Page 44 of An Inheritance of Monsters

But Mrs. Marsh didn’t give me the usual skeptical look, or roll her eyes, or scoff.

She just took the seat across from me and blew on her tea. “Well, that’s why I brought you here. If you couldn’t see anything, there wouldn’t be much of a point in having you visit, would there?”

I stared at her, utterly nonplussed. Most people waited until I turned my back, then swirled their finger by their head in the universal ‘this bitch is looney-tunes’ sign.

“As for what I’m not telling you… if you can see the ghosts, surely you can discover its secrets for yourself.”

She smiled as she took a sip.

The ghosts. She’d saidtheghosts, not just ghosts… which meant she saw them, too.

Or at least believed in them.

“The man who died in the capsizing—was he a boy?” I nodded to the TV, which had been turned off.

“A teenage boy,” she replied, watching me over the rim of her cup. I was amazed by her perfectly lacquered nails, the color of almond milk. How could such a reclusive woman be so put together? “Seventeen. Nearly a man.”

I thought of the ghost that had come crawling out of the waves to the north, beaten down with exhaustion.

How young his face was, how bright and fresh his spirit.

He had to have been the same boy.

I sipped my tea, mulling it over as Mrs. Marsh told me how the rosehips were harvested from her own garden, how normal it was to have terrible storms this time of year, how lucky we were there was a break for the Coast Guard to come for Crispy.

I helped her clean up the kitchen, erasing any trace of our bloody entrance, then took the camera and headed upstairs as thunder crashed overhead.

We were in for round two of the storm. Already the darkness had driven away the remains of the evening light.

I locked my door behind me, not bothering to visit Sierra’s room first. She’d had a scrunchie looped around her door handle—a sure sign she wanted to be left alone.

But maybe that was all for the better.

I put the camera on the dresser, pulled the curtains shut to hide the erratic flashes of lightning, and began to shed my sodden clothes.

And saw six pairs of glowing crimson eyes watching me from under the bed.

Chapter13

Juno

“Rask!”

At first, the sight of eyes under my bed made my heart burst into overtime, thrumming in my ribcage like a bird.

But I’d been waiting for this moment since the Voidstorm had begun and Zirin had thrown me back into this world.

The monsters were okay.

The entire room shook with the force of his purr. “My Juno.”

For some reason, the idea that he thought of me ashisJuno warmed my ice-cold heart. I abandoned the struggle of ripping off my chilly, sodden tank top and knelt on the floor, only feet from the edge of the bed.

But Rask didn’t emerge. Those jewel-like eyes just shone at me, narrowing as I moved.

“Is it too bright for you out here?” I lowered my voice, crouching a little to try to see under the bed. Around Rasks’s eyes, there was nothing but swirling darkness.

The bed shuddered, the entire frame creaking. “Not too bright.”

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