Harley Merlin 11: Finch Merlin and the Lost Map Read online

  “Perhaps it would be best if everyone concentrated on their own plant,” Etienne cut in. “You must all find your own means of creating the right formula. In such small proportions, nobody will come to harm, as long as you don’t try to ingest the chemicals.”

  Yeah, so butt out. I returned my attention to the pipette and gave it a defiant squeeze. A few drops tumbled into the reddish soil. The air stilled with anticipation, and everyone gaped at me. I waited, begging the sapling to shoot up and give me some plump fruit. Seconds passed, but the sapling stayed the same. Come on, little shrub… Etienne’s tree had grown instantly, but mine didn’t do anything.

  Then, the tiny fruitlings started to shake. I stepped back, praying that I’d lucked out and gotten the formula on my first try.

  But then, the orange seedlings began to cry. They started small, with snuffling that could’ve been rustling leaves. The sound grew slowly into an all-out bawl. The seedlings shook harder, their sobs turning into an eerie howl that cut right through me. It was the bestial scream of someone who’d lost a loved one. They sounded so heartbroken and pained, like I had tortured them.

  “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I gasped, tears springing to my eyes.

  The sobbing spread, hitting everyone with that agonizing sorrow. Melody went first, sinking onto her stool as her shoulders shook. Luke went to comfort her, but he was crying, too. Mr. Abara wiped his eyes on the backs of his sleeves, and Oliver stared dead ahead with tears streaming down his cheeks. Blanche leaned over her bench and held her head. The Basani twins clutched each other, weeping at the tops of their lungs. Even Etienne wasn’t immune. He sat on the edge of his bench, his tears flowing down an otherwise calm face.

  “They are weeping orange willows,” Etienne said. “They are a native hybrid of weeping willows and orange trees, found only on this island. If the formula is wrong, they will cry. If the formula is right, the trees will grow and blossom and prompt the fruitlings to turn into fully formed fruit.”

  “How do I stop them?” I asked through blurry eyes.

  He sighed heavily. “They will cease when they are ready.”

  “Will they do that every time?” Melody whimpered, holding Luke’s arm.

  “No. As Finch said, it will be trial and error.” Etienne pushed away from the bench and made for the door. “I do not care for the weeping, so I will leave you to your work. But, as a parting detail, I should tell you that the closer you get to the right formula, the better the trees will react. They are your guide. Listen to what they have to say.”

  He left without another word, while the rest of us waited out the heart-wrenching sobs of my sapling.

  “I’m sorry. Please, stop crying,” I pleaded, caressing the little orange fruitlings. They still felt hot to the touch, but I could handle it to comfort them.

  Gradually, their sorrow subsided, but I didn’t know if I had the heart to try again. That sound wasn’t just creepy, it was devastating. Like all the losses I’d ever experienced, balled up and shoved down my throat.

  Forgive me, buddies. I’ve got to make you grow. Steeling myself, I cleaned out the beaker and started fresh. This time, I chose only the clear liquids and poured them into the beaker. I planned to add serpent excretion last, to give it that blue color. However, as soon as the ricin hit, the whole thing turned red.

  “Crap,” I muttered under my breath.

  “You won’t find the right formula through blind luck, Finch.” Luke was at it again.

  “Why don’t you concentrate on your own formula, huh? It doesn’t look like anyone will swoop in and save your ass this time, so you’d better hop to it,” I snapped back.

  Luke looked ready to lunge, but Melody pulled him back. “He’s right, Luke. We need to figure this out, and we only have three days. Chemistry is a very exact science, and it’s going to take a lot of work to get the correct formula. Come on, let’s see if we can make any deductions.”

  He flashed a suitably venomous glare before leaning over Melody’s bench with her, listening to the interesting facts she had to say about each bottle. And, man, did she have a lot to say. I pretended not to listen as I went back to the drawing board.

  What did I do to get him this riled up? Yeah, he’d found me in the underbelly of the monastery, and probably thought I was up to no good, but why all the sudden anger? Surely, if he was suspicious, he’d have been better off buddying up to me to get answers. Maybe he thought I intended to hurt Melody, though I had no idea why. Then again, when it came to Melody, he didn’t seem to know what rationality was when he was around her.

