Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(99)

‘I can’t lie,’ Joan said desperately. ‘You know I can’t!’ He had to believe her.

Nick shifted out of his relaxed posture to his feet, fast and smooth and lethal. Joan found herself scrambling back.

‘Nick,’ she said. ‘Please. You have to believe me.’

‘Please?’ he said, looking down at her. ‘Is that what your victims said at the Changing of the Guard?’

Joan shook her head.

‘No, they didn’t beg, did they?’ he said. ‘They didn’t even know what you’d stolen from them.’

Joan’s next breath stuck in her chest. He really was going to kill her.

But instead of moving closer, he took a step back and then another. He opened the cell door without a word and locked it behind him. Key first, then a heavy bolt. Panic ran through Joan at the sheer claustrophobia of it. ‘Nick!’ she shouted. But he was already out of sight. Could he still hear her?

Whether he could or not, the drug was still hammering at her to speak. Joan screwed her eyes shut, trying to think around the desire to say truths. Nick hadn’t believed her. She couldn’t blame him. Who’d want to hear what she’d told him? That everything he knew about himself was a kind of lie?

The truth was, she’d never thought he’d believe her. But she’d had to try. She’d had to know if there could be any chance of a better ending.

Now she felt around on the floor until she found the bobby pin. As she did, the drug worked at her harder. It was going to make her narrate her escape, she realised, a hysterical laugh bubbling up. She struggled against it, but, just like before, the desire to speak was overwhelming.

She needed to placate it with a different truth.

‘The first time I met you . . .’ She could hear the raw emotion in her own voice. She closed her eyes. The drug wasn’t just forcing her to speak; it was forcing her to feel it. ‘The first time I met you, it was like I already knew you,’ she said. ‘Like I’d known you my whole life.’

There was no response from Nick. She hoped he wasn’t there.

‘Wherever you were,’ she said, ‘I wanted to be there too. You were like the sun. I was always turning toward you.’

There was a slight click as the spring gave on the lock. She blinked out of her reverie. Focus, she told herself.

‘You kissed me that night,’ she said. ‘I’d never wanted anything so much. Later, I thought maybe you’d been playing me the whole time. But then, at that nineties café, I started to wonder . . . Because you didn’t kill me, even though you knew I’d stolen time.’

She heard footsteps and then Nick was looking at her through the bars. Joan’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of him. He hadn’t left.

‘The Liu family has a story,’ she said. ‘They say that there was once another timeline. One that existed before our own.’

‘I know what you’re doing,’ Nick said. ‘You’re working on those handcuffs. It’s pointless. You’re not leaving this cell.’

‘Don’t you feel it?’ she said. ‘Don’t you feel that this timeline is wrong?’

If he did, he wasn’t showing it. But the drug didn’t care. It forced more words out. ‘The Liu story says that in the original timeline, the hero was just an ordinary boy in love with a monster girl,’ she said.

‘Stop,’ Nick said.

‘They say that if people belonged together in that first timeline, then our timeline will always try to bring them back together. They say that—’

‘Joan, stop.’

Joan wanted to laugh. ‘I can’t. Your stupid truth serum is making me talk and talk and talk. I think you’d have to kill me to make me stop.’

His hands came up to grip the cell bars then, knuckles whitening.

‘Oh, you don’t like that idea?’ she said. ‘Why not? You killed everyone else.’

‘You’ve taken time.’ He sounded formal. He’d said those words to other monsters just before he’d killed them. ‘You can’t be allowed to harm another human.’

Joan twisted the pin just like Gran had taught her. She almost had it.

‘So you’re going to kill me, then?’ she said to him. ‘Or will you ask someone else to do it?’

Something dark and dangerous crossed his face. No, he wouldn’t let anyone else touch her.

‘What’s the alternative?’ she asked. ‘Keeping me prisoner here? Turning me in to the police? What are you going to say to them? “She touched their necks”?’

‘I’m sorry, Joan,’ Nick said. ‘I don’t believe that we’re—whatever it is you think we are. The fact is, I should have done my duty a long time ago. The fact is that you’re a monster, and as long as you’re alive, you’ll hurt people.’

There was a click as the left cuff finally released. Joan shook it off. With another click-click, she had the right cuff off too. She showed Nick her free hands.

‘It doesn’t matter if you’re cuffed or not,’ he said. ‘You don’t have any time to travel with. And if you travel without time, you’ll die.’

‘You can’t keep killing us,’ Joan said. Her throat felt so tight. ‘I can’t let you.’