Page 119 of Once a Villain
Nick gathered himself with visible effort. “Seems like our next stop is the Monster Court. We’re breaking in.Tonight.”
Joan wet her dry lips. “I thinkyoumightbebreaking in,”she said apologetically to Ruth. Ruth had broken them out last time. Hopefully, the process was reversible.
“Well,” Tom said, looking between them all, “sounds like we have a lot to talk about.”
Thirty-Three
Mum parked the car on a balding patch of dirt at the edge of a field in Kensington around eleven p.m.
Joan stepped out. It was a cold, black night. Even with the headlights on, she could barely make out the field’s sea of overgrown grass and the pale glint of wildflowers. The other side of the road was a line of cypress trees, with another road beyond it.
Joan felt disoriented. She knew Kensington well. She’d volunteered at a museum here over the summer holidays; it was where she’d met Nick and Aaron. But this empty stretch of land was unknown to her.
She shuffled back as Aaron drew up in a borrowed car. With seven of them—plus Frankie and Sylvie—they’d had to take two vehicles. Aaron parked beside Mum and climbed out with Jamie and Tom. “Where on eartharewe?” he said.
Ruth peered over the low wooden fence separating the road from the field. “Why is the Court manifestinghere? I thought it always manifested in old buildings.”
“There was a castle here once,” Mum said. “It burned down in the 1800s, and this has been a field ever since.”
“A castle?” Aaron said, puzzled. “Here?”
But Joan saw it then—lines of raised grass in the field, theremnants of a once-formidable foundation. They stretched on and on; this estate must have been huge in its heyday.
“You know...” Mum pulled out a pocket watch. “I thought there’d be guests here waiting by now....”
It was cold enough that their breaths came out in white puffs. They were all wearing long black coats to stay hidden in the darkness, and Joan pulled her lapels tighter, trying to ignore her unease. “I guess we’re early.”
But an hour later, and several degrees colder, they all knew they’d gotten this wrong. Midnight had struck, and the gate to the Court hadn’t opened. They were still alone here.
“Damn it,” Mum breathed. “Eleanor’s not opening the gates this year. The assassination attempt must have rattled her.”
“It’s okay,” Aaron said. “There are more opportunities, aren’t there? You said the gates always open onto the same party. So we just need to go to a time when theyareopen.”
“They opened fifty years ago,” Mum said, “but...” She shook her head. “That jubilee isn’t accessible via time travel. It’s blocked off—you’d have to reach it the slow way, by living. The only way to travel directly to the gate is by invitation to the jubilee party. The invitation allows you to bypass the block, and travel to the time when it opens.”
Joan looked up at the clouded sky. The tears were still up there, she knew. She pictured them growing and growing until they breached the containment of their seals and consumed the whole timeline.
Would Nick’s and Aaron’s counterparts have fixed all this ifthey’dbeen here? Had they really intended to reach Eleanor atthe arena? What if they’d actually planned to come to this party instead?
How would they have gotten through the gate?
The words in the ring came to Joan again.You have what you need.
In all the chaos and relief of Nick’s return from death, Joan had forgotten they’d originally gone to the Argent house for the ring.
She retrieved it from her pocket now, remembering how she’d found it, wrapped up with Nick’s faked execution notice, in Aaron’s bedchambers. It was a plain thing—chunky and black, with a square signet, the hidden compartment completely invisible.
“You know,” she said to Nick, “you used to be able to time travel—when you were a monster slayer. I never learned how.”
Nick looked both curious and puzzled by the non sequitur. To be honest, Joan was too. She wasn’t quite sure why she’d said that.
She remembered him appearing unexpectedly in a café in 1993.Only monsters can travel, Joan had said to him. And Nick had said,Only monsters and me. And I travel in a different way.Idon’t steal time.
“Humans can’t travel unless they’re cuffed by a guard of the Court and dragged,” Ruth said.
“The strongest of the Hathaways can transport humans,” Tom said. “Like pets.”
“What?” Nick said to Tom, disconcerted.
