Only a Monster (14 page)

“What?” Aaron said. There was hope in his voice, but Joan could see how Ruth was gripping the back of the sofa, her knuckles white.

“We weren't the only survivors,” Ruth said. “But you're the only ones I've found alive.” She glanced at the door again. And this time, Joan felt a chill start to spread through her.

“What do you mean?” Aaron said.

“Someone is hunting down anyone who escaped,” Ruth said. “Someone is silencing anyone who tries to tell the tale of it. You spoke about the massacre in public today. You can't ever do that again.”

Joan made tea. The ordinary ritual of it was comforting. Beside her, Ruth reached into the air, taking out food she'd bought at the market—pies and mushy peas, still piping hot. The Hunt family power. And that was comforting too. At Gran's place, everyone had had stashes of food like that—except Joan, of course. Her Hunt power had faded over the years.

As Ruth reached for another pie, Joan found herself suddenly remembering what Gran had said last night.
Someday soon, you'll come into a power
.
Not the Hunt power. Another.
What had Gran meant by that? But that memory was quickly chased by another memory—Gran's blood seeping all over Joan's hands. Gran's harsh breaths rattling in and out. Joan heard her own breath hitch.

“Joan?” Ruth said, jolting Joan out of it.

“Yeah.” Joan wasn't there, she reminded herself. She was here.

Ruth reached back into the air and retrieved a knob of ginger—freshly peeled. Joan blinked at it. “For your tea,” Ruth said. She dropped it carefully into one of the mugs. “I know you like ginger in your tea.”

Joan took a deep breath and let it out. “I'm so happy you're here,” she whispered.

Ruth didn't quite smile, but for a moment that new hard look in her eyes softened to fondness. “I'm glad I found you.”

Joan brought the teapot and mugs over to the coffee table. Ruth laid out pies. “Bacon and egg,” she said. “Steak and ale, steak and kidney, cheddar and leek.” She unloaded tubs of mushy peas too, and chips with gravy.

Ruth and Joan squeezed onto the sofa together. Aaron took the armchair. For a little while, they all just sat there, looking at the dark window, drinking too-hot tea, and eating.

Aaron drank his tea black and unsweetened. Ruth dropped three sugar cubes into her mug. She hovered her hand over the rising steam. Joan's heart tightened at the familiarity of the gesture—Ruth always did that when she felt cold.

Aaron broke the silence first. “The attack isn't recorded in the Oliver histories.” He lowered his mug to the table, hand shaking a little. Joan remembered what else he'd said: his father's death hadn't matched the records either. “This is all wrong,” he said. “None of this is supposed to be happening.” He'd said that last night too.
This night is all wrong.

“It's not just the Oliver records,” Ruth said. “I've seen other families' records of that night. They all say the same thing.”

“You've seen other families' records?” Aaron sounded a little shocked.

“Listen to what I'm saying,” Ruth said. “
They all say the same
thing.
Not just the same false events, but recorded with the same words. I've seen it in the Hunt records, the Hathaway records, the Patel records.”

This night is all wrong.
The families each recorded all the events of history, but Nick's attack wasn't in any of them. There was only one explanation. Someone had concealed the attack. “You think the records have been tampered with,” Joan said.

Aaron shook his head. “That isn't possible. Only the family archivists record events. And they would never collaborate.”

“I know,” Ruth said.

Aaron's gray eyes were wide. “The family histories must be perfect. Because if they're not, doubt could be cast on every recorded event.”

“I know,” Ruth said again.

“If we can't trust the records, then we can't trust anything.” Aaron's voice was rising. “Any event could be wrong. Any death. There'd be no way to know what's going to happen on any given day.”

“You mean like being human?” Joan said.

Aaron stared at her. “Yes.” He sounded taken aback. His eyes were a little wild. “It would be as bad as being human.”

It's not so bad
, Joan wanted to tell him, but she could see that he wouldn't be able to hear it. He seemed shaken by the prospect of an unpredictable future. It was the opposite for Joan. The thought of an unchangeable future written in a book was a claustrophobic horror.

