Page 58 of Only a Monster

‘Please,’ Joan said. ‘Please. I need to know.’

‘Need to know what?’ Ying said.

‘How to undo deaths.’

The sad lines in Ying’s face were like carvings in wood. ‘You’ve lost someone.’

‘Yes,’ Joan whispered.

‘I can’t help you with what you want to know,’ Ying said gently. ‘You don’t owe me for telling you that you can’t bring them back.’

Joan couldn’t accept that. ‘Something or someone changed the timeline before,’ she said. ‘You have perfect memory, and you said that the Liu records are comprehensive. You must have heard something—some rumour, some whisper—about how it was done.’ She held out the necklace again. ‘Please.’

Ying started to shake his head as if to refuse one final time. And then he frowned, leaning closer to get a better look at the necklace. Joan heard his breath catch. ‘Where did you get that?’ he said softly.

Joan remembered the way Gran’s hand had slipped from her wrist, leaving the chain behind. She’d barely been able to see it through her tears that night. ‘My grandmother gave it to me.’

‘May I?’ Ying said. But instead of reaching for the necklace, he cleared the table, moving bowls and plates to the ground so that there was only the black tray left.

Joan draped the necklace across it. The gold pendant was very bright against the black.

There’d been blood on the chain after Gran had died. Joan had washed it that night in the shower. But she hadn’t really looked at it—she hadn’t been able to bear it.

Now she examined the pendant: it wasn’t the silver-tongued fox of the Hunts, but something else. At first, Joan couldn’t make out the intention of it. It was a creature with a lion’s head and the talons of a bird. It wasn’t much bigger than her thumbnail, but it was exquisitely detailed: three-dimensional and lifelike. It stood on a flat gold disc, ears up, head tilted in curious interest. The whole thing seemed to be solid gold.

‘I never noticed you wearing that,’ Aaron said to Joan.

‘It has a long chain,’ Ying said absently. The chain was gold too, and very fine. There were dark marks along it, as if the gold had been burned. Ying spread his fingers, touching four fingertips to the patches, and Joan had a sudden clear memory of touching the chain in those same places. The chain had been unblemished, and after she’d touched it, these dark patches had appeared. She’d thought at the time that the blemishes had been blood. But looking at the chain now, it seemed almost as if the gold itself had been transformed into something else. But how?

Ying looked at Joan again. There was something searching in his gaze, as if she hadn’t really had his attention before this. And now she had it completely. Joan was unexpectedly reminded of the way Edmund Oliver had looked at her in the Gilt Room. His indifference had changed to interest, as if he’d seen something inside her. The Hunts have been keeping secrets, he’d said.

‘What do you want to know?’ Ying said.

Joan swallowed. Her heart was beating faster, and she wasn’t sure why. ‘How was the timeline changed?’ she asked.

‘There are stories about the creation of our timeline,’ Ying said. ‘But they’re myths.’

‘Myths?’ Joan said. The human hero is a mythical figure, Ruth had said last night. ‘What myths?’

‘They say that the King created our timeline,’ Ying said. ‘Using an object. A device. He destroyed the zhenshí de lìshi with it and created this timeline in its place. Now this timeline is his timeline. Everything in it is just as he wishes it to be.’

‘What device?’ Joan said. They were so close to learning what she needed to know. If there was a way to get her family back, she had to have it.

‘All I can tell you is that it’s held at a place called the Monster Court.’ Ying was still looking at her with that new attention. ‘The seat of the King’s power. And you don’t need to ask me how to get to it.’ He picked up the necklace, and, to Joan’s surprise, placed it back into her hand, coiling it slowly before letting the end drop. ‘You have a key.’

Joan stared at him.

Ying stood up. ‘We’ll call on you when we need a favour,’ he said.

TWELVE

Joan and Aaron walked away from the Liu family gallery. Joan couldn’t stop touching the necklace Gran had given her. Could it actually be a key to the Monster Court? The seat of the King’s power?

‘You talked about the King when we first arrived,’ Joan said to Aaron as they walked.

‘Get that pendant out of sight,’ Aaron said, clipped. He was very tense. He’d insisted on walking back by a different route, and now he was checking over his shoulder.

‘Why didn’t Ying take it?’ Joan wondered. She tucked it carefully under her jumper. ‘I offered it to him.’

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