Page 42 of Once a Villain
“I’m sorry I’m late!” the woman said to Aaron. “The traffic was quite awful.” When Aaron didn’t respond, she added, “Well, aren’t you going to say hello to your mother?”
And then Joan was staring at the woman too. This was Marguerite Nightingale? Joan could see the resemblance now. Marguerite had the same fragile beauty as Aaron, the same delicate features, the same shining blonde hair.
Aaron made a visible effort to gather himself. “Hello, Mother,” he said hoarsely. He was so pale Joan thought he might pass out.Joan couldn’t imagine how he was feeling. Intheirtimeline, his mother had been executed for sheltering a member of the Grave family. Aaron had tried to protect her, but she’d been killed right in front of him. Afterward, his father had disinherited Aaron for trying to help her. He’d spread a cruel lie that Aaron had turned his mother in to the Court himself, and the Nightingales had blamed him for her death—leaving Aaron utterly alone.
“Mother... ,” Aaron said again. For a second, he looked and sounded much, much younger.
Concern crinkled Marguerite’s eyes now. “Are you quite well? Here, let me deal with the unpleasantries.” She bent and killed the red-haired man with a touch to the back of his neck. Joan’s gasp of horror was drowned as the dead man’s sister started to scream. A moment later, Marguerite had killed her too, with the same matter-of-fact efficiency.
Joan stared, shocked. Marguerite had just killed two humans. They’d been crying and terrified, and Marguerite had killed them as casually as tossing rubbish into a bin.
Aaron put a hand over his mouth, and Joan saw the moment it hit him that this wasn’t his mother but her counterpart, molded by this world to become as cruel and ruthless as his own counterpart.
“Come,” Marguerite said to Aaron. Joan and Nick might not have been there at all. She gestured at the pub above them, where the drinkers had been jeering from the balcony. They’d fallen silent after Marguerite had killed the humans. “You’ll feel better when you’ve eaten something,” Marguerite continued. “I’ve booked us a table at the Pelican.”
Fourteen
They followed Marguerite up algae-stained stairs to the pub above the dock.
On the foreshore below, the prisoners were slumped, dead, on their concrete blocks. Joan imagined that, when the tide rose, their bodies would be pushed into the river. The blocks would drag them to the silted bottom, still bound to the embedded rings.
Aaron glanced back, and Joan caught his eye again. He looked shaken. Joan could almost see his thoughts; he was horrified that he’d have to feign being Marguerite’s cruel son during lunch. He’d have to pretend he hadn’t just seen two people murdered by her hand.
From below, Ruth and Jamie hurried to catch up, Frankie trotting with them. Marguerite, Cassius, and Aaron were almost at the top of the stairs now, out of earshot.
“Who is that scary woman?” Ruth breathed.
“Aaron’s mother,” Joan told her.
“Hismother?” Jamie repeated. “In our timeline, Marguerite Nightingale was executed.”
“Seems she’s alive here,” Nick said.
“And executing people herself,” Ruth muttered.
“Everything happened so fast,” Joan said shakily, remembering how the woman had screamed as her brother had died. “Ithought we’d have time to save them—to argue the case. But Aaron’s mother just...”
Ruth sighed, the sound blending with gusting wind from across the river. The breeze brought with it the rotting brine of the foreshore, and Joan tried not to think about how many other bodies must be in that river.
“We didn’t get anything from the crowd; they were too scared to talk,” Ruth whispered. “And we didn’t want to push it. I got the feeling that if you sayanythingagainst the Queen here, someone will snitch.”
“Aaron’s having lunch with his mother and Cassius at the pub,” Joan whispered. “I think we should try again up there. We still need information about the wolves, about Eleanor—wehaveto get to her. Does she make public appearances? If so, when and where?”
“I’ll try to seed the conversation,” Ruth said.
“You extract, I’ll remember,” Jamie said to Ruth.
An illustrated pelican sign swung on a post above the pub door. The building was far older than it had seemed from below. The floor was flagstone, uneven with age, and polished to satin by countless footsteps. Nick ducked instinctively as he crossed the threshold; the doorframe was only a little taller than him.
Marguerite gestured to a table at the front of the pub, with a pretty view, through hashed windows, of Wapping Wall draped in ferns and ivy.
Joan moved to sit beside Aaron, and Cassius gave her a strange look. It hit Joan then that every person with a pendantwas on their feet, either serving in the pub’s uniform or standing behind tables. She faltered.
Aaron pointed at painted footprints on the floor, and Joan’s mouth dropped open as she realized she and Nick were supposed to stand on them. Nick gave Aaron a narrow look, as if he’d created the policy himself.
Aaron couldn’t have projected being more at ease with the situation, but he twitched when Nick took the spot right behind his chair. For all Aaron’s sharp comments last night, Joan had the feeling he was wary of Nick, maybe even a little afraid of him. Like all monsters, Aaron had been raised on bedtime stories of a legendary monster slayer—a boy who protected humans and slaughtered monsters. And here was Nick in the flesh,not a fictional character but a real person who’d been a slayer in multiple timelines now. Who could probably still kill every monster in this room if he turned his mind to it.
As Joan stepped into place, Ruth covered the awkward moment with a cheery: “Hello!” She leaned over to shake Cassius’s hand. “I’m Ruth and this is Jamie!”