  “Did you know ricin is taken from the beans of the castor oil plant?” Melody rambled. “That’s where its name comes from—Ricinus communis. The oil is extracted, leaving the ricin in the fiber. It causes cell death and is most effective when inhaled or injected.”

  Melody was an assassin’s fever dream. If Etienne ever decided to return to his old life and didn’t feel like using magic, she’d be his girl. While I worked, she rambled about batrachotoxin and how the natives of Western Colombia took the poison from the skin of frogs and laced their darts with it. Hence the name “poison dart frogs.”

  All the while, Luke smiled at her, observing her like a lovesick puppy. She could have been talking about cow crap, and he’d have kept on grinning.

  I mixed another batch of poison, leaving out the ricin and adding the serpent excretion to the rest of the clear liquids. It looked like the right color, but that didn’t mean anything. Trial and error, right? I drew it into the pipette and carried it to my shrub.

  “Fire in the hole!” I shouted.

  Everyone covered their ears. After dripping the blue liquid into the pot, I dropped the pipette and followed suit. The seedlings shook, quicker than before. Even through my hands, I heard their sorrowful cries. They twisted in my chest like a knife, bringing another wave of tears to my eyes. I’d need to down a gallon of water, unless I wanted to risk dehydration.

  As the sobs subsided, I returned to my bench and dumped out the mixture. Everyone had stopped to have their own sad moment, and they were slowly coming out of it. This was probably why we had three days for this task. With all the crying, we’d be stopping and starting like a rusty old Chevy.

  A couple of hours and a whole load of tears later, frustration set in. We all had notebooks, and they were full of failed attempts. This was hopeless. Even having the color as a guide wasn’t helping. Plus, there was always the possibility that Etienne changed the color on purpose to trick us. So, I threw everything at my poor shrub. Every color, every combo, every quantity I could think of. Nothing did a thing to calm the seedlings’ cries. If anything, they grew louder.

  “I hate these plants.” Mr. Abara sighed as he dumped a beaker of failed mix into the sink. “What do they have to cry about, anyway?”

  “I’m getting very tired.” Blanche stretched her arms.

  Melody nodded. “Who knew chemistry could be so exhausting? Maybe the fumes from all these chemicals are making us sleepy. Some of them are neurotoxins, so it’s not impossible.”

  “You’re saying that now?” I teased. “What if this is just a slower version of that laughing gas?”

  “This is ridiculous.” Mr. Abara sat on his stool and folded his arms across his chest. “This is not possible. Etienne is fooling us.”

  “I guess we just have to keep trying.” I didn’t have anything more encouraging to say.

  Everyone got back to it. Shouts of, “Fire in the hole!” became our way of warning the room of another imminent howl of misery. It burst through the lab every few minutes, with all of us ducking and covering our ears. I’d stuffed some cotton balls down my ear canals, which took the edge off a bit.

  When I leave for the night, I’m going to find wax. When near Ithaca, do as Odysseus did with the sirens’ song, right? If I didn’t find a way to block out that heartbreaking sound, it’d finish me off long before the frustration did.

  I returned to my mixing like a regular Julia
Child, keeping an eye on the Basani twins, who were whispering to each other. Nobody else seemed to have noticed; they were too engrossed in the task. I made a show of pouring liquids into my beaker.

  Oliver crouched on the ground, writing failed attempts on a piece of paper with his back to his tree. With him totally oblivious, the Basani twins struck. Using thin strands of Telekinesis, Fay whipped some of his bottles off his desk. Meanwhile, Shailene nabbed bottles from Etienne’s desk and switched them with Oliver’s. All in the blink of an eye.

  You sly little witches! Oliver got back up and reached for one of the substituted bottles, his eyes fixed on his beaker. Read the damn label! I tried to urge the thoughts into his head, but I wasn’t a Telepath. At their benches nearby, the Basani twins sneered, waiting for Oliver to screw up.

  I didn’t want to help that lazy wretch. But I didn’t want the Basani twins getting any satisfaction, either. This put me in a true pickle. Ah… life was easier before you came along, conscience.

