Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(59)

The necklace . . . A vague memory came to her. Ying Liu hadn’t been the first person interested in the necklace. Someone else had asked about it first . . .

‘When I first went to the market yesterday,’ she said slowly, ‘someone offered me money for Gran’s necklace.’

‘So?’ Aaron said. ‘Those stall owners buy and sell all kinds of junk.’

‘But it wasn’t junk, was it?’ Joan said. ‘It was a key to the Monster Court.’ Joan remembered the gleam of interest in the man’s eyes. Go on, he’d said, name a price. ‘If he buys stuff like that,’ she said, ‘then maybe he sells stuff like that too.’

‘If he does, then he’s mixed up in some dangerous things, and we should stay away from him,’ Aaron said.

‘If there’s even a chance . . .’

‘Joan.’ Aaron sounded helpless and scared. ‘The King’s power is absolute. We can’t just . . .’ He shook his head. He’d thought the term true timeline was blasphemous; Joan couldn’t imagine how he must be feeling about going against the King more directly.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said to him. He didn’t have to be part of this at all. ‘I’ll go down there and find the stall.’

But when she reached for the door, Aaron and Ruth followed her.



Joan pushed through the market. The Court Guards who’d raided earlier were gone, but they’d left behind an atmosphere of discontent and fear. One stall owner was crying as Joan passed her. The man who had stood at the stall with her earlier was nowhere to be seen.

‘What do you remember of this guy?’ Aaron asked Joan as they walked through what Joan now recognised as the twenty-first-century section of the market. There were clothes here that could have been from her own wardrobe at home.

‘I think he was a Hathaway,’ Joan said. He’d had their muscular build. Aaron grimaced.

‘You don’t like that family?’ Joan said. Aaron had been annoyed by the loud Hathaways at the inn.

‘They’re thugs,’ Aaron said.

The man wasn’t at his stall; his card table was bare. Joan thought about the crying woman earlier. She turned to the seller at the next table—a woman with a bob of grey hair and a youthful face. ‘Excuse me,’ Joan said. ‘Yesterday, there was a man here selling phones.’ She hesitated, not sure how to ask if he’d been caught in the raid.

To her relief, the woman pointed to the far end of the market. ‘Down the back.’

The back of the market was dingy and cold. There didn’t seem to be a particular time associated with it. Some tables were selling fresh eels and fish on ice. Other tables had nothing on them at all.

Muscular men and women watched Joan as she passed. All Hathaways, she thought. There were animals with them. Dogs, mostly, but Joan glimpsed some cats and an animal that looked more fox than dog.

‘I’ve never seen a dog like that,’ she whispered to Ruth.

Ruth glanced over. ‘It’s not from this time.’

‘We can take animals with us when we travel?’

‘We can take small objects,’ Aaron said. Which made sense—they’d arrived in this time with their clothes. ‘But only the Hathaway family can travel with animals,’ he went on. ‘Most of them travel with a familiar.’

‘A familiar.’ It was a word Joan associated with witches. ‘You mean a pet?’

‘Yes, a pet. The most useless family power in London.’ Aaron’s tone was contemptuous. He kept his voice very low, though, as if he didn’t dare insult the Hathaways within their hearing.

The man who’d bought Joan’s phone was at the very back of the market, where it ended in a smoke-blackened brick wall. From here, the rest of the market was just the curtained backs of stalls. Cardboard boxes lay about, discarded. There was a smell of old cabbage leaves and fish.

The man sat at an empty card table, asleep, his squashed face snoozing against the dirty brick wall. A tiny bulldog snored at his feet. The man was a little older than twenty, broad-shouldered and hulking. Sprawled out, he barely fit into the folding chair.

‘Him?’ Ruth said to Joan. She groaned. ‘Tell me Tom Hathaway isn’t your guy.’

The man’s arms were crossed in sleep. There was a tattoo around one bulging bicep. Curled lines formed a two-headed dog, both heads meeting to growl at each other.

‘You know him?’ Joan asked.

Ruth grimaced. ‘Everyone at the Ravencroft Market knows Tom Hathaway. Used to be a Court Guard. Got sacked. Now he’s a washed-up drunk who buys and sells phones.’

‘Fantastic,’ Aaron said.

Joan took a step closer. ‘Tom?’ she called. The man and dog continued to sleep. ‘Tom Hathaway?’ Joan said louder.

The man sniffed and twitched. ‘Mm?’

‘Can we talk to you?’

‘Mm.’ Tom smacked his lips, but he didn’t open his eyes. ‘Get me a drink, love?’

Ruth looked at Joan and Joan mouthed back From where? Aaron rolled his eyes. He bent down and grabbed a half-drunk beer bottle from under Tom’s own card table. He plonked it down.

Tom’s eyes opened at the sound. He fumbled for the bottle and then swallowed down the remnants of the beer in one big gulp.