Page 88 of An Inheritance of Monsters

Eloise.

As easy going as I felt with my other nemeses—none of them could hurt me now—Eloise would always remain the one person I despised all others.

There would be no magnanimity for her. My happiness didn’t stretch that far.

“Good morning, Porter,” she greeted from behind me. I watched her reflection in the mirror as she swayed into the kitchen, carrying a biography and notebook, her camera hanging around her neck.

The skeptic mumbled something in return. No one liked Eloise. If there was one thing we could all agree on, it was that she did not belong here.

I piled cups in the dish drainer rapidly, intending to leave before she destroyed my mood.

Unfortunately, fate had other plans.

I turned around as she set her things on the table, and a paper slipped out of her notebook, wafting through the air to land a foot away from me.

I bent down automatically to pick it up, and froze halfway through the motion. “What…?”

Eloise frowned as I straightened up, holding the paper.

It was a list of contacts from our previous episode, covering the haunting of Slate Hill Hospital.

Many of the contacts were relatives of those who had died there, those few who had volunteered to speak about their experiences; their phone numbers and addresses were even listed beneath their names.

I knew the dark ink and handwriting as my own. The frayed edges had been torn right out of the Black Book.

“This is mine.” I gazed at it in confusion. “Youstole my notebook?”

Eloise’s lips pinched together. “What are you talking about?”

“Someone stole my notebook,” I snapped, waving the page. “And here you are, with a page of it. Not only that—a list ofprivate contacts.”

“I didn’t steal your notebook,” she snapped, but the blood had drained from her face. “I have no idea how that got there!”

“Bullshit!” I shouted. Porter jumped in his chair, his eyes darting between us. “You’re a fake and you prey on innocent people. You can’t tell me you have no idea how a list of potential victims just magically made its way into your possession!”

My happiness from earlier had shattered like glass.

All I felt now was a dark, seething rage.

This bitch, who had taken the last remnants of my life from me, had dared to steal my notebook—just to gain access to more people to soak for their money.

Poor, desperate people drowning in sorrow, who would sell their cars and houses and every possession they owned to feed a fraud.

“I’m telling you, I did not steal it.” Eloise’s hands were shaking, clenched at her sides. “And you have no right to call me a fraud! I built my career with my own two hands—”

I crumpled the page, my lips curling back from my teeth in a snarl. “You built it by lying and stealing. You built it by preying on the desperate.Youare the reason people can’t stop grieving, because you drag them through it for years for theirfucking money!”

I’d taken a step forward without thinking, my limbs shaking with rage, and Eloise ran into the table as she tried to move back.

“My parents are dead because of you!” I felt disconnected from my body, like someone else was screaming. “You took every last fucking penny they had, and when you told them you couldn’t do any more for them, they killed themselves!”

My hand swung up to point at her, jabbing towards her face.

“BECAUSE. OF.YOU!”

Eloise took a shuddering breath, clutching at her high-buttoned collar. “I didn’t coerce them into paying me. Everyone has the right to choose what they spend their money on.”

A hysterical laugh bubbled out of me. “Of course they do. So you choose people who are so deep in grief they’ll consult a fake psychic to tell pretty little lies about how their dead son misses them. And when they can’t pay anymore, you leave them high and dry. You should be fucking ashamed. I don’t know how you stand to live with yourself.”

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