Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(5)

She got the door open and then locked it behind her. She checked the lock and then checked it again. When she turned, she expected to find the house dark and quiet. But to her surprise, there was a well of light coming from the kitchen. Someone was still awake.



Gran was at the kitchen table, drinking cocoa. More cocoa bubbled on the stove. Joan hesitated in the doorway, not sure if she was in trouble. The clock said it was just past one a.m. Dad would have freaked out if Joan had stayed out that late without calling him.

‘Hello, love,’ Gran said without looking up. ‘Come and sit down.’ There was another mug of cocoa on the table, Joan saw now. It was steaming.

‘I—’ Joan didn’t know what to say. Gran, I think maybe I was drugged. Or maybe I hit my head and got knocked out. Neither of those things seemed true. ‘Something happened,’ she managed. ‘Someone did something to me.’

‘Sit down, my love,’ Gran said, more gently. She slid the cocoa over to Joan.

Joan sat slowly and put her hands around the mug. It was very hot.

Gran looked softer than usual in the dim light. She was in a flannel dressing-gown, and her hair was a curly grey halo. She waited for Joan to sip the cocoa and then she asked: ‘What happened? Tell me exactly.’

Joan tried to remember, and panic bubbled up inside her again. The whole day was missing from her memory. There was just nothing there. ‘Mr Solt did something to me,’ she said. ‘He did something. He—he pushed me against the wall. And then . . .’ She hit the blank place in her mind again. ‘And then I don’t remember.’ The words blurted out of her. ‘Gran, I don’t remember anything that happened since this morning.’

‘He pushed you.’ Gran sounded reassuringly calm. ‘Did you push him back?’

‘What?’ Joan said. It was such an unexpected question that for a moment she didn’t know how to answer. ‘No.’

‘But you touched him.’ Gran put a finger against the nape of her own neck. ‘Here.’

Joan started to say no again and then remembered how she’d flung her hand up to keep her balance. She had a vivid sense memory of the edge of her hand knocking against Mr Solt’s neck.

‘It was day,’ Gran said. ‘And then it was night, with nothing in between.’

Joan stared at her. That was exactly what it had been like. ‘He did something to me,’ she whispered.

‘He didn’t do something to you,’ Gran said. ‘You did something to him.’

‘What?’ Joan said.

‘My love, I told you what you were when you were six years old.’

Joan shook her head. She couldn’t take her eyes off Gran’s face.

Gran leaned closer. ‘You’re a monster, Joan.’

On the stove, cocoa was still bubbling. Joan could hear the slow tick of the clock. The whole world seemed to have narrowed to Gran’s green eyes.

‘You mean I can make things disappear?’ Joan said. ‘Disappear and reappear?’ She wasn’t very good at it. If anything, that ability had diminished over the years. Gran and Uncle Gus could make whole paintings vanish, but Joan had never managed anything much bigger than a coin.

In the yellow kitchen light, Gran’s eyes were as luminous as a cat’s. ‘That’s the Hunt family power,’ she said. ‘Each monster family has its own power. But all monsters have a power in common. We can travel. That’s what you did.’

‘Travel?’

‘Humans are bound in time,’ Gran said. ‘Monsters are not. You stole time from that man and then you used it to travel from this morning to tonight. You travelled in time.’

Joan wanted to laugh. She wanted Gran to start laughing. But Gran was just looking at her. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said.

‘Life,’ Gran clarified. ‘You stole a few hours of life from him.’

‘No,’ Joan said. She didn’t understand.

‘You didn’t take much,’ Gran said. ‘Half a day, perhaps. He’ll die half a day earlier than he was supposed to.’

‘No!’ Stealing life from humans . . . Joan’s family had always called themselves monsters, but Gran was making it sound like they were monsters. Like they preyed on humans. Yeah, they shoplifted sometimes. Ruth could pick a bike lock. Bertie snuck into movies through the back door. But they weren’t monsters.

‘I didn’t,’ Joan said. ‘I didn’t steal life from him. I wouldn’t. None of us would. And travelling in time . . . well, that’s . . .’

Joan saw Uncle Gus’s hat then, on the kitchen bench. It was like all of Gus’s hats: beautifully kept. This one was a chestnut colour with a rich brown band. Gus was slimly built with a kind of 1950s style. He liked sharp suits and hats. Even his hair was old-fashioned: neatly smoothed and parted to the side.

Joan thought about what Aunt Ada had been wearing yesterday morning. Ada had an eclectic wardrobe, and Joan had always liked it. Yesterday she’d been up early, wearing a mechanic-style jumpsuit and a scarf in her hair with a knot at the top. The day before, she’d been in a white dress, like she was going to a 1920s garden party.

Like she was going to travel back in time to a 1920s garden party.

Joan pushed away from the table. The scrape of her chair was loud in the silence.