Page 49 of A Mastery of Monsters

I keep playing the moment over and over in my head. The sight of that bearlike thing shifting and becoming my brother. Jules’s sharp jaw and narrow eyes. It’s the way he held his face so stiff and tight.

It was him.

He’s a monster.

We got back to Riley’s Lexus without seeing anyone else.

The boy we’d dragged into the back seat was sweaty, bleeding, and near hyperventilating.

I hadn’t seen the wound on his side since Riley stripped off her jean jacket to put pressure on it.

Understandably, she didn’t have mental space for me.

She ushered the boy into her house via the back door and told me it was best if I go. I made my way to Victoria Hall alone.

And now, the next day after classes as I’m walking toward McIntosh Castle, she finally texts me.

There are two monsters, the one you saw at Big Sandy Bay and the one from last night, correct?

Nothing about Jules.

Yeah , I reply.

And that’s it.

I want to believe that Jules didn’t kill Sammie. That he wouldn’t have murdered that boy even without our intervention. But what proof do I have? He was failing out of school. He had time to leave a note. And the warnings he gave me… He was afraid. And he told me not to look for him. Is this why?

This isn’t even getting into how he became a monster in the first place.

He couldn’t have been born that way like Virgil.

I would have known. Wouldn’t I? I mean, he was away for his first year, and he was struggling.

It’s possible he’s one of those spontaneously born monsters without a bloodline, and that his turning was a surprise to him, too.

This changes everything.

I kept thinking that once I found Jules, I would disentangle myself from this whole thing.

Drop out from the competition and school and go back to how things were.

That’s not possible anymore. Jules is in this.

There’s no way for him to stop being a monster.

I don’t know how to help him yet, but I do know I’ll need a title. The power of it.

There’s no quitting anymore. There’s not even the option of skating by.

I have to win .

I barely notice when I reach the front door of McIntosh Castle. I stand there, thoughts whirling in my head.

Jules wouldn’t choose to hurt people. I need to remember that a Master is almost definitely involved. No matter what he’s done, it wasn’t his fault. Someone must be forcing him. And they can’t control him outside of his monster form, so they needed a different tactic.

That’s why it attacked me. After all, I’m not in QBSS, so I wasn’t a legitimate target.

And even Virgil said the monster wasn’t trying to kill me.

It was a threat. And it worked. If I hadn’t texted Jules, whoever is behind this probably would have told him.

That’s why Jules’s note said I couldn’t just leave Kingston.

I have to stay here where I can be monitored.

They’re using me against him. Probably using Bailey and Dad, too.

The door opens, and I jerk away. Margot says, “Why are you just standing there?”

“Sorry… I…” She steps back, her brow furrowed, and I stumble in after her, swapping out my shoes for a pair of slides.

“Bring your shoes with you. You’ll need them.”

I follow her down the hall, carrying my sneakers as instructed.

She brings me through a door I’ve never paid much attention to that leads into a dark basement. The rafters are exposed and the lights hanging from them are dim. All the walls are the same stone on the exterior of the house and the concrete floor is shiny, like they smoothed lacquer over it.

Virgil is waiting there in the most casual outfit I’ve seen him in: a white golf shirt, untucked, and a pair of black basketball shorts.

There are a bunch of gym mats on the floor, which Margot walks over to. “Corey is finishing up a class, so she’ll be by soon,” she says. “In the meantime, you’ll do some kickboxing drills with me, and then Virgil will be your moving target practice for your knives.”

Once I’ve changed, put my shoes back on, and have my hands wrapped and in gloves, Margot runs me through the basics. I try to pay attention, but I’m picturing Jules’s face. That pained way he looked at me.

What would Margot do if I told her? Tell Henry, most likely.

And Henry might tell Adam. Maybe the society isn’t paying much attention now, but once they have a name, will I just be making it easy for them?

Say they lock up the Master partnered with Jules—what would happen to him?

Would they pair him with someone else? Or put him in the Pen?

I just manage to dodge a punch from Margot. “Keep your guard up!” she says. “Move your feet more. Bouncing and staying light on them will help your speed.”

I throw some wild punches that don’t land. Then she comes back at me harder, and I’m stumbling on my feet trying to defend. I grunt as she catches me in the side and when I bend to block my body, a kick comes out of nowhere and sweeps my legs.

I fall with a hard thump on the mat.

“You didn’t say we were doing kicks,” I grumble, pushing to my feet.

Margot says, “It’s kick boxing. Of course there are kicks.”

She comes at me again, and again, and every time my defense is pathetic. When I do make my own offensive attempts, they fall short. I don’t land a single hit, and the whole time I’m wondering where Jules is.

Margot grits her teeth and pulls off her gloves, shaking her head. “Knife throwing now. Get on your holsters.”

I drag myself to my backpack and buckle the still too tight holsters onto my thighs.

Virgil pulls protective gear over his limbs and puts on a helmet. Margot straps a board with a target on it to his chest. “He’s going to run around the room and move faster over time. Obviously, hit the target.”

“Am I going to be throwing knives at people in the tests?”

“The first test will be some sort of navigation. We don’t know what yet.

Corey was dropped in a forest area. I got underground tunnels.

And you may or may not need those skills for it.

But yes, eventually, you will have to throw knives at people.

Hand-to-hand combat is permissible by the second test. They add weapons in the third.

” She gestures to Virgil. “You run, and you”—a gesture to me—“stay in the center.”

I expect him to jog around the small space; instead, Virgil moves at a near sprint, and I rush to throw a knife. I get one near the inner ring of the target. Then he speeds up. It’s harder, but I manage another hit.

Then Virgil hits a speed that I can’t fully comprehend. The instant I turn to him, he’s already moving, and then I pivot, and he’s gone again.

“Anticipate the movement!” Margot says.

