Page 86 of Only a Monster

Inside the slice of Palaeolithic time, the rolled rug that they’d used as a bridge was lying on the snow. It hadn’t vanished like the twig had. Would the Court guess that the Hunt power had done that?

‘We have to get out of here,’ Joan said. ‘Right now.’

SEVENTEEN

They clambered up the stone staircase and ran back the way they’d come.

Joan’s mind was racing, and she could see that the others were trying to figure out what had happened too. They’d broken into the Monster Court. They’d thought they’d find the transformatio—the device that could change the timeline. Instead they’d found a recently vacated prison cell.

Who had been in that lonely cell? Joan wondered as she ran. Why had they been put in there?

She shook her head at herself. Whoever the prisoner had been, she couldn’t help them. She hadn’t even been able to help her own family.

She ran through suite after luxurious suite, until her breath was hot and painful in her throat. Was the transformatio somewhere else in the palace? Was there still a chance she could find it here and save her family?

No. She knew the truth. They’d had one shot at this. Any second now, the guards would be alerted. The only thing left to do was flee.

Joan ran hard, reaching the suite with the curtains flung wide and the view of the frozen Thames. Breath ragged and legs straining, she glanced over her shoulder to check on the others.

No one was behind her. She stumbled to a stop. Through the doorway, she could see that the previous room was empty.

Panic struck her like a blow. Where were they? She tried to remember when she’d last heard them running behind her. Not for a few minutes, she realised. But how had she lost them? Had they taken a different route?

She took a deep breath, trying to force the panic down. There was no time to look for them, or for them to look for her; the guards could arrive at any moment. Joan would have to find her own way back to the chapel and hope that everyone else would make it too.

A last look over her shoulder and Joan started running again. And almost collided with someone running the other way.

Nick.

For a split second, the shock of seeing him was overwhelming. Nick was here and solid and real. In the café, there’d been a table between them, but there was no barrier now.

Nick’s face betrayed his surprise, but Joan reacted first. She used her momentum to drive her knee into his thigh. He hissed in pain, but he dodged her next kick and managed to hustle her backward. Joan threw her hand up to his neck, just as he pinned her against a wall. His thighs were pressed against hers, chest against her shoulders.

Joan’s hand curled around Nick’s neck, her thumb under his jaw. But he’d pulled a knife. It glinted in the moonlight, its tip pressed against her side. The sharp point of it hadn’t quite penetrated the thick velvet of her dress, but she could feel the pressure of it threatening.

They both breathed in and out, staring at each other. He was dressed for the gala in a beautiful black tuxedo, his clothes tailored for once to his muscled frame. His crisp white shirt made his hair look darker. His silk pocket square was a perfect thin line. He looked good.

Joan could kill him right now, she realised with a shot of horror. At the Pit, Aaron had said that you could kill someone if you took more time from them than they had left. All Joan would have to do was concentrate on one big block of time, and Nick would drop at her feet, dead.

And Nick could kill her too. All he’d have to do was thrust that knife.

Nick’s breaths sounded as loud and unsteady as Joan’s. Over his shoulder, Joan could see that frozen tableau: the unrippling river, the unmoving trees. She felt just as frozen. She and Nick were standing at the edge of a cliff. One wrong move and they’d both fall.

Nick’s knife arm felt very tense. ‘Did you get it?’ he whispered.

Joan supposed she should lie, but she shook her head.

They were as close as they’d been when they’d kissed. But where there’d been tenderness in Nick’s face in the library, now Joan could only see pain. ‘You stole time,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘You stole human life.’ In the Gilt Room, he’d told her: I only kill monsters who steal human life. His arm shifted, and Joan tightened her hand against his neck. Do it, she told herself fiercely. Take time from him. In turn, Nick’s arm tensed even more.

As he shifted position, his arm ground into the wound in Joan’s side. She flinched and gasped, and Nick’s eyes widened. The pressure vanished. ‘You’re still injured?’ he breathed.

‘What do you care?’ Joan said.

There was a shadow of agony in his eyes. ‘Would you have stolen time again if I hadn’t killed your family?’ he whispered. He sounded raw.

Joan was surprised by the question. ‘No,’ she blurted. It had been an accident the first time. She’d never wanted to hurt Mr Solt. She found herself suddenly and horribly close to tears. ‘How were you even in the nineties?’ she said thickly. ‘How can you travel in time if you’re not a monster?’

‘I’m not going to tell you that,’ he said, in the flat way that he spoke about his mission.

---