Page 57 of An Inheritance of Monsters

We stepped through the door of pitch black, and every hair on my body seemed to stand straight up.

When I opened my eyes, there was nothing but more darkness… but instead of the scent of sweetness and salt air, I smelled… mothballs.

Mothballs and dust.

I reached out a hand and met wood. We were inside a wardrobe, if the sound of rustling cloth on my left was any indication.

I pushed the door open, revealing an empty bedroom bathed in moonlight. After the clarity and beauty of the Void’s vast space, there was something gray and washed out about my world.

“No one lives in this room,” Voraal said quietly. He had taken on his smoky form, most of his physical self hidden in a whirl of shadows. “It is one of the many doorways.”

I clutched my blanket tighter than ever as I stepped out of the wardrobe, glancing around as though expecting one of the other guests to pop up and shout, ‘Surprise!’

Nobody did. As Voraal led me to the bedroom door, another question popped into my mind. “Why are we all here, Voraal? What was the purpose of inviting us?”

He just looked back at me, his mouth tight and frustrated.

“Can’t answer that one either, huh?”

He shook his head.

I sighed. “It’s okay. I’m not upset at you.”

“I hope not. I have, after all, waited a very long time for you.” He offered a hand again, and a wild thought popped into my brain as we stepped into the hall.

What would we look like to any other human here? Would I look like a nutjob, wearing nothing but a blanket and holding hands with the air?

But I blinked at Voraal, dropping my voice to a whisper. “What do you mean, waited for me? Me specifically, or… well, any human woman?”

His horns gleamed in the moonlight, eyes like ghostlights. “Foryou, Juno.”

I looked away from his intense gaze, trying to fight that hook-like feeling inside me that drew me towards him… and realized where we were.

Mrs. Marsh’s bedroom was in this hallway. After her edict that her bedroom was extremely off-limits, we’d all avoided this particular wing out of respect for her privacy.

But there were hundreds of framed photos on the wall, ranging from a faded sepia, to black and white, and finally to color at the end.

Without asking, I stepped up to the first one in my line of sight. It was sepia, old and worn white at the edges, featuring a family.

I drew in a quick breath. There was an older woman and two girls, one in her teens, the other a toddler.

They posed stiffly, wearing old-fashioned, high-necked dresses.

If I knew my history right, this picture was of Ivy Marsh, and her daughters Madeline and Sophie. Ruby, Ivy’s sister, must have vanished already when this was taken.

After Ivy, Madeline had lived out her days on the island, followed by her fiancé’s ugly death, but Sophie… she was another Marsh girl who had disappeared into the mists of time, never appearing in any record after Madeline’s inheritance of Duskwood Manor.

I moved to the next photo depicting both girls, oddly fascinated by Sophie. There was so little about her, and yet right here was solid proof that she had once lived and breathed.

But the following picture stole my breath.

Madeline Marsh, standing in front of the gates to Duskwood Manor—and her face was nothing but a blur.

Just like the pictureSpirit Squadhad taken when we’d landed on the island, when my face had been smudged out of existence.

“What the hell?” I whispered under my breath, moving in closer and squinting.

But blinking didn’t make it disappear. The same thing had happened to this picture of Madeline.

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