Page 53 of An Invocation of Monsters

Then I paused, looking back in the mirror one last time, searching my face.

For a moment, there had been something… odd about my reflection. I stared at myself, trying to pinpoint what it was, but all I could see now was myself, looking tired and a little harried, but nothing out of the ordinary.

“Weird.” I stepped out, and found Kase waiting for me in the parlor. He was eyeballing the array of books and boxes still spread on the coffee table.

I stopped in place, staring at him. He still wore his usual whites and beiges—no color for this Society kid.

But now he wore a crown of white flowers with it, along with red paint streaked liberally across his face.

“Um… did I miss a memo about dressing up?” I asked, staring at three lines extending from the corner of his eye to his jaw, clearly drawn on with his fingers.

Kase smiled, a hint of self-consciousness playing about his lips. “You’re not a full Society member yet, so no. This’ll come later, after your induction.”

“Tonight?” I asked, locking the door behind me as I followed him out into the hall.

He shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe. Every moment you spend in the Lodge, you’re being vetted for entry. A lot of people get asked to leave after a week when it’s clear they’re not our sort of people.”

“The sort of people who see the doorways, right?”

He led me outside, towards the forest path that cut through the abandoned village. “Yeah. You’ve got to have a touch of the extradimensional to your essential genetic make-up to see one at all. Some have more, some have less. Gillian was probably the strongest Society member, but Mary and Joseph have seen plenty of doors.”

“How many have you seen?” I was up to two, and couldn’t help but wonder what the average count was. Did they have a running tally somewhere?

“One.” Kase smiled sheepishly. “But that’s more than a lot of people, so… I’m not upset. I just have to work harder at opening my mind to the Things Beyond.”

“So how many have Mary and Joseph seen?” I asked, picking my way around a fallen log. Kase had pulled out a large Coleman lantern, otherwise I would’ve tripped right over it and eaten dirt.

He hesitated for a full minute. “Mary says she has seen ten. Joseph says he’s seen seven.”

Before I could stop myself, I’d snorted and blurted out, “Bullshit.”

But Kase didn’t take offense. The line of his shoulders relaxed.

“Don’t tell them I said this, but… yeah. I love them, but I think they’re insecure that they couldn’t quite measure up to Gillian.” He cut a sideways glance at me, the shadows playing across his young face making him seem oddly sinister. “I already told you that she actually went through and met the Things Beyond.”

I made suitably awed noises, even though this was old news to me.

But the good thing about Kase was that once you got him rolling on a subject, he happily took the wheel.

“She opened the door and actually communed with them, becoming a vessel for their power.” The fanatic gleam in the eye I’d seen before had lit up again. “No one else has done it since.”

I bit my lip, keeping mum.

“But you know what really supports my theory?” Kase continued. “Gillian said she found five doors, and she was there. She was actually on the other side. So I think Mary and Joseph are just trying to one-up her, because there hasn’t been any sign that the Things Beyond have communed with them. You can find all the doors you want, but it doesn’t matter if the other side doesn’t want you. It’ll keep you from crossing over.”

“So you’ve seen a door, but you haven’t crossed?” We passed through the village, and on a hunch, I watched Kase’s gaze as we passed the building where chalk marks were still just visible on the ground, where Toth had been trapped.

Kase didn’t notice the marks at all. “No, not fully. Sometimes if I sort of… peer in I can get a glimpse of the other side, but that’s about it. I have to concentrate really hard just for that. Joseph said it's because my genetic lineage is weak, but… I can’t do much of anything about that. So I’m going to keep up with my studies and maybe I’ll be able to cross over one day.”

It was the second time he’d mentioned genetics, and there was a feeling I didn’t like very much forming in the pit of my stomach.

Especially when combined with the fact that all of these people looked the same. They could’ve all fallen off the same branch of a family tree. Dirty blonde hair, blue eyes… and yet somehow none of them appeared to be actually related.

Of the visitors who’d been asked to leave the Lodge, I wondered how many had dark hair or eyes. My own father, Benjamin, had been dark-haired, and they had no compunctions about telling me how he hadn’t been fit for their group.

“So what about Willow? How many has she seen?”

We turned off the beaten path I’d come to know, into deeper forest. Now we were on an uphill incline.

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