She leaned over to put her own mug down. Her wound
pulled as she stretched, a fresh reminder that Nick's attack had only been last night for her and Aaron.

“Who's doing this?” she asked Ruth. Someone was falsifying records. Someone was hunting down survivors. “Who's trying to cover up the attack?”

“I don't know,” Ruth said.

Joan remembered the disbelief in Gran's voice last night.
I was supposed to have so much more time to prepare you.
Joan closed her eyes. She remembered how Gran had gasped in pain. She remembered the sound Ruth had made when she'd been stabbed. Her own breath hitched as she pictured that deep, twisting wound under Ruth's rib cage. “I thought you were dead,” she whispered to Ruth.

Ruth ducked her head. “When I saw you at Holland House that night, I—” Her voice cracked. “I'd thought
you
were already dead. All the others were dying or dead when I found them. Bertie . . . Uncle Gus. Aunt Ada. Gran.”

Joan took a long, shuddering breath.
You messaged for help
, Ruth had told her that night.
And I called everyone else.

Ruth must have known what Joan was thinking, because she squeezed Joan's hand. “You know it wouldn't have mattered whether you'd sent that message for help or not. The other families were attacked too. He would have found us wherever we were.”

Joan squeezed Ruth's hand back. “I still wish I'd never sent it,” she managed.

“I know,” Ruth whispered. “And I wish I'd been there
sooner. When I got there . . . Uncle Gus and Aunt Ada were already dead. Bertie was barely alive. I tried to call an ambulance, but my phone didn't work. I held his hand.”

Joan swallowed around the lump in her throat. God,
Bertie
. She couldn't believe this had happened. Was
going
to happen.

“How could those humans have known so much about us?” Aaron asked. “How did they find us?”

“I don't know,” Ruth said.

“You went looking into the records afterward, though?” Joan said.

Ruth nodded.

“Did you learn any more about the attack?”

“You mean, did I learn any more about
him
?” Ruth said.

Him.

Joan swallowed. She'd been trying not to think about Nick directly. Now she felt a flash of anger, followed by pain. It hurt to think about him. She didn't want to think about him.

A memory came to her anyway. Not of the night itself, but of before that. Of a morning when she and Nick had arrived at work before anybody else. They'd cleaned the Gilt Room together. Joan had dusted the picture frames and Nick had mopped the floor, his shirtsleeves rolled up. The morning sun had been soft and warm. And Joan had thought,
If every day were like this, I'd be happy forever.

She heard her breath shudder out. “Did you learn anything about him?”

“I never actually saw him, you know?” Ruth said. “I only heard
you
talk about him.” Her mouth twisted, sad and wry. “You talked about him so much that summer. I remember I used to tease you about him. God, that was so long ago.”

It had been two days ago for Joan.

“He doesn't seem to exist,” Ruth said now. “I know he was working at Holland House because you said so. But there are no employee records of him. I tried to trace him through security footage near the house. He somehow never appears.”

Joan waited for more, but Ruth had stopped. “What else?” she said.

“You're the one who knew him, Joan.” Ruth's voice was gentle.

“I didn't,” Joan whispered. She remembered how it had felt when they'd met. Like she'd known him her whole life. Like she could trust him with her life. She'd just known. But she'd been wrong. She'd never felt so sure and been so wrong.

Her throat felt tight. Last night, she and Nick had sat together under the window in the Holland House library. Nick had touched her cheek and she'd leaned up to kiss him. When the Olivers had attacked, he'd saved her life. And then he'd stood in front of her and said:
If you ever steal time from a human again, I will kill you myself.

“I haven't learned anything about him,” Ruth said. “Not his real name, not who his parents are, not how he came to learn about monsters. I don't know who he is.”

Once upon a time
, Joan thought,
there was a boy who was born
to kill monsters. A hero.
“Gran used to tell us stories,” she said. “Do you remember?”

“Joan . . .” Ruth was already shaking her head.

“About a human boy who was destined to kill monsters.”

“Those are just stories,” Ruth said. “They're just bedtime stories for children.”

