Where Monsters Lie (The Monster Within 2)

Chapter One

They say time heals all wounds.

Sometimes, the opposite is true. For me, after last year, this is certainly the case.

Avery Black, Year Two, Saint Marcellus Academy for Monster Hunters. There it is—my name and information printed neatly at the top of the page in black and white. In a few days, school will start. Soon, it will be the day I walk back into the school for monster hunters with my head held high.

After months of poring over my parents’ journals, of training with their weapons in the woods, of hunting monsters around their cabin, I’ll walk in stronger, more focused, more capable.

But today, I have to get to the damn airport.

I fold the entry letter up and tuck it into my back pocket before grabbing my suitcase and hurrying downstairs. It’s early. The sun hasn’t even risen yet. I try to be as quiet as I can, knowing Aunt Trish is asleep.

I’ve tried to keep her out of my new world as much as possible. I know she’s curious, sometimes, but it’s best this way. She’s already been hurt by this world before, and the more she gets involved in it, the more inevitable that hurt becomes again.

There’s a reason this profession is not for the faint of heart.

I quietly wrestle my suitcase to the foot of the stairs and head into the kitchen for a snack, but I freeze. There, at the kitchen table in her robe and slippers, is Aunt Trish.

And she’s holding a dagger.

I stare at her, flabbergasted, but she just gazes calmly back. My eyes flick to the dagger. I realize it’s the one I used to slay a small monster last night in the woods—and its blood still stains the blade.

“Aunt Trish?” I say carefully.

She waves the dagger at me like it’s a toy, and not a razor-sharp weapon made for slaying creatures of the shadows. “You left this on the counter last night.”

I blink. Different emotions flow through me in waves: relief that my aunt hasn’t suddenly gone crazy and decided to kill me, amusement that she clearly has no idea how to hold a dagger properly, embarrassment that I so carelessly left a huge knife lying around, and finally panic. I’ve been so careful, all summer, so that she wouldn’t know about my secret monster-hunting outside of school.

So much for that, now.

“Um,” I say eloquently.

She wastes no time cutting to the chase. “You’ve been hunting in the woods, haven’t you?”

I run through a few possible different answers in my head and decide that simply not replying would be the best course of action. I stare at her for a few seconds; long enough that the silence begins to feel uncomfortable.