I guess and throw, and the knife plinks off the wall. I try again without much success. Sweat drips down my forehead. I physically cannot move fast enough to both see him and throw accurately.

Finally, I run out of knives.

Margot claps her hands. “That’s enough.”

I hunch with my hands on my knees.

She says, “Do you know what I mean when I say anticipate his movement?”

“Somehow predict the future?”

“I mean stop and pay attention, and think with your brain. That entire time he was moving around in a predictable circle. All you had to do was wait for him to come around and throw. But you’re not paying attention to anything. You’re distracted. What’s up with you?”

“Nothing.”

Virgil’s eyes dart from me to Margot and back. “Are you worried about the test?”

“No.”

Margot mutters something under her breath and collects one of my knives from the floor, running her finger along the edge. “Sharp. That’s good. But you’ll need a new set. New holsters, too—you seem uncomfortable in those.” She nods to Virgil. “You can ditch the protective gear.”

“I don’t need new knives.” These are the ones Mom gave me. I don’t want to go into these tests without them. Especially now that there’s no exit plan. I’m in this, for real. Fuck.

“Yes, you do,” Margot says. “Monster hides are tough. Only a few materials in the world can handle it.”

“Mine are good!”

Virgil tosses off the last bit of gear. “I can get a test patch? We can see?” Before Margot agrees, he’s pulling on a pair of slides and jogging up the stairs.

Once the door closes, she turns to me. “What’s going on? You can tell me even if you don’t want to tell Virgil. Or I can leave, and you can tell him if you don’t want to share it with me.”

“Nothing is going on!” Virgil is a rule follower. Loyal almost to a fault. He would tell Henry about Jules too. They all would. I wish I could trust the psychology professor as much as they do, but I don’t know him. I can’t put Jules at risk. “I just need to pay more attention, like you said.”

When Virgil returns, he’s holding a furry thing in his hand. He accepts the knife from Margot. She scowls. “It’s not going to—”

He stabs the center and the fur splits.

It’s a patch of a monster. Skin and fur in a neat square. “How did you get that?” I ask, my voice a whisper.

“It’s collected. We need test patches to be sure of weapon strength. Your knives are good. I’m surprised…” He keeps talking about the quality of my blades, but I’ve already drifted away.

Collected .

Meaning, taken from a monster. I bet anything from the ones in the Pen. They went in there with a Doctorate, carved a neat square of flesh, and handed them out for testing.

That could be Virgil.

That could be Jules.

“Are you listening?” Margot asks. I nod. I know she doesn’t believe me, but she continues, “You can’t do anything significant until you have the serum, but doing the exercises to get into sync with each other will be useful. Better to start early in expectation of making it to the initiation.”

Virgil reaches out his hands and I awkwardly set mine on his like we did during the monster affinity prelim.

He must have already handed off the test patch to Margot.

I don’t know why we’re doing this in the middle of a physical training session.

He closes his eyes, so I close mine too. We’re probably matching breaths again.

I should have gotten Greg or whatever’s number so I could ask him more about how Jules had been.

In February, he’d gotten that invitation, left QBSS, and then tried to rejoin.

When I saw him this summer, he’d seemed fine, but his room was messier than usual, and apparently, he was on academic probation.

Then, after the Big Sandy Bay thing, he disappeared with that warning note.

I don’t think it’s far-fetched to link the monster at Big Sandy Bay, Jules, these invitations, and QBSS together. The trouble is figuring out what the links are. And why this stuff with Jules started in February but nothing popped off until months later.

“August, concentrate,” Margot says.

Virgil keeps shifting around, which isn’t helping with this breath-matching thing.

“ August ,” Margot says again.

“I’m trying,” I reply.

“Then why aren’t you moving?”

I open my eyes. “Why would I be moving?”

Margot stares at me for a long moment. “I’m out. Deal with your shit and come back later. If I stay here a second longer, I’m going to lose it.”

I stare slack-jawed as she gathers her stuff and stomps up the stairs, nearly running into Corey, who’s coming down. Corey looks after Margot and then at us. She shakes it off and smiles. “I think I’ve had a breakthrough with Dr. Weiss’s journal. I found this contact—”

“The exercise we were supposed to be doing was matching motions,” Virgil says to me. “To help us sync movement. Which you would have heard if you were paying attention. You know, so you can develop techniques to keep me from ripping you apart during the initiation.”

His tone is light, but the words are cutting. Virgil is the sort of person who holds on to his anger and releases it in sharp, passive-aggressive bursts. Possibly because overt aggression, as a monster, would make his life difficult.

I say, “Why are we even doing this now? I’m three tests away from initiation.”

“Maybe because you weren’t paying enough attention to physically train properly, so Margot was attempting to give you a break to be nice to you? Like she’s putting in effort while you’re apparently daydreaming?”

“I wasn’t daydream—”

“Do you understand the seriousness of this? We need to have affinity in order to connect during initiation. Seriously, what is going on with you? If you tell us, then we can help instead of wasting time.”

I could. I could tell him.

But then I think of Riley. She knew me from my brother this whole time. And then Virgil just happened to see me throw my knife at that guy? Was that really a coincidence? Or was it planned somehow? Is he keeping something from me?

I don’t know these people.

What if me and my brother are pawns in a bigger game? In whatever Henry and Margot were talking about at that meeting.

Virgil’s parents were monsters who killed people. They weren’t sent to the Pen; they were murdered.

If Jules killed anyone, even if it wasn’t by choice, it doesn’t change the facts.

“Nothing is wrong,” I say.

Virgil shakes his head. “Fine. I think we’re done for the day.”

I leave, walking past Corey, who stands with her head down. I know she said something about Dr. Weiss’s journals, but I don’t have the capacity to get into any of it.

I just want to leave.