Only Ashes Remain (Market of Monsters, #2)

by Rebecca Schaeffer

This was not the time to commit murder. No matter how much she wanted to.

They were also very rare these days. Because they couldn’t reproduce with humans, their species was dying. Between laws, hunters, and technology making it more difficult for them to run from their crimes, kelpies were slowly going extinct.

Wouldnt the fact that they neither look like or can reproduce with humans make them another species altogether according to scientific standards?

“You really need to tone down the serial killer look in public,” Nita sighed, watching until the two students had completely vanished from view. He snorted. “It’s not that far from the truth.” Nita just raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to scare me or something?” He grinned at her, smile wide and crooked. “Are you scared?”

She’d been in Toronto less than a day and with Kovit less than an hour before she’d been involved in a murder. And she hadn’t even had a chance to dissect the body. No, we aren’t supposed to think like that. Why not? He was evil. We didn’t know him. Why shouldn’t we want to dissect him? Because . . . well, actually, yeah.

“So you don’t have a pool in the basement where you murder people?” “I never said that.”

“Oh, and you know the story of Bluebeard? Marries a lovely young lady, invites her into his home, says don’t open the basement door, she ignores him and finds a bunch of skeletons of his ex-wives?” “Yeah.” “Well, I’m Bluebeard, and I’m telling you upfront the basement is full of rotting skeletons so please don’t go down there unless you want to join them. In which case, you’re more than welcome! If you’re going to kill yourself anyways, best to donate your body to my food stores.”

“It’s like my hunger is a giant tree. If I want to sate it, I need to chop the tree down. Small, insignificant pains are pins. You can stick hundreds of thousands of pins in a tree and cover it like a pincushion, but it won’t do anything to chop the tree down.” He licked his lips. “If you want to cut it down, you need a chainsaw. And not just for a few seconds, that tree is large, it’ll take you all afternoon to cut something like that down, even with the chainsaw.”

Metaphor for how much zannies must eat

And even if it did go exactly according to plan, a lot of people would die. It was a bit much, even for her. Which, she thought, was practically a good deed. All those people she might have killed but wasn’t going to. That was how good deeds worked, right? Yeah, not even you believe that, Nita. Shut up.

“Every time someone thinks about me and imagines who I’d be in another life, they take away the choices I’ve made in this life. They make it seem like I was crammed into a life I didn’t want.” He closed his eyes. “They take away my power in my own life. Build me up in their minds into a person I’m not. How is that any different than the people who only see me as a tool or a monster?”

“I am not a good person. But I am a person. I make my own choices.”

Just because other people said unnatural like a slur didn’t mean Nita had to stop using it. Why should she let other people change the way she referred to herself?

Completely agree

Nita hadn’t realized that when he said he needed to cool down, he literally meant he wanted to eat ice cream. But hey, to each their own.

“No one likes to be wrong. So sometimes, when something proves us wrong, it just makes us more fervent in our belief of it. But it’s okay to be wrong.”

How was ignoring what Kovit did any different from with her mother? Wasn’t she just enabling him by pretending not to see his crimes? For the first time, she let herself consider: was she just replacing one monster with another?

“You’re likening torturing people to eating ice cream when you feel shitty.”

“He’s a zannie. It’s literally his biological imperative to hurt people.” “It’s also my biological imperative to drown people and eat them, but here you are, not underwater or eaten.” Adair rolled his eyes.

You’re not going on some angsty teen emo self-hate spiral, are you?”

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeh

What would it be like, everyone despising you for being a monster, but also wanting you to be more of a monster? Wanting you more ruthless on one thing, less on another.

No one is perfect. No one is exactly who you want them to be. There is something in every person, even your closest friend, that you don’t like.

She walked away and marveled that she was the exact opposite of Kovit in many ways. He couldn’t hurt people he knew—only people he didn’t. She struggled hurting strangers, but could easily consign her enemies to eternal pain.