Page 13 of Monsters' Manor

How does she expect me to feel, given the fact I spent nearly all my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood away from magick?

“It’s just not something I have any interest in exploring.”

That apparently wasn’t the answer Odelia wanted to hear. Her eyes narrow and her frown deepens.

“Your father would want you to at least try.”

If my stomach felt greasy before, it’s downright painful now, roiling with guilt and indignation. Manipulative witch.

“That’s not fair.”

My words are barely louder than a whisper, but they put a flash of hard resolve on Odelia’s face.

“I know it’s not fair, Rosemary, but that doesn’t make it any less true.” She stands from her desk and comes out from behind it to stand right in front of me.

I stand as well, uncertain what she means to do and not about to take whatever it is sitting down. She raises her hands and rests them on my shoulders.

“Your mother really did a number on you, didn’t she?”

“Don’t talk about my mother.”

She doesn’t even flinch at the venom in my voice. “Why not? You came here instead of going home to her. Why is that?”

“None of your damned business.”

I shake off her hands and take a few steps away, breathing deep and trying to calm myself down.

“It is mydamned businesswhen I’m giving you a paycheck and a place to live, Rosemary. It is my damned business when I extended an offer of help, when you refuse to acknowledge or train your magick, and then you have an unintended flare in the middle of the night market. What if it had been flames, instead of telekinesis?”

Again, she’s not wrong, but I’m feeling too defensive right now to think straight. My head swims and my fingertips tingle with the flames she just mentioned.

I’m losing it, and I need to get the hell out of this conversation and out of this office.

“So, what?” I finally ask. “I either get on board with training my magick and being a part of your haunted house, or I’m out of here?”

“Part of my haunted house?” she asks derisively. “Please, Rosemary. You don’t really think that’s all we do here, do you? Edgar’s Acres might be the part of our family’s legacy that’s visible to non-magick folk, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface of the community we have the privilege of stewarding.”

I’m only vaguely aware of what she means. Before my father died, I was too young to understand most of it, and my mother never talked about it at all.

But I’ll be damned if I let her know that.

“There’s a whole shadowworld, of which we are stewards,” Odelia says—patiently, like she’s talking to a stubborn child. “Entire communities hidden by wards and glamours, monsters doing their best to remain unnoticed while walking amongst humans. We all work together to stay protected and to ensure all members of those communities are cared for.”

The words stir memories of my father’s voice, of stories he used to tell me about a world I’d be a part of one day. When I was older. When I didn’t live under my mother’s roof anymore.

I blink away those memories and the sting of tears behind my eyes.

“That’s the world your mother denied you after James died,” Odelia continues, voice softer now. “That’s the world I’m inviting you to be a part of. You could have gone anywhere else, Rosemary, but you chose here. And I think you know there’s a reason for that.”

An uncomfortable sense of shame settles over me. I want to cling on to my stubbornness and indignation. I want to beright, for all the hurt and reluctance I’ve been clinging onto to have been justified. But as much as I try to summon all those feelings and wrap them around me like a protective cloak, I can’t seem to grasp a single one.

“So, I’ll ask you again. What will it be?”

And just like that, the path of my life branches out before me. Something in Odelia’s resolve tells me this isn’t an offer she’s going to extend again.

Which… as much as I want to fault her for that—I mean, come on, I’m the black sheep just coming home after fifteen years, and she expects me to have it figured out after a few short weeks?—I can understand where she’s coming from.

She has responsibilities I can’t even fathom, concerns that go well beyond one wayward niece who’s been running away from her magick for years.

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