An Invocation of Monsters (The Void Book 2), page 2
Broken bones? Might take me a few minutes, but they’d be good as new.
But cancer?
Nope.
Since I’d turned fifteen and had discovered that laying my hands on people cured them of all their ills, that was the one thing I’d come across that I couldn’t heal.
But with power came fear.
When I’d developed the healing hands, it had taken me a few months to realize that I was at the center of everyone around me suddenly becoming healthier and more vibrant, and it had happened in a bad way.
I used to volunteer at the small nursing home in Innsmouth, back when I’d been sure that I’d go to college to become a nurse after graduation. I touched people without thinking, because it was a natural part of the job.
It hadn’t occurred to me to be worried when I played a game of chess with ancient Miss Prynne, brushing her hand in the process. Or when I’d fluffed Mr. Vallejo’s pillow and patted his shoulder.
A day later, the Innsmouth local newspaper ran an article about an angel. Both Prynne and Vallejo had seemingly aged backwards overnight. It was a medical miracle.
It was Miss Prynne who had linked the so-called ‘miracle’ to me.
The next time I visited, she’d clutched at my arm, eyes wide and desperate. Her nails dug into my flesh so hard they opened wounds, and with blood streaming down my arm, the nurses had to pry her off me.
I had to go in for stitches, and I told my mother that there’d been an accident. Miss Prynne did have Alzheimer’s, after all, even if it was suddenly in remission—supposedly thanks to me.
Then my stitches healed overnight. I went to great pains to keep it hidden from my mother, pretending to go to the appointment to have them removed, while simultaneously freaking out that such a thing was possible.
After skipping two weeks of volunteering, I returned once more to find that Miss Prynne had died trying to escape the nursing home.
She’d smashed out her window and attempted to climb out, cutting herself badly enough to bleed out in the process.
Before she died, she’d been ranting my name, telling them she had to find me. The nursing home staff didn’t blame me for giving up the volunteer work after that.
Later that week, I’d done my friend Chelsea’s hair as an excuse to touch her, full of dread at the thought that Miss Prynne’s death was my fault.
Turned out it was.
Chelsea, who had endometriosis, came back with a perfect bill of health at her next appointment. She was amazed but happy.
But despite that, all I could think of was the smashed-out window in the nursing home.
Miss Prynne’s nails digging into my arm hard enough to tear flesh.
If people knew what my touch could do, I would be hounded to the ends of the earth for this power.
There would be nowhere to run to. Nowhere to hide.
I became hyper-aware of my hands and personal space bubble. At infrequent times I would touch people—usually friends or classmates who were ill. As long as I was sparing, no one would link the sudden spate of mystery healings to me.
My father… well. He had died in an accident; he was gone before I could lay hands on him. But we had never been close. I mourned as anyone would, but my father’s physical absence in death was about the same as his emotional absence in life.
But two years later, my mother had come home with a cancer diagnosis.
I’d hugged her at every opportunity. Held one of her hands as I read to her during chemo treatments. I tried to force the power through me when I touched her.
But it didn’t work, and I was stumped as to why she was the one person I couldn’t heal.
The answers were here in these woods, in the place she’d hidden.
So no matter how weird this was, or if the people she’d been friends with looked like serial killers, it didn’t matter.
I had to keep going.
Kase glanced at me when I pulled my glove back on. “We’re almost there.”
A minute later, he pulled the truck off the gravel track and onto a paved drive. We drove under trees that bent inward, framing the road for us. Through the packed trunks, I could see the glitter of the sun on water, and a lake expanding in the distance.
My mouth dropped open for a second when I got my first look at Deepwater Lodge.
The lake itself was huge, but the mansion perched on the edge was just as awe-inspiring from its sheer size.
It was a chunk of modernized Victorian architecture dropped in the middle of the wilds, a confection of floor-to-ceiling windows, stained glass glowing with roseate colors, and a tower or three that nearly matched the surrounding pines in height.
“Welcome to Deepwater Lodge,” Kase said proudly, as my gaze finally dropped to the lawn surrounding the Lodge and its front doors.
A shard of disquiet lodged itself in my chest.
The double front doors were framed with more antlers, and there was a young woman about my age sitting on the stone wall surrounding the mansion.
She looked like the female version of Kase: tanned skin, dirty blonde hair, wearing a shabby chic white dress. She was barefoot, a flower crown of Queen Anne’s Lace and daisies set atop the mass of wild curls.
I frowned as we drew closer, watching as the girl tore several petals from a daisy and tossed them in the air as she watched us drive past, like a mock-celebration of throwing confetti.
Kase pulled around a gardening shed and parked the truck behind it. I slid out with relief and managed to brush him off before he could grab my duffel bag, slinging it over my shoulder.
I turned around and my heart almost leaped out of my chest. The girl was standing right behind me, almost nose to nose with me.
Her eyes were enormous, a clear shade of blue. A faint smile touched her lips. “You must be Elle,” she said, extending a hand. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Yes, I’m Elle Gray.” I took her hand, waiting for the inevitable frown when she felt my glove, but the vague smile never left her face. She never blinked, either.
“This is Willow Barrett,” Kase said, his gaze flicking between the two of us.
