Page 61 of Once a Villain
“But... you were at the Oliver house this morning,” Joan said to Jamie. “And last night.” They were going to the Oliver house now. She could feel Ruth’s and Nick’s confusion—and Tom’s. They didn’t know about the true Oliver power—the rare ability to differentiate family from family, just by looking into someone’s eyes. Last time, the Olivers had been tasked with mopping up the remnants of the Grave family. It had to be the same here, for the Lius.
Aaron understood at once. “Who did you speak to at the house?” he asked Jamie urgently.
Jamie opened his mouth and closed it. He was barely holding it together. “Only your valet,” he managed.
Aaron swore under his breath. Geoffrey had the true Oliver power, apparently.
“What’s going on?” Ruth said. “Who cares about the valet?”
Aaron waved his hand at her dismissively. “How close did he get to you?” he asked Jamie.
“Close.”
“Did he look into your eyes?”
Jamie hesitated for just a moment. “No.”
“You’resure?” Aaron said.
“Perfect memory,” Jamie reminded him. “I’m sure.”
“What exactly’s going on?” Ruth said.
“None of your business,” Aaron said, more out of habit than heat. When Ruth scowled in response, he gritted out: “Oliver stuff.” Ruth blinked, but surprisingly she accepted that. All the families had secrets.
“Where else can we go?” Joan said. “Back to the Serpentine?”
“No,” Aaron said. “We have resources and power here that we won’t have elsewhere.” To Jamie, he said, “You need to keep your head down around Geoffrey. Watch me for cues. I’ll tell you if you need to worry about anyone else.”
Joan caught Tom’s expression again as Jamie turned, shaken, to walk up the hill.I’m not saying I’ll help you, Tom said to him earlier. But his gaze now was dark and protective, as if some bone-deep part of him was already starting to remember what Jamie had been to him.
At the house, Aaron ushered them all up to the Oliver library—a round room upstairs, in his private wing of the house. He’d toldGeoffrey to take the night off. “Send some food up before you turn in, though,” he’d said, glancing at Joan. “Whatever’s immediately available.”
If Geoffrey thought they were an even odder group than last night, he didn’t comment on it. He just nodded respectfully.
The food arrived shortly afterward on silver trays—slices of cold roast duck and fresh bread and butter, and a ceramic bowl with a sauce of sour cherries.
Within a few bites, Joan felt the world solidify again. She hadn’t realized how out of it she’d been until she’d eaten. And as her mind sharpened, the room seemed to sharpen too. The library was bigger than she’d first grasped. They hadn’t really explored Aaron’s wing of the house—they’d gone straight to his bedchambers last night.
Here, books covered curved walls, floor to ceiling, with sliding ladders provided for the upper shelves. A glass dome showed a golden sunset, tinted in blue, glinting stars beginning to emerge.
Jamie closed his eyes. “The damage is worsening,” he murmured, quoting the message again. “We’re running out of time to stop her. We’ve done what we can to prevent her from locking things down, but she’ll have plans of her own, and she might still outwit us.I wish I could help you, but you’re alone in this now. You can get to her. You have what you need. Godspeed....”
“They were trying to stop Eleanor from locking the timeline too,” Ruth mused. “I wonder what exactly they were planning to do.”
“I think the last part of the message is more important,”Joan said. They had to assume that Eleanor would still outwit them, as Nick had said. That she’d lock the timeline, whatever the counterparts had done. “Nick said that Aaronhad what he neededto get to her now. To stop her.”
“He has to be talking about the cipher,” Nick said. “The numbers at the end of the message. It must describe where and when she can be intercepted.”
“I think so too,” Joan said.
“Tell us the numbers again?” Ruth asked Jamie. She’d found some blank paper on a desk, and enough pencils for them all. She passed them around now so that they could all write as Jamie dictated.
“Right then,” Joan said. “Let’s break this code. We just need to find the book Nick used.”
Hours later, Joan wanted to scream with frustration. Together, they’d checked most of the books in the library, and all the ones in the walkway leading to Aaron’s suites.
In front of her, the page of the latest book swam in and out of focus. There were some strange numbers in the cipher: the first three were 9 1894 1. Tom had suggested they represented chapter, line, and word, but it had quickly become apparent that book chapters just weren’t that long. They’d switched to chapter, word, and letter numbers instead. Joan rubbed at her eyes now. Were they still wrong about how the cipher had been encoded? Surely, Nick’s counterpart hadn’t expected Aaron’s to accurately count such high numbers.
