Page 24 of An Inheritance of Monsters

I twisted the knob and let the door creak open. The narrow beam of light found solid wood floors… and stacks of paintings, leaning against the walls in neat rows.

Most of them were covered with thin white sheets, but one had been left out in the open. I stepped into the room, shining the light on it.

It showed a spiraling swirl of darkness, with two pale pinpricks that might have been eyes. The suggestion of claws and horns was picked out in rough detail.

The painting looked so real that my lungs locked up in my chest for a moment before I remembered to breathe again. “Is this… you?”

The monster that had been following me through the warren made a soft sound just behind me. There had been no footsteps at all to give away how close he was, only those twining shadows in the corners.

“It is one of my kind.”

His voice was deep like Rask’s, but smoother—as though he had practice speaking as a human.

I nodded, careful not to jerk the beam around. Rask had made it quite clear what the monsters thought of direct light. “Were you in my closet last night?”

“I was.” The shadows at my back shifted.

I was torn between elation—another monster wasspeaking to me, in broad daylight, when I was definitely wasn’t dreaming—and a muted sort of terror.

He was speaking to me, but we were alone together.

In the depths of a library where I was quite sure Madeline’s fiancé had not committed suicide.

I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly parched, and carefully moved the flashlight to another painting. It was a landscape of Duskwood, but the sky was red and bloody, and the waves as black as tar.

“Are you going to hurt me?” It wasn’t the question I meant to ask, but somehow that one had taken precedence above all others.

I’d felt these shadows before, in the parlor. And this monster’s assessment of me had felt cool, almost calculating. Even now, I felt unseen eyes running over me from head to toe.

An uncomfortably long moment passed before he answered. “I have no intention of hurting you. I am… curious.”

Well, at least he wasn’t going to be the one to break another lovely window using my body. “I am, too.” My voice came out hoarse, and something touched me.

I felt a hand against my hair. Fingers, or claws, running through my long ponytail.

Warm breath touched the back of my neck.

“Will you turn out the light, Juno?” he breathed in my ear.

A pleasant shiver went down my spine at the feel of unseen lips.

I didn’t ask how he knew my name. I’d announced it all over the island since I’d arrived.

But he was asking a lot of me.

There was a large difference between talking to a monster in the dark in the comfort of your bed—everyone knew the monsters couldn’t get you there—and turning off my sole light in a pitch-black maze.

A claw caressed the nape of my neck, raising goosebumps on my skin.

But no one had ever made discoveries by being afraid. And in this house, I stood on the cusp of a whole world of discovery.

I gripped the flashlight tight, enough to impress the pattern of the handle on my palm… and clicked it off.

The darkness immediately pressed in on my eyeballs, an almost tangible presence. If I wasn’t blinking, I wouldn’t even be sure they were open.

I couldn’t see him, but Ifelthim—and his shadows. The air around me thickened, and the same soft sensation of being touched that I’d felt in the parlor returned.

But this time, there was something solid within those shadows. His warmth soaked into me.

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