Page 58 of A Mastery of Monsters

“You said it yourself. I put a lot of pressure on you kids to do well. You tried so hard in school in those subjects we told you would be good, and I never thought about whether you actually liked them. You seemed to… but I didn’t ask, did I?

I was surprised about Jules’s decision to leave so suddenly, but then again, I’d never asked him what he wanted either.

” Dad shakes his head. “I don’t want you to leave too.

So do what you like, okay? Whatever makes you happy, and I’ll be happy too.

I should have said that to you before. To Jules, too.

Both of you. You guys and Bailey, you’re… ”

You’re all I have left.

He’s right. He never asked. He never asked whether I wanted to go to university, or if I wanted to study what they pushed me to in school. He didn’t ask… and Mom didn’t either. But she isn’t here for me to punish.

“I’d like to be better,” Dad says when I don’t respond.

“Don’t wait until you almost die to be better!

” The tears that spring to my eyes are unfathomable.

I don’t know if they’re because I’m upset or pissed or a combination of the two.

“Now you want to tell me to do what I want? Now you actually care what I want? You’re seventeen years too fucking late. ”

“You’re right,” he says. “I am too late, aren’t I? I’d hoped not. But I am.”

“Yeah, I know. And now I’m a disappointment.”

His face crumples. “I was never disappointed in you.”

I snort.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make that clearer. I was disappointed in me .

I… I thought things would be so different when I left school.

I wanted to make a life with your mom. Instead, I got engaged and paid for the wedding with credit.

Acted like I had more than I did. By the time you two were born, we were drowning in debt.

Annie learned how bad it was when we tried to get a new car, not even a super nice one, and still failed the credit check.

I couldn’t manage any of the prestigious teaching jobs I hoped for.

Annie had to support us with her consulting.

I thought if I pushed you kids to be better than I was, that you’d avoid struggling like that.

We worked so hard to hide how difficult it was from you.

And then… and then she was gone, and I couldn’t—” He stops for a moment, choking up.

“I thought being with Bailey would be better than you watching me fall apart. And I could tell you were struggling, but I didn’t know what to do, so I just stayed away, I guess. You had Jules and Bailey.”

“I wanted my dad! I wanted you to try too!” I never said the words aloud before and hadn’t realized that I wanted to say them either.

That I meant it. “Do you know what it would have meant to hear you or Mom say you weren’t perfect?

! After you tried to make sure we were? It would have been a fucking relief to know it was impossible even for you.

Instead, you pretended like you’d never misstepped in your entire life so that we could feel worse than shit when we did. ”

Dad winces.

I know that in some ways, he did try. He texted and called and even emailed. I don’t know what I want him to do, but I want it to be better than that. Maybe I want him to be knocking down my door like Bailey. To insert himself. To read my mind and know what I want.

My hands tremble at my sides.

“I will,” he says. “I’ll try. And you, August, you’re perfect just as you are. I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to do what I wanted. I just want you to be you. And I want you to be okay.” He reaches out his hand to me.

I want to slap it away. To push him back. To avoid him ever wanting anything from me. But how can I, when what he wants is what I want too?

I don’t want my family to keep shrinking.

I reach out and take his hand.

“I’m sorry for Jules,” Dad says.

“He chose to leave.”

“He was upset with me. About your mom. He kept asking me these questions about when I had met her, and the people she knew, and all this other stuff, and I didn’t have answers for him, and he was so angry.”

I frown. “Questions about Mom? Like, recently?”

Dad nods. “I think he was trying to look into her genealogy, but Annie’s mother wasn’t close wth her family, Annie didn’t know her father, and she didn’t have any siblings.

She had some friends at Queen’s, sure, we both did, but I didn’t remember them, and she didn’t keep in touch after school. They had some sort of falling out.”

Why would Jules be interested in that stuff? And why would he be so pressed about it? “Jules never gets angry at you.”

“Yeah. It was unlike him, but you know, he’d been having trouble in school.” I hadn’t known that, actually, but apparently everyone else did. “Then he had a tussle with that boy, and I had to bail him out.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” I hold my hands up. “Jules fought with someone? And got arrested?!”

Dad shifts on his bed. “From what I heard, it was pretty one-sided. It started as an argument but then got out of hand.”

“When was this?”

“During the school year, a couple months after Annie…”

“Like February?”

“Maybe? I can’t remember. I figured he was acting out. I was a little more permissive. But I don’t know, now he’s gone, and I can’t help feeling like I didn’t do enough.”

“He’ll come back,” I say.

I’m working through the time line. The aggression that Jules was experiencing was out of character, but it wasn’t abnormal for a monster getting close to turning.

Which meant my brother was struggling with this for a long time.

No wonder he was desperate enough to accept that invitation.

And looking into Mom’s history… Did he have some understanding of born and bitten monsters?

It’s not like you’d forget if you were bitten, and he would have transformed right away in that case, so he must have been chasing lineage.

Maybe he doesn’t know about spontaneously born monsters.

But how did he learn about monsters at all? From QBSS?

The solution to all this is to find a way to communicate with Jules. But if it were that easy, I would have already done it.

I need help.

I think of Virgil out in the hallway.