“Mary and Joseph are waiting,” Willow said, abruptly releasing my hand. She was still staring at me. I was quite sure her eyelids hadn’t moved once since I’d turned around.
I resisted the urge to wipe my hand on my thigh as I followed Kase. I was wearing gloves, and she didn’t look dirty, besides.
There was just something about her that made me feel like I’d flipped over a rock and found the underside crawling with fat white grubs.
My gut churned again as we approached the front doors of Deepwater Lodge, the racks of antlers looking spiny and like they might reach out to grab us, but there was no pop in my ears, no sudden pain.
I walked into the place my mother had come to every summer, my chest tight.
What was I hoping to find here?
It was beautiful, the ceiling of the foyer rising several stories. Everything was made of dark wood, offset by the cream furniture and golden sconces on the walls.
While I couldn’t imagine my polished mother backpacking in the woods, I could definitely imagine her coming here. Then I closed my eyes, breathed deep, and smelled the waft of a magnolia candle.
The tightness in my chest was almost unbearable. That was my mother’s scent. She’d always had a magnolia candle burning in our house.
It was like walking in and being hugged by a ghost.
When I opened my eyes, there were two more people standing in front of me, a man and a woman.
I recognized them from the funeral. They looked exactly like they had then, only now they were wearing white.
The woman, Mary, held out her hand, smiling. “It’s so nice to finally see you here. We’ve waited for this day for so long.”
When I reached out to shake for what felt like the millionth time today, she gripped my wrist, her fingers like iron bands, and peeled off my glove.
I was so shocked by her audacity that I just stood there, frozen in place, as she laced her fingers through mine.
A long moment passed, and the woman exhaled, smiling even wider.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “It is long past time you arrived. Welcome home, Elle.”
3
Elle
All of the little sirens in the back of my head had gone from red alert to full-on shrieking klaxons, but Mary’s grip was almost unnaturally tight.
Her bird-boned fingers were laced in mine like a skeleton’s embrace, tight enough to turn my knuckles white.
“Thanks for the warm welcome, but I’ve never been here before,” I said, trying on a smile yet again. Like the one I’d worn for Kase, it felt like a mask. “I’m not sure if I’m ready to call this home yet. Or if my mother did.”
“Oh, she did.” Joseph stepped forward, and Mary finally released my hand. He had the grace to allow me to pull my glove back on before taking my hand in a grasp that was far more fish-like than Mary’s. “Have you ever read of Jung’s personas?”
“A little.”
Joseph smiled. Despite their thinness, both Mary and Joseph had wide, full-lipped mouths that seemed designed for smiles. “The persona—the mask we hide behind to conceal our true natures. Deepwater Lodge was the only place Gillian ever removed her mask. This was her home, where she could slip free of the persona you all knew.”
Discomfort was an almost tangible sensation worming its way through my stomach.
“The persona can be many things—a wife. A mother. A real estate agent.” Joseph’s pale blue eyes seemed to be searing through me. “But those were things she had to be for the sake of social propriety in your world. In this world, she was so much more.”
I hated that the things he said made sense, even as they tore apart the image I’d always carried of my mother.
Had I not given her enough credit? Was she more than I’d believed?
Or were these people just out of their fucking gourds?
“I look forward to seeing what happens when your persona finally slips,” he added, now giving me a smile that seemed more sly than welcoming. “You might find the person you become in this house suits you more than the face you wear now.”
Yeah, right. I’d spent years carefully curating myself to live as normal a life as possible.
Living in a lodge full of wackadoodles for a month wasn’t going to change that.
“Maybe so.” I hefted my duffel bag, which was starting to dig into my shoulder, and Kase jerked back into action.
“I’ll show her to Gillian’s quarters,” he said quickly. “She’d probably like to settle in and rest.”
Mary nodded, her palm pressed to her stomach.
“They’re her quarters now and will be referred to as such,” she said, in a tone of voice like the cat who got the cream. “I had Willow clean them for you before your arrival. I hope they’re to your liking, Elle.”
I wondered what I’d healed in her with that unauthorized touch. “I’m sure they will be. Thanks, Willow.”
At that point, I was just desperate to put distance between myself and the Society members while I got my bearings.
There was something about them that put me on edge, like taking a step only to find that you’d walked off a cliff and there was nothing but empty air beneath your foot.
Willow smiled vaguely, twirling a piece of Queen Anne’s Lace she’d pulled from her flower crown, and I followed Kase down the hall with relief.
The rest of the Lodge was just as beautiful as the foyer. We went down another hall lined with windows overlooking Deepwater Lake, and I found my gaze pulled to the nearly-black water in the center.
Kase saw where I was looking. “There’s a very steep drop-off only fifteen feet or so into the water,” he told me. “We swim all the time, but be careful. Joseph strung buoys to mark the spot.”
“Looks cold out there.” It was spring, but at this latitude it would be pretty chilly even in full sun.
Kase laughed. “Yeah, that’s another one of the anomalies about this place. It could be ten degrees outside, but swimming in the lake feels like taking a warm bath. We go out year-round.”
