Hosseini looked at me. “Genie, I’m sorry you had to go through that. I hope you can forgive the idiocy of mob mentality.”
“I’ll give Charlotte a hand,” I replied. “In the spirit of peace. It was my mess, after all.”
“Very honorable of you.” He dipped his head. “For my part, I’m looking forward to training you and turning your talents toward less chaotic ends. If you have Water abilities that can cause this, then your future as a hunter is very promising, indeed.”
I grinned, though my insides felt hollow. A futile victory. “The feeling’s mutual.”
“I’ll leave you to it.” Hosseini walked out, leaving me with a sullen Charlotte. She hadn’t argued against the punishment, but I could see she wasn’t jazzed about cleaning up. I couldn’t blame her. If anyone should have been mopping up, it was Bike-Pump Teddy and his fan club.
I stalked over to the counter, where one of the banquet hall workers was gathering mops. He handed two to me, complete with rusty buckets. I carried them back over and set one down beside Charlotte.
“Thanks,” I said, “for speaking up.”
She merely nodded, remaining cool to me as we cleaned, extinguishing any notions I had of a budding friendship between the two of us. Maybe the others would have a change of heart, maybe they wouldn’t. I couldn’t control anyone but myself. What hurt most was knowing my dad had faced this for years and had shielded me from it. But he’d hung on, thanks to the few who’d made him feel he belonged. That was enough to help me cling to my faith in the magical world. There was room for me in it. And I’d find my nook, sooner or later.
I was stubborn as a mule. It would take more than this for me to give up.
Seven
Persie
With everything rapidly slipping out of my control, I flung open the window, snatched up my backpack of pre-hexed Mason jars, and raced out the door, slamming it behind me to try to keep the smoke from setting off any alarms. How would I even begin to explain the mess in my bedroom to anyone who caught a glimpse? It looked like a bomb had gone off. Eyes watering and still shaky from the Purge, I took off down the hall to find the little monsters.
You’re not screwing this up for me! I ducked into doorways and hid behind walls to avoid being seen, keeping my eyes well and truly peeled. They couldn’t have gotten far, right? Oh, who was I kidding… of course, they could get far. They had freaking wings and a frightening determination to cause as much mayhem as possible. And I had absolutely no clue what they were. I’d never met them in a dream before, and though they resembled the sprite that Nathan had shown us, they definitely weren’t the same thing. Different bodies, different colors, different wings, and a penchant for bizarre accessories.
“Where the heck are you?” I hissed to the empty hallways as I entered another part of the Institute. Still living quarters, but not a section I’d visited before. Amber light flickered from the sconces on the wall, creating shadows that flitted and darted like the very creatures I was after. It left my head spinning and my stomach churning, until I had whiplash from turning left, right, back, and forward in an endless rhythm. But the tiny critters were nowhere to be seen. It was only the shadows messing with my already screwy head.
Okay, let’s think about this logically. How much harm can they actually do? I pressed on down the hallways, a million worst-case scenarios thudding in my brain. What if they got into Victoria’s room and scrambled her wardrobe, or got into her bathroom and did what they’d done in mine? What if they reached the main assembly hall and started smearing muck, or worse, on all that clean, white marble? What if they snuck into the Repository and let the monsters loose? They might not have looked violent, but they were really freaking mischievous. And there were so many things in this place for them to smash! They seemed to love smashing. And throwing things. And, holy crap, they’d really loved the fire.
“Why did it have to be these beasts?” I muttered, peering around a corner to make sure the coast was clear of people. Meanwhile, my eyes squinted through the gloom for the glint of a monster. “At least one big one would’ve been easier to spot.”
This would all come back to bite me if I couldn’t capture them. Speaking of which, where the heck were all the hunters who’d been stationed to watch over me? The one at the bottom of my corridor hadn’t been loitering there, and I couldn’t see any suspiciously placed personnel on my sprint through the hallways, either. I really hoped Victoria hadn’t called them off because I’d gone five days without a Purge. What if I’d lulled her into a false sense of security at the very moment when I could’ve used some help? Not because I couldn’t handle capturing what I’d created, but because there were so many of them. I’d estimated thirty, maybe more, had exploded from that weird black ball of mist.
Should I go to Victoria? I weighed the options as I pressed on. She’d given me a direct line to her office phone and an emergency beeper for occasions like this. But if I went to her with this incident or sounded the alarm, perhaps she’d worry that this might be a common occurrence in the future—Purging multiple beasts at once. What if that swayed
