Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(78)

Tom ushered Joan and the others along the edges of the buildings, keeping to the shadows. No one seemed to notice as they slipped out of sight.

‘We won’t have long,’ Tom whispered. ‘The guards will check everyone on the grounds. They’ll realise fast that we don’t belong here.’

They walked quickly. The palace grounds seemed to be structured as a series of open yards, each surrounded by buildings. Soon they were in the working part of the palace. Joan peered through the windows of the heavy stone buildings as they passed. One was a kitchen with huge unlit hearths and benches where food could be laid out. Another had deep basins for washing.

It was all as eerily empty of people as the suites had been. And it was dark. The only light was from the moon overhead.

‘There’s a gate farther up,’ Tom whispered. ‘Not too far from where Trafalgar Square will be.’

He took them through a courtyard full of chopped wood. Then past an elaborate brick building with open archways. ‘Stables,’ he said.

‘Wait,’ Joan whispered. She ducked into one of the archways. There were dozens of stalls, pristinely clean. There were no horses in any of them. There’d been no animals on the grounds, Joan realised—except for those brought in by the Hathaways. The woodyard, at least, should have been full of rats and cats and foxes. Insects. But here, alone in the stables, she couldn’t hear anything but her own footsteps, her own breaths.

At the back of the room, there were saddles and neatly folded blankets. Joan took a coiled rope. Then she rummaged through a box of tools until she found a hammer and a couple of nails.

When she re-emerged, Aaron put a finger to his lips. And then Joan could hear something—footsteps in the far distance. Voices. ‘Guards,’ Aaron murmured into her ear.

After that, they walked in silence.

Tom took them to a wooden gate at the very edge of the palace, where two stone walls met. The gate was small and unadorned—more like a passage out of a back garden than a palace.

Tom drew the iron bolt quietly and pulled the gate inward. They all retreated instinctively from the gaping mouth. On the other side, there were silhouettes of buildings and a wide street. The moonlight seemed to barely touch any of it. Nothing was moving.

Joan felt a sick swoop in her stomach, as though she were standing on a high wall. There’d been something awful about the view of the frozen Thames, but now she realised that the horror of it had been mitigated by the window between.

Beside Joan, Aaron put his hand over his mouth as if he were going to be sick.

‘There’s nothing there,’ Ruth whispered. ‘It looks like there’s something there, but there’s nothing there. It’s a void. All those silhouettes are just shadows.’

‘I know,’ Tom said. His gaze was averted; he couldn’t even look at the view.

Joan could feel it too—the horror of it. Her stomach roiled. Her skin crawled. She had the feeling that if she stepped across the threshold, she’d fall and fall and fall forever.

She tried not to think about that as she passed Aaron the hammer and nails to free her hands. Then she started to work on the rope. She made a loop with it, the size of the gate. As she tied the ends together, Aaron seemed to understand what she was doing. He lined up one of the nails at the left top corner of the gate’s wooden frame. At Joan’s nod, he tapped it with the hammer.

They all stopped then, listening. Joan held her breath. There were no urgent voices. No running footsteps. No sounds at all. Joan counted to ten. Then she nodded at Aaron again. He moved over to the other corner and tapped in the other nail.

Then he helped Joan hang the rope around the gate. Earlier in the night, they’d needed a long rug to cross the stretch of snow between them and the archive. But Joan hoped that here a rope would be good enough. And she hoped it would be easier for Ruth to manage.

‘I don’t know about this,’ Ruth whispered. ‘I can’t even feel the Hunt power. It’s like—’ She hesitated as if she wasn’t sure how it felt. ‘It’s like it’s burned out of me. The Hunt power isn’t supposed to open gates like this.’

‘Close your eyes,’ Joan whispered, ‘and try. Just try. One more time.’

Ruth hesitated again. Her eyes were sunken with fatigue; her skin was almost grey. But she touched the rope with the flat of her hand and closed her eyes. Nothing happened for a long moment. ‘I can’t—’ she started to say, and then something flashed on the other side of the gate. Joan heard Aaron gasp.

For a second, the moon had been smaller, and in a different part of the sky.

Ruth must have felt it. She opened her eyes. Frowning with concentration, she pushed the rope against the wooden frame, straining. There was another flash, and this time it lasted long enough for Joan to see the buildings grow and shrink on the other side of the road. There was no way to know what year she’d seen.

Ruth was already exhausted. ‘I can’t keep it open,’ she said.

‘Okay,’ Joan said. ‘Okay. We’ll have to jump across during the flash.’

‘You must be joking,’ Aaron whispered. ‘If the gate closes while we’re crossing . . .’

‘If Conrad finds us . . .’ Tom whispered back.

Aaron squeezed his eyes shut for a second. ‘All right,’ he said in acknowledgment. ‘All right. I’ll go first.’ He stepped up to the threshold of the rope.