Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(34)

There was plate of fresh bread on the table. Aaron took a roll and scored a cross in the crust. He pushed a pat of butter into the scoring, and then passed the roll to Joan. He took another for himself. ‘Eat that too.’

The bread was dense and very dark, and warm enough that the butter had already melted into it. Joan looked around as she chewed.

Just like the city outside, the inn was familiar and strange at the same time. People stepped in and out of the air with casual ease—as if they were merely stepping from one room to another.

At the closest table, two women were playing a game that looked like chess—but when Joan peered more closely, the pieces seemed wrong: an elephant, a medieval cannon.

It was all so disorienting. And yet . . .

Some things were familiar. Joan licked butter from her thumb. It was heavily salted and as sour as yogurt. She’d only ever tasted butter like that at Gran’s house. She bent to breathe in the familiar scent of it.

‘We call it whole-milk butter,’ Aaron said.

She could have been eating Gran’s food. ‘My gran makes butter like this. I thought it was a family thing.’

Aaron shrugged. ‘It’s a monster thing.’

A monster thing. When all this was over—when the events of last night were undone—maybe this taste would become a family thing again. And that was a strange thought too. Maybe Joan would never learn that there was a greater context to these parts of her life. A culture.

Laughter erupted at one of the tables. ‘Hathaways,’ Aaron said, sounding annoyed. The laughter was coming from a rowdy table in the centre of the room. There were a dozen people there. Like all the groups in the inn, the Hathaways seemed to be a mix of races; their only real similarity was their muscular build—men and women both. Most of them seemed to have pets: Joan spotted a grey cat on a man’s lap; a sleepy pug curled under a chair. As she watched, a black cat jumped onto the Hathaway table and stalked between cups and bowls. Joan opened her mouth to ask Aaron another question, but right then a woman stepped out of the air near the Hathaway table. Her hairstyle was distinctive: curls at her forehead and coiled plaits at the back of her head.

‘That woman’s hair,’ Joan said slowly. Where had she seen hairstyles like that before?

Aaron glanced over and shrugged. ‘We really should eat before we talk.’

Joan answered her own question. ‘Statues.’

‘Joan,’ Aaron said. ‘Keep eating.’

‘Ancient Roman statues.’

‘Joan.’ Aaron leaned in until all Joan could see was his face. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘From her hairstyle, I would say she arrived from circa 100 AD.’ His voice took on an almost seductive quality. ‘I went there once, you know? To the Temple of Venus on Velian Hill. It was such a hot day that the flower offerings wilted in their vases. The perfume of roses and myrtle was like wine.’

‘What?’ Joan tried to focus on him. Her head felt muzzy.

‘The stream of worshippers didn’t stop,’ Aaron said. ‘There were so many offerings that jewellery and flowers piled up on the floor.’

The smoky hearth was losing its scent. ‘Stop it,’ Joan said thickly.

‘Newlyweds brought in a bull with gilded horns,’ Aaron said. ‘I stayed for the sacrifice. Do you want to hear about that?’

‘No.’ She felt as though she were falling. What had Aaron told her at St James’s Park? Focus on the details. She put her palm shakily against the table. She could barely feel the wood. Her throat contracted in a terrified sound that she couldn’t hear. Details. There were scratches in the gloss of the table. Beside one of the bowls, Aaron’s fist was clenched tight enough to whiten his knuckles. There was a shallow cut on Joan’s own hand—across her thumb. That must have happened in the sword fight.

The smell of the hearth returned slowly until the air was smoky enough to make Joan cough. ‘Why did you do that to me?’ she demanded.

Aaron smiled slightly, but his eyes were flat. ‘Right now, anyone could do that to you. A Jane Austen book cover could do that to you.’

‘What is wrong with you?’

‘What is wrong with me?’ Aaron had the gall to sound irritated. ‘I’m trying to help you.’ He added, conceding, ‘You did well that time. You came back from it quickly.’

The problem was he looked so much like a human boy that Joan kept expecting him to act like one. But he wasn’t a human boy. He was a monster, raised by monsters. ‘You know what?’ She stood up. ‘I don’t want your help.’ He’d brought her here to this time. She didn’t need anything more from him than that.

‘Where are you going?’ He frowned.

‘Just don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t help. Don’t do anything else for me.’ She felt his eyes on her as she walked away.



Joan had noticed a flow of people coming and going near the back, even though the signs for the lavatory pointed the opposite way.

Sure enough, there was a back door. Joan opened it, expecting another nondescript laneway, but to her surprise, it opened onto a cobblestoned square with bow-fronted shops and tall brick buildings. Front door, she revised.

Streets led away from the square. Looking down one of them, Joan saw more buildings and what looked like a park that ended in a wall. Joan imagined that wall enclosing all of this. A monster place, she thought, hidden away.