Page 52 of Once a Villain
Aaron swallowed. “Be safe,” he said to her softly.
“Yoube safe,” she said to him, touching his cheek.
Aaron’s gaze followed his mother out onto the dock as she left. Outside, the wind had picked up. Marguerite walked to a parked car, holding down the edge of her skirt. Tendrils of hair fluttered around her face, defying her neat bun. Joan couldn’t imagine how Aaron was feeling.
“Can you take us to the Oliver house?” Aaron asked Tom when he came back in.
“Of course,” Tom said easily. He made no move, though, to start the boat again. Instead, he leaned against the boat’s wall. “I need to know something first, though,” he said. “Whoareyou all? Becauseyou”—he nodded at Aaron—“are not the Aaron Oliver I know. Andyou,” he said to Nick, “look and sound uncannily like the gladiator.” He met Joan’s eyes. “And I knowyourface from a wantedposter.Joan Chang-Hunt.Strange thing is, a girl with a very similar name died in infancy about seventeen years ago.”
Seventeen
Joan took a step back.A girl with a very similar name died in infancy.She’d wondered where her other self was, and now it seemed she’d died here as a baby. Her name here would have been Joan Chang-Grave.
But how had she died? What had happened?
Joan had so many questions, but Tom was still looming over them all, blocking the way out.
“Who are you all?” he said. “Who are you really? Because Aaron isn’t the only one acting wrong. You humans keep looking me in the eye, as if you’ve never been trained out of the habit.”
Joan shivered. Ruth had been right that she and Nick weren’t behaving like other humans here. Tom followed her inadvertent glance at the window and tilted his head. “You all keep looking at the view as if it shocks you. What do you expect to see?”
Joan pictured her own city again—all the monster sigils swept from the skyline, St. Paul’s softened back to a dome. Homesickness stabbed at her as she ran through possible answers in her mind.You’ve got it wrong. We’re exactly who we seem to be.
The problem was, Tom was smart. Nothing ever got past him. Even so, he wasn’t quite like any of the Toms Joan had known. The first time she’d met him, Tom had been desperately searching for Jamie. The second time, he’d been living withJamie on a tranquil narrowboat.
This version of Tom, though, was different. He had an air of self-reliance, of wariness. He was even more closed off than the Tom who’d lost Jamie. This Tom had never met him.
Aaron lifted his hands. “Let’s be calm.”
“Thisisme calm,” Tom said. “Believe me, you’ll know if I lose my temper.” His huge frame was almost too big for the space; he made the boat seem like a toy around him.
Jamie spoke then.Hesounded calm—as if he couldn’t imagine ever fearing Tom. “I can hear another boat coming.” He went over to pick up Frankie from the floor—she and Sylvie had been staring at each other balefully. Frankie settled in his arms, huffing at Tom. She wasn’t scared of Tom either.
“Hmm.” The sound rumbled at the back of Tom’s throat. Outside, a louder rumble rose over the rhythmic splash of the river as a Court patrol boat emerged from the east, black and gleaming. An oil slick on the water. Behind it, the London skyline was even more sinister than it had been yesterday, its dark buildings reaching up like stalagmites in a cave.
They couldn’t just sit at the Nightingale wharf. Theyreallycouldn’t afford guards stopping to ask questions. With Tom here, they were just about the complete group that had fought against Eleanor at the end of the last timeline. “Tom, youhaveto take us to the Oliver house,” Joan said. “We have to get out of here.”
“You’re on a boat, on Hathaway territory,” Tom said. “I decide where we go.” As he said that, though, his gaze tracked the Court boat.
“So what—you’re kidnapping the head of the Oliver family?” Aaron said.
Tom rolled his eyes. “We both know I’m not.” He whistled a few notes, though, and the boat jumped back to life, heading east, away from the patrol boat. Away from the Oliver house.
Joan exchanged a look with Nick. They could rush Tom, she supposed. They were five against one, and they had Nick. But... at some point, without Joan noticing, Jamie had put himself subtly between Tom and the rest of them. So maybe it would actually be more like four against two.
Joan sighed. Truthfully, she wasn’t about to fight Tom either. He was her friend; he was Jamie’s husband.
Tom looked at them, one by one. “Dead girl,” he said, indicating Joan. “NotAaron Oliver.Notthe gladiator. Don’t know you”—this was to Ruth—“but I assume you’re anotas well.” He stopped at Jamie. “And then there’syou. Another one I can’t place.”
Hurt flashed over Jamie’s face. He was still unintimidated, though, even with Tom looming. Joan saw Tom realize with a slow blink that Jamie alone was unafraid of him here.
“My name is Jamie. I’m from the Liu family. Our sigil is the phoenix. Our motto is:bù ji kui bù, wú yi zhì qian li; bù ji xiao liú, wú yi chéng jiang hai.”
“What does that mean?” Tom said, almost to himself, and Jamie’s breath stuttered. Tom didn’t understand Mandarin anymore.
Jamie’s voice wasn’t quite steady. “Is it really true? You’ve never heard of the Liu family?”
Tom shook his head, but he searched Jamie’s face, brow crinkling, as if therewassomething familiar about him.
