Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(90)

‘Yes,’ Ruth whispered.

‘Who is she?’ Joan said.

‘I don’t know,’ Ruth said. Joan looked at Tom and Aaron. Tom shook his head slightly. Aaron seemed dazed.

‘What we just saw . . .’ Aaron said. ‘That shouldn’t have been possible. You can’t be in the same time twice. It’s a fundamental law of time travel. You shouldn’t be able to change the timeline like that. But they killed his family over and over—’

‘And over and over and over,’ Ruth murmured.

‘It isn’t possible,’ Aaron said. ‘How could it have been recorded? What family power can do that?’

Nick had been tortured and then rebooted so they could do it all to him again, over and over and over. . . . He’d been remade. How many times had they killed his family? How many times before they’d broken him? That last number had been 1922. Joan couldn’t stop shaking. She rounded on Tom. ‘Did you know about this?’ she demanded furiously. Because if he had . . .

‘No!’ Tom said. ‘I had no idea that the hero was—was constructed.’

‘You said this message was left for you! Left for you by—’ Something that had been nagging at Joan surfaced. ‘Jamie Liu . . .’ She paused.

Aaron appeared beside her, footsteps silent on the carpet. Joan could see the wheels turning in his head just like they were turning in hers.

‘Ying Liu has a son named Jamie,’ Joan said slowly. ‘We saw his paintings in the Liu gallery. They were all of the hero.’

Tom’s jaw worked. He couldn’t seem to stand still. He shifted his weight, fists clenching and unclenching. ‘Jamie always loved the stories of the hero,’ he said. ‘He was the foremost scholar of the myths.’

‘Was?’

‘He found out something he shouldn’t have,’ Tom said. ‘Something about the hero. Something he wasn’t supposed to know. And the Court just . . .’ Tom swallowed. ‘Took him. They just took him. It was a long time before we were even able to discover that he was still alive—that he was being kept by the Court. That they were using him to keep their stupid records.’

The Lius had perfect memory, Joan remembered. She should have realised that the archive was a Liu.

‘We always knew that he was going to disappear,’ Tom said. ‘It was in the Liu records. But I promised him I’d protect him. I told him I’d keep him safe. I told him I’d change the timeline somehow.’

‘You’ve tried to rescue him before,’ Joan realised. ‘You became a guard to get into the Court.’

‘I never saw him in the Court,’ Tom said. ‘I tried, but I never got as close as I did tonight.’

Joan remembered what Aaron had told her once. Everyone goes up against the timeline. Everyone tries.

‘Jamie knows me,’ Tom said. ‘He knows I won’t stop until I get him back.’ His voice cracked. ‘That fucking mattress was still warm.’

As he spoke, the air in the sitting room seemed to shudder again suddenly.

Joan shuddered with it. ‘Tom,’ she said. She couldn’t stand to see any more from the device. Please, she thought. But when the image resolved, it wasn’t Nick.

Tom stumbled closer. A man in his twenties was standing in the middle of the room. He had Chinese features and a gentle quality. The kind of person who’d help an old lady cross the street, Joan thought. Her next thought was that he looked ill. His face was gaunt; the skin under his eyes looked bruised.

‘Jamie,’ Tom whispered. He lifted a hand to touch the man’s face. But there was nothing to touch. His fingers went right through.

‘Hello, Tom,’ Jamie said. He was in the prison cell. Joan could see the thin blanket. The cold stone floor. The sight of them gave her the swooping, sick feeling that she’d had when she’d been in there. The feeling from her old nightmares. She imagined she could smell the room again. Fear and sickness and death.

‘The guards told me that no one would ever get into this room,’ Jamie said. ‘But I knew you would.’ His eyes crinkled, fond. ‘I love you.’

I love you, Tom mouthed back, even though Jamie couldn’t see it. Tom’s expression was raw: an open wound. Joan felt like an intruder watching him.

‘Who’d have thought researching fairytales would be so hazardous?’ Jamie’s chuckle turned into a pained hitch. He rubbed his chest absently, as though his ribs hurt. The angle of his fingers looked wrong. They’d been broken and hadn’t been set properly, Joan thought. Tom’s own hands clenched into fists.

‘Tom,’ Jamie said seriously. ‘I found something I shouldn’t have. The hero is real. And he’s going to kill more people than you can imagine. He’ll commit dozens and dozens of massacres by the time he’s done. But what he doesn’t know is what you just saw. That he was made into the hero. He was made into this.’

There were echoing footsteps suddenly, real enough that Joan and Ruth both turned to the kitchen. But the sound was coming from inside the recording. From the muffled quality, someone was approaching Jamie’s room.

‘The woman who made him—who brought me here. She believes no one can stop her,’ Jamie said quickly. ‘But she’s wrong. She thinks she made the hero perfectly. She didn’t. She made a mistake with him. He can be stopped.’