Page 15 of An Inheritance of Monsters

The closet was empty—except for two dust bunnies hiding in the corner.

I frowned up into the dark corners, unsure of why I was surprised.

But the feeling of eyes on me, a dark presence looming just out of sight, had been so powerful that goosebumps had risen all over my body.

I closed the door slowly, waiting and peering into the crack.

For just a moment before I’d opened the door, I could’ve sworn I’d seen… something. A swirl of smoke from the corner of my eye, a faint gleam…

“Shrooms,” I told myself firmly for the third time, even though I knew that was bullshit by now.

I was completely lucid. It wasn’t like the walls were bleeding while I looked at the luminescence still gleaming on my skin.

It was tangibleproofthat there was something here in this manor—but if I went running down the hall to Crispy and Sierra right now, claiming I’d visited another world through my bathtub and met a tentacled monster…

They’d never take me seriously again. It was already hard enough maintaining composure on camera when I could see ghosts leering over Crispy’s shoulder or circling Sierra.

The one time I’d tried to bring up the things I could see, they’d both scoffed at me, and the tension had become unbearably uncomfortable when I insisted it was true.

It had been a dead subject between us since then. It was one thing to be great at research, and another to claim the asylum you were visiting was absolutely teeming with spirits no one else could see.

Especially when one of them had held me at arm’s length since.

Sierra, who did tarot readings and looked for auras in every location we visited, had become cool and remote towards me once I’d told them, likely thinking I was trying to steal her thunder as the medium on our show.

She could have that role, for all I cared. But it hurt more that they hadn’t believed me at all—and bringing it up now would only make the gulf between us deeper.

I couldn’t risk it with Carson here, ready to swoop in and steal the Sci-Fi Network slot.

But Icouldsketch out everything I’d seen and felt in the back of the Black Book—and maybe in the morning, in the full light of day, hinting that Duskwood Manor had something real in it would seem less ridiculous.

I whirled away from the closet and dug in my duffel bag, pulling on underwear and a tank top before I went hunting for the Black Book.

I’d left it somewhere on the bed. My elbow hit the pen on the nightstand, sending it clattering to the floor as I found the notebook hiding under one of the pillows.

A quick tug of my nightstand lamp cord illuminated the room in a dim pool of light, including the polished wooden floors underfoot.

But there was no pen. It must’ve rolled all the way under the bed.

Fuck it. I’d retrieve it in the morning to return to Rosalie. I wanted to sketch that glittering night sea before the image completely left my mind, along with the face of the monster who’d held me so delicately.

I flung myself on the bed and snatched a pencil from the explosion of random things I’d left on the nightstand, flipping to the very back of the book.

He took form quickly, rough and unfinished, but the lines were there… the carved face with its tentacled mouth, the curious and wary blue eyes…

I was yawning widely by the time I started on the swirling vortex of the sky.

And didn’t remember falling asleep at all.

I openedmy eyes to darkness.

A tiny sound clattered through the silent room, faint but distinct. My face was cushioned on the open notebook, the pencil still in my hand.

I didn’t remember turning the light off.

The clattering sound came again, almost insistent.

My phone… I swept a hand out over the covers and finally felt its smooth edges. A flick of my thumb and the screen’s light spilled out over my bed.

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