Page 91 of An Inheritance of Monsters

“I’m sorry I made fun of you about your brother. I didn’t realize… it doesn’t matter. I didn’t think. I didn’t use my fucking brain and I should never have said the things I did.”

“That’s true enough,” I said softly.

That video had cut deep. I’d buried enough of my past that he didn’t even know the half of it, and I was glad he’d never found out more.

“I’m sorry I talked shit about your appearance. It has nothing to do with the work you’ve done. It was just jealousy speaking… but I hope it’s not too late for an old dog to learn tricks. I apologize, Juno. From the bottom of my heart.”

Porter held out a hand.

For a moment, I just stared at him. This older man with his potbelly and balding hairline, who had tried to cut me down…

But I was not a vindictive person. And I hoped he was right.

It wasn’t too late for him.

Even if I faded from the world, Porter would leave the island, and I hoped he would leave a better person.

I took his hand and shook it. “Apology accepted.”

He exhaled, hand tightening around mine, and gave me a shaky smile before releasing me.

I closed the closet door, a measure of peace creeping in and displacing the shock. “Now, let’s get these downstairs. Our work isn’t done.”

We coveredEloise with the sheets, hiding her bulging eyes and rictus grin. Jack and Carson were shivering at the table, having been in there the entire time we were upstairs.

Mrs. Marsh touched my shoulder as I pulled the sheet up over Eloise’s hair. “That must have been terrible to witness, dear.”

I’d seen the dead before. The only shock had been in believing it was my fault.

Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t. I had told Voraal no, and no one, including me, could’ve anticipated that Eloise would actually see the monsters and die of fright.

“I’ll be okay. When will they come for her?”

Mrs. Marsh just sighed. “It’ll be another day or two, at the very least. Assuming the storm lets up. Come have a spot of tea when you’re ready.”

I nodded, but took a moment to myself in the freezer with Eloise under the pretense of having a moment in silence.

In reality, I was waiting for her ghost to rise.

Which it did in short order, the misty form pulling itself from the cold flesh like she was struggling to climb from a grave.

Eloise’s spirit landed on the floor, a hunched, shrunken-in version of her living self, like the burdens of the world were weighing her down.

“You must find the idol to find peace,” I told her.

The ghost’s head swiveled, looking up at me with one swirling white eye.

I pointed in the direction of the beach. “Find the idol. You’ll be at rest there.”

Eloise sighed, exhaling a cloud of mist, and her hunched form crept away on all fours until she disappeared through the wall.

I knew she would find the stone and eternal rest, that weight lifted from her shoulders. There was still a sliver of me that believed she didn’t deserve eternal peace; after all, she had driven my parents into abject despair.

But I also firmly believed I saw the spirits of the dead for a reason, and I wouldn’t allow myself to abuse the power by turning her away from the next world.

By the time I left the freezer, I was shivering so hard that a spot of tea sounded pretty damn good.

Everyone else was doing the same thing, and someone had retrieved Eloise’s suitcases from her room. A tall stack of books rested next to it.

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