Where Monsters Lie (The Monster Within 2)

It’s this little spark of guilt that makes me enraged when I’m sitting in creature studies and hear the PA system ding.

“Avery Black, please come to the headmaster’s office.”

Class stops, and everyone’s eyes are on me. I purse my lips and glare daggers over at Piers and Bennett. To his credit, Bennett impassively looks down at his paper when my eyes find him, picking up his pencil and finishing his notes. Piers just stares, his face pale.

I stand up, my hands shaking in rage. Did they really run to the headmaster and tell on me, like children? After everything they put me through last year? After all the bruises, scrapes, cuts, and gashes they gave me last year, they have the audacity to report me to the headmaster now?

“I’ll watch your stuff,” Erin says quietly to me. I nod and walk out of the classroom, but not before shooting a searing glance Piers’ way.

I could kill that boy.

The empty halls are just as I remember them from my wanderings last year. Peeling paint on walls, scuffed tiled floors, claw-marked banisters—somewhat dilapidated but resonating with rich history.

My feet take me to the headmaster’s office. The door is propped open and Headmaster Novac, a sixty-some year-old man in a neatly tailored suit, sits behind his desk. Standing next to him is a man I’ve never met before, and across from him is a man I do. It’s Mason Dagher, Piers’ father.

I stop in the doorway. Dagher looks over his shoulder at me and stands up. He looks different from the last time I saw him this close. I didn’t see it back in the forest, but his eyes, the same as his son’s, have lost some of their light and intensity, and there are deep bags beneath them. His hair is streaked with gray and slightly rumpled, as though he’s slept on it wrong. His stubble is growing unevenly. The suit he’s wearing looks ill-fitting and baggy—has he lost weight?

I manage just in time to stop myself from smirking. If he’s doing poorly, it serves him right. For years, Mason Dagher claimed that he captured and imprisoned the djinn in Saint M’s custody, the monster that killed my parents. Last year I discovered that he’s been lying. My parents imprisoned it as their final act in this world. And somehow, he let them die.

“Miss Black,” Headmaster Novac says warmly. He indicates a seat across from his desk, next to Mason Dagher’s. “Please have a seat. And close the door behind you.”

“Yes, sir.” I do as he asks. I scoot my chair away from Mason Dagher before I sit in it, and Dagher scowls as he sits back down. If Novac notices, he doesn’t comment.

“Miss Black, I know you’re not one to mince words or waste time,” Novac says pleasantly. “So I’ll get right into it. This meeting is to discuss the djinn phylactery.”

“What about it?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. This is certainly not what I expected. I glance over to Mason Dagher, who is steadily avoiding my gaze, and then up at the man standing next to the headmaster. This second man is smiling at me with an almost uncomfortably wide smile.

“Well, years ago, Mr. Dagher generously donated the phylactery to the school and entrusted us to be its caretakers,” Novac says. “Due to recent events, it’s become apparent that it wasn’t Mr. Dagher’s to give. The true owner of the djinn phylactery is, in fact, you—Miss Black.”

I lean back in my chair, my head reeling. “I … hadn’t thought of that,” I admit.

“Once it was discovered that Mr. Dagher had been lying—” Novac begins, but Dagher interrupts him.

“I wasn’t lying,” he growls. “I captured it!”

“Evidence proves otherwise, Mason,” pipes up the strange man in the corner, still smiling. He grabs a thick binder off Headmaster Novac’s desk and flips through it. “By its own admission, the djinn identified itself as being captured by monster hunters Samson and Riley Black, and so ownership of the phylactery passes to their closest kin—their daughter, Avery Black. This is in accordance with law number 13, section 2, subsection—”

“The djinn could be lying!” Dagher yells desperately, cutting him off.

The strange man grins even wider, a steely light glinting in his eyes, and snaps the binder shut. “Monsters don’t lie when it wouldn’t benefit them,” he says in a pleasant voice, but something in his tone sends a chill up my spine. “Besides, only the touch of the one who captured it could awaken it, and this girl managed to do that.”

“Ah, where are my manners,” Novac says suddenly. He half rises from his seat, as if he might expect Mason Dagher to lunge across the desk and strangle the man beside him. “Miss Black, this is Mr. Roland Skinner, the lawyer assigned to this case.”

“A pleasure,” Mr. Skinner says, nodding in my direction. As angry as Mason Dagher is, this man remains resolutely cool.

I nod at the lawyer but address the headmaster. “So … what’s this got to do with me?”

“Well, you see, the djinn technically belongs to you,” Headmaster Novac tells me. “We believe it would be in your best interests to sign ownership and custody of it over to the school so that we can protect it as we see fit. You won’t be doing this for free. We will pay you a considerable amount, of course.”

As he speaks, Skinner has started gathering a stack of papers. He slides them across the desk towards me, and holds out a fountain pen for me to sign.

I look down at the documents, and then back up. “No.”

Novac’s eyebrows raise. “Excuse me?”

“No,” I repeat, louder this time. “I won’t do that. I own the djinn. I don’t want to sign it over.”

“My dear girl,” Mr. Skinner says, pushing the papers even closer to me, “why wouldn’t you? It is in your best interests, after all. You are unfit to look after the djinn at present.”