Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(27)

‘Okay,’ Dad said. ‘Call you later?’

Joan nodded. She wanted to say, No, don’t hang up. Stay talking to me forever. She wanted to say, Don’t ever let anyone touch you on the back of the neck. But that would sound crazy.

If she told her Dad about the monsters, maybe Dad would believe her and maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, he’d be worried enough to call Gran, and when he didn’t get an answer, he might even fly back here. He’d put himself in danger, and that couldn’t happen.

‘See you soon, okay?’ he said.

Joan nodded. ‘Bye, Dad,’ she managed. She ended the call. The black screen reflected her face. She turned the phone over, not wanting to look at herself.

Aaron stepped away from the wall. ‘What about your mum? Or was she in the house last night?’

‘She died when I was a baby.’ Joan wiped her face against her arm. ‘You want to call anyone?’

Aaron shook his head. Joan blinked. He had no family left at all? No friends, even? ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

They arrived just after ten.

‘The Pit,’ Aaron said.

‘This is Buckingham Palace,’ Joan said.

‘This is a festering hole of misery and petty theft,’ Aaron corrected her. He caught an elbow in the stomach from a tourist. His lips tightened. ‘A pit.’

There were people everywhere: crowded onto the Victoria Memorial under the great stone statue of Victoria and pressed against the palace gates. From the festive atmosphere and the faint sound of drums, the Changing of the Guard was about to begin.

‘Why are we here if you don’t like it?’ Joan said, confused.

‘To take time,’ Aaron said. He led her into the crowd. At Joan’s blank look, he said: ‘You know how this works, right? We take time from humans, and we use it to travel.’

‘I know,’ Joan snapped, even though she only knew what Gran had told her two nights ago. Aaron had a way of talking to people as though they were beneath him. It made Joan want to push back at him about everything.

‘The time comes off the end of their lives,’ Aaron said. ‘If we take a year, they’ll die a year earlier than they should have.’

Joan swallowed. The feeling of wrongness was back in the pit of her stomach.

‘Stealing time is always a risk,’ Aaron continued. ‘You don’t know how long anyone has left. If you try to take more time from someone than they have, they’ll drop dead right there in front of you.’

‘Drop dead?’ Joan said numbly.

‘Yes, and we don’t want to draw that kind of attention.’ Aaron’s tone was utterly practical. He could have been talking about getting caught picking a neighbour’s flowers. ‘So we reduce the risk by taking a little bit of time from a lot of different people.’

It still didn’t explain why they’d come here to Buckingham Palace. A Tube station would have been just as crowded. And they’d stopped off at Primark on the way to buy Joan a T-shirt, jeans, and some shoes. For some reason, Aaron had also bought an ugly floppy hat and two bottles of water. Why hadn’t they taken time there?

Aaron seemed to know what she was thinking. ‘We can’t just pop over to the local grocery and steal time,’ he said. ‘If a monster did that—if they kept taking time from the same place, the same group of humans—those humans would die earlier than the general population. That would create a statistical anomaly that could draw the attention of human authorities. And our authorities—monster authorities—they don’t like that. That’s why you should always take time from visitors.’ He gestured at the crowd around them. ‘Tourists.’

Tourists. Joan looked at the crowd. Everyone here was dressed for a holiday—comfortable shoes and light jackets.

‘There are a lot of different techniques,’ Aaron said, ‘but to be honest, most of them are just for show. The important thing is to touch the back of the person’s neck. Any part of your hand will do—fingers, thumb, palm. Then concentrate on an amount of time. No other thoughts. Clear your mind of everything else. Just one touch, nice and fast, and move on. The ratio is one to one. Take a day, and you can travel a day.’

Joan’s stomach was really starting to hurt. ‘Okay, so. So, we go back two days. You warn your family, and I’ll warn mine.’

‘Days?’ Aaron frowned. ‘We can’t go back two days.’

‘What?’

‘You can’t be in the same time twice. The timeline doesn’t allow it. If we want to go back, we’ll have to go back to before you were born. And you’re, what—seventeen?’

‘What?’

‘How old are you?’ Aaron said slower, as if she were stupid.

‘Sixteen.’

‘I’m seventeen. So that’s seventeen years. But for safety, you should always add a few years. Let’s say twenty years.’

Joan stared at him. ‘But. But we only need to go back a couple of days. To before our families were killed.’

‘Well, we can’t.’

‘But.’ Joan couldn’t take it in. ‘We can’t go back twenty years! We can’t take that much time. That’d be like killing someone!’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Aaron said, and Joan realised that people were staring at them. Aaron tugged her farther into the crowd. ‘We’re not killing anyone,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘We’re not taking twenty years from a single person. That’s why we came here. We’re going to take a little time from a lot of people.’