Page 70 of Once a Villain
And where do these two rank?Aaron had said, frowning.
Tom had swiped a hand over his mouth, half covering that strange expression from earlier.Nick was valuable when he was the gladiator, but he’s supposed to be dead, and so is Joan. They’re unregistered and unranked. Fair game to anyone, I suppose.
Now the men sized JoanandNick up with something between contempt and an open hunger that made Joan’s skin crawl. She wasn’t even sure if it was a hunger to steal life, or to dominate and crush. Whatever it was, it made her increase her pace, head down. She was desperately glad that Nick was here with her.
It hit her anew that this was their first time out in the world outside of Aaron’s protection. She felt almost sick with fear. How did the humans of this world make it through daily life, feeling like this all the time?
“Is this what it feels like to be catcalled?” Nick murmured to her when they were out of earshot.
“Well...” Sort of. “If the catcallers were vampires....”
Nick made a sound at the back of his throat that Joan guessed was amusement but sounded more like a growl. And Joan hadthe strange feeling that he would have almost welcomed a confrontation from those guys—the chance to put them down. That he would have preferred that to scurrying away like this.
She imagined his counterpart, born and raised here, trained in the arena and forced to fight. He would have chafed so much against this world.
Farther north, the paving ended and the streets became sticky mud. This was what Jamie had called thehuman end of town. Here, the buildings weren’t laid out in any kind of plan but dumped in a jumble, taking whatever open ground they could find. Together, they were a mess of crumbling brick walls and gaping windows, patched with boards and flapping rags. Birds nested in slumped roofs, and chimneys puffed dark smoke, thickening the air to acrid soup.
Joan was reminded of the rookeries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the slums of London had been so miserable and crowded that plagues had started here. She squelched in mud as she walked—at least she hoped it was mud. She could imagine what Aaron would have been saying if he were here. A couple of barefooted kids crouched in the street, their heavy pendants a sickening reminder of their status in this world.
Nick stopped outside a precariously leaning building that shouldn’t have been three levels high. His shoulders dropped as he took in the broken windows above, the holes in the wooden roof. “I think this is the place.”
If Eleanor gave me that choice again, I’d choose you again. Every time, he’d said. But, surrounded by the consequences of thatchoice, Joan wondered how that could be true.
He caught her expression and lifted her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “We’re going to fix this,” he said softly. “That’s why we’re here.”
Joan nodded, trying to smile. As Nick knocked on the door, her neck prickled. She looked over her shoulder and glimpsed a man staring at them from a gap between buildings; another watching from a window. Nick tucked her closer to him.
“Be ironic if we got attackedhere,” Joan whispered.
Before Nick could answer, the door opened, revealing a thin, long-limbed boy. He had lighter hair than Nick, but the same strong brow. “I saw you from the window!” He grabbed Nick’s arm, dragging him inside. “What are youdoinghere? Quickly!” He started up a wooden staircase that wobbled under his feet.
The boy matched Tom’s description—sandy-haired and about thirteen. He must have been Finn.
Joan’s throat tightened at Nick’s shell-shocked expression. She remembered Nick pounding desperately at his own front door. He’d been ripped from his family and dragged into the monster world. It struck Joan that he hadn’t seen them since. That some part of him had never believed he’d see them again. Not until this moment.
His family had been close, she knew.Eight of us in a two-bedroom flat, he’d told Joan once.My brothers and I all slept in the TV room until I was seven.
“Were you seen?” Finn asked now over his shoulder.
Nick took a breath, visibly pulling himself together. “I-I’m not sure. I hoped the disguise would be enough.”
“Disguise?” Finn paused on the staircase to peer at him. “Huh. Youdolook different. What happened to your scars? Wait...” A smile started at the corners of his mouth. “Are you wearingmakeup?”
“Shut up,” Nick said, his exasperation more automatic than felt.
“Who’s your friend?” Finn turned his grin on Joan. “He must like you if he’s done himself up for you.”
Joan hadn’t expected Finn to be such a little brother. She found herself smiling a little. “I’m Joan.”
“Finn. The better brother,” he said, and Joan bit back a wider smile.
Nick rolled his eyes. “Just keep walking.” As Finn turned, though, Nick’s expression shifted to something grimmer. He’d caught sight of the thick pendant at Finn’s throat.
Like the server at the Pelican, the two numbers around his neck were the same: 8 3 27. Eight years, three months, and twenty-seven days left of life.
Nausea hit Joan. How much time had been stolen from Finn already? Because according to that pendant, he’d never see his twenty-second birthday.
“You all right?” Finn asked Nick as he walked up.
