Page 123 of Never a Hero

The boat dipped as Nick made his way down the stairs. He sought and found Joan’s gaze, and her breath caught. For as long as she’d known him, he’d searched for her instinctively as he’d entered every room. He was still doing it, even now.

Jamie and Ruth came down next, and then Aaron, who removed his hat as he entered. His hair shone in a stray beam of sunshine, and the boat’s grandma lace curtains and duck-egg paint suddenly glowed around him, as if his glamour were reflecting on them.

He looked between Joan and Nick, eyebrows rising. He still seemed to be the only one of the group who’d registered the tension between them. ‘Cold in here,’ he said wryly.

Ruth looked puzzled. ‘Is it?’

‘Hmm,’ Aaron said. ‘Maybe it’s just me.’

Tom led the horse up the towpath, pulling them along the canal, with Frankie trotting ahead. The Victorian era rolled past: crumbling houses covered in climbing vines, smoke-billowing factories, towering brick chimneys, and then trees and more trees.

‘Never been on a Hathaway boat,’ Aaron said, looking at the view. ‘Quite a pleasant way to travel,’ he added, a little grudgingly.

Between the speed of the horse and the traffic on the canal, the boat arrived around lunchtime. By that point, Frankie was asleep on top of the boat.

They took the stairs from the canal bank up to the Roman Road bridge. The smells of a street market floated toward them, a funfair mix of sausages and toasted buns and baked apples. Ahead, canopied stalls lined the street with tables full of produce—apples and pears, fresh eggs, golden butter. Farther up, more stalls offered second hand clothes, shoes, furniture.

Joan almost missed the familiar slouched figure leaning against the wall behind the apple seller.

‘We should get some food as well as the stuff on the list,’ Jamie said, and Joan nodded absently. But as the others walked on, she reached for Tom’s arm to hold him back. She had no doubt who’d called in Owen Argent.

Tom waited obligingly until the sounds of the market were enough to swallow their conversation. They both kept their eyes on Nick. He didn’t seem to register Owen as he headed to a pie stall.

‘I know the Argent power has worn off him,’ Tom murmured to Joan. ‘His mind is free, isn’t it?’ He rubbed at his jaw. ‘Did you two make some kind of deal? Stop Eleanor first and then fight it out? Or are you planning to side with him in the aftermath?’

The questions jolted Joan. Side with Nick against who? Against him? Against Ruth?

Tom saw it in her face. ‘The former, then,’ he murmured. ‘So he’s with us until we stop her. And then what?’

After that, our paths will diverge, Nick had said. Joan swallowed. ‘I should have told you he was free,’ she admitted. ‘I was afraid of what you’d do to him. Of how he’d retaliate.’ She was still afraid. ‘What we’d do to him? What he’d do to us.’ Tom’s gaze was too shrewd, although there was a hint of something considering too, as if he was wondering what he’d have done if Jamie had been in Nick’s place. ‘And where would you be in all this? On the sidelines? In the middle?’

Joan didn’t want to fight at all. But it didn’t seem optional. How, she wondered again, had the original Joan and Nick made their relationship work? That Joan surely couldn’t have known what she was. ‘He is on our side right now,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen after we fight Eleanor. But Nick and I agreed that stopping her matters more than anything else.’

‘He agrees,’ Tom said. ‘You and Jamie agree.’

Joan was surprised. ‘And you don’t? Tom, we saw that world through the café window. We can’t—’

‘We can’t what?’ Tom interrupted her. ‘We can’t live in a world where monsters rule? Where Court Guards execute people at whim? Wake up, Joan! The Court already rules over all of us—human and monster. They already do whatever they want! Do you think it makes a difference if they do it openly or in secret? With or without the masquerade?’

Joan opened her mouth. She hadn’t thought of it like that. And at the same time, Tom laying it out gave her a strange feeling that they were still missing something. Monsters and humans will die in uncountable numbers, Astrid had said.

‘Jamie wants to stop this,’ Tom said. ‘And that means I do as well. I’d like Eleanor to die. I’d like to do it myself. But all that really matters to me is that Jamie is alive at the end of this. And that means protecting him from Eleanor and Nick. So you fucking bet I’ll have Nick compelled. And that’s only out of respect for you.’ The unspoken I’d rather take care of it in another way hung in the silence between them.

Joan swallowed hard at the implied threat to Nick. The Argent power is wrong, she wanted to say. It was what she’d told Liam Liu. But she remembered again washing Gran’s blood from her hands—red lines streaking the sink—and the words died in her throat. What if Tom was right? What if Nick turned on them the moment they stopped Eleanor? What if he killed them all? Or maybe it would be the other way around. Maybe Tom would kill Nick just to make sure Jamie stayed safe.

‘Jamie told me about Nick’s massacres,’ Tom said. ‘Are you really going to risk your cousin? The rest of us? In the hope that it won’t happen again?’

Nick had told her that they were only working together for one task. Tom was right. Joan couldn’t risk everyone else just because she cared about Nick. He’d killed all their families before.

‘If we do this, I’d want a guarantee,’ she said. Even saying that much felt so wrong. All her arguments to Liam still stood. Compelling Nick would only make him hate and fear monsters more. It would only make him more dangerous. And it was just wrong. Controlling a person’s mind was wrong.

And yet … After that, our paths will diverge, Nick had said.

A battle was looming between Nick and monsters. The battle lines had already been drawn. But maybe this would delay it—at least until they could all regroup. In the short term, this might be the only way to keep them all alive—Nick included.

‘What guarantee?’ Tom said.

‘If we put the Argent power on him, I want your word that he won’t be harmed. That no one will hurt him while he’s helpless.’ And helpless seemed such a strange word to associate with Nick. Before Tom could even answer, Joan added, ‘You owe me.’

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