  I threw out a rapid strand of Telekinesis and flicked the substitute bottles off the table, including the one Oliver was about to pick up. They hit the ground with a splintering crack, startling Oliver and the others. He stared at the broken bottles.

  “Did you do that?” He looked at me, mouth open. I had my palms up, so I was the obvious culprit.

  “I did, but only to stop you from making a big mistake. You need to keep an eye on your stuff, Oliver. There are snakes around.” I shot a dark glare at the Basani twins. “You two need to back off. We’re all equals here.”

  The twins paled. “Who’s to say you didn’t switch his bottles?” Shailene retorted.

  “You just did. I never said anything about his bottles being switched.” I flashed a cold smile.

  Their mouths opened and closed like beached fish.

  As the dust settled, most of us returned to work. Oliver recovered his stolen bottles and held them close, shooting furious looks at the twins every few minutes. Only Blanche didn’t pick up again. She made her way over to me, and I stopped what I was doing.

  “That was a wonderful thing you did, just now,” she murmured. “You didn’t have to help him, but you did. That’s commendable.”

  I shrugged shyly. “I couldn’t let them sabotage him. He might be an ass, but they’re bigger asses.”

  “Your language, Finch. It would make a nun blush.” She tutted playfully.

  “That’s tame compared to the stuff I used to hear,” I replied.

  Her expression softened.

  “Nowadays, I just do the opposite of whatever Katherine would’ve done,” I told her. “What are you going to do once you pass all these trials and find El Dorado?”

  “I appreciate the assumption that I’ll pass the trials.” She grinned, but then her expression calmed. “I’m just trying to feel alive before death comes for me. It’ll be a slow trek to the grave if I just sit around, doing nothing.”

  “I think that’s admirable. I hope I have the energy when I’m your age… if I get to your age.” I heaved a sigh.

  She peered up at me, sadness in her eyes. “I hope you find a way to enjoy life someday. You learn what’s important when you lose someone. It changes you. Take it from an old lady: there’s no sense in life if you’re not livin’ it and doin’ everything you can to stave off death. Just existin’ will leave you hollow, son.”

  I let out a dry laugh. “Believe me, I’m trying.”

  A nearby rustle distracted me from my impromptu therapy session with Blanche. A parrot landed on the windowsill, ruffling its feathers and throwing back its head.

  “Numbskull! Hey! Numbskull!” it croaked. It was definitely looking at me. “Numbskull! Hey!”

  This parrot had Morph written all over it.

  “Sorry, Blanche. I’m just going to take a closer look at that… bird.” I got up and crossed the room.

  “Hey!” it chirped.

  “Yeah?”

  Its black beak opened wide. “Marlin! Marlin! Numbskull!”

  Marlin? Wait… if this was Kenzie, she’d only be able to use the parrot’s vocabulary to speak to me. Marlin and Merlin. Coincidence? No chance. This parrot was definitely for me.

  “What do you want?” I whispered.

  “Take a leak! Take a leak!” it croaked.

  I leaned closer. “You want me to go somewhere private?”

  “Bingo! Two fat ladies!”

  “Who are you calling fat?” I put my arm out, and the bird hopped right on. Turning around, I saw everyone’s eyes firmly fixed on me. “I’m going to give this to Etienne. No idea how it got in. But if this thing keeps squawking, and those buds start crying again, my ears will hemorrhage.”

  I hurried out of the room before anyone could question me. I took the parrot into the flowery square outside and ducked into the shadow of a cloister. Only then did I turn to the parrot.

  “Kenzie? Is that you?”

  The parrot nodded. “Numbskull! Bingo!”

  “What are you doing here? Did Harley send you?” I had so many questions, having starved so long for communication.

  “No! Numbskull!” the parrot cawed. “Airbus!”

  “Airbus? You mean, Erebus?” My heart lurched. “Are you working for him?”

  “No time! Spy! Donkey spy!”

  I frowned. “Donkey? What donkey?”

  “Donkey! Faster!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I muttered in frustration.

  “D’oh! Caster! Donkey! Caster!”

  My eyes widened. “Do you mean Doncaster?”

  “Bingo!”

  “Davin has a spy here?”

  It nodded, ruffling its feathers. “Yes! Bad spy! Bingo!”

