Page 58 of Monster Mansion

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be entirely ready,” I admitted. “But I’m as ready as I’m going to be.” I followed him down the hall.

The view down to the foyer was much cleaner than I expected as I glanced over the balcony. There wasn’t a single visible sign that anything violent had happened at all.

“You’ll not be surprised to learn that I had to direct the other two how to clean up after themselves.” Ruse chuckled. “Almost two hundred years stuck here with how many humans, and they couldn’t educate themselves in the slightest.”

I couldn’t help but giggle at the thought of Ruse having to give cleaning lessons, but from what I’d come to learn about the trio, it made perfect sense.

Nox and Thorn were hovering awkwardly in the foyer, waiting for me to come down and meet them.

“You all should be proud of yourselves,” I told them as I descended the spiral staircase. “It looks great in here.”

“Thank you,” Nox said as he rolled his eyes. “We’re practically cleaning experts now. Oh,” he reached into his pocket. “This belongs to you.”

“Thanks.” I said as Nox passed me my gun. I cleared the chamber, removed the magazine, and stuck it in my waistband for the time being. “Probably a good idea that I don’t leave that behind.”

I was unwilling to allow the final small-talk to go on forever like I knew it would if nobody halted it.

“So, are you guys ready to give freedom a shot?” I asked as I walked to the double front doors and swung them both open. “See if all our efforts were worth it?”

Thorn lifted his head to sniff the air and walked outside, patting me affectionately on the head as he liked to do. As if he were following a scent, he kept walking with his head sniffing the breeze. Ruse, Nox, and myself watched him, waiting for him to stop or even look back, but he never did. He just slowly crept toward the edge of the property.

“You two better go after him,” I said with a sniff. “He’ll walk right into a car without noticing.”

“You’re probably right,” Ruse said as he shifted into a bald eagle. “Thank you, Logan. For everything.”

Before I could respond, he shot into the air like a cannon and flew down to Thorn. “Wait up, you giant oaf!” I could hear him cry. “You have to consider a concept like ‘stealth’ now!”

Nox and I were the only two left on the stone patio, and I watched with pained eyes as his tendrils began to sway and pull him away from the house.

“I’m going to miss you,” I said as I reached out for his hand. “Please tell me I’ll see you all again.”

“Of course you will,” he assured me, squeezing my hand with his before pulling me into his chest. “I don’t know exactly when or how, but I can’t be away from you forever. Neither can the other two, I’d wager.” He laughed as he tilted his head toward the two who had already made a break for it. “In the meantime, though, I’ll always be near you. There are pieces of me in all the darkness in the world.”

He gently wiped a single tear away from my eye with one of his many smoky appendages, then he gave me a soft kiss on the mouth before disappearing into a cloud of smoke and mist and cascading down the driveway after his companions.

I took a seat on the stone steps and waited for some kind of sign they were alright, and that they made it. My eyes locked on the edge of the driveway searching for any kind of motion, but none came. My monsters were free.

Eventually, as the sun began to sink under the treeline, I stood up and locked the mansion door behind me, got in my car, and took off down the drive, not even bothering to lock the iron gate behind me.

Epilogue

ONE MONTH LATER

Blair entered in yet another tiny little dress and a different set of funky heels, then twirled in a circle in her apartment’s living room.

“How about this one?” she asked me as I sat in the oversized bean bag chair with my laptop open on my lap and my headphones draped around my neck. She lifted one foot off the ground like a flamingo as she checked herself out in the full-length mirror on the wall. “These shoes are much easier to walk in.”

“You look cute as hell, but you’re going to freeze,” I reminded her. “It’s supposed to be down in the fifties tonight.”

“Okay,Mom,” she said with a playful eye-roll. “You’re sure you don’t want to come out? I feel like it’s been forever since you came out andstayedout instead of coming home early.”

“I’m just a little overloaded trying to get all my shit in order before school starts back up,” I said with a shrug.

“Yeah, but I feel like it’s more than that,” Blair said as she stuck a hand on her hip and leaned her weight to one side. “You’ve been weird since you got back from that creep-o place in West Virginia. Which reminds me, you still haven’t told me the entire story yet.”

“Yes Idid,” I responded in a sing-song voice. “Rich dude got an early flight back, and let me go home early. That is literally it.”

“Yeah, okay,” Blair said sarcastically. “One minute, you’re all, ‘I am the Witch of the Wood,’ and the next, you’re just back here hanging out like nothing happened.” She leaned into the mirror and carefully removed a smudge of black eyeliner from the corner of her eye. “You might think you’re a good liar, Lo, but you’re just not. One day, I’m gonna fish the rest of that story out of you, and you’re gonna wonder why you never told me sooner.”

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