Page 28 of Monster's Reward

“You have to listen to this,” Jasmine said.

“But I was right in the middle of—”

“Seriously, you’re going to want to know this!” Mikaela burst out.

“Okay, okay, tell me.”

Jasmine settled on her bed and Mikaela began to pace.

“We were in Monsters Throughout History and I suddenly realized we had an expert on monsters right there in front of us and none of us had ever asked him. So I did. I went up to Professor Sommerland and I asked.”

“Asked him what?”

“I asked who he thinks the Shadow Killer is.”

I blanched. “In class?” I was horrified. What if the other students figured things out? What if it got back to Jahrdran that my roommates were asking about the shadow killer?

“Of course not! I waited until after class, then I asked him.”

“Okay. And?”

“He doesn’t know.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course, he doesn’t.” I went back to my book, determined to finish—

“But he doesn’t think it was a shadow monster.”

I froze and looked back up. “He doesn’t?”

“Nope.”

“Then who does he think it was?”

“He doesn’t know, but he said it didn’t make sense for it to be a shadow monster because they were known the world over for their heroic acts, using the shadows to leap into disaster areas to save lives.”

“How did you explain even knowing about them?”

“I told him I’d run across a reference to the killer while researching for his class, but I hadn’t heard of the monster classification before and I was curious.”

“Okay, well, while that’s interesting, I don’t see how it can help us.”

“He also said the reason everyone believed the killer was a shadow monster was because only they can shadow-walk,” Jasmine said.

“Yeah, except that wasn’t entirely true,” Mikaela’s voice rose with her excitement. “According to Professor Sommerland, the mates of shadow monsters could also shadow-walk.”

I nodded. “That’s how I was able to pull Jahrdran into the shadows. Because he’s my mate.”

“Exactly and once a mate has access to the shadow realm, Mr. Sommerland said their access became permanent, and over time, they got better at shadow-walking.”

“So he thinks maybe the killer was a shadow beast’s mate?”

“It’s the only other possibility, he said.”

“Shit,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Hold on, it’s in here somewhere.” I flipped back several pages, scanned, flipped a page again, then exclaimed, “Okay, listen to this.”

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