Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(96)

Nothing happened, of course. The Patel power hadn’t worn off yet. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go,’ she said.

Aaron didn’t reply.

Joan opened her eyes. She was still in the house. But it was subtly different. The pictures on the wall had changed. The wavy glass of the window was clear and flat.

And Aaron was gone.





TWENTY-TWO




On the surface Holland House seemed just the same. Tourists wandered the grounds eating ice creams and sausage baps. Costumed guides chatted to tour groups about the gardens and the house.

Except that Joan didn’t recognise any of the staff. And they all had a watchfulness about them—everyone from the ice-cream seller to the guides. A watchfulness and a military bearing.

Joan had guessed right. She knew Nick as well as she knew herself. According to Aaron, tourist sites were often traps for humans. After the massacre at Holland House, Nick had turned this tourist site into a trap for monsters. Anyone who came here with the intention of stealing time would be caught.

In the front garden, Thomas the peacock pecked furiously at Joan’s shoes. ‘At least you haven’t been replaced,’ Joan said to him. He cawed back at her in his harsh dinosaur way. He was well fed and in an unusually good mood, tail feathers relaxed. Nick was looking after the house, it seemed.

A woman’s voice sounded from the terrace, unexpectedly cheerful. ‘Joan!’

Joan looked up. ‘Astrid?’ she said, surprised and relieved to see a familiar face. Astrid had been one of the other volunteers at the house. She was half-Chinese like Joan, and half-Kenyan—tall and Black, with the straight-backed posture of a ballet dancer.

Astrid ran up to her. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you were only here for the school holidays.’ She threw her arms around Joan.

How long did Astrid think she’d been gone, Joan wondered. When was this? She hugged Astrid back. ‘I’m just visiting,’ she said. ‘What about you? I thought you—’ She stopped as she felt Astrid’s grip shift. She glimpsed a syringe.

Joan tried to struggle free, but it was too late. A needle jabbed into her side like a bee sting. And then everything went black.

Joan woke to pain. Her head ached. She blinked her eyes open.

She was lying on her side on a stone floor. Her heart started to pound. The far wall was iron bars. She was in a prison cell, just like the one in her nightmares.

No, not quite. That cell smelled of sickness and death. This one didn’t smell of anything but clean stone.

Joan shook her head, trying to clear the bleariness. She tried to orient herself. Beyond the iron bars, the corridor architraves had a familiar pattern: fleurs-de-lis.

This was the basement of Holland House. When Joan had volunteered at the house, there’d been staff rooms and kitchens down here. Now, someone had kitted out one of the staff rooms into a prison cell.

Joan tried to reach up to touch her aching head, and realised for the first time that her hands were cuffed together in front of her. Her heart stuttered with panic. She tried to wrench her hands apart.

‘Hello, Joan.’

Joan turned fast. It was Nick. Of course it was. He was standing in a corner of the cell, in a slouch that looked very close to relaxed. Only a slight tension in his shoulders betrayed that he was feeling anything more.

‘How’s your head?’ Nick asked.

Joan didn’t want to admit to any physical weaknesses. ‘Bit over-the-top, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘The whole dungeon thing?’ To her relief, her voice came out dry and calm. She surreptitiously felt her pocket, but the Mtawali travel token was gone; there wouldn’t be any easy way out of here. She glanced around the room. There were no windows, no obvious ducts. It would take her a few seconds to get up. Another few seconds to rush him. And she’d seen how fast he was when he attacked.

She tried to push herself up to stand. Something tugged at her leg. She tugged back and realised that her left ankle was locked into some contraption jutting out of the wall. ‘Oh, what?’ It looked like a chain from a medieval torture chamber. And then a wave of panic hit, claustrophobia combining with the setting. Her hands were trapped, and now she was locked to the wall as well. For a second she felt as though she really were in the prison from her nightmare. She fought the chain wildly. ‘Get it off !’ The chain jerked her back again and again like the jaws of a live animal. Under it all, the fog of the drug lingered like sleep.

‘Sorry, Joan. I can’t let you hurt anyone.’ Nick hadn’t moved. But there was a shadow of something in his eyes now. Concern? Confusion? He hadn’t expected her to react quite like that to the chain. ‘I can’t unlock that. I can’t allow you to touch anyone. So you’ll need to calm down.’

Calm down? She’d love to see him if he were trapped somewhere like this. Inadvertently, she remembered him in that chair, mouth bloody, begging for mercy for his family. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to breathe.

She thought about how Astrid had run right up to her, as if the staff had had an alert out on her. ‘You knew I was coming?’ she said.

‘You told me you would,’ Nick said. ‘I believed you.’ He shifted his weight. ‘So what’s your plan? I assume you came to kill me.’

‘No,’ Joan said. ‘No. Nick, I came here to talk.’