Page 24 of A Mastery of Monsters

Sometimes you think everyone’s looking at you and it’s just paranoia, but in this case, I know everyone is looking at me.

I walk into a dance studio. The walls are lined with mirrors and ballet bars, and the floors are a shiny pale wood.

The room is filled with rows of about thirty evenly spaced desks and chairs.

On each lies a single slim piece of paper and a mechanical pencil.

As eyes follow me, I make my way to the back of the room and slump into my chair.

As a first for the day, I’m on time because Virgil and the others made sure of it. I slouch in my seat and play with the pencil, twirling it between my fingers.

A boy two rows ahead of me twists back in his chair. “I have a question for you.” It’s the guy who Virgil had that weird response to being nominated. Caden.

I meet his eyes but say nothing.

He continues like I told him to go on. “I’ve never seen you once. Not at a lecture or gathering.”

“More of a statement than a question.”

“Why do you think you deserve to be here?”

“I was nominated.”

The girl beside me laughs. She’s the one who was nominated first, Violet.

Her brown skin is dewy, and her eyes and lips are covered in expertly applied black makeup that matches the black outfit she wears.

I approve of the color and find her appraising my choice of high-waist wide-leg black jeans with tears I personally made with a box cutter paired with a tight black T-shirt.

“And yet somehow that doesn’t seem to be enough,” he counters.

“She answered your ‘question,’ Caden,” Violet says, rolling her eyes.

Caden doesn’t get to say more because a familiar man walks into the room dressed in a fluorescent-pink-and-green Hawaiian shirt.

When Bernie spots me, a smile lights up his face before he looks away.

I didn’t expect to see him again, especially since he said he doesn’t teach anymore, but I guess this is an exception.

Now I understand what Virgil meant when he said Bernie should have taken more time off.

If his son hasn’t even been gone a year, that means he failed in last year’s candidacy.

The same round Margot was in. And now Bernie is back, smiling at us like he didn’t just lose his son in this process.

“Welcome to the societal knowledge portion of the preliminary testing. I’m Professor Mathers.

I will be reading the questions aloud, and you will have one minute to select your answer on the sheet in front of you.

Do not check or cross it out—fill in the circle as indicated on the sheet.

You must achieve a minimum score of fifty percent to be accepted as a candidate. We will begin now.”

I scramble to ready myself. What the fuck? Corey said I should have lots of time to go back and check my answers. She made it seem like I was going to get a packet or something like a normal test. Not this reading aloud thing.

For the next hour, we sit in silence with only the sounds of pencils scratching and Bernie reading in monotone.

My neck keeps stiffening, making the whole exercise even more uncomfortable than it already is.

I try to focus, but the questions aren’t quite what we studied.

Some of them are straightforward, like “Who was the fourth Doctorate?” But others are things like “According to apocalypse protocol, which quadrant is our safe zone?” and “What was Edward Weiss’s philosophy meant to inspire? ”

At the end of the session, we’re given a couple of extra minutes to consider our answers. It’s useless unless you memorized the questions and their order, which I didn’t.

Bernie instructs us to remain in our seats while he collects our sheets.

I sigh and tip my head back.

“That bad?” Violet whispers.

“I’ve done better, and I’ve done worse.”

“Fair. I’m Violet, by the way.” She jerks her head to the white boy sitting next to her. His dirty blond hair is carefully styled. He wears square-framed glasses and has a warm smile. “That’s Bryce.”

“August.”

I’m saved from any more socializing when Bernie clears his throat.

“Please proceed to the right to the room next door. Your monster affinity test will take place there. If you already have a partner, they’ll be waiting.

For the majority of you who have not yet declared one, we’ve provided volunteers. ”

I scrape my chair back with a slight nod to Violet and Bryce. I don’t care about making friends, but I’m not an asshole. She didn’t need to help me deal with Caden or bother introducing herself, but she did. I can be nice sometimes.

On my way out, Bernie says, quiet enough so I can hear, “I’m glad to see you. For Virgil’s sake.”

When I look back at him, he’s already turned away to fuss with his bag.

I proceed to the next room, which has the same sort of setup except the desks are pushed together in pairs with chairs at either end so you’re facing the person you sit with. And the space is bigger to accommodate twice the number of desks.

