Page 97 of Only a Monster

‘You need to give me what you found,’ Tom said softly.

‘What it is?’

‘I told you. It’s a message.’

Joan shook her head. ‘I’m going to need to know more than that.’

A muscle jumped in Tom’s jaw. That was the only warning Joan had before the sudden burst of violence. In one fast movement, Tom had closed the gap between himself and the others. He threw Ruth and Aaron into a wall with easy strength.

Before Joan could react, Tom was shoving her too. Joan’s shoulders hit the wall. After a stunned moment, she dove at him. He pushed her back again, almost casually, with one big hand. Joan was furious with herself. Tom had shown her exactly what he was at the rendezvous, and she’d just—

A car door slammed nearby. Joan froze.

Tom stared at Joan meaningfully, one finger at his lips. Shhh. He released his grip on her. She realised then that Tom had pushed her—and himself—into a doorway recess. Aaron and Ruth were in an identical recess opposite. Anyone looking from the street would see an empty alleyway.

Two more car doors slammed. Then footsteps sounded.

Joan risked peering around the recess. About twenty paces away, a woman and two men were walking into the alley from the street. Joan pulled back again, heart thumping. They were all wearing pins with the winged-lion insignia. All three were easily Tom’s height, although not quite as muscular in build.

‘How much longer?’ one of the men said. ‘We’ve been patrolling all night.’

‘There was a sighting near here,’ the woman said.

‘There’ve been sightings all over. You ask me, they’ve already escaped this time.’

‘They were hit by Sai Patel himself. They’re still here,’ the woman said. ‘Conrad pulled guards in from all over. Took me out of the Victorian era. If he did that, he needs them found.’

The footsteps got closer. Joan could hardly breathe. In the doorway opposite, Ruth and Aaron looked terrified. The doorways were too shallow to hide any of them completely. If the guards just looked—properly looked down the alleyway—they’d see all of them standing there.

‘Do you believe the rumours?’ the woman said. ‘Of strange powers used in the archive? Something forbidden.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Something wrong.’

‘Above my pay grade,’ the man said.

‘What about that other tip-off, though?’ the woman said. ‘About a half-human girl with a strange power? That can’t be a coincidence.’

Joan couldn’t breathe at all now. They were talking about her.

In the opposite doorway, Ruth’s face creased with confusion. She had no idea what the guards were talking about—not about the power and not about the tip-off.

Joan had a suspicion of where the tip-off had come from. Dorothy Hunt is not a good person, the innkeeper had said. Joan’s gran would never have hurt her. But the woman in the bar . . . Joan remembered how that young version of Gran had looked at her: as if Joan were nothing to her. Horribly and annoyingly, Joan felt tears prickling. She clenched her teeth, forcing them back.

‘Wouldn’t mind that reward, though,’ the man said.

‘A favour from Conrad himself,’ the woman said. ‘Imagine that.’

The tips of their long shadows reached Joan’s feet. Tom touched Joan’s hand to get her attention. Ready? he mouthed to her. Joan was almost too tense to nod. Tom gave her a slight smile, trying to be reassuring. Me first, he mouthed.

The shadows stayed motionless. The moment seemed to stretch and stretch. If not for Tom’s chest rising and falling beside her, Joan would have thought that time itself had frozen again. She began to shake from unused adrenaline. Beside her, Tom’s muscles were smooth and ready as though he could have waited all day in that tensed posture.

A sudden loud noise made Joan jump. It sounded like the squeaky music from an old-fashioned video game.

The woman groaned. ‘Just because we’re in the nineties doesn’t mean you need a stupid ringtone,’ she complained.

‘There was a sighting near Rotherhithe Station.’ It was the second man—the one who hadn’t spoken yet.

And now, finally, sounds of movement. The shadows began to retreat.

‘Were they caught on camera?’ the first man said.

---