Harley Merlin and the Cult of Eris (Harley Merlin, #6)

I glanced at him. “How?”

“We need to flip these switches again, in a certain order. I’ve used a Gemini device before—I know how to overcharge it so it breaks.” He looked panicked, but that nagging doubt in the back of my head wouldn’t shut up. This was all too weird, and way too convenient.

“You want us to power down the Bestiary?” I couldn’t believe I was saying it.

He shook his head. “Not exactly. Look, I know you don’t trust me completely, but if you do as I say, you’ll get autonomy back. Not only that, but you’ll send a pulse back through the other end of the Gemini device that’s powerful enough to fry Tess’s hands. Hopefully it’ll knock her out, but first things first.”

“If you’ve got any part in this, Finch, I swear to God I’ll—”

He grabbed my hands and stared into my eyes. “I know how this looks. Believe me, I do. But if the Bestiary stays down, the whole magical world will collapse into the real world. The interdimensional pockets will spill out.”

I glanced back at the room and saw Wade, Santana, and Raffe sprinting across the Bestiary floor, slamming doors to keep the beasts at bay. Raffe had gone full djinn, rounding up any escapees and hurling them back into their boxes. There was terror on their faces as they came face-to-face with a huge serpent. Between the three of them—Santana, Raffe, and Wade—they wrangled it into submission and slung it back into confinement.

Tobe stepped up behind me. “I do not know why the backups aren’t working. I can only assume there is a device attached to the stem, as Finch has said. I only hope he’s as trustworthy as he attests to being.”

“Come on, Harley.” Finch gripped my hands tighter. Why do I have to make the choice?

“You really think this will work?”

He nodded. “I really do.”

“Then… we have to do it.”

“Finally!” He looked back at Tobe. “Now, there is no room for error. None. So you’ll have to do exactly what I tell you. To the letter, got it?”

Tobe and I nodded.

“Tobe, you get back on the levers. Harley, you’re on switches.”

I forged a small ball of fire in my right hand and held it close to the panel. “Which ones?”

“Tobe, pull the second lever. As soon as he’s done that, Harley, you need to push the fourth switch in.”

That nagging doubt was getting louder. “How do you know all of this?”

“I’ve seen the panel before. I saw Tobe’s sketches when I was plotting to let the gargoyles go. Katherine wanted me to get them for her, but I was arrested before I could. I’ve still got the memories, though. So I know which switch and lever does what, and I’ve always been good with electronics. This will work.”

My suspicions softened. Maybe his checkered past had finally become useful. After all, he’d had free rein of the coven before he was suspected of being Katherine’s associate.

“Tobe, pull it. Harley, get ready.” Finch cast me a hard look. “It’s now or never.”

I gritted my teeth. “Fine. Tobe, do it.”

I made a vow, there and then—if Finch was playing us, then I would see him punished for foxing us again. He wouldn’t even make it back to Purgatory once I was done with him.

Tobe pulled down hard on the lever, and I flipped the fourth switch. As fast as possible, we made our way through the pattern that Finch gave us until, at last, there was only one switch left. The main switch, the one that would hopefully bring life back to the deadened Bestiary. It was my job to press it, and I’d never been so scared to flip a switch before. To my right, Tobe pulled down the last lever, leaving the rest up to me. Praying that I was right about Finch, I lifted the plastic casing of the last switch and pushed on the yellow bar. It clicked down, and now we had nothing to do but wait.

A moment later, sparks of bronzed electricity gathered around the Bestiary cages, spiraling up in mystical tendrils. As if a gust of wind had swept them away, they surged toward the central stem and got sucked into the inner workings. The wires and fiber-optics lit up like it was the Fourth of July, electricity bristling through every vein, as if someone had just defibrillated the entire thing. It popped and crackled with a thousand tiny explosions, bronzed particles dissipating into the atmosphere, until, finally, the Bestiary lights flickered to life and the central stem began to thrum. The power had come back.

I sank down against the wall, able to breathe again. Holding my head in my hands, I looked up at the lights. I’d never been so grateful to see lit-up bulbs before. It also made me realize just how quiet the Bestiary had been without the whirr of the central stem constantly pulsing away in the background. It was nice to hear it again and feel the vibrations running through the floor beneath me.

“Do you realize what we have just done?” Tobe stared at the central stem. “We have just prevented a devastating attack upon, not only the coven, but the rest of the magical world. I cannot even begin to imagine what would have happened if we had not. I shall be able to think of little else for the foreseeable future.”

I looked to Wade, who seemed to be putting the last of the runaways in its box, with Santana and Raffe backing him up. They’d done just as much as we had to prevent this from taking a downward spiral real fast. And they looked exhausted.

Finch smiled. “I knew it would work.”

“Looks like some of that underhanded stuff you did here came to some good,” I replied, my body drenched in a cold sweat.

“You should be glad that Katherine didn’t get her hands on it first. I’m not saying getting arrested was a good thing, but at least she didn’t get those sketches.” He folded his arms across his chest and looked up at the towering central atrium.

Not far from where we’d left him, Raffe darted across the room and stooped to pick something up beside the base of the stem. A second later, he came running toward us with something clutched in his hands. It looked like nothing more than a smoking jumble of plastic, all mixed up with a few still-glowing crystals and a tangle of molten wires, but I sensed it was far more than that. Finch confirmed my suspicions as he took the smoldering item out of Raffe’s hands and held it up to the light.

“Yep, just what I thought. This is one half of the Gemini device.”

Raffe gaped at it. “It fell off the atrium.”

Behind him, Santana walked toward us, her phone pressed to her ear. She ended the call shortly afterward, her face set in a grim expression. “I like fireworks as much as the next girl, but I needed my brown pants for that one.” She shook it off in true Santana style. “I’ve just been on the phone with Astrid. She’s sending security magicals to do an in-house and outside perimeter sweep for Thessaly Crux. She’s sending medical staff to come and look at the personnel in here, who got electrocuted by those initial blasts. She’s already pulled up Thessaly’s file, and she’s looking through it now. She’ll phone back when she’s got more info.”

“What would we do without you?” I flashed her a smile.

“Flap about, probably,” she replied. “So, who got the lights back on?”

I nodded toward Finch. “That was all Finch’s doing, believe it or not. He knew what to do to destroy that heap of junk over there. It was messing with the atrium, but he knew a way to get it to overload and break off.”