Page 58 of An Inheritance of Monsters

Voraal was quiet at my side as I moved down the hall. Sophie never appeared in another photo, but soon another small girl began appearing in Madeline’s photos: Beatrix Marsh.

Elizabeth’s mother.

As the photos grew crisper, the clothes more modern, Beatrix grew.

And finally, there it was: an eighteen-year-old Beatrix, wearing a tea dress and flowers in her hair, her face smudged out of the photo.

I switched to the other side, hunting through the photos of Beatrix’s life until Elizabeth appeared.

As a child, she’d been cherubic. In the later photos—one was particularly memorable, her pale blonde hair curled into finger waves, a beauty mark on her cheek, flapper dress glimmering—she was stunning.

And I found her face smudged out when she appeared to be roughly twenty, standing in front of Duskwood Manor with her hand on her curvy hip.

“Voraal, whatisthis?” I touched the framed photo with shaking fingers. “What does this mean?”

Because according to history, all the Marsh women had suffered terrible lives, particularly at the hands of the men around them, or terrible deaths.

And now I had something in common with them.

Something very specific.

But the monster answered. “They were marked by the Void.”

It didn’t reassure me as much as I wanted it to.

“Does… does being marked by the Void mean you die in a horrible way?” I asked, my voice small. I couldn’t stop breathing so quickly, my head spinning.

Oddly, Voraal cocked his head, studying my face. “I do not understand your meaning.”

I flung a hand back towards the older pictures. “Sarah was burned at the stake. Ruby disappeared into thin air. Ivy was stabbed to death in her own bed. Sophie also vanished, Madeline’s fiancé was murdered and then she became a recluse, and Beatrix supposedly drowned in the bay—”

Strong arms suddenly wrapped around me, squeezing me tight. Pulling me into an embrace of shadows and comforting darkness.

My increasingly-hysterical babble was cut off abruptly. I buried my face in the crook of Voraal’s neck, forcing my breathing to slow down, uncaring if anyone walked into the hall and saw me looking like a lunatic.

I was marked, just like every woman who had ever lived on this island.

“Have I not promised to take care of you?” he asked softly, speaking against my hair. “Have I not given you every reason to trust me?”

To my embarrassment, hot tears were prickling the backs of my eyeballs.

I was a researcher, goddamnit. I was a professional, and I had lived my entire life seeing terrors no one else was plagued by.

I could handle this.

“I just want to know what it all means,” I said, my voice muffled, but thankfully stronger than it had been a moment ago.

Voraal was silent, but then his shadows swirled around us.

When they faded, we were in front of my door. Voraal reached out and opened it, and gently guided me inside.

“I will be here when you need me,” he said.

I looked up at him, taking in the precise planes and angles of his face, his pillowy lips, and thought about rising to my tiptoes…

But I couldn’t stop thinking. I couldn’t put together the pieces of me whirling around in internal chaos.

“Thank you,” I whispered, and shut the door. Locked it.

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