Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(81)

She had found something at the Court. Something wedged into the notch under the desk. She’d forgotten about it in the rush to escape.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she whispered.

‘Let’s not insult each other,’ Tom said, almost gently. ‘Neither of us was going to leave that room empty-handed. And you made the first move to leave.’

Joan got to her feet slowly, careful to telegraph her movements in case he took it as an attack. Tom had seemed a gentle giant—not stupid, but slow and a little clumsy at times. Right now, though, he didn’t seem so slow. And if he wasn’t slow, maybe he wasn’t clumsy at all.

Joan put her hand against her pocket. She could feel the thing she’d found—a square of lightweight plastic. She’d barely glanced at it before she’d pocketed it; it had been white, with no markings. She’d dismissed it as unimportant when she’d retrieved it, but now she wondered . . .

‘Whatever you think I have,’ she said, ‘I don’t.’

Tom’s expression seemed so sharp now that he could have been a different person.

Joan remembered suddenly how she’d met him. He’d approached her. He’d called out to her at the market when he’d seen her necklace—he’d known it was a key to the Monster Court. Later, Ruth had said that he was a former Court Guard. Everyone at the market knew, she’d said. Had Tom deliberately spread information that he’d been a guard? Had he known Joan would turn to him, needing a guide inside the Court?

Tom gave her a crooked smile. ‘You know they used to hang pirates here?’ His tone was casual, but something about the way he said it made Joan’s heart thump. ‘They hanged Captain Kidd right there.’ He nodded at the stone wall at the back of the stairs. Green algae covered two-thirds of the stone, an ominous sign of how high the Thames could climb. ‘This place isn’t much in this time,’ he said. ‘But it used to be like Victoria Station here. Kids running around the docks. Whelk sellers calling out their wares. “Whelks, whelks, penny a lot!” And the river so full of boats that we’d all be bumping up against each other.’

Tom took the last steps in a casual stride. Joan stumbled back. Water splashed. She looked down to see that the river was pooling around her feet. The tide was coming in.

‘They had to hang Captain Kidd twice,’ Tom said. ‘First time, the rope snapped and he thumped down into the mud. The whole crowd thought he’d get a reprieve. That since the rope had snapped, he’d be spared. But he wasn’t. He was hanged again, and the second time it took.’ His eyes had glazed, as if in memory, but when Joan shifted her weight, they sharpened again. ‘And afterward, they put him on a pole and let the Thames take him three times. Three tides.’

‘What do you want?’ Joan said.

‘What did any of us want?’ he said. ‘To get to the Royal Archive.’ He almost spat the word. ‘But he wasn’t there.’

‘He?’ Joan felt like a complete idiot then. She’d assumed that the archive had been a room somewhere else in the palace. It hadn’t occurred to her that the archive and the prisoner had been one and the same. Did that mean . . . Joan blurted: ‘He’s the transformatio? He’s the device? He’s the one who can change the timeline?’

Tom made an impatient sound. ‘There’s no device. The transformatio really is just a myth. There’s no way to change the timeline.’ He held out his hand. ‘But I know he left something in that room. Give it to me.’

Joan wanted to take another step back, but she couldn’t. The staircase was blocked by Tom’s big frame. Behind Joan, the river was rising. The water swirled around her feet, lapping at the bottom of her dress. She put her hand in her pocket and closed her finger and thumb over the plastic square. ‘I’m a Hunt,’ she warned him. Had they ever mentioned her lack of the Hunt power in front of Tom? ‘If I hide it, you’ll never find it.’

‘You won’t do that,’ Tom said.

‘Step back or I will.’

A male voice in the distance made them both tense. ‘Maybe if we’d gone through Cheapside, as I’d said, we’d have been here ages ago.’

Aaron. Joan breathed out, relieved. She’d never been so glad to hear his tetchy tone.

Then, less distantly: ‘Guards were all over the square mile, you idiot.’ Ruth.

‘It’s three against one now,’ Joan said to Tom. But it wasn’t. Not quite yet.

‘Do you even know what you found?’ Tom said, low and intense. ‘It’s a message. But you won’t be able to decode it.’

‘Oh, but you could, I suppose?’

‘Yes,’ Tom said. ‘The message was meant for me.’

Joan hesitated then. ‘For you?’

Ruth and Aaron’s bickering was getting closer. In a second, they’d be upon them. Tom would glance up, and Joan would have a moment to shove him off the stairs.

Still she hesitated. What was she missing? ‘Why would the prisoner have left you a message? Who was he?’ And why had Nick been looking for him? There was too much that Joan didn’t understand.

Tom shifted on his feet, as if weighing his options.

‘Don’t come any closer,’ Joan warned him. ‘I’ll use the Hunt power to hide it.’