Only a Monster (27 page)

Joan didn't dare blink as she climbed above the tide. She half thought Tom would try something while she was off-balance, but he didn't move. He hadn't touched her when they'd been alone together either, she realized slowly. He'd threatened her, but he hadn't hurt her. He could have easily taken what she'd found by force, but he hadn't. She couldn't understand it.

“We need to go somewhere
now
,” Ruth said.

“Not an inn or a human hotel,” Tom said. “The Court will have guards all over them.”

“We can't go to my family. They'd turn us all in,” Aaron said.

Ruth usually took any opportunity to bait Aaron about the Olivers, but she only said tensely: “Then where?”

“There's nowhere else to go,” Aaron said. “Nowhere off the Court's radar. They have access to every human record. They have spies everywhere. They know every—” His mouth snapped shut suddenly. From his expression, he'd realized something.

“Aaron?” Joan said.

Aaron's gaze lifted to her face. There was an intensity in his expression that wasn't usually there. Without knowing why, Joan found it hard to breathe under the weight of his attention.

The river washed in and out. A bird chirped and was answered by another. Morning was coming upon them fast. And still Aaron just looked at Joan. “Aaron?” she said uncertainly.

His gaze left her finally, turning to the water. “There's a
safe house in Southwark,” he said. “The Court doesn't know about it.”

“How do you know?” Ruth said.

“My mother told me,” Aaron said. His tone was final. It was clear that no more questions were allowed. He turned and walked up the stairs.

The sky was still mostly gray as they walked from Wapping, being even more careful than usual not to get caught by security cameras.

Beside Joan, Ruth was quiet. Joan was worried about her. Ruth had already been exhausted back at the palace, and now she was out of breath just from walking.

Joan put an arm around her, trying to take some of her weight. But she knew that if anything happened, Ruth wouldn't be able to run.

“How far is the safe house?” she asked Aaron.

“Not far.” Aaron glanced at Ruth. If Joan didn't know better, she'd have said he was worried too. “But we'll have to cross the river.” To Tom, he said: “Are you sure your family can't spare a boat?”

“They can't,” Joan said flatly.

Aaron blinked, but to Joan's surprise, Tom backed her up. “We'd be seen crossing the river by boat.”

Joan could feel the wary tension between them. She hadn't told the others what had happened at the watermen's stairs. She
didn't even know why. The sensible thing would be to get herself and the others away from Tom.

The message was meant for me
, Tom had said. Joan had been turning those words over and over in her mind. It hadn't even been the words; it had been the way he'd said them.

She couldn't make sense of it all. Gran's key to the Monster Court. The cover-up of Nick's killings. Rumors of a device that could change the timeline. An empty prison cell where the device should have been.
The message was meant for me.

Joan felt as though she'd found pieces of a puzzle but didn't understand the picture they'd make when fit together. There was still something missing. Something she didn't understand. But what?

“It's almost dawn,” Aaron said. “We need to get to the other bank before daybreak.” He chewed his lip. “We're close to Tower Bridge.”

“The bridges will be watched,” Ruth said.

“We might be lucky,” Aaron said.

As they approached Tower Bridge, Aaron swore under his breath. Blue lights flashed from parked police cars. There was a police checkpoint at the bridge. Cars and pedestrians were being questioned and searched. “Those police are monsters,” Aaron whispered. “Most of them, anyway.”

“How is that possible?” Joan said.

“The Court places monsters high up in human circles.”

“Won't all these Londoners find this strange?” Joan said.

“They're used to it,” Tom said. “In this time, there are IRA bombings for years on either side of us.” He ran a hand over his face. “If there's a checkpoint here, there'll be a ring of security around London. Court Guards will be all over the Tube.”

It was true that the motorists weren't asking questions as the supposed police peered through their windows. As Joan watched, a car was allowed to roll through. A police officer beckoned the next car with a gloved hand. “They're letting people through,” Joan said. “What if we just walked down the footpath? How would they know we were the ones?”

“We can't be seen,” Aaron said tightly. “There are Olivers and Griffiths among the guards.”

Ruth breathed a curse. “The Griffith family can induce truth,” she whispered to Joan tiredly. “Any monster who passes through will be stopped and questioned.”

“We're losing night,” Tom said.

