Page 118 of Never a Hero

Ying didn’t seem surprised that Joan had lingered. ‘You already owe the Lius a favour.’ His tone was not unkind. ‘We do not allow people to owe two.’

Joan should have expected that. The last time she’d been here, she’d had to bargain for information. And Ying had just given up knowledge for free, but Jamie had been present for that. Ying wouldn’t require payment from his own son.

‘There’s something I need to know,’ Joan said to him. ‘Something unrelated to Eleanor.’

Rather than answering immediately, Ying gestured for her to sit on the wooden chair opposite him. He poured more tea for her. The fresh-grass scent of it mixed with the less pleasant smokiness of this time.

‘What is your question?’ Ying said. It wasn’t the promise of an answer, Joan could tell. Just an invitation for her to ask.

Some part of Joan didn’t want to articulate it. ‘The last time I saw you,’ she said, ‘I offered you a necklace in return for information. You refused it.’

Ying gave her a searching look—one that reminded her of their conversation in that other courtyard. She hadn’t had his attention until she’d shown him that necklace, and then she’d suddenly had it completely.

‘I remember,’ he said softly.

Joan touched her collarbone, where the necklace had once sat. ‘There were dark patches on the gold chain.’ She’d made those marks. As Gran had lain dying, Joan had clutched at the chain. It had been the first time her power had manifested—she’d reverted the metal to ore.

‘I remember,’ Ying said again.

Joan swallowed. She shouldn’t have been saying any of this to Ying, but she had to know. ‘Your expression changed when you saw those marks. You recognised them. They were made by a power, and I think you’d seen that power before.’

‘You have not yet asked me a question.’ Was there a gentle note in his voice?

If he were going to turn her in, he’d have done it last time. ‘It was a power outside of the twelve families,’ Joan said. She saw again Edmund Oliver’s face, full of loathing. You don’t even know what you are. Joan braced herself now. ‘My gran gave me that necklace. It was untarnished when she gave it to me, but after I touched it …’

‘It was marked,’ Ying said. He had seen her power before. ‘Ask me your question, Joan.’

Joan wet her dry lips. ‘We told you that there were tears in the timeline—in a café and at Holland House. But there was something we didn’t tell you. Something that I didn’t tell the others.’

For the first time, Ying seemed puzzled by Joan’s line of conversation. ‘Go on.’

‘Those tears in the timeline are in places where I used my power. I used it in that café—in the exact spot where the tear was. And I used it at Holland House—on Nick.’

‘You think you tore those holes in the timeline … like the boy in the fairytale?’ Ying’s expression was hard to read.

Joan ducked her head. Ying wanted her to ask directly. A favour owed for a question answered. ‘Why is my power forbidden?’ she said. And then she found herself blurting out too: ‘Why does the Court want me dead? What am I?’

‘You say that as if you were some kind of aberration. Some creature that slipped out of the void itself.’

Edmund had once called her an abomination. You should have been voided in the womb, he’d said.

‘I tore open the timeline like the boy in the story,’ Joan said. ‘I damaged the timeline. I … I think Astrid’s warning could have been about me. Maybe I’m the cause of the cracks in the world; maybe I’m going to tear the timeline open and throw us all into the void.’

Ying regarded her. ‘Astrid’s warning was not about you. I do not believe you have been damaging the timeline.’ He always looked sad, and right now melancholy hung over him like a storm cloud.

‘How do you know?’ Joan asked.

‘Do you remember the children’s chant?’

‘Olivers see. Hunts hide …’ Joan started. Ying had recited it to her last time. It was the chant that monsters used to teach their children about the family powers.

Ying completed the chant in his resonant voice: ‘Olivers see. Hunts hide. Nowaks live. Patels bind. Portellis open. Hathaways leash. Nightingales take. Mtawalis keep. Argents sway. Alis seal. Griffiths reveal. But only the Lius remember.’

‘The twelve families of London,’ Joan said, feeling uncertain. Why was Ying telling her this again?

‘Yes,’ Ying said, ‘but there is a secret version of that chant. One that only the Lius know. It has a different ending.’

Joan felt herself start to tense and wasn’t sure why. ‘What ending?’

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