Only a Monster (31 page)

“It . . . it was recorded,” Joan said.

Nick clearly hadn't expected her to say that. “
What?
”

“I'm so sorry, but I saw what he did,” Joan said. “Your whole family was killed. I saw them. Nick, I'm so sorry he—”

“Stop,” Nick ground out. “
Stop.
”

But Joan couldn't. “You have to know what they were actually recording.” She wet her dry lips. “They were recording the process of making you into the hero.”

Nick's eyes hardened. The only sound in the room was their breathing. Joan was very aware that the walls of the basement were five feet thick. The basement had once been a wine cellar. You could scream and scream down here, and no one would ever hear you.

She had to wet her lips again before she could speak. “The . . . the stories say that you were orphaned by monsters and destined to kill them. But you weren't destined. You were
crafted
. You were made into this.”

“
Stop
,” Nick said, and Joan felt a surge of real fear at the look on his face. She was suddenly very aware that she was trapped in a room with the slayer from her childhood stories.

But the drug was still working. It forced her to keep speaking. “They didn't just do it once,” she said. “They killed your family over and over. They reset the timeline so they could torture you over and over.”

“Stop,” Nick said again. “Stop
lying
.”

“I'm not lying. You know I can't.”

“Drink the rest of that bottle.”

Joan's stomach was churning. There was a good chance that she'd throw up if she drank. But she unscrewed the lid and took a deep breath, then forced the rest down. It sloshed unpleasantly in her gut.

The drug took effect even faster than the first dose. And this time, the out-of-control feeling was worse. Joan had the urge to babble anything to Nick. To say truths that he hadn't even asked for.

“You—you were made by monsters.” She was stumbling over the words now; they came out faster than she could speak them. “They killed your family as . . . as a kind of origin story. To motivate you to hate us. Then . . .” She made a guess. “Then you were trained in how to identify us, how to kill us.” She could
see in his face that she was right. “Nick, you resisted them. You didn't want to become this. They had to do it over and over until you broke.”

“You can't change the timeline over and over. It isn't possible.”

“I can't lie,” Joan said desperately. “You know I can't!” He
had
to believe her.

Nick shifted out of his relaxed posture to his feet, fast and smooth and lethal. Joan found herself scrambling back.

“Nick,” she said. “
Please.
You have to believe me.”

“Please?” he said, looking down at her. “Is that what your victims said at the Changing of the Guard?”

Joan shook her head.

“No, they didn't beg, did they?” he said. “They didn't even know what you'd stolen from them.”

Joan's next breath stuck in her chest. He really was going to kill her.

But instead of moving closer, he took a step back and then another. He opened the cell door without a word and locked it behind him. Key first, then a heavy bolt. Panic ran through Joan at the sheer claustrophobia of it. “Nick!” she shouted. But he was already out of sight. Could he still hear her?

Whether he could or not, the drug was still hammering at her to speak. Joan screwed her eyes shut, trying to
think
around the desire to say truths. Nick hadn't believed her. She couldn't blame him. Who'd want to hear what she'd told him? That everything he knew about himself was a kind of lie?

The truth was, she'd never thought he'd believe her. But
she'd had to try. She'd had to know if there could be any chance of a better ending.

Now she felt around on the floor until she found the bobby pin. As she did, the drug worked at her harder. It was going to make her narrate her escape, she realized, a hysterical laugh bubbling up. She struggled against it, but, just like before, the desire to speak was overwhelming.

She needed to placate it with a different truth.

“The first time I met you . . .” She could hear the raw emotion in her own voice. She closed her eyes. The drug wasn't just forcing her to speak; it was forcing her to feel it. “The first time I met you, it was like I already knew you,” she said. “Like I'd known you my whole life.”

There was no response from Nick. She hoped he wasn't there.

“Wherever you were,” she said, “I wanted to be there too. You were like the sun. I was always turning toward you.”

There was a slight click as the spring gave on the lock. She blinked out of her reverie.
Focus
, she told herself.

“You kissed me that night,” she said. “I'd never wanted anything so much. Later, I thought maybe you'd been playing me the whole time. But then, at that nineties café, I started to wonder. . . . Because you didn't kill me, even though you knew I'd stolen time.”

She heard footsteps and then Nick was looking at her through the bars. Joan's heart skipped a beat at the sight of him. He hadn't left.

“The Liu family has a story,” she said. “They say that there
was once another timeline. One that existed before our own.”

“I know what you're doing,” Nick said. “You're working on those handcuffs. It's pointless. You're not leaving this cell.”