  “Do you know who it is?” I pressed.

  “No! Spy! Bad spy!”

  “Come on, Kenzie, you have to give me more. You’re killing me.”

  “Poison!” she croaked.

  My frown deepened. “Poison? What do you mean? Is he going to poison someone?”

  “No! Poison tree! Grow!”

  Understanding hit me. “You know how I can make the tree grow?”

  “Later!”

  “You know, but you can’t tell me now?” I prompted.

  “Soon! Later! Got to go! Ciao!” The parrot flapped away, leaving me to stare after it.

  As I sank back into the shadows, I let Kenzie’s stilted words mingle in my brain, trying to make sense of them. First and foremost, Davin had a spy in the monastery. He wasn’t just thinking about getting inside, he’d already done it, albeit vicariously. Secondly, but no less importantly, Kenzie might have a way of making that tree grow.

  The timing worried me—the same way it had worried Etienne. And the same way it clearly worried Erebus, if he’d gone to the trouble of enlisting Kenzie. That stuck in my throat. What had it cost her? I couldn’t think about that now. I’d have to ask her later, if she came back. Until then, I needed to focus on what I could do something about.

  Why had Davin sent a spy? Once again, Davin seemed to be meddling in Erebus’s business. It left an aftertaste of suspicion in my mouth, foul and unrelenting. If Davin was hellbent on getting in Erebus’s way a second time, there had to be a reason. Maybe there was a deeper connection between the Prince of Darkness and the perpetual British stone in my shoe.

  Either way, this had just added a guacamole of crap onto this never-ending, layered dip of difficulty.

  Trying not to lose my mind, I headed inside. But everything had changed. I couldn’t look at the others the same way. Not now. Any one of them could’ve been the spy, even Etienne. Especially Etienne, given his old ties to Davin.

  I glanced at Luke. He ranked high on my list of suspects, especially since he’d followed me around and gotten all annoying about my potions. Almost like he wanted me to fail.

  “Hey, numbskull!” Luke shouted over the weeping, as I returned to my bench.

  “Talking to yourself again, Luke? First sign of madness, you know,” I retorte
d. Childish, but deeply satisfying.

  He scowled. “I guess you and that bird are kindred spirits. Same size brain.”

  “Actually, African grays are famously smart, so I’ll take that as a compliment.” I gave him a cold stare. “That one probably had a bigger vocabulary than you’ll ever have. Maybe you should ask it to teach you some really hard words, like ‘Neanderthal.’”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Ah, so you don’t know what that means. It’s hard to explain. I could get you a mirror, if you want me to show you.” I knew I shouldn’t bite, but if he worked for Davin, I wanted to get in all the digs I could before I exposed him.

  Melody put a hand on his shoulder. “He’s just teasing, Luke. Come on, let’s get back to work, shall we?”

  He might not have realized, but Melody was as much his defender as he was her protector. I’d noticed it a lot. Subtle gestures here and soft words there, to calm him down. But if I discovered that he was the spy, nobody—Melody included—could protect him from my wrath.

  Twenty-Four

  Finch

  Day one was a bust. Kenzie hadn’t come back, and the monastery had lost its charm. I couldn’t even enjoy the tasty food, since it came with a hefty seasoning of suspicion. I observed everyone during those quieter moments, waiting for someone to slip, but I wasn’t that lucky. They went about their business, same as ever. Only my situation had altered.

  On day two, I entered the lab before dawn. I hadn’t slept a wink. The slightest sound had woken me during the night and put me on edge. Fearing I might be smothered didn’t encourage a good night’s rest. Not wanting to stare at spooky-ass Hades until the sun rose, I’d dragged myself out of bed to face another long day of screeching saplings.

  Mr. Abara slept on the floor. He’d evidently tried to pull an all-nighter and failed miserably. Melody and Luke stood at their benches.

  “Where’s your parrot?” Luke sniped right in.

  “It flew off,” I replied. I’d worried over Kenzie all night, so it was a bit of a sore point. I wanted to know what sort of deal she’d struck with Erebus, and I wanted to know how to solve this tree problem. A hint about the spy’s identity would’ve been helpful, too. But she hadn’t returned.