Page 8 of An Invocation of Monsters

Willow smiled vaguely, twirling a piece of Queen Anne’s Lace she’d pulled from her flower crown, and I followed Kase down the hall with relief.

The rest of the Lodge was just as beautiful as the foyer. We went down another hall lined with windows overlooking Deepwater Lake, and I found my gaze pulled to the nearly-black water in the center.

Kase saw where I was looking. “There’s a very steep drop-off only fifteen feet or so into the water,” he told me. “We swim all the time, but be careful. Joseph strung buoys to mark the spot.”

“Looks cold out there.” It was spring, but at this latitude it would be pretty chilly even in full sun.

Kase laughed. “Yeah, that’s another one of the anomalies about this place. It could be ten degrees outside, but swimming in the lake feels like taking a warm bath. We go out year-round.”

It hadn’t escaped my notice that neither Mary nor Joseph had explained exactly what the snap headache had been, and Joseph’s little speech about Jung’s personas had thrown me off-guard.

I had to remember that my mother knew these people. They weren’t strangers to her… although I had been, apparently.

We came to a pair of double doors, with a brass plaque on the wall beside it. I read my mother’s name inscribed on it with deep flourishes, but it wasn’t her married name.

It said Gillian Marsh.

I touched the plaque, running my fingers over her name. I was surprised she hadn’t had it changed to read Gillian Gray.

But maybe this was where she came to remind herself that she was more than just Benjamin Gray’s wife.

Kase pushed open one of the doors, and the house abruptly changed.

We stepped into an open parlor with polished parquet floors and high ceilings. A large, plush leather couch sat in front of a fireplace with an antique Victorian mantel, an Impressionist painting in shades of indigo, cream, and warm ochre hanging over it.

I could see the stamp of my mother all over this room, down to the half-burned magnolia candle on a brass side table.

“The bedroom is this way,” Kase said, yanking me out of my reverie of seeing my mother curled up right there on the sofa. The mental image was so clear, I could almost believe I’d really seen her.

Then I realized that Kase was no longer treating me like a pariah he’d picked up on the side of the road. He was opening doors like a footman who’d waited his whole life for this moment.

I glanced at him, and caught the same wide-eyed adoration he’d shown earlier when speaking about my mother.

He’d become solicitous about showing me to my rooms… after I’d healed Mary’s mysterious ailment.

Maybe he’d just needed hard proof that I was his Mother of Open Doors’ precious offspring before he went into subservient puppy mode.

I stepped into the bedroom. An enormous picture window overlooked the lake, and indigo walls gave the space a dreamy cast. There was a massive canopied bed piled with cloudy cream linen.

A sparkling chandelier cast rainbow spots across the walls, and I dropped my duffel bag unceremoniously on the bed. Even the pale wood furniture, carved with mandala-like flowers, had been polished in preparation of my arrival.

“I hope you like it,” Kase said anxiously from the doorway.

“It’s gorgeous.” I managed to sound normal and even-toned, even though my throat had swollen tight. It was all so… her, and yet also me.

Like she had known this space wouldn’t be hers forever. That it would be passed on, and somehow I had walked into the bedroom of my dreams.

At home, our house had been done in shades of gray, just like our name. Dove gray, creamy gray, foggy gray, cool gray.

Even my childhood bedroom, hardly changed since childhood, was white and gray. The entire place had felt very institutional; I hadn’t felt the slightest spark of regret about selling it.

I watched the crystal chandelier sparkle against the dark paint and smiled.

“Um… I can show you around the rest of the house.” Kase’s eyes lingered on me. I felt his gaze like a living weight. “We have a live-in chef, so you’ll want to know where the kitchen is, and where everyone else lives. Some places are off-limits.”

“That sounds great, thanks.” I tugged my gloves, ensuring they were covering every inch of exposed skin halfway up my forearm, and followed him back out of my new bedroom.

The kitchen was on the opposite side of the house, a massive room of stainless steel and white marble that was almost blinding in its cleanliness and sound-proofed, the why of which became apparent as soon as we opened the door and were assaulted with jet engine levels of Eastern European techno.

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