“Don't you feel it?” she said. “Don't you feel that this timeline is wrong?”

If he did, he wasn't showing it. But the drug didn't care. It forced more words out. “The Liu story says that in the original timeline, the hero was just an ordinary boy in love with a monster girl,” she said.

“Stop,” Nick said.

“They say that if people belonged together in that first timeline, then
our
timeline will always try to bring them back together. They say that—”

“Joan,
stop
.”

Joan wanted to laugh. “I can't. Your stupid truth serum is making me talk and talk and talk. I think you'd have to kill me to make me stop.”

His hands came up to grip the cell bars then, knuckles whitening.

“Oh, you don't like that idea?” she said. “Why not? You killed everyone else.”

“You've taken time.” He sounded formal. He'd said those words to other monsters just before he'd killed them. “You can't be allowed to harm another human.”

Joan twisted the pin just like Gran had taught her. She almost had it.

“So you're going to kill me, then?” she said to him. “Or will
you ask someone else to do it?”

Something dark and dangerous crossed his face. No, he wouldn't let anyone else touch her.

“What's the alternative?” she asked. “Keeping me prisoner here? Turning me in to the police? What are you going to say to them? ‘She touched their necks'?”

“I'm sorry, Joan,” Nick said. “I don't believe that we're—whatever it is you think we are. The fact is, I should have done my duty a long time ago. The fact is that you're a monster, and as long as you're alive, you'll hurt people.”

There was a click as the left cuff finally released. Joan shook it off. With another
click-click
, she had the right cuff off too. She showed Nick her free hands.

“It doesn't matter if you're cuffed or not,” he said. “You don't have any time to travel with. And if you travel without time, you'll die.”

“You can't keep killing us,” Joan said. Her throat felt so tight. “I can't let you.”

“You're locked in that cell,” Nick said. “You need human time to travel. And I won't let any human in there with you.”

Joan braced herself. She wasn't sure what she more afraid of—this next bit working or it not working.

“You're right,” she said. “I do need human time to travel. But I've had a hunch about something since I woke up in here.” She could hear the fear in her voice now. “I'm not just half-monster. I'm half-human too.”

Nick's eyes widened in realization.

Joan reached up to touch her own neck.

“
Joan, don't!
” The words sounded torn from his throat. Joan wondered if he even knew he'd said them.

Joan wrenched time from herself. Distantly, she could hear Nick fumbling with the key. But the loudest sound was her own screaming. When she'd taken time from people, they hadn't seemed to feel it, but this was like tearing into her own flesh. She fell to her knees in agony. How much time had she taken from herself? She had no idea.

The door burst open. Joan let herself look at Nick for a fraction of a second longer than she should have. She'd always yearn for him, she knew. Just like the need to travel was always in the background, so was her need for him.

She gave in to the other yearning.

The cell was dark and very cold. Joan crouched where she'd fallen, grief overwhelming the relief of escape. It wasn't that she'd lost Nick, she told herself. She'd never had him, not in this timeline, not after what had been done to him. Not after what he'd done to her.

She felt around in the dark. There was no resistance from the shackle. Joan was relieved. She'd been afraid it would come with her.

She took a tentative crawling step, and her shoulder hit the wall, making her grunt. She felt bruised all over.

She had a flash then of Nick shouting to her:
Don't.
What had he meant? Don't what?
Don't take time from yourself
? More likely
Don't escape
. She remembered what else he'd said.
I should have done my duty a long time ago
.

Joan swallowed back tears. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness now. The far wall was still iron bars and a door. Joan touched her hair. No more bobby pins. The one she'd been using was in another time. She was going to have to pull the wire from her bra.

But when she went over to look at the lock, the door swung open at her touch. It wasn't locked. Wasn't even properly shut.

Somewhere, at the back of her mind, a warning bell sounded. This wasn't right. Nick would have posted a guard here.

When had she landed?

She half expected alarms to go off as she stepped out of the cell. But there was no sound. She walked down the corridor, through the old staff room, up the short flight of stairs.

As she surfaced into the house, a dry dust smell hit her, along with the more usual notes of wood and wool. The silence was eerie.

Joan's apprehension grew as she walked. The first room she came to was completely unfamiliar.

It took her a while to understand that it was the Breakfast Room. There should have been a roped-off dining table, with a replica Georgian breakfast: plum cakes and buttered toast and jam. But all the furniture was gone. The great tapestries of Bacchus and Venus had been stripped from the walls.

