Page 137 of An Invocation of Monsters

“You told me Mary said ‘children’,” Juno said quietly. “Sophie’s children, plural.”

I stopped chewing abruptly. “You mean… there’s others. Like us.”

Juno nodded, then pulled her phone out of her pocket and pulled something up. She slid it over to me.

I picked it up and saw a news article.

There was a photo of a smiling girl, no older than twenty. She was strikingly lovely, with long dark hair, straight brows, and full lips.

Her eyes were as gray as smoke and mist. Marsh eyes.

I scanned the article: it was recent, from the website of a small town called Kingsport, a celebration that Arianna Marsh had been accepted to the Miskatonic University on a full-ride scholarship. She would be making the move to the city of Arkham later that year.

Beneath were a number of comments wishing her well.

My toast turned to a lump in my stomach.

I slid the phone back to Juno and got up to refill my tea cup.

“You see, I found a brief letter on Duskwood Island, from Madeline to Sophie.” Juno raised her eyes to me. “Madeline was Sophie’s older sister. She enrolled her in the Innsmouth Preparatory School for Girls because she was too young to care for her little sister alone. I believe she thought Sophie would return to the island, but she never did. From her letter, I inferred that despite not tying herself to a single gate, Sophie did in fact enter the Void later and meet her own monsters, who she took as her mates.”

“She was the one who opened the first door to the Void here,” I reminded her. I’d told her that earlier this week, and Juno nodded.

“Yes. And Felicity was mentioned in this letter—along with someone named Mercy. I did some prying, found some old records on the mainland, and found that a woman named Mercy Marsh—whose mother was Sophie—had given birth to a Diana Marsh. And guess what Arianna’s mother’s name is?”

“I’m going to take a wild guess and say… Diana?”

“Bingo.” Juno tapped the screen over the girl’s face. “Arianna is a distant cousin of ours, a direct descendant of Sophie Marsh.”

“So… what do we do about it?” I felt the first stirrings of panic.

My god, I had just committed a blood sacrifice. I didn’t know the first thing about guarding Void gates.

There was still so much I didn’t know. I couldn’t drop everything and help this girl when I had no idea what to do with myself.

Juno read the panic on my face. “Elle. Deep breath and chill. I’m not suggesting we do anything.”

There was a slight relief in the panic. “No?”

“No.” She patted my chair. “Sit. I’m just telling you what I’ve found, and knowing that Sophie had multiple children definitely confirms this. I don’t think we should contact her or anything. We’d sound like lunatics.”

I smiled at her weakly.

“I’m just letting you know I’m happy to have it confirmed. I am going to keep an eye on her—from a distance, of course.” Juno put her phone away. “But we don’t have to do anything. Tracing other Void-touched family members is just a pet project of mine. I want to know how many others have this ability. There could be… so many more of us that we don’t know about.”

The relief was in full force now. I wasn’t ready to do anything yet besides learning my own abilities and what I needed to do here.

And the fact that this Arianna was heading to Miskatonic University, where my mother had been put on a trajectory that ended up ending her life…

Well, I wasn’t touching that yet.

The wound was still too raw.

“I feel like there’s a lot we still don’t know,” I said, dumping sugar in my tea. “And probably won’t ever know.”

“Probably.” Juno smiled. “But that’s what makes the search fun.”

* * *

---