Page 24 of Never a Hero

Good memory runs in my family, he’d told Joan once. They’d just started an early shift. They’d been mopping the foyer, sunlight slanting in through the shutters, making stripes on the floor so that it was hard to tell what was water and what was shadow. At the word family, the rhythmic swish of Nick’s mop had paused, and Joan had turned to find his head ducked, his nape exposed above his collar. Nick had never liked to talk about his family. That morning, though, his guard had seemed down. When he’d spoken again, it was with the northern burr that always came out when he was tired. But I was trained to notice things too.

Trained? Joan had said, confused.

Taught, Nick had corrected himself quickly. And before Joan could ask who had taught him that, he’d changed the subject and the moment had been gone.

Now, in the station, Joan scanned the crowd too. People’s clothing and technology seemed subtly different, although she couldn’t have said what had changed. Maybe the cuts were more tailored; maybe the phone screens were brighter and sharper. If anyone was a monster, Joan couldn’t pick them out.

‘I remember all the people who attacked us at the bakery,’ Nick murmured as they made their way to the exit. ‘But there were a couple more attackers I didn’t see.’

‘Hmm?’

‘At my house,’ Nick said. He hesitated, and Joan suddenly knew what he was about to say. ‘Did you … recognise one of them?’

His eyes were still on the crowd. Around them, the sounds of the station clamoured: trains, near and distant; people hurrying; tourists chatting. He wasn’t aware of the cat-and-mouse game they were in, Joan told herself. He just wanted to know more about the attack that had upended his life.

‘His—his name is Aaron.’ It felt strange to say his name aloud. She hadn’t said it since the last time she’d seen him. It was her turn to hesitate. ‘I met him over the summer.’

‘They said they brought him in because he could identify you,’ Nick said. He looked curious. ‘Who is he?’

‘Just … someone I knew for a while.’ It felt wrong to phrase it like that. Aaron had meant something to her by the end. He still meant something to her. She couldn’t believe he’d been in that garden. That he was working to hunt her down. She put a hand to her cheek where Aaron had touched her on their last day together. Joan, if you somehow remember this, remember what I’m saying now. You have to stay far away from me. From me and from my family. Never let me close enough to see the colour of your eyes.

Joan hadn’t felt a glimmer of her power since she’d burned it out on Nick. She’d never even used it in this timeline. Someone knew about it, though. If Aaron had been called in to assist with the search, they surely knew.

Nick’s dark eyes turned to her with the same intense attention he’d given to the crowd. ‘Why do I get the feeling,’ he said slowly, ‘that whatever happened to you over the summer, it was bad?’

Joan opened her mouth, feeling off-balance. She’d expected him to ask about the attack again. To ask how exactly she knew one of the attackers. She didn’t have an answer for this. You happened, she thought. You happened to me, and I happened to you. But it had been more than that. Edmund Oliver had tried to kill her. The Monster Court had tried to kill her. And now someone was after her again. That was what Nick had been caught up in this time.

‘What does he look like?’ Nick nodded at the crowd.

Joan took a breath. ‘Blond with grey eyes,’ she said. ‘He isn’t here.’ She’d have known if he were—Aaron Oliver turned heads. Crowds rippled around him like he was a stone thrown into water.

She braced herself for the next question, but instead there was a flicker of measurement in Nick’s expression. She watched him make the decision not to push. He knew, she thought. He knew she was keeping something from him. Not unintentionally. Not I didn’t get the chance to tell you. But deliberately. He knew.

They emerged from the station into a clouded London morning. The glass-and-steel monolith of Blackfriars Station was exactly as Joan had remembered it. There was no sign of the six years that had passed without them.

Cars and trucks crawled past as they made their way along Blackfriars Bridge, heading for the staircase down to the riverside walk. Scaffolding to the east and west blocked most of the view, but on the other side of the bridge, the One Blackfriars building looked just as it always did, pale and sail-like under the white sky.

Nick’s vigilance began to ease slightly. They hadn’t seen a single monster since Milton Keynes. Joan loosened a little too. Maybe they really had escaped.

‘I thought there’d be more differences,’ he said, looking over the railing at the cars streaming by on the underpass.

‘Six years isn’t so long, I suppose,’ Joan said. ‘On a city scale.’ On a personal scale, though …

Nick gave a crooked smile, acknowledging the unsaid part of it. ‘You know what’s weird? I keep thinking I’m late for Sunday football. I get up at six on Sundays to coach my brother’s team. And then I’ve got my own match after that.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Joan said, half on autopilot. And then she properly heard what he’d said. ‘Except about waking up early.’

Nick chuckled, two lifting notes of surprise, as if he hadn’t expected to laugh. ‘Not an early riser?’

‘No,’ Joan said. ‘I’m usually the last one up.’

Nick’s answering smile was unguarded, and something heavy eased in Joan’s chest. ‘What about you?’ she said. She tried to picture Nick lounging about but couldn’t. He’d always arrived early for shifts at Holland House, even the punitive seven a.m. ones. Joan used to imagine him going to bed at dusk and rising at dawn, Spartan-like. ‘Do you ever sleep in?’ she asked.

Nick’s handsome face scrunched, as if he had to really think about it, and something dangerously fond started in Joan’s chest, easing the weight a little more.

‘I—’ Nick broke off, his gaze snapping to something ahead.

Joan turned fast. Had he seen one of the attackers?

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