Page 48 of A Mastery of Monsters

We walk to the door at a calmer pace but once we get outside, Riley sprints for her car, and I hurry to keep up. It’s a white Lexus SUV with leather seats. It puts both Bailey’s Civic and Dad’s CR-V to shame.

I look her up and down. “Are you rich?”

“Just get in!” I do as she says, and before I’m even buckled, she’s peeling down the road. “I think he’s gonna take the bus, so we can get there before him. But I need to park far enough away for him to not recognize my car.”

“Okay, 007.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Is that entire house yours?”

“My parents bought it.”

Riley is rich. We drive down King Street past St. Lawrence and end up in a more residential area. She pulls up next to a set of houses where she parks, rushing me out of the vehicle. “We’re on foot from here. We’ll stay back a bit so we can watch him.”

“Bossy,” I mumble.

We walk on the sidewalk, clinging to the shadows, and I take the time to decide how much I want to trust Riley from this point forward.

On one hand, she’s brought most of the perks to this arrangement, and had she not specifically chosen me for my connection to my brother, probably could have shaken me off a long time ago.

On the other hand, fuck Riley for lying.

Virgil’s been less helpful in making strides, but at least he’s honest. He’s always been up front about what’s going on. And he even added some theories.

We made a promise to each other, and I know he’ll do what he can to keep it. But Riley has her own motives.

I gnaw on my lip. I guess I do too.

“There he is,” she whispers.

A boy in a hoodie hops off the bus. We keep back as he enters a parking lot in front of a wooded area. He disappears down a narrow path. There are signs marking this as the Rideau Trail and noting that it’s closed after sundown.

Because the path is so narrow, we can’t follow him right away. It would be obvious he was being tailed if he looked back, so we wait at the edge, glancing in every once in a while to see where he’s gone. The next time we look, we can’t see him at all.

“Shit,” Riley says, and strides onto the path.

I follow her, looking from side to side to try to see him. On one side, there’s a golf course, quiet and empty. But on the other, the trees are denser.

The sound of crunching leaves reaches us.

And then there’s a louder sound. A massive smashing of branches and groan of trees.

The boy screams.

“Fuck!” Riley leaves the main path, running straight into the denser area, smacking tree branches out of her way and leaping over branches.

Damn, those track trophies weren’t just for show. I rush after her, barely able to keep up, with a few slips and falls along the way.

We break out into a clearer section, where the trees are tall, their lower trunks naked and skeletal. The boy is on his knees, staring at a monster with wide eyes. I look at it, a fine tremble working under my skin.

This isn’t the one from Big Sandy Bay.

Its body is covered in black fur that looks slick, and its eyes are bloodshot, the pupils blown wide around a ring of brown iris.

It has the rough appearance of a bear, but there’s a mane of bone around its neck, gleaming white.

Those sharp ridges of bone are all over its body.

They remind me of the way coral sticks to rocks. Sharp and unyielding.

The boy comes back to himself, scrambling off the ground and running. But he’s going the wrong way. Farther into the trees instead of back the way we came. The monster tears after him.

Riley doesn’t hesitate to take off after both of them.

“Oh, so we’re chasing the giant monster?” I spit out between breaths.

“What else are we supposed to do?” she says. “We can’t leave him to die.”

We run through the trees, following the heavy sounds of the beast. This thing is massive. It should have easily caught that guy by now, but it hasn’t.

“What the fuck?” I ask. “What’s it doing?”

“I don’t know,” Riley says. “But it won’t play with him like this forever.”

A frantic cry echoes through the trees, and Riley runs faster.

We come upon the monster with the boy pinned under one of its giant paws.

The guy is bleeding from a scratch down one of his cheeks and someplace on his side too, judging by the wet spot on his hoodie. The creature turns to us and roars.

I stumble away from it. Shit, shit, shit . This is a terrible idea. I only have one knife on me. This girl told me to come to a party to talk. If Riley knew this was the plan, she should have said to bring more weapons. Then I would have my full set.

The monster increases the pressure on its paw. The boy’s eyes bulge, tears streaming down his dirt-smeared cheeks.

“We need to do something. Distract it. Get it to focus on us,” Riley says.

My mouth drops open. “And what are we supposed to do when that happens?”

“I got it. Just get it on us.”

I swallow. I’ve already fought a monster. This can’t possibly be as bad, right? I yank my blade out and throw it, aiming for the thing’s eye. But it tilts its head at the perfect moment, and the blade smacks the hard bone around its neck and falls to the ground. It looks at me and snarls.

Well, it’s paying attention to us now.

I step back as the beast abandons the boy and stalks toward me and Riley. “Okay, I did my part. This is where you do your bit.” The monster picks up speed and rushes toward us. “Riley!” It’s going too fast. “Fucking do something!”

“I got it,” she says, her voice low and even.

A golden beam of light shoots from her chest, and the monster roars and reels back, using its paws to cover its eyes. Even I have to throw my hands up. Squinting, I realize that it isn’t her chest glowing, it’s that gaudy necklace she always wears. The one that doesn’t fit her style.

She unclasps it, holding it in her hands, where it grows longer and thicker. The light fades, and she’s holding a six-foot-long length of thick gold chain.

Before the monster can prepare, she whips it out, and it lengthens further and curls into a loop, wrapping around the thing’s neck.

The links glow. The beast howls and thrashes and bucks.

And then it begins to shrink, smaller and smaller until it’s a boy.

No. Older than a boy but not a man, hunched over on his hands and knees, still bound by the chain.

He looks up, and I freeze.

“Jules?” My voice is small. Tiny. Insignificant.

Because I’m looking at my missing brother. Because the monster that rushed us, tried to kill us… is Jules .

His face crumples as he looks at me. All those sharp angles falling to ruin.

He snarls, fur bursts from his skin, and Riley’s chain snaps. Monster once again, he turns and runs.

I drop to my knees.

My missing brother isn’t missing after all.

And he might be a murderer.