“We could try the tunnel to Rotherhithe,” Ruth said. “It isn't far.”

“That tunnel was closed to foot traffic more than a century ago,” Aaron said. “Only trains use it now.”

“There are still ways through it,” Ruth said. “If we're quick, we'll make it before the first train.”

Joan exchanged a glance with Aaron. The last thing Ruth looked right now was quick.

Ruth guided them away from Tower Bridge to a round brick structure, filthy with caked dirt. Tufts of grass sprouted from cracked concrete around the brick.

“Lavatory?” Aaron said dubiously.

“Ventilation shaft,” Ruth said. With two fingers, she mimed walking up onto the roof of the shaft, and then climbing down and down and down.

Joan could feel Ruth shaking with exhaustion as she and Tom boosted her up. Tom hoisted himself up next, one-handed, his muscles shifting with the effort. He'd tucked Frankie under one arm, and she craned inquisitively over his shoulder.

“I'm fine,” Ruth mumbled. “I'm fine.” But she seemed to be saying it to herself, hoping to make it true.

They climbed down—three levels at least. Ruth's gasping breaths got louder and louder. By the time they got to the bottom, her arms were shaking so much that Tom had to help her down the last rungs of the ladder.

“Are you all right?” Joan whispered.

Ruth nodded. “Listen for trains,” she managed.

They were in an underground tunnel with a high, curving ceiling. Strips of metal arched overhead at regular intervals. Down the tunnel, the effect was of concentric arches. The wall was lit with old-fashioned swan-necked lamps. Train tracks ran along the ground.

“Don't touch the tracks,” Ruth warned. “They're electrified.”

“What happens if a train comes?” Joan asked.

Ruth gestured ahead. Between each pair of lamps, there was a recessed archway. There wasn't one tunnel, but two, Joan realized, with the archways connecting them.

There was a glint of something bright near Joan's foot. She
wiped at the ground with her shoe. Under the dirt, between the tracks, there were tiles: white and blue, with a winding floral pattern.

“There used to be a market down here in the 1800s,” Aaron said. “People sold souvenirs in these archways. There were fortune-tellers. Monkeys.”

“Don't tell me you came slumming down here,” Ruth said.

“Tourists and slum dwellers are the best people to steal time from,” Aaron said. When Joan looked over at him, he shrugged. “What?”

You know this is wrong
, Nick had said. Joan thought about standing among all those gifts to the King. Those marvels, those horrors. She was struck with a sudden and intense yearning—so strong that, for a moment, she was afraid she was trying to travel. But it wasn't a yearning for a different time. It was for Nick—for the Nick she'd known before all this.

She remembered again the time he'd rescued the wasp. It had been stuck in the Gilt Room, rattling behind a curtain.
Kill it
, one of the tourists had said, but Nick had captured it in a cup and released it outside.
It's just in the wrong place
, he'd said.

Joan had trusted Nick's judgment: his moral compass. Just being near him had made her feel like the person she'd wanted to be. And now . . . She folded her arms around herself.

She was so morally compromised now. It had been at the back of her mind all the time since the Pit. She remembered telling Gran all those years ago that she wanted to be Superman.
You're a monster
, Gran had said.

As they walked down the tunnel, Joan became aware of a humming sound getting louder and louder. “What's that noise?” It didn't sound like a train.

“The pumps,” Ruth said.

“We must be under the river,” Aaron said.

Joan looked up at the ceiling. The air smelled of damp concrete. It was scary to think that the Thames was roaring over them. It reminded Joan of the wave of power that had engulfed them as they'd fled Whitehall.

“What exactly happened to us outside Whitehall?” she said. “What did that man do?”

“He hit us with the Patel family power,” Aaron said. “He mired us in time. We won't be able to travel again until the strike wears off.”

“It wears off?” Joan said.

The was a pause before Aaron answered, as if he'd heard something strange in her voice. “Eventually,” he said.

“Difficult to say how long we'll be stuck in this time,” Tom said. “Could be a day. Could be months.”

“One of the Victorian-era Hunts stole a Patel chop once,” Ruth said to Joan. “The Patels mired her for years. Forced her to live in a time she'd been in before.”

