Page 31 of Once a Villain
“And these are for the humans.” There was a slight emphasis on the wordhumans; she couldn’t keep her contempt from her voice. She drew from her pocket two metal pendants withrotatable numbers. “A Nightingale can confirm the amount of life left, but we’ll need their identity cards to determine how much servitude remains.”
The maidwasn’t human herself, Joan realized, surprised; she wasn’t wearing a pendant. It hit Joan that none of the Oliver staff in the garden had worn pendants either. But then... the Olivers had always hated humans; perhaps they preferred monster servants.
The maid put the pendants onto a tray. Joan flinched at the hard metallic clatter. She didn’t want to wear that pendant, and shereallydidn’t want a Nightingale to calibrate it. She’d stolen a lot of life from herself over the last few months, and she had no desire to know how much remained.
As the maid turned to leave, Joan realized they still needed something. “Wait—” she said. “Can you have two people fetched from the Serpentine Inn? They’ll need a ride.”
The maid’s mouth pursed—she was clearly irritated about receiving an instruction from a human. But at Aaron’s nod, she just said, “Room number?”
“Two.” Joan found a notepad and pen on a desk and wrote quickly:Come to Oliver House.She added her initials and the Hunt mark: theVand upside-downUwith a strike running through them to make a fox. Then she folded the letter and folded it again, tearing and twisting until the paper was crudely locked. If anyone but Ruth opened the letter, Ruth would know.
Joan offered the letter to the maid, who snatched it from her.
“My lord,” the maid said to Aaron again. Then she stalked out of the room, the door closing with an emphaticthumpbehind her.
“Well... I think she bought it,” Joan said.
“She really didn’t like the idea of us withhim,” Nick said. He sounded bone tired now, as if the maid’s disgust had tipped him into exhaustion. He went over to the table and covered the pendants with a napkin. He apparently felt the same as Joan—he didn’t even want to look at them.
Aaron rummaged through the shopping bags, producing trousers, shirts, skirts, dresses. They were in charcoal and cream colors, tweed and soft gauze.
“How much did you buy?” Nick asked disbelievingly as Aaron laid out the clothes in various configurations on the floor.
“Well, now that you’re apparentlywithme... ,” Aaron said, frowning down at the selection. “Not nearly enough.”
Joan forced herself up. With the clean clothes on display, she felt even more tacky and dirty than she had before. She was desperate to get changed. “Mind if I have the first shower?”
“Go ahead,” Nick said, and Aaron nodded.
Joan picked up a tweed dress that Aaron had bought, and realized that all these outfits would be ruined if she slept in them. “Do you think your counterpart has—” She stopped. She’d never actually seen Aaron in comfortable clothes, but he surely didn’t sleep in his suits. Right? “Any T-shirts to sleep in?”
“T-shirts?” Aaron sounded out the word as if it was alien to him—as if he’d never in his life worn such a thing. “I’m sure he has nightclothes.” He gestured to the dressing room. “What’s his is mine right now. And what’s mine is yours. Take anything you like.” He added to Nick, far more begrudgingly, “You too, I suppose.”
Joan washed quickly, knowing the others would want to get clean too. There were cuts and bruises all over her arms and legs, she saw with dismay—from the fight with Eleanor at the end of the last timeline. That fight had been just a few hours ago from Joan’s perspective. No wonder she was sore. The others must have been too.
She shut off the shower and wrapped herself in a towel to get clothes from the adjoining dressing room.
As she entered, she could only stare. It was far larger than she’d realized—on the same scale as the bedchamber—and the walls were decorated in royal blue and gold, with illustrated panels showing peacocks and songbirds. Clothes were lined up in neat racks and folded onto tables in display. Joan felt like she was in a posh department store.
Aaron’s counterpart seemed to have more flamboyant taste than Aaron’s usual preference: the suits were in rich colors with interesting cuts. Joan smoothed down the velvet of a long blood-colored jacket with a deep V-neck.
It took her a couple of minutes to understand that the clothes were organized according to the time of day. Morning suits over there; then day suits; dinner suits; and, finally, sleepwear.
Feeling intrusive, even with Aaron’s permission, Joan sorted through racks of silk nightclothes, all of them beautifully hand-embroidered with mermaids and seashells and tridents.
She found a simple set—a short-sleeved shirt with matching shorts. The gray silk pooled in her hand like water, and the mermaid design on the front pocket was woven with thread so brightthat it could have been real silver.
Joan slipped the shirt over her head. It was huge on her, and the shorts threatened to fall, but they werealmost painfully comfortable after the chafe of her wet 1920s clothes. She rolled the waistband to tighten the shorts. When she was done, she thought she could smell Aaron, faint but comforting, under the scent of fresh laundry.
Back in the bedchamber, Nick lifted his head as Joan closed the dressing room door behind her. His gaze swept over her, and for a split second his eyes darkened, just like when she’d unzipped her dress earlier. Her heart stuttered.
“You found something to wear,” Aaron said. He was staring at her too, mouth open slightly.
Had he had second thoughts about sharing his clothes? “You—You said it would be okay—” Joan started, embarrassed suddenly.
“Yes,” Aaron said, oddly fast. “Yes, that’s okay.”
As he spoke, a loud beeping sound made them all jump.
