Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(25)

When all the blood was gone, she turned the tap off and slid to the tiled floor. She pulled her knees to her chest. The position tugged painfully at her cut side, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Here, in the quiet, she could hear Gran’s last harsh breaths again. When she closed her eyes, she could see all those people lying dead among the flowers.

Once upon a time, Gran had said, there was a boy who was born to kill monsters. A hero.

Joan had been so angry with her family earlier today. For their silence. For the secrets they’d hidden from her. And now they were gone. Nick had killed them.

Joan pictured Nick’s face, square-jawed and honest. She drew her knees tighter against her body. In movies, heroes killed monsters all the time. When the camera moved from the monsters’ bodies, you never had to think about them again.

But when you were the monster, when the monsters killed were the people you loved . . .

Joan kept her eyes open. She watched water crawl toward the drain, making long lines on the tiles.

When she got back to the bedroom, Aaron was lying on top of his bedcovers, shoes off but still clothed. ‘I tried to call emergency services,’ he said. He was holding his phone. His throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed. ‘The dispatcher kept asking who I was. Where I was. Whether anyone else had survived and where they were. I hung up.’

‘Do you think they traced the call?’ Joan asked. What was the extent of Nick’s reach? How many people did he have?

‘I don’t know.’ Aaron sounded exhausted. ‘I’ve been trying to call the other families. No one’s answering.’ He dropped the phone onto the bed and put both hands over his face. ‘Who attacked us?’ he said. ‘How can this be happening?’

Joan remembered again that sweltering night when she and Ruth had been sleepless, sick with a fever. Ruth had been eight, and Joan seven. Gran had sat up with them, cooling their faces with damp cloths. The air had been heavy with the smell of impending rain.

Tell us a story, Ruth had said. Tell us a story about the human hero.

You have a morbid sensibility, Gran had said, but she’d been smiling.

Aaron was shaking his head. ‘This night is all wrong,’ he said now. ‘It’s all wrong.’

‘I can’t bear it either,’ Joan whispered. Her family must have been in pain when they’d died. They must have been so scared.

‘You don’t understand,’ Aaron said. ‘I’m saying this night is wrong. The Oliver records say nothing of an attack. The people I saw dead . . . those deaths are wrong. It’s all wrong. They weren’t supposed to die tonight.’

The Oliver records. Joan felt as though a crack were opening up in the world, giving her a glimpse of something beyond—something vast and strange. A new world where the future was recorded as if it were past.

But . . . ‘It doesn’t matter what the records say,’ Joan told him. ‘It happened. We were there.’

‘Don’t you understand what I’m saying?’

‘No,’ Joan told him. Why did he even care about the accuracy of a stupid book? His family had died tonight and so had hers. ‘Your records are wrong,’ she said. ‘Obviously.’

Aaron’s expression said this was pure, outrageous blasphemy. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’ He got up and stalked to the bathroom.

After a few minutes, the shower started.

Joan looked up at the stain on the ceiling and considered her options. She should find somewhere else to stay for the night. It didn’t make sense to stick with Aaron. He despised her, and the feeling was mutual. And, according to Ruth, the Hunts and the Olivers had always been enemies.

And yet . . . If she was honest with herself, she didn’t want to be alone tonight. Not with the sound of Gran’s dying breaths still in her ears. Even Aaron Oliver’s company would be better than that.

Aaron’s shower seemed to take forever. Joan closed her eyes. She didn’t sleep. The clock ticked on the wall, marking the seconds. Eventually, the water stopped. The bathroom door squeaked.

Joan opened her eyes. Aaron was coming out of the bathroom, shirt half-buttoned. His hair was darker when it was wet.

He’d put all his clothes back on—as Joan had. They were both still dressed to flee.

‘We have to leave in the morning,’ Aaron said. He’d obviously been thinking about it in the shower.

Joan realised then that she’d been holding out some small hope that tomorrow could end with Dad picking her up at an airport far, far away from here. But that couldn’t happen. It wasn’t safe for Dad to be around her.

‘I don’t think he’ll stop until he kills us all,’ she said.

‘I know.’ Aaron stared down at his hands. ‘We don’t have a choice, then, do we? We have to leave this time.’

A jolt ran through Joan at his words. She felt like a struck bell.

If they travelled back in time, they could warn everyone. They could save everyone.

But now, in this quiet room, she remembered how monsters travelled. To leave this time, they’d have to steal time from humans.

And it mattered. Joan couldn’t lie to herself. She’d have given anything for even five more minutes with Gran. With any member of her family. Every day of life mattered. Every minute mattered.

Could she really do this? Could she deliberately steal time from someone’s life?