It hadn’t escaped my notice that neither Mary nor Joseph had explained exactly what the snap headache had been, and Joseph’s little speech about Jung’s personas had thrown me off-guard.
I had to remember that my mother knew these people. They weren’t strangers to her… although I had been, apparently.
We came to a pair of double doors, with a brass plaque on the wall beside it. I read my mother’s name inscribed on it with deep flourishes, but it wasn’t her married name.
It said Gillian Marsh.
I touched the plaque, running my fingers over her name. I was surprised she hadn’t had it changed to read Gillian Gray.
But maybe this was where she came to remind herself that she was more than just Benjamin Gray’s wife.
Kase pushed open one of the doors, and the house abruptly changed.
We stepped into an open parlor with polished parquet floors and high ceilings. A large, plush leather couch sat in front of a fireplace with an antique Victorian mantel, an Impressionist painting in shades of indigo, cream, and warm ochre hanging over it.
I could see the stamp of my mother all over this room, down to the half-burned magnolia candle on a brass side table.
“The bedroom is this way,” Kase said, yanking me out of my reverie of seeing my mother curled up right there on the sofa. The mental image was so clear, I could almost believe I’d really seen her.
Then I realized that Kase was no longer treating me like a pariah he’d picked up on the side of the road. He was opening doors like a footman who’d waited his whole life for this moment.
I glanced at him, and caught the same wide-eyed adoration he’d shown earlier when speaking about my mother.
He’d become solicitous about showing me to my rooms… after I’d healed Mary’s mysterious ailment.
Maybe he’d just needed hard proof that I was his Mother of Open Doors’ precious offspring before he went into subservient puppy mode.
I stepped into the bedroom. An enormous picture window overlooked the lake, and indigo walls gave the space a dreamy cast. There was a massive canopied bed piled with cloudy cream linen.
A sparkling chandelier cast rainbow spots across the walls, and I dropped my duffel bag unceremoniously on the bed. Even the pale wood furniture, carved with mandala-like flowers, had been polished in preparation of my arrival.
“I hope you like it,” Kase said anxiously from the doorway.
“It’s gorgeous.” I managed to sound normal and even-toned, even though my throat had swollen tight. It was all so… her, and yet also me.
Like she had known this space wouldn’t be hers forever. That it would be passed on, and somehow I had walked into the bedroom of my dreams.
At home, our house had been done in shades of gray, just like our name. Dove gray, creamy gray, foggy gray, cool gray.
Even my childhood bedroom, hardly changed since childhood, was white and gray. The entire place had felt very institutional; I hadn’t felt the slightest spark of regret about selling it.
I watched the crystal chandelier sparkle against the dark paint and smiled.
“Um… I can show you around the rest of the house.” Kase’s eyes lingered on me. I felt his gaze like a living weight. “We have a live-in chef, so you’ll want to know where the kitchen is, and where everyone else lives. Some places are off-limits.”
“That sounds great, thanks.” I tugged my gloves, ensuring they were covering every inch of exposed skin halfway up my forearm, and followed him back out of my new bedroom.
The kitchen was on the opposite side of the house, a massive room of stainless steel and white marble that was almost blinding in its cleanliness and sound-proofed, the why of which became apparent as soon as we opened the door and were assaulted with jet engine levels of Eastern European techno.
A large, grumpy-looking chef whose arms were a solid block of tattoos was laboring over rows of tiny plates on a vibrating metal table, flourishing his hands wildly as he moved to the music.
“This is Tater,” Kase yelled in my ear.
“Dark chocolate panna cotta with vanilla whipped cream,” Tater announced over the thumping bass, plating a tiny chocolate half-sphere with a perfect dollop of vanilla bean-speckled cream on top, and sprinkled with chocolate shavings.
He handed me a spoon, and of course with it being chocolate, I wasted no time in taking a not-so-ladylike bite.
“This is ungodly,” I said thickly, and he nodded with satisfaction.
“Sinful.” He pinched his fingers in the air, shaking them for emphasis.
“Absolutely decadent.” I ate another bite, wondering if I could just scoot my bed in here. There was room in the corner next to the dessert fridge, if I just shoved the extra stove out of the way…
“You may come and sample whenever you like,” he said, taking my empty plate. I saw words in Italian tattooed in black script over his hairy chest in the gap of his shirt.
I could already tell Tater was going to be my new best friend. Anyone who gave me chocolate for free won my heart.
Kase practically dragged me out of there before I could start sniffing around whatever was hiding in the oven, and my ears popped when we left the kitchen and its endless vibrating beat.
Next, I was brought back across the house to yet another set of double doors. There was another plaque here that read Mary and Joseph.
“All the founders have full apartments here,” Kase explained. “They’re marked out so no one wanders in.”
“Where do you live?”
He pointed up. “Acolytes take upstairs bedrooms. There’s only two of us right now. Mary and Joseph are here, your quarters are on the lake side, and Tasha’s are closer to the front of the house.”
“Tasha?” Who was Tasha? My mother had never mentioned anyone by that name.
Kase gave me a sidelong look that in no way diminished the brand-new puppy love in his eyes. “Tasha Vintner was the fourth founding member of the Wendigo Society.”
