Page 38 of An Inheritance of Monsters

When we stopped, I’d barely opened my eyes again before Zirin was shoving me through a square of black on the ocean’s surface overhead.

Behind him, I saw the billowing storm rolling towards us, a horrible chittering noise coming from that darkness—

And then I landed hard on porcelain tiles under a stream of ice-cold water, and the doorway snapped shut.

Chapter11

Juno

Morning dawned with anxiety nibbling at my nerves and the sky outside a dreary charcoal gray.

There had been no sign of Rask when I went to bed. At least, no sign of himself.

The tube of lip gloss I’d left for him was gone, and a dark blue marble had been left in its place. I put the marble among my other treasures, arranging them neatly on my nightstand, but when I called for him…

Nothing. No sense of presence at all.

I’d flung open the closet next, but the dust bunny was the only occupant. No Voraal, not even in the dark corners.

It took all of my effort to break out my laptop and begin typing up the opening intro to this episode ofSpirit Squad, but the whole time my mind was on the monsters.

It had to be the Voidstorm keeping them away. They lived in the Void, moving between doorways… but Zirin said ‘bad things’ came with the storms.

What if the monsters didn’t open the doors during the Voidstorms, so those things couldn’t come through?

But that meant they were trapped there, as well.

I wrote six pages in a frenzy and printed them off before finally succumbing to sleep, clutching the bit of sea glass Rask had given me.

Everyone else in the manor seemed just as irritable this morning, but for different reasons.

“The footage was completely ruined.”

Carson was already bitching to Jack and Rosalie when I walked into the kitchen, my hair pinned up in a messy bun. I’d pulled on leggings and an oversized hoodie, and clutched my notebook and the script to my chest.

“All of it white fuzz, up until the 10p.m. mark. Maybe there’s some sort of electromagnetic interference here. And thesmell—I found a fucking turd under my bed. How does that even happen? What the fuck?”

For the first time that morning, I couldn’t help but suppress a laugh. Now I knew where Rask had gone off to just before the storm.

But my worries for the monsters, trapped in the Void, immediately replaced my smile with a grimace.

OnlyafterCarson saw me giggling, of course.

“Was it you?” he demanded, face drawn tight. “That’s juvenile as fuck, Juno.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” I snapped. “Does leaving shit under someone’s bed really seem like something I’d do?”

Carson held my gaze a moment longer before looking down. “No. It was probably that skeptic—”

He mumbled it, ensuring Porter couldn’t hear him from across the room, wherethat skepticwas making notes over a cup of coffee.

At least Carson was willing to concede I wasn’t a complete asshole, despite our history.

“We had the same thing happen with our footage,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee while extending the olive branch. “There’s definitely some sort of interference here.”

Monstrousinterference, of course. He could look all month and never find a thing.

Carson took the opening gracefully, thank god. “Did it occur at the same time?”

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