Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(84)

You know this is wrong, Nick had said. Joan thought about standing among all those gifts to the King. Those marvels, those horrors. She was struck with a sudden and intense yearning—so strong that, for a moment, she was afraid she was trying to travel. But it wasn’t a yearning for a different time. It was for Nick—for the Nick she’d known before all this.

She remembered again the time he’d rescued the wasp. It had been stuck in the Gilt Room, rattling behind a curtain. Kill it, one of the tourists had said, but Nick had captured it in a cup and released it outside. It’s just in the wrong place, he’d said.

Joan had trusted Nick’s judgment: his moral compass. Just being near him had made her feel like the person she’d wanted to be. And now . . . She folded her arms around herself.

She was so morally compromised now. It had been at the back of her mind all the time since the Pit. She remembered telling Gran all those years ago that she wanted to be Superman. You’re a monster, Gran had said.



As they walked down the tunnel, Joan became aware of a humming sound getting louder and louder. ‘What’s that noise?’ It didn’t sound like a train.

‘The pumps,’ Ruth said.

‘We must be under the river,’ Aaron said.

Joan looked up at the ceiling. The air smelled of damp concrete. It was scary to think that the Thames was roaring over them. It reminded Joan of the wave of power that had engulfed them as they’d fled Whitehall.

‘What exactly happened to us outside Whitehall?’ she said. ‘What did that man do?’

‘He hit us with the Patel family power,’ Aaron said. ‘He mired us in time. We won’t be able to travel again until the strike wears off.’

‘It wears off?’ Joan said.

The was a pause before Aaron answered, as if he’d heard something strange in her voice. ‘Eventually,’ he said.

‘Difficult to say how long we’ll be stuck in this time,’ Tom said. ‘Could be a day. Could be months.’

‘One of the Victorian-era Hunts stole a Patel chop once,’ Ruth said to Joan. ‘The Patels mired her for years. Forced her to live in a time she’d been in before.’

‘What happened?’ Joan asked. Aaron had told her the rules—you couldn’t be in the same time twice. The timeline didn’t allow it.

‘What happens if you’re in a tunnel and can’t get out of the way of a train?’ Aaron said, dry.

‘We don’t know what happened to her,’ Ruth said. ‘People who meet themselves in time vanish. Some people think that the timeline flings you away into its outer reaches. Or that you vanish into nothingness.’

‘It’s rare,’ Aaron said. ‘The timeline doesn’t allow you to jump into a time you already occupy. And if you get too close just by living, you start to feel an intense urge to leave. But you can live your way into it—whether by being mired or stubborn. The Olivers say that if that happens, you get pushed outside time itself.’

Outside time itself. Joan shivered, thinking of that shadowy abyss of nothingness outside the walls of the Monster Court.

‘What’s the point of speculating?’ Tom growled. ‘Either way, you’re gone.’

That seemed to silence them all. They walked through the tunnel, listening for trains. Joan imagined what this place must have looked like in the 1800s—lit up with gas lamps and crowded with market stalls and tourists in suits and long dresses.

‘Are we going to talk about what else happened at the Monster Court?’ Ruth said finally. She was flagging. Her voice was getting more and more hoarse and tired.

‘What’s there to talk about?’ Aaron said.

‘We didn’t find the device,’ Ruth said. ‘We can’t change the timeline.’

Joan glanced at Tom and found him looking back at her. There’s no device, he’d said at the watermen’s stairs. No device meant no way to save their families. Joan couldn’t bear to think about that yet.

‘What’s there to talk about?’ Aaron said again. ‘We failed. We came out empty-handed. We barely escaped with our lives. And now Conrad is after us. We’ll live out the rest of our lives running from godforsaken time to godforsaken time. And one day we’ll turn a corner, and Conrad will be standing there.’

Ruth said: ‘Listen, if you’re going to—’

Joan held up her hand to quiet them. There was a glint of light ahead. A train?

‘We’re almost through,’ Tom said, and Joan realised that she was seeing daylight. From bank to bank, it didn’t take long to walk under the river. And outside, dawn had finally broken.

The tunnel emerged where a train would have—right into Rotherhithe Station, platforms on either side. There was a security guard on one of the platforms. He paced away from them. From his posture, he seemed both cold and bored. He was clearly waiting for trains, and not expecting anyone to walk out of the tunnel.

Monster? Joan mouthed to Aaron.

Can’t see, Aaron mouthed back. He needed to see the man’s eyes, Joan remembered.

Silently, Ruth pointed out one camera and then another one. Tom boosted each of them up onto the opposite platform. Before the guard could turn, they tiptoed up the stairs, and then they were out of the station, on the south side of the river.