“Is it a word that humans gave you all?” Nick asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your people have powers,” Nick whispered. “You’d seem dangerous to some humans. Maybe even monstrous. But . . .” He shook his head. “Back in that alley, Jamie was scared of me. Of being found out.” With each word, he sounded sleepier.

  He had picked up on Jamie’s fear. Joan had a flash of the other version of him, the bodies of four monsters lying behind him.

  “I think it’s a word humans gave you because they were scared of your powers,” Nick murmured. “Always about fear in the end.”

  Thirteen

  Joan woke to the wash of water and the low drone of an engine. The porthole window framed a slow-moving view of brick buildings with white lattice windows. She’d fallen asleep in darkness, but Jamie must have opened the shutters. Now sharp sunshine glared off glassy water. The white sky had cleared to smears of cloud against blue.

  Somewhere outside, raucous laughter rose; dogs barked; someone whistled a cheerful trill. They were nearing a mooring.

  Nick breathed steadily beside Joan, still asleep, his head against the cushion, body slanted toward her. Joan felt the echo of his heavy warmth against her side. Had they been pressed together at some point?

  Until now, Joan had been forcing her gaze away from him. Had been looking at him in glimpses. Now she let her eyes roam. His body was like a classic sculpture. A young Mars, she thought. The god of war. With his head tilted, the vulnerable underside of his jaw just showed. A sudden sense memory hit Joan—of her mouth right there, the prickle of stubble against her lips. Another memory followed fast: the rough pad of his thumb running over her own lower lip.

  She sat up and squeezed her eyes shut. That had never happened. She’d never kissed him like that. He’d never touched her like that. It was just a fantasy of her tired mind. Or maybe a lost remnant of the original timeline.

  Either way, this was just proof that she needed to be more vigilant about how she looked at him; how she thought about him.

  Under her, the cushions shifted as Nick stirred. He breathed in sharply, tensing as he realized he was somewhere unfamiliar. For a second, he was a coiled spring.

  “We’re on the boat,” Joan whispered. “We’re safe.”

  She had expected him to tense more. The word monster stood between them now. But to her surprise, he relaxed at the sound of her voice, his shoulders loosening. “Joan,” he said, voice gravelly. Her name came out lengthened and soft, like he was murmuring a prayer.

  He opened his dark eyes, gaze seeking hers. Joan’s stomach flipped over. Asleep, he’d been impossibly handsome, a classical statue. Awake, that football-captain, popular-boy charisma made his looks even more magnetic. For a second, she couldn’t pull her eyes from him.

  Outside, Tom called out something, and Jamie answered. The view rotated, showing a glassy marina lined with apartment buildings. And then they were drawing up alongside a narrowboat, much smaller than the barge. Like on Tranquility, a double-headed hound ran across the side, the painter’s hand not as skilled as Jamie’s.

  “Where are we?” Nick said.

  “I think we’re with Tom’s family—the Hathaways.” Beyond that, Joan couldn’t guess. The piled-up brick buildings said they were still in London, but the sun seemed too high in the sky for that. They must have slept hours, and it wouldn’t have taken that long to get out of the city.

  She stood, reaching for the wooden wall by the door for balance. Her whole body ached. However long she’d slept, it hadn’t been enough. Nick took her cue and got to his feet too, his long legs straightening. He stretched, T-shirt riding up to show defined muscles. Joan dragged her eyes to the porthole fast.

  “Who’s the artist?” Nick nodded at a jar of paintbrushes on the galley bench.

  Joan hadn’t noticed them. “They must be Jamie’s. He grew up in his family’s gallery.”

  “I like his work,” Nick said. “I like that.” He lifted his eyes to the wall above them.

  Where the wall met the ceiling, there was a green feature panel. Joan had taken it in as solid color. But now she saw that it was a detailed illustration: a riverside scene. It ran like a ribbon around the boat, beginning with grazing fields here in the living area, and gradually becoming woodland in the galley, and then wildflowers in a glade. It was beautiful.

  Joan followed the green line of fields and woodland. She’d wondered how Jamie could live on the water. He’d been wary of the rain when she’d last seen him—a vestige of his torture. Now, though, on the rocking houseboat, with the outside world visible through every window, Joan saw how far this really was from the stark, windowless cell he’d been kept in last time. Here, Jamie was always connected to the outdoors. Even with his eyes closed, he’d feel it.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Nick said.

  Joan took a breath. Some part of her had been bracing for it. She’d wanted to be standing for it. She’d said the word monster in front of him. He’d come to his own conclusion about it, but he’d been half-asleep at the time. Now, with a clearer mind, he must have been reassessing.

  Joan readied herself. In her mind’s eye, she saw one of Jamie’s paintings. Jamie had been obsessed with the hero myths, and he’d depicted Nick standing outside a town house, poised to kill its occupants. The hero knocks, Aaron had said, as if it was a familiar subject of art in the monster world.

