Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(62)

‘What did he do?’ Joan asked, hushed.

‘He just . . .’ Aaron’s hands curled into fists. ‘He told me to go to my room. I went. I stayed up all night, but Kit didn’t come back. The police dredged the pond for him in the end. Because, see—’ His voice cracked, finally. ‘See, back in the sixties, they’d found a boy’s body in that pond. They thought maybe something like that had happened again.’

‘Oh,’ Ruth said, soft.

Aaron’s hands uncurled and curled again. ‘We must have heard those stupid ghost stories a hundred times.’

‘You just walked back to your room?’ Joan blurted. ‘You didn’t try to help your cousin or anything?’

Anger flashed over Aaron’s face. ‘What do you know about going up against the Court?’ There was a horrible rawness in his voice. A tone that Joan didn’t fully understand.

‘Okay,’ Ruth said placatingly. ‘Okay.’

‘Shit.’ Aaron thumbed the corner of his eye. ‘We can’t do this. We don’t have a plan. We’re not trained to fight. We have nothing.’

‘We’re going to plan this,’ Joan said.

‘We don’t even know what we’re looking for! We have no idea what this device looks like! We don’t know where it will be! We wouldn’t even know if we saw it!’

‘You’re right,’ Joan said. ‘Okay, you’re right. You’re right.’ And he was right. They couldn’t plan this knowing as little as they did. They needed more information.

Joan knew what she had to do.

The innkeeper was alone when Joan arrived at the inn. It was very late. Joan had left Aaron and Ruth asleep at the flat. Only the lights of the main dining room were still on. The wall of stained glass was dull without the backdrop of daylight. The cauldron of stew bubbled softly over the low-burning hearth.

‘Was wondering when you’d come back,’ the innkeeper said. He was sitting by the hearth, reading a book. As Joan got closer, she saw that it was in a language with a non-Roman alphabet.

‘Have you found her?’ she said.

The innkeeper dug into his pocket and retrieved a folded piece of paper. But he didn’t give it to her. ‘Dorothy Hunt is not a good person,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what your business is with her, but you want my advice? Put this in the fire.’

Joan held out her hand for it.

Without her phone, Joan had to ask for directions and then more directions just to get to Soho. By the time she got to the address, the night was cold and black.

She stood outside the door, feeling a wave of déjà vu. Aaron wasn’t with her this time, but there was a plaque beside the black door: a sea serpent engulfing a sailing ship. This was a monster place.

The door opened onto a short dark corridor with soft lights along the floor; it reminded Joan of walking up the aisle of an airplane. At the end, there was a room just a little wider than the corridor, lit with golden chandeliers the colour of candlelight. A gleaming wooden bar ran the length of the room.

Joan stood there, frozen. There she was. Gran. Sitting alone at the bar, drinking. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old, dressed for the nineties in black ankle boots and a black gauzy dress with a Peter Pan collar.

Joan had expected her to be young, but not quite this young. Joan was reminded again that monsters were time travellers. She imagined them, suddenly, living a few months in this year; a few months in that one. Skipping back and forth between decades at whim. She wondered if she’d ever get her head around all this.

Gran was beautiful young—a different beautiful from her older self. Her cheekbones were still sharp. She had Ruth’s hair: lustrous, dark curls. Her eyes were the same luminous green as in Joan’s time.

And she was alive. She was alive and she was here.

‘I fucking hate this song,’ Gran said to the bartender conversationally. It was ‘Wind Beneath my Wings’. Gran and Aunt Ada had argued about it once. They’d all been at a funeral for a distant cousin of Gran’s. You don’t even know this song, Aunt Ada had hissed to Gran. I know bullshit when I hear it, Gran had hissed back.

The bartender lifted his head and saw Joan. ‘Out,’ he said. ‘No kids in here.’

‘I just want to talk,’ Joan said. ‘To her. I just want to talk to Do—Dorothy.’ She stumbled over Gran’s name, unused to saying it.

‘I’m not selling you anything,’ the bartender said.

‘I’m not buying,’ Joan said. ‘Five minutes. Please.’

The bartender looked over at Gran, and Gran nodded slightly.

‘Five minutes,’ the bartender said. ‘I’m setting a timer.’

Joan took a deep breath and sat on the bar stool next to Gran’s. She didn’t know where to start. Gran lifted her glass, and Joan saw that her ring finger was bare. Joan had never seen her without her ruby wedding ring.

‘I don’t know you,’ Gran said, with her usual gruff impatience. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m your granddaughter,’ Joan blurted.

‘Granddaughter?’ Gran said. But her sharp gaze flicked over to Joan and then stayed.

‘I look more like my dad.’

‘What’s your name?’