Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(77)

‘Hey ho!’ the other guest said, cheerfully. She was a middle-aged woman dressed in robes and a gold headdress. ‘Dumping your host gift too?’ The woman took a small vase from her robes and placed it onto a shelf. ‘I arrived a bit late.’

Joan couldn’t find an answer. She was relieved when Ruth spoke. ‘Uh. Yes,’ Ruth said a little artificially. She leaned against the cabinet, covering the click of its closure with a cough. ‘Yes, we arrived late too.’ She patted one of the vases on the shelf.

‘Goodness,’ the woman said. ‘Where did you get that old thing?’

The vase next to Ruth was ancient: cracked and repaired. The woman’s vase was in the same style, but glossy and new.

Joan looked around slowly. The room was full of artifacts—people’s gifts for the King. Vases and necklaces. Bolts of cloth. Bracelets, urns, statues. Hundreds and hundreds of artifacts. Museum pieces from all of history.

You know this is wrong, Nick had said. Look around you.

‘Where did you get that vase?’ Joan heard herself ask the woman.

‘What, this?’ The woman shrugged. ‘A little market in Babylon.’

‘Babylon?’ Joan said. The hairs rose at the back of her neck. Babylon had been at its height nearly four thousand years ago. A return trip to Babylon would cost nearly eight thousand years of human life. Joan stared at the woman. She looked so ordinary. Like someone’s mum. Had she stolen that much human life to go to a party?

Joan thought about the stone statues breathing fire in the next room. The butterfly chandelier. All the marvels here. It occurred to her that they were probably future technology. Human technology, stolen by monsters. Was that what Nick had seen when he’d walked in? All these stolen things?

‘Joan,’ Ruth said urgently. Joan blinked at her. The woman was on her way out the door, sparing a moment to give Joan a puzzled look over her shoulder.

For the first time, Joan wondered what would happen if she and Ruth were on the opposite sides of this. She quashed the thought as soon as it had risen, surprised at herself. She could trust Ruth with anything. And Ruth could trust her. Always.

‘Joan, are you with me?’ Ruth’s dark hair was frizzing out of her fancy bun. Ruth’s hair was always like that—it never wanted to stay in one place. ‘Are you with me right now?’

‘Yeah?’ Joan said. ‘Yes.’

‘Okay,’ Ruth said. ‘Because we can’t get back through the gate. There are guards swarming all over it. Dozens of them. We’re stuck here.’





EIGHTEEN




Inside the halls, none of the guests seemed to know about the break-in. The music was still playing; people were still dancing and laughing. Ruth took Joan’s arm, and together they strolled through the hall, past the guards at the doors.

The guards knew. They were alert and watchful, eyeing every person who walked past them.

Joan and Ruth stepped outside. The party had extended now to the courtyard. People stood talking softly by the light of the moon and the floating lamps. Servers moved between them with food and drinks on silver trays.

Ruth led Joan away from the crowd, into the shadows by the hall’s stone wall. Her grip was tight on Joan’s arm. On the other side of the courtyard, there were half a dozen guards by the gate. Not enough, apparently, to alarm the other guests, but enough to prevent escape.

Joan’s attention was drawn to a man standing in their midst.

‘Conrad,’ Ruth whispered. Joan hadn’t heard that much fear in her voice since the night their family had died. ‘The King’s Reach.’

Conrad was too far away to see clearly, but Joan could see that he was blond, in his early twenties at most. There was an air of power surrounding him. And something about him made Joan think of the relentless cold of winter; of still, moonless nights.

‘That gate is the only way out of here,’ Ruth whispered. ‘What are we going to do?’

Figures peeled away from the other guests: Aaron and Tom. Frankie trotted underfoot.

‘Conrad is methodical,’ Aaron whispered. ‘He’ll check everyone who passes through the gate. And when he finds us . . .’ He swallowed. ‘He’ll make a spectacle of us.’

‘There must be another way out,’ Joan said.

‘There’s no other way.’ Tom sounded bleak. ‘And there’s no way to travel out—we’re on the mire.’

‘There is a way,’ Joan murmured. ‘We just travelled to the Palaeolithic period and back.’ She looked at her cousin. ‘You need to create another bridge and get us out of here.’

Ruth shook her head. Her fingers felt very cold on Joan’s arm. ‘I can’t feel the Hunt power right now. It’s like I burned it out.’

‘You need to try,’ Joan whispered. ‘Please.’

‘If we try, we need to be very careful about where,’ Aaron whispered. ‘We’re almost on top of Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence. Scotland Yard. If we come out in the wrong place . . .’

‘I know where we can go,’ Tom said. ‘Follow me.’



The guests in the courtyard began to murmur as more guards appeared from the halls. Joan could hear pieces of their conversations. Something stolen, she heard. Guards found unconscious.