Page 25 of Only a Monster

Vera shrugged. She slid a numbered key under the glass and pointed at the fire door. ‘Lift’s broken.’

‘I’d have preferred sleeping under a bridge,’ Aaron told Joan as they tromped up the stairs. Cockroaches scuttered alongside them.

‘Nick won’t look for us here,’ Joan said.

‘Nick.’ Aaron looked at her sideways.

‘I—I knew him before tonight,’ she said.

She looked away from Aaron’s sharpening gaze. ‘We were—’ She stopped at the stab of pain in her chest, harsher and sharper than the pain in her side. She’d kissed Nick just before all this. She’d wanted it so much. ‘I knew him,’ she managed.

Aaron was still looking at her. Joan had the unsettling impression that he was seeing more than he should have. Then his eyes dropped to a yellow stain on the fraying carpet and he grimaced. ‘Well, of course he won’t look for us here. No one would come here. Rats wouldn’t. Health inspectors clearly haven’t.’

He was back to his annoying superiority, but for just a second Joan had seen something underneath that careless exterior: something more insightful and intelligent than she’d realised, and more alien. It occurred to her that he wasn’t human. And that, for all that she was half-monster herself, she didn’t really know what a monster was.

The stairs ended in a long corridor with peeling wallpaper that showed layers of older patterns underneath: blue paisley and sallow orange. The edges of the carpet were nibbled to threads—Aaron had been wrong about the rats.

Joan found their door number and then leaned against the wall while Aaron struggled with the stiff lock. The pain from the sword wound was starting to get to her. She touched her side underneath Aaron’s jacket and found fresh blood on her fingertips. Shit.

Aaron reached inside. There was a click. A single dim bulb illuminated the room. Two beds. A private bathroom with an uncurtained shower and a toilet. Everything they needed. Better than Joan had expected.

‘Oh, this is unmitigated hell,’ Aaron said. The view through the window was the dark glass of an office building. He stared at it grimly and then snapped the curtain shut.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ Joan said.

Aaron pointed at the ceiling. There was a cloudlike brown stain on it. ‘What’s that?’

‘A fresco,’ Joan said. As Aaron wandered into the bathroom, she considered their situation. The lock might have been stiff, but the door was as thin as her finger. There was a single flimsy bolt.

She shrugged off Aaron’s jacket and squeezed herself between the two beds. Then she shoved the nearest one. It didn’t want to go at first. She forced it, inch by grinding inch, until it was up against the door. With any luck, that would slow down anyone trying to kick the thing in. The jolt of pain hit her belatedly. She leaned on the bed and breathed. Goddamn Lucien.

‘Here,’ someone said, right beside her, and Joan flinched. For a second, all she could see were Edmund’s cruel grey eyes. The round muzzle of the gun.

She raised her hand instinctively to push him away.

‘Fine. Do it yourself, then,’ he said, and Joan’s vision cleared. It was Aaron, his mouth disdainful. He dumped a first-aid kit on the bed along with a hand towel and a bowl of soapy water. ‘What kind of hotel has a first-aid kit in the bathroom, and no robes?’ he said. ‘Nice place you’ve brought us to.’

Joan stared at him as he picked up his jacket from the bedside table. She wasn’t scared of him, she told herself. She’d been afraid of his father, but she’d seen Aaron at his basest self. He was a coward. He might be more than a head taller than her, but if it came down to a fight between them, she was sure that she could take him.

Aaron didn’t seem to notice the way she was looking at him. He made a show of shaking out the jacket and walking to the wardrobe. ‘Really,’ he said. ‘Clothes should be hung. Not tossed aside like wrapping paper.’

Joan pulled herself together enough to say: ‘Not exactly important right now, is it?’

‘It’s important to look respectable. We represent our families.’

Their families were dead. He seemed to remember it at the same moment she did. He stood, frozen, a hand on the open wardrobe door. ‘Well,’ he said. He closed the wardrobe with more force than necessary. ‘These coat hangers are wholly inadequate.’

The first-aid kit had been raided before—it was that kind of place. Joan sat on the bed and sorted through what was left. Bandages. Tape. Antiseptic. Scissors.

She peeled up the mess of her tank top. Aaron hissed. ‘It’s not all mine,’ Joan said. She suspected it was mostly Gran’s.

Aaron came over to sit on the bed opposite hers. There was a small gap between them—so small that they were practically kicking each other. ‘What exactly happened back there at the house?’ he said.

Joan looked up at him. He was stupidly good-looking. In his designer suit, he made this poky little room seem almost glamorous. His hair shone like a crown.

‘You mean after you left the Gilt Room?’ she said.

He hesitated. ‘Yes.’

---