Joan looked at Aaron. He was watching her with an expression she couldn't quite read. “That man in the maze,” she said to him. “He had a tattoo.” She touched the back of her neck. “Here, where a monster would see it if they tried to take time. A warning. You didn't believe that your father was dead until you saw that tattoo. And then you
knew
.”

Aaron couldn't seem to take his eyes from hers. “It was the hero's emblem from the stories,” he said. “The wolf.” Joan felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. That was in the stories Gran had told her too.

“The human hero is a mythical figure,” Ruth said. “Like King Arthur. He isn't real.”

But Joan could see it in her eyes. She was remembering the same sweltering night that Joan had been remembering. Years ago, Joan and Ruth had fallen sick with a fever, and hadn't been able to sleep. Gran had sat up with them all night and told them a story about the hero—one Joan had never heard before.

“In the myths,” Aaron said now, “the human hero is the end of days. He kills the first monster, unraveling us all so that monsters never exist. We're never born.”

“Those are fairy tales,” Ruth said.

“Yes,” Aaron agreed.

“The timeline can't be changed,” Ruth said, “so he can't kill the first monster. He can't stop us from being born.”

“No.”

“Okay,” Joan said. “Okay.” Ruth had gone so pale that the only color on her face was the slash of red lipstick. Joan wished again that Gran were here to explain everything in that reassuring, dry way of hers. But Gran wasn't here. Gran was dead, and if Joan didn't do something, then Gran would stay dead.

“What do we know?” Joan said, trying to focus. “There was an attack by humans. Ruth hasn't found any other survivors. There are false events in the historical records. Is that all?”

Ruth hesitated. Her eyes turned unerringly to the door again.

“Ruth?” Joan said slowly. Maybe she didn't fully know this new Ruth yet. But she knew
her
Ruth. Her Ruth wouldn't just have been running for two years. Her Ruth would have been looking back at her pursuers, trying to work out who they were.

“I don't know anything else,” Ruth said. “Not for sure.”

“Not for sure?” Joan said.

In the pause that followed, the building seemed very quiet. The rain was slowing outside, just a patter against the roof now. Joan couldn't even hear the market sellers downstairs.

“I thought I saw something once,” Ruth said. “Just after I escaped. After I landed in the eighties.”

“My family still lived in Holland House in the eighties,” Aaron said.

“Yeah, I know,” Ruth said with a tired half smile. “I was bleeding all over the shop and had to get your stupid window open again. And I knew if I passed out, your family would find me. Almost bled out before I got to the road.”

Joan pressed closer to Ruth. Ruth was sort of smiling about it, but she'd been even closer to death than Joan had realized.

“Next thing I know,” Ruth said, “I'm in hospital, and the girl in the bed next to mine is telling me to shut up.” She swallowed. “I'd been babbling about the massacre. Annoying everyone in the ward. I didn't know what I was saying.”

Ruth had woken up all alone. At least Joan and Aaron had had each other last night.

“They wheeled me out for a scan,” Ruth said, “and that's when I saw
her
, walking in the direction of my room.”

“Her?” Aaron said.

“A blonde woman with a long swan neck,” Ruth said. “Walking down the hallway of the hospital ward like she owned it. And there were three men with her. Wearing pins with winged-lion insignia.”

Joan started to ask what that meant and then stopped when she saw that all the color had drained from Aaron's face.

“When they brought me back to my room,” Ruth said, “the girl in the other bed was gone. They said she must have checked herself out. But I don't think she did.”

“You saw Court Guards at the hospital?” Aaron said, hushed.

“I don't know for sure,” Ruth said. “I was all drugged up
and really out of it. But afterward . . . Every time I followed rumors of survivors, I found whispers of Court Guards. And a blonde woman.”

Something creaked on the landing outside. They all jerked their heads to look at the door—as Ruth had been doing all night.

A door nearby opened and closed. A lock slid shut. Joan breathed out. She heard Aaron's and Ruth's breaths ease out too.

“We should get some rest,” Ruth said. “Stall owners are going to bed. Best to have our lights on and off on the same schedule as them.”