Page 66 of Only a Monster

As Aaron’s face lost all colour, Joan had a strange feeling of almost knowing something. Like a word on the tip of her tongue, or like a dream that she couldn’t quite remember.

‘No,’ she said. ‘The King created this timeline. He used something to change the original timeline.’ That was true. She didn’t understand why she was so sure, but she was.

And at the same time, she felt unsettled. Why was the Court concealing Nick’s actions? And if the Court knew about Nick, why hadn’t they already stopped him?

‘We have to do something,’ she said. ‘I know there are things we don’t understand about this, but if Nick gets to the Court before we do—if he changes the timeline—he’s going to end us all.’

‘Joan . . .’ Aaron looked helpless.

‘No,’ Joan said. ‘No.’ She didn’t want to talk about anything but a plan. Because, Nick aside, they had to get to the Monster Court. She needed that device. It was the only way to bring back Gran and Aunt Ada and Uncle Gus and Bertie. She needed it to undo what Nick had done.

‘We can’t get there before he does,’ Aaron said. ‘We can’t get there at all. The Court sits outside time. It’s inaccessible. Nick took the only way in. The necklace.’

‘There must be another way,’ Joan said.

‘There isn’t,’ Ruth said.

‘There must be,’ Joan said. She needed to think. Instead she found herself helplessly remembering how Nick had slipped the necklace from under her shirt. How he’d looked at her. She tried to steady her breath—she didn’t want to cry again. She remembered how his knuckles had brushed her throat as he’d worked the clasp from her neck.

The necklace . . . A vague memory came to her. Ying Liu hadn’t been the first person interested in the necklace. Someone else had asked about it first . . .

‘When I first went to the market yesterday,’ she said slowly, ‘someone offered me money for Gran’s necklace.’

‘So?’ Aaron said. ‘Those stall owners buy and sell all kinds of junk.’

‘But it wasn’t junk, was it?’ Joan said. ‘It was a key to the Monster Court.’ Joan remembered the gleam of interest in the man’s eyes. Go on, he’d said, name a price. ‘If he buys stuff like that,’ she said, ‘then maybe he sells stuff like that too.’

‘If he does, then he’s mixed up in some dangerous things, and we should stay away from him,’ Aaron said.

‘If there’s even a chance . . .’

‘Joan.’ Aaron sounded helpless and scared. ‘The King’s power is absolute. We can’t just . . .’ He shook his head. He’d thought the term true timeline was blasphemous; Joan couldn’t imagine how he must be feeling about going against the King more directly.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said to him. He didn’t have to be part of this at all. ‘I’ll go down there and find the stall.’

But when she reached for the door, Aaron and Ruth followed her.

Joan pushed through the market. The Court Guards who’d raided earlier were gone, but they’d left behind an atmosphere of discontent and fear. One stall owner was crying as Joan passed her. The man who had stood at the stall with her earlier was nowhere to be seen.

‘What do you remember of this guy?’ Aaron asked Joan as they walked through what Joan now recognised as the twenty-first-century section of the market. There were clothes here that could have been from her own wardrobe at home.

‘I think he was a Hathaway,’ Joan said. He’d had their muscular build. Aaron grimaced.

‘You don’t like that family?’ Joan said. Aaron had been annoyed by the loud Hathaways at the inn.

‘They’re thugs,’ Aaron said.

The man wasn’t at his stall; his card table was bare. Joan thought about the crying woman earlier. She turned to the seller at the next table—a woman with a bob of grey hair and a youthful face. ‘Excuse me,’ Joan said. ‘Yesterday, there was a man here selling phones.’ She hesitated, not sure how to ask if he’d been caught in the raid.

To her relief, the woman pointed to the far end of the market. ‘Down the back.’

The back of the market was dingy and cold. There didn’t seem to be a particular time associated with it. Some tables were selling fresh eels and fish on ice. Other tables had nothing on them at all.

Muscular men and women watched Joan as she passed. All Hathaways, she thought. There were animals with them. Dogs, mostly, but Joan glimpsed some cats and an animal that looked more fox than dog.

‘I’ve never seen a dog like that,’ she whispered to Ruth.

Ruth glanced over. ‘It’s not from this time.’

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