Page 96 of An Invocation of Monsters

You’re not of the blood.

Marie stared at Sophie furiously, her mouth working but no sound coming out.

What if… blood did matter? What if there was actually something genetically ingrained in me that made me able to see monsters?

What if Kase and Joseph were right?

In that window of time, Sophie seemed to sense that she’d pushed her friend too far.

“Please, don’t be upset,” she begged, gripping Marie’s hands. “I will bring you back here, I promise. Maybe they will choose you, too!”

“Yes, you must,” Marie demanded, aware that she’d won this fight. She fought hard to hide her smile. “You can live with me forever, and keep the door open for us.”

At that, Sophie only smiled sadly, but her next words were lost to me. She spoke soundlessly.

Toth made a low, pained noise.

“I can’t hold the window any longer,” he said, and I nodded.

The mistiness began to dissipate, taking Sophie and Marie with it. The bleeding colors faded and vanished, and Toth’s wings came to a slow halt.

When they were still, they drooped limply against his back.

Toth unhooked his claws from my hands, and I winced as I flexed my stiff fingers.

“I’m so sorry, Elle,” he said, taking my hands. “I couldn’t risk losing you within that window.”

I just smiled and touched the backs of my hands one at a time. The wounds sealed up, leaving nothing but dried blood behind. “No harm, no foul.”

“Did you find what you were seeking?” Toth lifted a hand to his lips like he would kiss it, but instead his tongue flickered out, lapping the dried blood from my skin.

I chewed my lip, reminded myself to break that habit for the millionth time, and gazed at the place where Sophie had been standing.

She had known about it all. What other secrets were hiding within the hidden branches of our family tree?

“I think I found even more than that.”

30

Elle

With my mind whirring a million times a minute, I quietly crept through Kiraxis’s cavern, and Toth lifted me up to the dark mirror.

“You’ll come back for me tonight, right?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Toth nodded, and I kissed my fingers and pressed them to his lips before climbing back to my world.

My dull, dreary human world, where the late afternoon sunlight splashed across the floorboards as I slid out from under the bed.

For a moment, I just leaned back against the bed, sighing as I pulled my legs up against my chest.

I felt a little better. Not a lot, but enough to no longer feel like I was being sapped by despair.

If my great-grandmother had known about the Void—God, she’d been so matter-of-fact about it, like she’d been born knowing about all of this—then I had to question if I was truly unnatural at all.

Maybe Joseph, on some weird level, was right. Maybe there were people out there who were genetically inclined to be able to access other worlds.

I mean, it was no worse of an explanation than assuming I was a freak of nature.

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