The house was still grand, of course, even naked: the walls were flocked velvet; the ceiling was a geometric marvel of gold and white. But with no one here, the grandeur had a feeling of impending dereliction. A house like this needed a staff to maintain it. Without them, the house would fall apart.

Through the bay windows, the sun was setting. Joan had a shuddering feeling of déjà vu, remembering the last time she'd stood at bay windows here, looking out onto the falling night.

How far had she traveled? If she walked out of the grounds, what would she see? Had she traveled a year? Five years? Ten? For all she knew, she'd stolen all the life she had left from herself. She could drop dead before her next breath.

She really,
really
couldn't think about that.

The house seemed empty, but that didn't mean that the grounds were unpatrolled. The library had a decent view of the surroundings, and from the color of the sky, there were about twenty minutes of light left.

Joan made her way through the China Room. That had been stripped too. The curator, Murray, had been so proud of the Holland House china collection—all those paper-thin cups with matching rose patterns.

Gran had died two rooms away.

Joan's breath hitched. She forced herself up the stairs. On the next floor, the door to the Yellow Drawing Room was open. The Gilt Room was visible just beyond. No Olivers this time. No Nick. Just two empty rooms.

Joan opened the library door. For a split second, she expected it to look just as it had when she'd left it: shelves of leather-bound books. Reading chairs.

But, of course, whoever had stripped the house had been here too. Only the bones were left: a long corridor of empty shelves. The ceiling was still a deep evening blue, speckled with gold stars. Joan had always loved it.

Through the window, the Dutch Garden was weedy and overgrown. The only movement was the wind in the leaves.
The house seemed abandoned. Joan drew a finger through the dust on the windowsill.

The last time she'd been in this room, Nick had been here too. They'd sat together in this same dusk light. Then he'd touched her cheek, and they'd kissed.

And then . . . Her breath shuddered out. Then they'd heard the sounds of monsters arriving.

Maybe in the true timeline she and Nick had kissed that night too. Maybe they'd both pulled away and laughed a bit, and then maybe they'd kissed again. Maybe afterward, they'd walked through the gardens, and on to Kensington. Gotten a kebab and an ice cream. Maybe they'd promised to see each other the next day, and the day after that.

The sound behind her was soft, a footstep against the wooden floor.

And then Joan really did understand why she'd come up here to the library, why she hadn't already left the house. She was always drawn to him. She supposed he was drawn to her too. The timeline would never stop trying to repair itself, as long as they were both alive.

She turned from the window. Her stupid heart leaped at the sight of him.

Nick was in shadow as he approached, but Joan could see that his hair was longer. He still looked the same, though—film-star handsome, dark-haired and square-jawed. And he still radiated that same otherworldly goodness. The hero to her monster.

It wasn't fair, she thought. They'd never had a chance in this timeline. They should have had their whole lives together, but now there was only this.

“Stop,” she blurted. As though she could stop what was about to happen.

To her surprise, he did stop, just a few paces from her.

He'd set it up like this, Joan realized. The empty house. Just her and him here alone. No one watching, no potential collateral. No more excuses for what had to be done.

“You were standing by that window the first time I saw you,” he said. His voice was the same as ever. Steady and deep as calm water.

“I remember,” Joan said. She couldn't bear this. She couldn't fight him yet. She wasn't ready. There had to be enough time left in her for another jump. Maybe a bigger one this time.

Nick stumbled closer, as though he couldn't help himself. “Please,” he said. “Please don't take any more time from yourself.” Of course he knew what she was thinking. They'd always been in accord.

The step had brought him into the last of the light. Joan saw then what the shadows had hidden. He was only a little older. But his expression was different. Where last time, he'd been resolved, now he looked raw and unsure. Like the night they'd kissed.

“I had a long time to think,” he said. “To wonder how much time you took from yourself.”

Joan braced herself. She'd expected a terrifyingly fast attack—something like what he'd done to Edmund Oliver. But
he was just standing there, hands open and unthreatening by his sides.
Now
, she thought. He was going to do it now
.
But still he stood there. The tension was unbearable.

He took a shuddering breath. “Joan,” he said. “The first time I saw you, I knew what your voice would sound like before you said a word.”

Joan stared at him. The memory came back to her in sharp clarity. Nick had walked into the library, head bent over an open book. Joan had been charmed by the careful way he'd cradled the book, protective of its fragile corners. She remembered how he'd looked up and seen her; how his eyes had widened just before she'd spoken.

“I knew what your laugh would sound like,” he said. “I knew you were a restless sleeper, that you kicked off the sheets, even in winter. I knew you put fresh ginger in your tea. I knew that if you were faced with two choices, you'd always choose the right one over the easy one.”

