Page 98 of An Inheritance of Monsters

I frowned, flipping the page, and found a new picture, this one just as grainy as the first: a lovely white-washed building surrounded by gardens, with a wooden sign readingInnsmouth Preparatory School for Girls.

Beneath it, Sophie was listed as attending it from the ages of eight to eighteen, and the final photo on the page was of a photocopied train boarding pass to… Essex.

Myhometown.

I was about to flip to the next page when I heard loud footsteps coming down the hall: Mrs. Marsh’s kitten-heeled shoes clicking with every step.

Panic speared through me and I dropped the file, letting it shut, and looked around for anywhere to hide. Her room was enormous, extending into what looked like another parlor, but there was nowhere I could possibly go—

Except the bathroom.

I practically sprinted for the closed door while simultaneously trying to run as quietly as possible, wrenching it open and hurling myself into the well-lit bathroom.

The click of Mrs. Marsh’s heels drew closer and closer… and I heard her bedroom door shut.

There was silence for a moment as I stood shaking in her porcelain-tiled bathroom, then I heard her voice. There was something odd about it, distorted by the door between us.

“Is that you, Shuzen?” she asked playfully.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say she sounded young, no more than twenty. Certainly not like a ninety-year-old woman.

I was going to tremble right out of my skin if I didn’t get out of here. I had no idea how far the limits of her hospitality extended, but the last thing I wanted to do was explain that I had been snooping through her family’s ancestry files.

Glancing around wildly, I found the bathtub—an enormous iron clawfoot like mine—and stepped into it quietly, praying she would wait to open the door.

I summoned the Void with all my heart, desperately hoping this would work—

And dropped through the bottom, falling fifteen feet into a glittering sea.

I hit the warm waves with a massive splash, sinking and sinking, bubbles spuming around me…

And then I remembered the danger of the Dagonites.

I kicked hard, clawing my way back to the surface and taking a huge gasp of air.

That had been close.Waytoo close.

And if my suspicions were correct, I needed to get the hell out of here… because Elizabeth Marsh might be jumping in after me at any moment.

It was hard to swim my way to shore with my sodden clothes trying to drag me down and my heart racing overtime, every flicker of light beneath the waves making me believe a Dagonite was swimming up from the depths with clawed hands…

But somehow I made it to the beach unscathed, coughing up luminescent water as I dragged myself onto the black sand.

I had no recognition of this particular area of the Void, but if I could find one of those stone structures, I would have a way out of here.

I was still too afraid of the threat of the Dagonites to start yelling haphazardly for my monsters. If there was one thing those fish-people had made clear, it was that they were goddamn fast.

They’d have me dragged under and sacrificed to Dagon before Zirin could get to me.

I hiked my way up to the dunes, seeing a distant forest of trees like nothing else on Earth, but there were several toppled columns from a long-forgotten temple that were much closer than that.

And, to my extreme happiness, a pitch-black doorway was framed between them.

I was panting for breath by the time I made it to the columns, pushing through from the Void to Earth with a little less caution than I should’ve used.

My shoes squelched wetly on wooden floors. The air was immediately ten degrees cooler around me.

But I had no idea where I was in the powerless manor. I reached out, hoping to find a wall, and ran into something soft and fleshy with my knees instead.

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