Page 66 of An Invocation of Monsters

There was a moment of quiet, the only sounds the waves, the gulls, and Juno’s breathing.

“Yes,” she said, and I couldn’t read her tone of voice. “Sophie Marsh was our great-grandmother. If that’s what Aunt Gillian thought, then she was right. I have records here of her birth. She moved from Duskwood Island when she was about… oh, ten or so, to be fostered at a girls’ school on the mainland.”

My stomach clenched, squeezing in on itself.

What were the odds?

Realistically, there should have been no way that a college-aged Gillian just happened to come across a mysterious, tragic mansion in the forest where our great-grandmother just happened to have visited.

Absolutely no way.

“Are you still there, Elle?”

“I’m here.” I tapped the pen harder, frowning at the sheet so hard my forehead hurt. “It just seems… a little weird, doesn’t it? That our great-grandma was here in this exact place, and my mother just happened to stumble across it however many years later?”

Another pause. Then: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” she said.

I could almost hear her smiling as she spoke. It was her favorite quote.

“True, but…” I chewed my lower lip, then made myself stop. I needed to quit that habit before I gnawed a hole right through it. “It just doesn’t feel coincidental.”

“Maybe it’s not.”

“Oh, please!”

Juno laughed. God, I wished I could talk to her face to face right now, read the expressions she wore. “You know what I believe in, Elle. Sometimes fate needs a helping hand, but it's always working in the background of things.”

“Providence,” I said sourly. She always referred to her life, her home, even her baby as ‘providence’.

“Exactly,” she said with satisfaction. “Maybe providence brought you there. But… don’t get mad at me, but I’ve been doing some research of my own since you decided to visit that place.”

“Of course I’m not mad at you. I fully expect you to be overprotective of your poor, whimsical baby cousin.” I pushed the book aside and propped my feet on the dining table, letting my head sink back into the cushions.

“‘Whimsical’ is one word for it,” she muttered. “Anyway, I found a book on the history of the area—”

“Was it called Deepwater, by Marie Vaughn?” I demanded, sitting bolt upright again.

“How did you know?” Juno asked, sounding surprised. I heard a door slam shut in the background now, the sound of waves gone. “Vor- ah, I found a copy in the library. This Society sounds so sketchy to me, and I wanted to know what you were getting into.” There was the sound of rustling paper. “I mean, look at this. This creeper kept a woman’s corpse in his basement for a year, living with her like she was still alive—”

“Blech,” was my only commentary on that. I’d skimmed that part pretty quickly.

“And then… these people built up an occult society around that?” Juno snorted. “I’m not surprised, that sort of thing does tend to attract a certain element, but mostly… mostly I just want to know there’s not someone there trying to lure you into a basement there. Are they treating you all right?”

I thought of Joseph. I could easily picture him keeping women in basements.

Honestly, it disturbed me, too. It was one thing for a bunch of college outcasts to make up their own special magical society; it was another thing to make a home in a place where such horrors had occurred.

But then again… they had turned out to be right, hadn’t they?

They had found the Void.

I almost opened my mouth to tell her. I almost let the secret slip.

But Juno was seven months along. She was working multiple research projects, keeping up with the care of a sea-bound mansion all by herself while pregnant; she didn’t need me adding to her worries.

She was already worried enough that I was here at all.

“Nobody’s tried to lure me into a basement yet,” I said, forcing a snicker. “But if I see any shackles in the attic, I’ll be sure to give you a call. But speaking of all right, how are you? How’s the little monster doing?”

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