Page 125 of Once a Villain
“Too fast to see,” Tom said.
“No,Isaw it,” Jamie said. “I saw twothings. A dead cedar in the middle of an empty lawn. It looked like it had been struck by lightning.”
“Yes,” Joan whispered. That lawn was on the northern side of Holland House. “That’s where we want to go.” This was going to work.
“And the second thing I saw was the void,” Jamie said grimly.
“Aaand that’s where wedon’twant to go,” Aaron said.
Joan tried not to imagine crawling shadows inside the door they’d made. “It’s okay,” she whispered to Ruth. “Just try again. Try to hold it open longer this time.”
Ruth looked unnerved. Joan would have been too if she’dopened a portal into the void. “What if I send you all into oblivion?” Ruth whispered.
Aaron pushed his hair from his eyes, looking more annoyed than Joan knew he felt. “Then we’ll all haunt you.”
“You won’t exist anymore,” Ruth said, but arguing with Aaron always seemed to make her feel better. “All right, shut up for real now.”
In the frame, the scene appeared again in a flash—long enough this time for Joan to see it. The garden was adorned for the celebration, fairy lights hanging in the cedar, the lawn covered with snow. It was only there for a second before the view was swallowed by a brief flash of the shadows. A glimpse of the void.
“I didn’t dress us for winter,” Aaron whispered.
“I think that’s the least of our problems,” Tom muttered. “We can’t cross in that split-second opening,” he said to Ruth. “We won’t make it. You need to hold it open longer.”
Ruth stepped back, breathing fast. “I’ll try—it’s not easy.” She didn’t seem as desperately drained as last time, though. The repeated practice seemed to be strengthening her Hunt ability. “Get ready,” she said to Nick. She put her hand on the frame again.
Joan felt a sudden wave of trepidation. Nick had died yesterday; she couldn’t bear to lose him again.
They’d already discussed this, though. Nick was the fastest and strongest of them, and his training as a monster slayer had lingered into this timeline. If an attack was waiting just out of view, he’d be the best placed to neutralize it before the rest of them came in.
“I’m going to count you down,” Ruth said. “Ongo, okay?”
Nick gave Joan a reassuring look, and then turned to Aaron, his expression less readable. Aaron seemed to understand perfectly, though. He nodded at Nick.
Nick squared up in front of the frame, shoulders set and determined, and Joan couldn’t breathe.
“Three,” Ruth said, “two,one,go!”
Nick leaped as the portal flashed into life, and then he was gone.
“Did he make it?” Joan could hear the fear in her voice, and Aaron put a hand on her arm.
“Yes,” Jamie said. “I saw him in the garden.”
Joan gasped out a relieved breath.
“All right,” Ruth said. She sounded a little shaky too. “Tom, you’re up next.”
Tom jumped through, and then Aaron followed.
“They’ve all made it,” Jamie reassured Joan. And then he jumped and was gone too.
“We’re going together.” Joan squeezed Ruth’s hand again. “Just catch your breath.”
Ruth shook her head. “We don’t know if time passes differently in there. We shouldn’t leave big gaps between jumps.” She straightened. “Ready? Three, two, one—”
The frame flashed up an image, and Joan leaped, dragging Ruth with her through the frame. For a horrifying split second, her vision was full of utter nothingness, and then she and Ruth were stumbling out into a snow-sprinkled lawn, the lightning-struck cedar stark and black ahead of them. Joan had an impression of biting cold, of snow hanging in the air, and then Nick pulled herand Ruth down behind a hedge a few paces from the gate. He put a finger to his lips as Tom leaned over and swiped away their footprints from the path with the sleeve of his coat.
They’d all arrived safely, Joan saw, relieved—Jamie and Aaron were crouching behind the hedge too, and Frankie and Sylvie were snug in their backpacks. Snow stood in the air around them, eerily unmoving, although when Joan touched the nearest crystals, they melted under her fingers. In the distance, footsteps crunched over the snow—the reason Nick had pulled her and Ruth down, Joan guessed.