  “You know . . . ,” Nick said softly, “you get this look sometimes.” Joan blinked up at him. She didn’t know what he meant. “A hunted look,” he said. “It’s on your face right now. I don’t want to be the cause of it.”

  Joan hadn’t realized she was being so transparent. “What did you want to ask me?”

  Nick searched her face. “You made that mark on the Portelli window, didn’t you?”

  Joan felt herself tense even more. That wasn’t the question she’d been expecting. “Yes,” she admitted. There was no point in lying about that. He’d seen her reaction to the mark. He’d helped her hide it.

  Nick hesitated. “It was a power, right? Like the other powers we’ve seen?”

  And suddenly this felt more dangerous than anything he could have asked about monsters. Could he hear her heartbeat? It seemed louder now than the water outside.

  I used that power on you, she thought. I unmade you like I unmade that glass. The words she could never say echoed in her head. “Yes, it was a power.”

  “Is that why the Court is after you?” Nick asked. “The people in the gambling room were talking about a girl with a forbidden power. . . .”

  Joan swallowed. She thought he’d missed that comment from the gamblers—he’d seemed consumed by the view of the Viking attack. But she should have known by now that he was always paying attention. Especially when it seemed like he wasn’t.

  “They’ve come after you before,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  Joan nodded.

  Nick’s eyes darkened with something dangerous. “Why is it forbidden?” Joan imagined him comparing her power with the Argent and Griffith powers and finding it seemingly innocuous.

  I unmade you with it, she thought again. You used to be someone else.

  The truth was, though, she still knew almost nothing about her power. She didn’t understand how it worked or where it had come from. She barely had control of it.

  “I don’t know,” she said. But with a shiver, she remembered again the words she’d overheard in the other timeline. A guard had spoken of Joan in a whisper: A half-human girl with a strange power. Something wrong.

  Nick was silent for a long moment. “Do your friends know about it?”

  Joan bit her lip. “Jamie knows. And I think he told Tom. Other than that . . . only my gran. And now you. And . . . and I guess someone at the Court suspects it. My gran warned me never to tell anyone.”

  Nick’s eyes flashed, the danger deepening. “I wonder how the Court found out.”

  The danger wasn’t directed at her, Joan saw then, in slow realization, but at the people who’d come after her. Guilt gnawed at her. It should have been directed at her. She’d upturned his life. And if he knew how she’d last used that power . . .

  “That look’s still on your face . . . ,” he murmured. His voice gentled. “I promise, Joan. You never need to be afraid of me. I won’t tell anyone about that power. No one will learn about it from me.”

  Unease roiled in Joan as she ascended the short flight of stairs onto the deck. If Nick ever figured out what she’d done to him . . . who he’d been . . .

  Was she endangering everyone here—Nick included—by keeping him with them? She’d told herself that it was safer to stick together while they were being hunted by the Court, but was that true? She had another flash of Jamie’s painting—of the hero standing outside a monster house, ready to kill everyone inside. It seemed disturbingly prescient suddenly. Nick was in a monster house right now—this boat was Tom and Jamie’s house.

  She emerged to bright light and unimpeded sky. Someone had taken down the canvas walls, transforming the wheelhouse into an extended deck. Joan saw Tom first, working the steering, looking over his big shoulder as he backed up into the mooring space. And then Frankie, snoozing on the padded seat at the boat’s nose; she’d found a sunbeam, and she lay with her white belly up, snoring, apparently unbothered by the shudders of the boat.

  “Oh good, you’re awake,” Jamie called to Joan from a pontoon. He pulled at a guide rope. “We’re here.”

  Joan shifted so that Nick could come up too. Where was here? They were in a big marina full of boats—dozens of them: sailboats, speedboats, narrowboats, barges—bright in the afternoon sun. The closest boats were all Hathaway: barges and narrowboats with double-headed hounds on flags and in paint.

  “This is Limehouse,” Nick said, looking around. “We’re not far from where we started.”

  “The Hathaways still call it the Regent’s Canal Dock,” Tom said, “but yeah. Had to play keep-away from the guards for hours. We were down in Putney for a while. Came back up here after the raid cleared. You two slept right through it. Even slept through the lock.”

  Joan shaded her eyes from the water’s glare. The Hathaway sprawl was on the walkway too. Muscled figures sat on deck chairs, their animals snoozing and running around chasing seagulls.

  Joan did a double take at a familiar figure at the edge of the Hathaway group; a familiar cloud of dark hair. Her heart slammed in her chest. “Ruth!” she shouted.

  “Careful,” Jamie said as he realized her intention. “I’m still tying up!”

  But Joan couldn’t wait. She jumped to the pontoon and ran. “Ruth!”

  Ruth met Joan halfway up the pier, and Joan threw her arms around her, staggering, legs still wobbly from the boat. Ruth squeezed her back hard.

