Page 94 of A Mastery of Monsters

“It backed off like it was listening to her. Mom told me to join QBSS and to keep everything a secret to protect the family, and then she threw herself over a cliff,” Jules finally chokes out. “And it left me alone.”

No. That can’t… Mom can’t… I shake my head and back away from Jules like physical distance between us will change his story. He’s wrong. Mom would have found a way out of that. She always had an exit plan. Always . “Did you see her body? Maybe—”

“She’s gone! I saw… she’s gone. The Monster only left because it got what it wanted.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t see it properly. I didn’t lie about that. If I’d seen its form, if I knew who it could have been…”

There’s a roaring in my ears so loud that I can barely hear what Jules is saying.

Mom isn’t missing. She was never missing.

Mom is dead.

And she knew about QBSS. Knew about Monsters.

Jules lied about everything because she told him to.

My brother keeps speaking, though I’m struggling to listen to him.

I slump to the ground. He says, “But no one in QBSS knew her. And they—I mean, the way they talked, they hated the society and Monsters. That’s why I thought Bernie was the better shot.

He said he knew her, but now I know he lied.

I decided to cut my losses and bonded with Bernie, and I thought everything was fine, but then Davy killed that girl and shit hit the fan. ”

I hide my face in my hands. It’s too much. All of this.

She can’t be dead.

She can’t be.

I stopped looking, but I never stopped believing that Mom was alive.

“Do you know what this means?!” Jules asks.

I peel my hands away from my face to meet his eyes. “I… I…”

“Someone came after her! They wanted her dead for some reason. The amount of times we moved, you think that was a coincidence? Training us the way she did? She was running. Someone with control of a Monster killed her.”

“Or a Wild.” My voice is detached from my body.

“A what?”

I scrub my hands over my face because I don’t want to be doing this right now. I don’t want to be learning this, and I don’t want to be teaching about the society either.

Jules says, “I thought I could handle this myself. I wanted you to stay out of it, but you have a direct connection to some of the highest-ranking people in the society. Henry and his Mastery group, and Adam, who is now the Doctorate. If anyone would know what happened, one of those two must.”

What would that mean if Henry or Adam knew Mom?

She must have been in that dossier Henry put together, but did they actually know her?

They must have known something about her if she and Carrigan were friends.

Why would he hide that from me? Did he set that fight up at the park? Set me up? What for?

Mom is dead.

She’s gone.

We won’t ever get to move beyond that moment.

She was so mad at me for wanting to stop training that night.

I thought she was just pushing another expectation on me when really, she was scared.

She was trying to prepare me for whatever she thought was coming.

She was trying to protect me. Protect Jules.

And in exchange, I yelled at her and ignored her call.

I scream just to get it out. Scream and scream and scream. Tears running down my face.

She should have told us! So many things would be different if she’d just told us!

I’m choking, gasping; it’s like I can’t breathe.

Mom is dead.

She’s not coming back.

Our family is never going to be back to what it was. Not ever.

Somehow, I’m curled up on the ground in the snow, and Jules is sitting next to me. I don’t know how long I’ve been like this. My tears are frozen to my face.

Mom isn’t just dead.

She was murdered.

They hunted her down, and even if she chose death, they forced it on her.

Jules is muttering about how it’s his fault. I see it from my brother’s perspective. He felt guilty, and at the same time, he was slowly becoming a Monster. He kept everything inside, trying to do it all himself, the way Jules always does.

And I hadn’t exactly been in a position to help with the way I was acting. I left my brother alone.

I raise my head and look at Jules.

I still have him. He’s still here.

This time, he won’t be alone.

“There’s more,” Jules says. My muscles clench. I don’t know how much more I can take. “Mom said to go to QBSS, to join them, but then she also said that once this person saw me, he’d help. That once he knew she was dead, he’d come find me. But he never showed up.”

“Who?”

“She said it was too dangerous to give a name, but… she said… she said he’s the Doctorate’s son.

I didn’t understand it because I didn’t know what a Doctorate was.

I asked Bernie, playing it cool so he wouldn’t know why I was interested, and learned there were three sons.

But I don’t know. I looked them over when they questioned me at Summerhill, and none of them reacted. ”

Carrigan.

That motherfucker lied to me. Played it off like Mom was no one to him. But she knew enough about the society to be targeted by them.

And worse, he’d abandoned her. She’d been counting on him to help Jules, and he looked my brother in the eye at Summerhill and didn’t do shit even when Jules’s life was on the line.

Go forth and cut those strings, Ms. Black.

Cutting and cutting and cutting until you get to the puppet master.

I don’t know who to blame for her death, but I will find someone.

Something needs to go in the gaping hole where finding Mom used to be. That hope I always held on to.

I need the person who did this.

Next semester, I’ll enter the society with a new goal.

I’m going to find whoever killed Mom, and I’m going to have my Monster rip their fucking throat out.