Page 38 of Once a Villain
Aaron didn’t answer for a long, long moment. “We should try to sleep,” he murmured finally. “You’ll be able to ground yourself more firmly if you’re well rested. And tomorrow, we won’t be hiding anymore. We’ll be out in Eleanor’s world for real. We’ll need to blend in. Flawlessly.”
Thirteen
Joan woke to Ruth and Aaron arguing.
“Anyof those clothes would be okay!” Ruth was saying to him.
“Okayis the antithesis of style,” Aaron said.
Everyone else looked like they’d just crawled out of bed, hair awry and eyes bleary, but Aaron was pin neat as always. His pale hair glowed as if from some spotlight that only ever focused on him. He flicked through a clothes rack that he’d apparently dragged in from the dressing room so that he could examine everything in natural light.
“I’m not just dressing us for an occasion,” he said. “I’m dressing us in character. It’s like you said last night—we’re going to be out in the world. We have to look right.”
“What does an executioner wear?” Nick asked him, and Aaron stopped flicking to glare at him.
The glare only lasted a moment, though, before Aaron’s expression turned thoughtful. “There’s the stereotype of the hooded cloak, of course, but I think it’d be a bit much.”
Joan sat up tiredly. Someone had opened the curtains, and outside, it was just barely dawn. Under the near-black sky, the Oliver estate was a swath of rolling hills stretching all the way to the Thames.
“You’re awake,” Nick said to Joan. He had his hands in his pockets, and Joan had the feeling he’d been keeping an eye onher. “There’s food on the trays. Apparently, we’re not allowed to dress yet.” This was clearly directed at Aaron, who grunted.
“Where’s Jamie?” Joan asked.
“Walking Frankie,” Aaron said. He eyed her. “You should eat something.” He was worried about another fade-out.
But this was the first morning in a long time that Joan had woken more grounded than not. She pushed away her blanket, and remembered she was still wearing Aaron’s pajamas. They all were. “We look like an Aaron cult.”
“Speak for yourself.” Ruth pointed at her breast pocket; she’d pinned a paper cutout of a fox over the mermaid sigil. Behind her, Aaron rolled his eyes.
In the end, Aaron styled himself from his counterpart’s huge selection, emerging from the dressing room in a cream suit with a gauzy pocket square that he’d somehow folded into a loose fan.
For Joan he paired a gray tweed dress from the Serpentine market with a blue silk scarf the exact shade of his tie; the scarf must have belonged to his counterpart.
“Dowdy,” Ruth said when she saw the dress laid out on Aaron’s bed.
“Invisible,” Aaron said, with a glance at Joan. He didn’t want her clothes drawing the attention of predators. Joan felt a rush of gratitude. She’d been trying to push away her fear about going back into the world as a human, and now that fear receded slightly. The scarf wasn’t just intended to protect her neck, she realized. It would hide the pendant—still on Aaron’s desk. She wouldn’t have to look at it.
Joan got ready quickly in the dressing room and examinedherself in the mirror. The gray had a little blue in it. It might have been invisible at a glance, but Aaron had an eye for clothes. The dress that had been plain draped on the bed looked expensive now that she was wearing it. It fit perfectly, skimming over her as if it had been tailored. In the mirror, she seemed subtly untouchable, like a diamond in the window of a jewelry shop. And her scarf, in the same shade as Aaron’s tie, was a clear message: She belonged to Aaron. She was under his protection.
No one willtouchyou, he’d said to her last night. That was what he’d been thinking about, she realized, as he’d agonized over the racks of clothes this morning.
When she came back out, Aaron tied her scarf into a bow, shifting it so that it was canted to the right under her chin. He fussed with it until every inch of her neck was covered.
It was Nick’s turn next. Aaron dressed him in pale gray trousers and a cream shirt, buttoning it just halfway. “Your counterpart was scarred,” Aaron explained. “As long as your shirt’s open, people won’t believe you’re him.” He gave Nick a silk cravat that protected his neck completely. He fastened a small pin to the tie—a mermaid—and then came over to put a brooch on Joan’s pocket. Joan’s mouth was suddenly dry as he straightened it. The three of them were wearing mermaid sigils like they all belonged together.
Ruth wasn’t so pleased when she saw the brooch a minute later. “If Gran knew Hunts were in this house, wearing all this stuff...”
A burst of fierce love hit Joan. She’d always consider herself a Hunt. She’d hoped Ruth still did, but she’d been afraid to ask.In the monster world, power was family and family was power, and Joan didn’t have the Hunt power anymore.
“Why don’t I—” Joan found a pen on Aaron’s desk and drew the Hunt fox on her own wrist in tiny marks. “Better?”
Ruth looked mollified. Then, to Joan’s surprise, she threw her arms around Joan. Joan hugged back. “We’re going to get out of here,” Ruth said.
“I actually like the house.”
Ruth smacked her arm. “You know what I mean. We’re going to get out of this timeline.” She eyed the pendants on the desk, and Joan sighed. She’d been putting off that part of the costume.
The pendant was some kind of metal Joan didn’t know: bronze in color, and as heavy as a hammerhead. As an object, it was horribly beautiful, designed to look as if the numbered piece was lying on a shell, with a mermaid curled around it.