“What happened?” Joan asked. Aaron had told her the rules—you couldn't be in the same time twice. The timeline didn't allow it.

“What happens if you're in a tunnel and can't get out of
the way of a train?” Aaron said, dry.

“We don't know what happened to her,” Ruth said. “People who meet themselves in time vanish. Some people think that the timeline flings you away into its outer reaches. Or that you vanish into nothingness.”

“It's rare,” Aaron said. “The timeline doesn't allow you to jump into a time you already occupy. And if you get too close just by living, you start to feel an intense urge to leave. But you
can
live your way into it—whether by being mired or stubborn. The Olivers say that if that happens, you get pushed outside time itself.”

Outside time itself.
Joan shivered, thinking of that shadowy abyss of nothingness outside the walls of the Monster Court.

“What's the point of speculating?” Tom growled. “Either way, you're gone.”

That seemed to silence them all. They walked through the tunnel, listening for trains. Joan imagined what this place must have looked like in the 1800s—lit up with gas lamps and crowded with market stalls and tourists in suits and long dresses.

“Are we going to talk about what else happened at the Monster Court?” Ruth said finally. She was flagging. Her voice was getting more and more hoarse and tired.

“What's there to talk about?” Aaron said.

“We didn't find the device,” Ruth said. “We can't change the timeline.”

Joan glanced at Tom and found him looking back at her.
There's no device
, he'd said at the watermen's stairs. No device
meant no way to save their families. Joan couldn't bear to think about that yet.

“What's there to talk about?” Aaron said again. “We failed. We came out empty-handed. We barely escaped with our lives. And now Conrad is after us. We'll live out the rest of our lives running from godforsaken time to godforsaken time. And one day we'll turn a corner, and Conrad will be standing there.”

Ruth said: “Listen, if you're going to—”

Joan held up her hand to quiet them. There was a glint of light ahead. A train?

“We're almost through,” Tom said, and Joan realized that she was seeing daylight. From bank to bank, it didn't take long to walk under the river. And outside, dawn had finally broken.

The tunnel emerged where a train would have—right into Rotherhithe Station, platforms on either side. There was a security guard on one of the platforms. He paced away from them. From his posture, he seemed both cold and bored. He was clearly waiting for trains, and not expecting anyone to walk out of the tunnel.

Monster?
Joan mouthed to Aaron.

Can't see
, Aaron mouthed back. He needed to see the man's eyes, Joan remembered.

Silently, Ruth pointed out one camera and then another one.

Tom boosted each of them up onto the opposite platform. Before the guard could turn, they tiptoed up the stairs, and then they were out of the station, on the south side of the river.

The south bank was more industrial than in Joan's time. The breeze across the river smelled like tar. As they made their way west, Joan felt those jolts of alienation and familiarity that she was beginning to associate with this time. London Bridge and Tower Bridge looked just the same, but the Shard was missing. The Millennium Bridge was missing.

Ahead of her, Aaron held Ruth's elbow to keep her steady, solicitous and gentlemanly. Joan wondered—not for the first time—which period Aaron had actually grown up in. He sometimes seemed to slip into manners from another age.

Or maybe he wasn't from anywhere. Maybe monsters just traveled and traveled through the past and the future, never stopping for long.

“You haven't told them,” Tom said softly to Joan. Joan wasn't sure if it was a question or an observation. Even more softly, he said: “They don't know about that power of yours either, do they?”

Joan shivered, remembering again how she'd slammed her hand against the lock. Power had poured out of her. And when she'd lifted her hand, the metal had turned into ore.

They'd fallen a little behind the other two, and now Tom slowed even more. Joan was suddenly very aware of his muscled bulk. “Walk faster,” she said.

Tom smiled crookedly, but he lengthened his steps again just enough to keep pace with the others. His gaze turned to the river. “You can almost imagine that you can see the territories of the great families from here,” he mused. “Olivers and Alis in
the west. Nowaks and Argents north. Griffiths and Mtawalis south. Patels and Portellis, east. Lius, the center. Hathaways, the river. And the Nightingales . . .” He paused slightly. “Anywhere they please.”

He'd missed a family. “And the Hunts,” Joan said.

“And the Hunts,” Tom acknowledged. “Always moving around the edges of other monsters' territories. As a child I used to think they were running from something.”