Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(75)

But then Joan hesitated. The scuff marks and the blood said there’d been a struggle.

Blood on the corner of the desk and messy scuff marks on the floor beside it. Someone had struggled next to the desk. And, after that, there were long scraped lines all the way to the door, as if the person had stopped struggling. Had they been unconscious? Or had they stopped struggling for a reason? Had they accomplished something near the desk?

On a hunch, Joan bent to run her hand under the desk. An uneven notch had been carved into the wood to create a shallow ledge. There was something in it. Joan had a flash of hope that it might be the transformatio, but even before she’d slid out the object and pocketed it, she knew it wasn’t. It was clear that this room had never held the King’s treasures. And in their research, the transformatio had been described as an ornate golden frame—a doorway.

‘Hey.’ Ruth’s voice sounded from the other side of the moat. The rolled rug connecting the archive to the rest of the palace seemed to shiver right out of existence for a second, leaving an empty expanse of white snow between them and Ruth. The rug reappeared again a moment later.

‘Oh my God,’ Aaron said, voice shaking. He had both arms around Frankie, and he tucked her closer, seeming to need the comfort. ‘What if we get stuck in that time?’

‘Go! While the bridge is still here!’ Joan pushed at Aaron. He went without argument, diving through the tunnel, careful of Frankie. ‘Go!’ Joan said to Tom. He jumped into the tunnel too, and Joan threw herself after him.

The second crossing was more terrifying than the first. One time when Joan blinked, she saw an endless field of snow in front of her instead of Tom’s legs. In the distance, trees rose from the landscape—like great monoliths, stark and leafless against the blue sky. Joan hadn’t known that trees could be so big. The cold hit her belatedly, like a physical blow.

Then the snow and trees were gone. Tom was in front of her again. Joan scrambled after him, and then strong hands were pulling her out—Aaron’s and Tom’s. And just in time. As Joan cleared the barrier, Ruth tottered backward and lost her grip on the rug.

Ruth’s gasping breaths sounded loud in the quiet. ‘Did you find it?’ she managed.

Aaron shook his head. ‘The room was a vacant prison cell. No archive. No treasures.’

Ruth laughed, high, with a note of hysteria. ‘Oh, fuck.’

‘You were right,’ Joan said to her. Ruth had said that there was something wrong. Joan hadn’t known what she’d meant at the time, but she understood it now. She felt it too. ‘There’s something wrong about all of this. I got something wrong.’

‘No time for debriefing,’ Tom said. ‘We have minutes before the new guards arrive.’

‘And look.’ Aaron pointed.

Inside the slice of Palaeolithic time, the rolled rug that they’d used as a bridge was lying on the snow. It hadn’t vanished like the twig had. Would the Court guess that the Hunt power had done that?

‘We have to get out of here,’ Joan said. ‘Right now.’





SEVENTEEN




They clambered up the stone staircase and ran back the way they’d come.

Joan’s mind was racing, and she could see that the others were trying to figure out what had happened too. They’d broken into the Monster Court. They’d thought they’d find the transformatio—the device that could change the timeline. Instead they’d found a recently vacated prison cell.

Who had been in that lonely cell? Joan wondered as she ran. Why had they been put in there?

She shook her head at herself. Whoever the prisoner had been, she couldn’t help them. She hadn’t even been able to help her own family.

She ran through suite after luxurious suite, until her breath was hot and painful in her throat. Was the transformatio somewhere else in the palace? Was there still a chance she could find it here and save her family?

No. She knew the truth. They’d had one shot at this. Any second now, the guards would be alerted. The only thing left to do was flee.

Joan ran hard, reaching the suite with the curtains flung wide and the view of the frozen Thames. Breath ragged and legs straining, she glanced over her shoulder to check on the others.

No one was behind her. She stumbled to a stop. Through the doorway, she could see that the previous room was empty.

Panic struck her like a blow. Where were they? She tried to remember when she’d last heard them running behind her. Not for a few minutes, she realised. But how had she lost them? Had they taken a different route?

She took a deep breath, trying to force the panic down. There was no time to look for them, or for them to look for her; the guards could arrive at any moment. Joan would have to find her own way back to the chapel and hope that everyone else would make it too.

A last look over her shoulder and Joan started running again. And almost collided with someone running the other way.

Nick.

For a split second, the shock of seeing him was overwhelming. Nick was here and solid and real. In the café, there’d been a table between them, but there was no barrier now.

Nick’s face betrayed his surprise, but Joan reacted first. She used her momentum to drive her knee into his thigh. He hissed in pain, but he dodged her next kick and managed to hustle her backward. Joan threw her hand up to his neck, just as he pinned her against a wall. His thighs were pressed against hers, chest against her shoulders.