Page 20 of An Inheritance of Monsters

“Did you see any spooks last night?” Porter whispered behind me. “Boo.”

I flapped an irritable hand at him. God, if only I could introduce him to Rask… not that it would matter. I could spread my legs and give birth to a full-grown Jersey Devil right now, and he’d still find a way to write it off as a hoax.

To my dismay, the skeptic took the chair next to me.

For once, Carson didn’t open the day with any obnoxious quips. He just fell into the chair next to Sierra and grabbed the coffee pot while she applied chapstick.

Unfortunately, Jack took it upon himself to fill his role.

“Jesus, you look like you got punched in the face. I could pack all our gear in the bags under your eyes.” He leaned over the table and snagged the sugar bowl, grinning at me.

“Mind your own business. Some of us around here actually work.” I reminded myself that if I could capture the monsters on camera, then Carson and Jack would be out of the running. We weren’t looking at a TV show; we were looking at a whole new area of study.

They were gnats, obnoxious but ultimately harmless. There was much bigger game out there.

Then Eloise walked into the kitchen, a sapphire octopus brooch gleaming on her cardigan.

And the only chair left was on my other side. It was more than I could handle.

“Come on, Crispy. Overnight footage.” I gulped my coffee, burning the roof of my mouth, but I couldnotstand to be sandwiched between Porter and Eloise right now.

Crispy shoved half a waffle in his mouth and followed me out. We were barely to the stairs when Sierra caught up with us.

“Jesus, you’re in a mood today.” She wrinkled her nose, falling in on my other side. “The footage isn’t going anywhere.”

I shrugged, letting Crispy lead the way to his room. “Better to knock it out now and see if we have anything to work with.”

Crispy’s room was a mess of electronics, with several monitors set up in a horseshoe on a desk. Every single camera auto-saved the stream data to his laptop every three hours.

I pulled up an antique chair and sat next to him, the coffee finally kicking in. A tremor of excitement went through me at the thought that they would soon see what I had seen…

And nobody would be able to call me crazy ever again.

“Well, I slept fine, so my room is probably out.” Sierra leaned against Crispy’s chair, her hand on his shoulder.

“So did I.” He frowned as he clicked through the files from last night, pulling them up one after another on each screen. “No phenomena to speak of.”

After a moment they both looked at me.

“Same.” I leaned in towards the video stream from my room. It encompassed my bed, the nightstand, and the door.

Crispy hit play, and a moment later it began running.

I wished I’d grabbed more coffee as we clicked through the stream. The first frame was Crispy’s face as he finished setting up the camera, and then went on to me unpacking things from my backpack.

I clicked ahead a little bit. Nothing had happened while we were all downstairs making ourselves dinner, except…

Several frames of blacked-out static. The view of the room distorted, fuzzing out at the edges, and blinked out altogether.

Then it was back, but the time-stamp read an hour later.

“Weird.” Crispy frowned, taking over the mouse. His and Sierra’s videos were playing on the other monitors, with no interference whatsoever. “Oh, it happened again.”

My camera went static again, and reverted just as I appeared on-screen, opening my door. I vanished again—I’d gone to Crispy’s room to collect the spirit box—and returned with the box in my hands.

Throughout the whole thing, the image kept distorting, coming in and out in waves. And finally, when I saw myself kick off my shoes before heading to the bathroom, it went out again.

And didn’t come back.

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