“Nick . . .”

“This timeline is wrong, isn't it?” he said.

“I . . .” For a long moment, Joan couldn't speak, even with the remnants of the truth drug demanding it. She'd been braced for anything but hope. “I . . . When I first saw you, I felt like I'd known you my whole life.” Her own voice came out sounding horribly vulnerable. She quashed the hope ruthlessly.
If you were faced with two choices, you'd always choose the right one.
But she hadn't, had she? She'd done terrible things.

Nick took another step closer, and Joan backed up
unthinkingly. Something like agony crossed his face. He lifted his empty hands, showing her that he wasn't armed. But he'd never needed to be armed. He'd started out in the Gilt Room unarmed. “The last time I saw you,” he said, “you told me that we were together once.”

Joan couldn't take her eyes off him.

“I said that I didn't believe you,” Nick said. “And then you took time from yourself. You screamed. I—I thought you were dying. I still hear it in my dreams.” He wanted to come closer, Joan could see, but he stood there, rooted to the floor, hands still half-raised.

Joan quashed the hope again. There wasn't going to be a happy ending, she reminded herself. She was a monster and he was a hero. Everyone knew how that story ended.

Her next breath felt too heavy. Nick saw that too. He always saw everything. He wanted to reach for her, she knew. She could read him as well as he could read her.

But it wasn't
her
he wanted to reach for. Not really. He wanted the other Joan. The Joan who made the right choices.
That
Joan had died in the massacre, along with her family.

The Joan who'd lived was a monster now—in every sense of the word. She'd stolen time. Even now, some terrible part of her wanted to travel and travel, crossing decades like pirates crossed seas.

“What are you doing, Nick?” she said. Didn't he know that drawing this out was torment?

Nick lowered his hands slowly. “I don't know.” He sounded
as raw and lost as Joan felt. “I've always put the mission first. I never allowed myself anything more.”

It sounded like a lonely life. Joan remembered the kitchen where Nick had found his family dead. The fridge behind him had been covered with photos—Nick and his brothers and sisters blowing out birthday candles, laughing at the camera.

She remembered his spartan locker in the Holland House staff room.

Now, in the silence of the library, his breaths sounded unsteady. “I never allowed myself to feel anything,” he said. “But then I walked into the library that day. And I saw you.”

Joan remembered how he'd walked through the door that day. And when he'd looked up, she'd
known
him.

“Someone changed the timeline,” he said. “But they couldn't make me forget you. Not completely.” His dark eyes were intent on her, as familiar as her own heartbeat. “I love you, Joan.”

Joan heard herself make a soft choked sound. How could something she'd wanted to hear so much hurt so much? No matter how much she wanted to travel in time, it was nothing to how she felt about Nick. From the moment they'd met, she'd only ever wanted to be near him.

“Don't,” she whispered. It was too much to bear.

“I know,” he said. There was so much pain in his voice. “I know how much you hate me.”

Joan shook her head, even though it was true. She hated him. She loved him. There was a rift inside her, and she was being torn apart by it. She took a breath and barely controlled
it. “It isn't me you remember,” she managed. “I'm not her—I'm not that other Joan.” The Joan from the true timeline, who'd made the right choices, who'd probably never stolen time in her whole life.

“I know who you are,” he said.

“You
don't
.” She suddenly couldn't bear the way he was looking at her. “I've stolen so much time,” she said hoarsely. She didn't even know how many people she'd stolen from. Had to be hundreds. Maybe even a thousand. She and Aaron had been in the Pit for ages. And she'd used at least thirty years from the travel token to come here. For a second, her revulsion at herself choked her breath.

And then Nick did step closer, as though he couldn't stop himself. Joan could almost feel the warmth of him in the cool air of the abandoned library. If she reached out, she'd be able to touch him.

She clenched her fists instead. “Whoever we used to be, we're not those people anymore,” she said. “If you feel anything for me . . . If—if I feel anything for you . . .” She watched his eyes darken as he realized what she was saying. “It's just a remnant of another timeline. We're different people now.”

“What they made me into?” he said.

“Yes.”

“And what I made you into?”

Joan's breath stopped in her throat. She couldn't take her eyes off him.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered. “I'm so sorry, Joan.”

“I did those things,” Joan whispered back. He'd killed her family, but it had been her hand on the back of innocent people's necks. It had been her choice.

“I don't even know how many people I've killed,” Nick said, soft. A confession. She could hear it in his voice then too. He was as sick at himself as she was at herself.