Page 70 of Never a Hero

Where monsters rule … Joan hadn’t put it into words like that, but she saw again the bodies in the van. The terrified onlookers. She shuddered. ‘Did you see the statue on the other side of the street?’

Jamie barely blinked as he retrieved the view with his perfect memory. ‘The Semper Regina statue?’ Then his eyes widened. ‘That was her.’

Joan took a deep breath and tried to control her exhale. She didn’t know what was going on here, but only one thing really mattered right now. ‘We have to get Nick back from her.’

‘We don’t know where he is,’ Ruth said. She held up an exhausted hand before Joan could argue. ‘I’m in. I’m just saying we don’t have a place to start.’

Jamie bent absently to soothe Frankie, who was pawing again at the edge of the seal. ‘We have to figure it out,’ he said. ‘Because you’re right, Joan. She was planning something last time. She made him into the hero for a reason. She can’t be allowed to do it again.’ Tom made a protesting sound, and Jamie’s expression shifted to stubborn determination. ‘I can’t run from this,’ he told Tom. ‘We always knew she might be back someday.’

Joan knew what he meant. Some part of her had been waiting for the woman’s return too; had been braced for this moment ever since she’d woken up in this new timeline.

‘Jamie—’ Tom started.

‘Something is really wrong here, Tom,’ Jamie said to him softly. ‘Whatever’s sealed off in there … it shouldn’t exist.’

Tom looked raw in the way he only ever did around Jamie. ‘I’m there when you have those nightmares,’ he whispered. ‘I’m there when you wake up. I can’t let anything like that happen to you in this timeline. Just—’ His voice cracked. ‘Let me face this. Stay home with Frankie.’

Jamie took Tom’s hand. A non-verbal conversation seemed to pass between them. Jamie apparently won the argument because Tom dropped his head. Jamie held on, running his thumb over Tom’s ring until Tom looked up at him again, his face so full of love and fear that Joan hurt for him.

‘I wish I could remember more details about her,’ Jamie whispered. ‘I wish I could remember something actually helpful. But … she could have taken him anywhere. I can’t think of any clear leads.’

A car drove past, flaring light into the room. They all turned nervously to the windows. The view outside was mundane now: coffee and clothes and perfume shops, all lit up. No guards in sight.

There was one obvious lead. The thought filled Joan with dread and a strange kind of yearning ache. ‘We know who took Nick,’ she said.

‘We know she’s associated with the Court,’ Tom said, ‘but—’

‘I don’t mean her,’ Joan said. She saw again Aaron’s fine-boned hand on Nick’s wrist. ‘Aaron Oliver captured Nick. To find Nick, to figure out what’s going on here, we have to go after Aaron.’

twenty-one

Joan was braced for guards as they slipped from the café. Maybe even for Nick to reappear with a knife—transformed back into a monster slayer. But Covent Garden was its ordinary evening self, brightly lit and crammed with people: tourists and theatregoers meeting up for drinks; workers rushing home.

Jamie consulted the records in his mind as they walked back to the boat. ‘There’ll be a masquerade party at the Oliver estate on Sunday. Aaron will be there.’

The Oliver estate. A kind of reckless urge washed over Joan. She wanted to go there now—without even a plan. She just wanted to get this done.

She took a deep breath. Think, she told herself. A house full of Olivers was dangerous. The true Oliver power was rare, but in a gathering of Olivers, it seemed likely that at least some of the guests would have it. Aaron had it. He—and some of his family—would be able to identify Joan’s forbidden power just by looking at her. They’d know that Ruth was from an enemy family.

But there was a clear solution to that, at least. It was a masquerade … Joan and Ruth could veil their eyes with masks.

‘Their actual house?’ Ruth sounded somewhere between intrigued and nervous. Joan was relieved to see how much better she looked. The colour was already back in her cheeks, and she was walking under her own steam again.

‘Well, outside the house,’ Jamie said. ‘It’s to be held in their famous gardens.’

They passed the arches of the market, lit up like Christmas. Music pounded from somewhere nearby, heavy with drums. Aaron would have hated everything about this scene, Joan thought with a pang, from the loud music to the shuffling pace of the crowd.

She could hardly believe she was heading toward him now. She’d spent months telling herself she’d never see him again. And when she had finally seen him, she’d had to run from him.

‘What do we know about Aaron?’ Tom asked. He bent to pick up Frankie, tucking her under one arm.

Jamie ran a hand through his dark hair, thinking. ‘He has a reputation—the Nightingales loathe him.’

‘The Nightingales?’ Joan said. What did the Nightingales have against him?

‘His own family hates him,’ Ruth said. ‘He was supposed to be the next head of family, but his father removed him from the line of succession.’ She lifted her eyebrows. ‘Hated by the Nightingales and the Olivers …’

‘Two formidable families,’ Tom murmured. ‘What did he do?’

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