Page 70 of Only a Monster

‘You actually saw a member of the Monster Court?’ Ruth sounded disbelieving. ‘One of the Curia Monstrorum? Which one?’

‘Conrad,’ Aaron said. He answered the question in Joan’s expression. ‘We call him the King’s Reach. He’s the King’s authority in this time. He’s responsible for enforcing the law two centuries into the future and three centuries behind.’

‘Kind of like a policeman?’ Joan said.

Aaron’s face went pinched. ‘Not really like that, no.’

‘Conrad came. In person?’ Ruth asked. She still sounded disbelieving.

For a moment it seemed like Aaron was going to leave it at that, but then he set his jaw. ‘I was there. I was at school with my cousin Kit when Conrad came.’

Joan glanced at Ruth. Her posture was still sceptical, but Joan could tell she wanted to know more.

‘They say that Conrad was a Nightingale once,’ Aaron said. ‘When he ascended to the Court, he revoked all ties to his family. His loyalty is only to the King now. But he still has the Nightingale power. He can steal life from monsters.’ His tone was becoming more subdued. ‘And . . . they say he can do other things. They say he can force people to travel with him.’

‘He forced your cousin to travel with him?’ Joan asked Aaron.

Aaron didn’t seem to hear her. His attention was on something inside his own head. ‘Kit and I were walking back to our dorm room. When we turned the corner, Conrad was waiting for us.’

Aaron swiped a hand over his mouth. ‘He told us to follow him outside. He took us to the pond down by the football field. Well, they called it a pond, but it’s more like a lake. I didn’t go down there much. People used to say it was haunted.’ Aaron’s mouth twisted. ‘Conrad just stood there, looking at us. Then he said: “Do you know why I’m here?” He was so casual. He said: “Someone’s been taking time at this school. Students who attend are eighteen percent more likely to die before the age of seventy-five than the general population.” He said that one day that anomaly would draw the attention of human authorities. He said that the King didn’t tolerate mistakes like that.’

‘What did he do?’ Joan asked, hushed.

‘He just . . .’ Aaron’s hands curled into fists. ‘He told me to go to my room. I went. I stayed up all night, but Kit didn’t come back. The police dredged the pond for him in the end. Because, see—’ His voice cracked, finally. ‘See, back in the sixties, they’d found a boy’s body in that pond. They thought maybe something like that had happened again.’

‘Oh,’ Ruth said, soft.

Aaron’s hands uncurled and curled again. ‘We must have heard those stupid ghost stories a hundred times.’

‘You just walked back to your room?’ Joan blurted. ‘You didn’t try to help your cousin or anything?’

Anger flashed over Aaron’s face. ‘What do you know about going up against the Court?’ There was a horrible rawness in his voice. A tone that Joan didn’t fully understand.

‘Okay,’ Ruth said placatingly. ‘Okay.’

‘Shit.’ Aaron thumbed the corner of his eye. ‘We can’t do this. We don’t have a plan. We’re not trained to fight. We have nothing.’

‘We’re going to plan this,’ Joan said.

‘We don’t even know what we’re looking for! We have no idea what this device looks like! We don’t know where it will be! We wouldn’t even know if we saw it!’

‘You’re right,’ Joan said. ‘Okay, you’re right. You’re right.’ And he was right. They couldn’t plan this knowing as little as they did. They needed more information.

Joan knew what she had to do.

The innkeeper was alone when Joan arrived at the inn. It was very late. Joan had left Aaron and Ruth asleep at the flat. Only the lights of the main dining room were still on. The wall of stained glass was dull without the backdrop of daylight. The cauldron of stew bubbled softly over the low-burning hearth.

‘Was wondering when you’d come back,’ the innkeeper said. He was sitting by the hearth, reading a book. As Joan got closer, she saw that it was in a language with a non-Roman alphabet.

‘Have you found her?’ she said.

The innkeeper dug into his pocket and retrieved a folded piece of paper. But he didn’t give it to her. ‘Dorothy Hunt is not a good person,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what your business is with her, but you want my advice? Put this in the fire.’

Joan held out her hand for it.

Without her phone, Joan had to ask for directions and then more directions just to get to Soho. By the time she got to the address, the night was cold and black.

She stood outside the door, feeling a wave of déjà vu. Aaron wasn’t with her this time, but there was a plaque beside the black door: a sea serpent engulfing a sailing ship. This was a monster place.

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