Page 73 of An Inheritance of Monsters

“Good night,” I mumbled.

Claws delicately plucked me from the water before I could fall through, and I sighed, burying myself against Rask’s warm chest.

He carried me to the bed, his purr lulling me back to sleep as he built a nest around us.

Chapter21

Juno

Iwoke to an empty bed, still warm and curled in the nest Rask had made for me. The first rays of early morning light had driven him back to the shadows under the bed.

No matter how well he and Zirin had distracted me, I hadn’t forgotten that there was a thief among us. The first thing I did upon rising was hide Ruby’s diary beneath the dresser, pushed all the way back against the wall.

I showered and dressed with grim determination, then carefully chose one of my favorite hairclips to leave under the edge of the bed. The enamel sky blue butterflies on it glinted as I pushed it beneath the bedskirt with a blown kiss.

I thought I felt a purr rumble through the floors before I left my rooms.

When I got to the kitchen, Rosalie was already there, wearing a giant raincoat, her bags piled around her feet.

“It was nice meeting you all,” she was saying with a forced smile, but when I walked in, the smile dropped.

I met Mrs. Marsh’s eyes across the room. She’d just hung up the phone… and she looked vaguely amused about the whole thing.

“They will be at the dock in half an hour,” she told Rosalie. “You’ll need to be there early—bad weather is coming in again.”

“That’s fine!” Rosalie’s reply was a bit too bright, and she seemed to be intentionally avoiding my gaze. “I’ll get going right now. Good luck, everyone.”

She hauled her backpack on, shaking off Mrs. Marsh’s offer to help her, and vanished towards the front doors.

Eloise sat at the table, legs crossed, sipping a cup of tea. “She just wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing.”

“And then there were… six,” Porter Hudson added.

Oh, boy. I resisted the urge to sneer at them, but mostly because I’d realized one thing when Rosalie left.

She and I had not been friends. We were barely acquaintances.

But now, every single person in this kitchen was a prime suspect for whoever had stolen my notebook.

I’d admitted it to myself, and Rask, last night when he bundled me up.

I feared what they would find in the back pages far more than I feared someone stealing my script and notes.

What if I was not the only one who had seen doorways—and someone now had an idea of the monsters on the other side?

What if they went hunting for them?

I had faith that my monsters could defend themselves against humans, but the last thing I wanted while I was in the Void with them was an intrusion of my human enemies. The weird fish-people from last night were bad enough.

I glanced at Carson, who looked vaguely surprised that Rosalie had taken off in such a hurry. He would be very interested in my script notes forSpirit Squad, given our history.

Jack Steele—leaning against the counter and smirking about it all—was also suspect. If he thought he could climb his way into Carson’s good graces by stealing from their nemesis, I had no doubt he’d do it.

Porter Hudson… well, the script wouldn’t matter to him.

But my drawings of an alien world sure would. He’d blast me as a psycho all over his YouVid channel, and even worse, let the secret of the monsters out into the world.

As for Eloise, I could not think of a motive for her to steal from me.

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