Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(67)

‘The one who was just here?’ In Joan’s peripheral vision, the new guard scowled and glanced over too.

The moment the guard looked away, Joan pretended to press her chop against the paper, hovering her stamp just above it. When the guard looked back again, Joan was lifting the chop up from an existing mark.

The guard bent and examined the two marks carefully—perhaps more carefully than she usually would have, after Joan’s comment.

Joan wet her lips again. She could see Ruth’s grim face over the guard’s shoulder.

‘“Marie Portelli,”’ the guard read. ‘“Great-niece of Elizabetta.” I met your great-aunt in the 1700s.’

‘She’s a force,’ Joan said, hoping that was true. Aaron had said that the other name on a chop was the closest head of family in your line. An indicator of status, he’d said. The closer your relationship to a head of family, the higher your status.

Maybe for Olivers, Ruth had said. Hunts aren’t like that.

To Joan’s relief, the guard seemed satisfied. She nodded and stepped aside. ‘Welcome to the Court,’ she said. She gestured for Joan to walk on.

The passage through the gate was about five paces long. Joan walked in, half expecting the guard to grab her by the collar—to say that someone had seen what she’d done.

One, two, three, four, five steps.

The change of temperature hit her at once—the air was humid and pleasantly warm. The smell of the Thames was stronger here: mud and brine.

Ruth took Joan’s arm and pulled her away from the gate. ‘What happened?’ she whispered.

‘There was a change of guard,’ Joan said. ‘But it was okay. I just—’

‘We saw what you did,’ Aaron said angrily. ‘Why didn’t you just walk away?’

‘I—I don’t know,’ Joan said honestly. ‘I don’t know.’ The truth was that it hadn’t occurred to her. She’d just wanted to get in.

And she was in. She was here. She looked up wonderingly. The sky was full of stars. Aaron had said that the Monster Court sat outside time. What did that mean?

‘I never thought I’d see this,’ Ruth said.

Joan looked over at the vast expanse of Whitehall Palace. She’d never imagined she’d see this either. Whitehall Palace had been London’s Versailles—it was the city’s great lost treasure. Beyond the main white building, there were glimpses of redbrick turrets and towers. The complex of buildings seemed to stretch for miles. This was where Henry VIII had married Anne Boleyn, and where he’d died. Where Charles I had been executed, and where his son Charles II had returned from exile to usher in the Restoration.

Joan stopped herself before that dangerous yearning feeling could start. She took a deep breath and released it.

‘Look at that,’ Ruth whispered.

‘I know,’ Joan said, and then realised that Ruth wasn’t looking at the palace at all. She was looking back toward the archway: 1993 was still visible, the gibbous moon in the sky. The gate had been a bare ruin when they’d walked in. But in this time it was a gatehouse with three stories of windows and a pitched roof. It was too dark to see much of the skyline beyond the palace walls, but Joan imagined she could hear trees rustling in place of cars.

‘It gives me the creeps,’ Aaron whispered.

‘Really?’ Joan wondered. It was so beautiful.

‘We can’t travel out of the mire,’ Ruth said. ‘We’ll have to walk back through that gate.’

It hadn’t occurred to Joan that monsters might feel trapped if they couldn’t travel. For her, it was something terrible that she’d done. Something she never wanted to do again.

‘What would happen if we didn’t use the gate?’ she wondered. ‘If we walked out of the palace through another door. Would we end up in the 1600s?’

‘I don’t think we’re in the 1600s now,’ Ruth said. She was still looking at the archway, her face pale. ‘This place feels as though someone took a piece of the world and suspended it in the middle of . . . of nothing. There’s nothing around us. I think if we looked out one of those windows in the gatehouse, there’d be nothing.’ Joan must have looked confused, because Ruth added: ‘Can’t you feel it? There’s no time outside this place. It’s like we’re on a rowboat in the middle of the ocean.’

Joan sought that internal monster sense. She could feel something, but not as viscerally as Ruth clearly did. To Joan, the palace just felt self-contained. She looped her arm through Ruth’s, wanting to comfort her. ‘Good thing we’re not likely to get invited back, huh?’

Ruth’s mouth twisted up. ‘We weren’t invited this time.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Joan said. ‘Oops.’

The three of them followed the other guests toward the heavy black doors at the other end of the courtyard. The path was lit with floating globes the same colour as the moon.

The guests’ clothes were extravagant. What had been dark silhouettes from afar were revealed to be intricately embroidered silks and jewels. All around, people were speaking other languages: Joan caught snatches of Latin and something that wasn’t quite French—some older version of it, maybe. Other people were speaking languages she couldn’t even guess at.

Here and there, animals padded alongside guests—dogs and cats and stranger creatures. Joan glimpsed a leopard with a jewelled collar, and a snake wound around a woman’s shoulders. A bird strolled past with a strange bobbing motion. ‘Is that a dodo?’ she whispered to Aaron.