There’s a bottleneck at the front of the room.

The other candidates are gathered at the door.

I assume because, like Bernie said, most of them don’t already have partners and they’re deciding who they want to go with.

I squeeze between them and head to Virgil, who is, in classic eager fashion, in the first row.

I sit down in front of him and sigh.

“That doesn’t inspire confidence,” he says.

“It was different. The test.”

“You’re not supposed to talk about it yet.” He pauses. “Different how?”

I cross my arms. “Am I supposed to talk or not supposed to?”

“We’ll discuss it after.” His eyes stray to the other candidates, many of whom are still lingering in the doorway, though some have started to fan out to the different volunteers, who comprise most of the monsters in the room. I notice Virgil looking at Caden again.

“What’s up with that guy?” I ask. “He’s a dick.”

Now it’s Virgil’s turn to sigh. “Keep your voice down. And yeah, I thought he might be. It’s not you, it’s me.”

“What does that mean?”

Virgil picks at a hangnail. “My parents… they killed his mom.”

“That’s not on you.”

He stares at me and then becomes reabsorbed in his nails. “Yeah, well.”

“It’s bullshit, you know that, right? For people to treat you like this because of something your parents did.”

“Can we drop it?”

“If you want.” I look around the room as more candidates pair off with monsters. It’s strange to think of them that way. That these people have the ability to become massive, snarling beasts. “I thought more people would be partnered up.”

“Most candidates don’t know any monsters personally unless they’re related to one. That’s why so many pairs are siblings.”

“It’s concerning that you have mostly sibling pairs but still make rules about monsters and Masters dating.”

Virgil splutters so much that a few heads turn our way. He cringes and ducks his head. “How did—who told you that? Corey?”

“Henry.”

“ Henry? Why did that even come up?”

“I was making a point.”

Virgil’s mouth drops open. “Making what point?”

An East Asian–looking woman enters the room, and everyone turns to her. She wears a long black dress that hugs her body like a second skin and nude heels whose red bottoms peek out when she walks. Her hair is dark with a slight wave to it and falls to her shoulders. She’s gone for a bold red lip.

She waves at the candidates who still haven’t moved from the front of the room. “Take a seat within the minute or I’ll fail you right now.” Her voice is unexpectedly deep.

The candidates she addresses scramble, rushing to find a seat. And when they finally do, they’re either stiff or shifting in place. It’s only then that my mind catches up enough to realize that they weren’t hesitating in the door because they were indecisive.

They were scared.

“I’m Professor Chen, and I will be conducting your monster affinity preliminary exam.

I will also preside over the associated training sessions, final tests, and initiation.

Some of you may be familiar with this process, but others will not be, so I’ll outline it for you.

” She leans against the wall. “I will be coming around the room and doing a diagnostic test. The only thing you are required to do is join hands with your partner and match breaths. You must foster a strong empathetic relationship with your partner throughout this process in order to successfully bond during initiation. That is what the sessions will help with, and the tests will judge. However, if you can’t even manage this simple exercise, you have no business being in the candidacy.

” She looks around the room as if waiting for questions but there are none. “Join hands now.”

“I thought we only had to do it when you came to us?” Caden asks, and the candidates seated around him nod.

“And I’m telling you that you have to do it now,” Professor Chen says. “So do it now.”

I reach out, and Virgil takes my hands in his.

Technically, we’ve already done this. When he begged me to do this competition.

He was close enough that I could feel a whisper of his breath on my face.

I wasn’t paying much attention to his hands then, but they’re surprisingly rough.

I expected soft and supple. After all, the guy literally lives in a library.

Virgil looks away from our hands. “Should be a quick process.”

“Nervous to hold hands with a girl?”

He turns back to me. “Don’t be a child.”

I glance across the room at a candidate who’s practically trembling as she holds the hands of another girl as small and slight as she is. “Why are people freaking out so much?”

“You saw Isaac in a controlled environment and state. And we got lucky at Big Sandy Bay. I don’t know why it stopped its attack, but even the attack itself was weak. It wasn’t trying to kill us.”

I raise my brow. “You sure about that?”