Page 94 of Once a Villain
Joan drew a wondering breath as a woman walked past carrying a basket full of carrots and onions. Her gray-streaked hair was pulled into a bun, with ringlets framing her lined face. The monster world was so strange sometimes—this woman was long, long dead and couldn’t have known that monsters were watching her from a window that didn’t even exist in her time.
“Looks like 1665, or maybe 1666. Just before the fire,” Aaron murmured, and Joan stared at the scene with new eyes. That street was less than a year from destruction, and the whole city was in the grip of the Great Plague. One in five Londoners would die of it. “It looks just likeour1600s,” Aaron added, forehead creasing. “No changes from Eleanor yet.”
“Jamie said that our timeline didn’t really diverge from this one until the 1800s.”
“She must have had a hand in this timeline earlier than that,” Aaron said. “Bythisperiod”—he nodded at the window—“the spire of St. Paul’s had already fallen to fire. The dome we know should have been built a couple of years after this.”
The image of Eleanor secretly and slowly changing the skyline to suit her own tastes creeped Joan out. More than that, she felt a tingle of primal warning at the tip of her spine. Eleanor always played the longest games, and Joan had the unsettling feeling she was still playing now somehow. That her plans weren’t over yet.
Joan folded her arms around herself, pushing Eleanor from her mind. Eleanor had hurt them all enough. Joan didn’t even want to think about her unless she had to.
A flight of dark stairs at the back of the room led to a short corridor with numbered doors on both sides. At the third door on the left, there was an unobtrusive mark in chalk on the floor—a circle with a dot inside it. The Hunt sign forSafe. Joan released the breath she’d been holding. If the others had been captured, Ruth would have done her best to scrub off that mark as she’d been dragged away.
Joan scratched at the door rather than knocking—not wanting to make too much noise in the middle of the night. After a moment, it opened a crack, and Tom’s crooked nose appeared, along with the tip of a knife.
“Did you getlost?” he hissed, pulling Joan and Aaron inside. He gave the corridor a sweeping look, then closed the door again, locking it behind them.
Two small windows showed the seventeenth-century street they’d seen downstairs. Disconcertingly, the view up here was evening rather than afternoon—with no street lighting. Joan peered out and saw a flame bobbing up and down in the middleof the road. The small figure of a child was holding a torch, guiding a group of people to the pub across the street.
The rest of the room was basic. It was a single space with built-in bunks along the walls, each with a privacy curtain. Opposite the windows was a small countertop, just large enough for a sink with taps and a kettle. There was no bathroom—Joan guessed there was a shared one at the end of the hall outside.
Ruth rolled out of the nearest bed. She’d been snuggled up with Frankie and Sylvie.
“You’re late!” she scolded, pulling Joan into a hug. “Where have you been?”
“Sorry,” Joan said. “We... Well...” A flush crept up her neck. She and Aaron had been in his bed.
“We couldn’t get here earlier,” Aaron said coolly. “We had to wait for the crowds to die down.” His face seemed harder than it had been even a few minutes ago. He’d pulled his mask on again. Not his counterpart’s, but the one Joan had always known him to wear; the one that made people think he was superior and cold. Joan hadn’t realized he’d removed it for her these last few hours. Not until this moment.
Jamie sighed. “Took us ages to get here too.” He was sitting on the bunk above Ruth’s, and he hopped down now, using a couple of steps on the ladder.
Ruth squeezed Joan harder. “I’m sorry about Nick,” she said softly.
Joan swallowed hard and nodded. She glanced at the bunks again—there were six of them. Two stacks of three. One for each of them, plus Nick. Her chest constricted. Nick should have beenhere with them. He was supposed to be here.
Ruth’s gaze tracked from Joan to Aaron, and Joan saw her register the Oliver logos. The fact that Joan and Aaron were matching. “Where did you get thoseclothes?”
“We went back to the Oliver house,” Joan admitted.
“Well,thatwas unwise,” Tom said.
Joan felt defensive of Aaron. She’d been a deadweight. “I don’t even know how he got me out of the colosseum—I wasn’t helping at all.”
“No, itwasunwise,” Aaron said to Joan heavily. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Jamie sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter where we go. We’re all outside Nick’s protection now. If Eleanor wants to send guards for us, she’ll find us wherever we are. We’re just waiting her out at this point.”
“Who monograms their tracksuits anyway?” Ruth said to Aaron.
Aaron glared at her. “Some of us are proud of our families.” He plucked a box of value-brand tea bags from beside the kettle. “Tell me this isn’t the only tea in the room.”
“It’s not that bad,” Tom said.
“Itisthat bad,” Jamie said. “And there’s no milk or sugar.”
Aaron dropped the box and wiped his hands as if he’d been touching dirt.
We’re just waiting her out.Jamie had made it sound like all was lost.