  “You’re here!” Ruth said hoarsely. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard!” She bent her head, mouth muffled against Joan’s shoulder. “What happened? You disappeared off the face of the earth! And then out of the blue, I get word from Edith Nowak that you’d shown up in this period at the Wyvern Inn.”

  Joan was getting choked up already. “Long story.”

  Ruth pushed her back, scanning her, and Joan took the opportunity to look at Ruth too. She was in a black blazer and slim trousers—in the tight cut of this time. Her slash of red lipstick was more crimson than Joan was used to. Other than that, though, she seemed her ordinary self.

  “What happened?” Ruth said again. “Gran thought you’d been taken by the Court!”

  “A bunch of Court Guards came after me at work,” Joan said. “They—They killed my friend Margie.” She heard her voice shake. “And I guess I’m a fugitive now. They put a mark on my wrist.”

  Ruth pulled Joan back in at that, arms tight around her. “How did you get away? How did you find the Wyvern Inn? I heard you had a human with you.” The word human was a whisper, like she was saying something scandalous. “That you took him into a monster inn.”

  “Nick was in the bakery when they attacked,” Joan explained. “They tried to kill him too, but we escaped together. And the rest of it . . . It’s a really long story.” Too long for a rushed conversation on the pier, and she could hear the others approaching. She bunched her thumb and fingertips together in a hollow fist, and then flattened her hand. A Hunt hand signal: later.

  Ruth’s forehead creased. Joan could tell she wasn’t satisfied, but she made the same signal in affirmation.

  Joan turned to greet the others. “My cousin Ruth,” she said, introducing her to them.

  “Hi,” Nick said amiably. “I’m Nick.”

  Ruth took him in—his square-jawed movie-star face, the muscles under his T-shirt. Her eyebrows went up. “Joan saved you from an attack?”

  “He saved me,” Joan said.

  Ruth’s guarded interest shifted to something far more serious at that. “He saved your life? Well, then our family owes him a debt.”

  Nick reddened slightly. “We saved each other.”

  Ruth gave him a long, thoughtful look. Then she turned to the others. “And you’re the other rescuers?”

  “Tom and Jamie,” Tom said.

  “And Frankie under Tom’s arm.” Jamie tilted his head. “And you’re the infamous Ruth Hunt. Bane of the Liu houses.” It was so straight-faced that Joan wasn’t sure if he was joking.

  It was Ruth’s turn to flush, but Tom chuckled. “What did you do?” he asked Ruth. “Steal from them?”

  “I would never—” Ruth started.

  “A lot of times,” Jamie said. “You know, you’re technically banned from Liu houses. I don’t know if we can take you to the safe house.”

  “Seriously?” Ruth said. Joan still couldn’t tell if Jamie was joking either.

  “I was banned from their houses for a while.” Tom’s tone was nostalgic. “Don’t worry. They’ll forgive you. They’re all soft touches, the Lius.” He glanced over at Jamie, and Jamie’s straight-faced facade cracked into a twinkle.

  Frankie wriggled in Tom’s arms, and he bent to release her. As soon as she was down, she shot along the pier to where the Hathaways were set up with their card tables. A black cat trotted up to greet her.

  “Come on,” Jamie said, starting to walk.

  “Where are we going?” Joan said. “What’s this safe house?”

  “It’s a place up ahead on shared Liu and Hathaway territory,” Tom explained.

  Joan took that in with puzzlement. “I thought Liu territory was up near Covent Garden.”

  “It is,” Jamie said. He drew a lopsided shape in the air that Joan guessed was meant to show the territory. “The main Liu house used to be on Narrow Street. This is London’s original Chinatown.”

  “Used to be bustling here,” Tom said. “Big boats with cargo and passengers. Felt like the center of the world for a while.”

  It was pretty bustling now. Jamie led them around the marina, past half a dozen Keep This Path Clear signs. The Hathaways had ignored them; the walkway was full of deck chairs and card tables. Fresh fish and tomatoes and buttered bread sizzled and spat on portable grills. A white-haired man chopped parsley on a board. There were animals everywhere. Cheerful dogs jumped from deck to deck, nosing at snoozing cats. A sleek rat slept in a man’s pocket, and a bright bird sat on the top of a Hathaway flag and trilled. There was even a large snake curled snugly around a boat’s chimney.

  Joan fell into step beside Ruth. Ahead, Tom and Jamie walked with Nick. Frankie bounced around Nick’s ankles, and he bent to touch her soft head. “She’s not a puppy,” Tom said over the cheerful noise of the Hathaways—apparently answering a question from Nick. “She’s a toy bulldog—an extinct nineteenth-century breed.” Nick seemed fascinated.

  They passed a woman standing on the roof of a narrowboat, mopping around a sleeping cat with mottled orange-and-black fur. She whistled a short phrase, high enough to cut through the cacophony on the walkway. The string of seven notes was full of sharps and oddly unmusical.

  A few boats up, a big man with a heavy brown beard sat on his deck. He would have been intimidating, but as Joan watched, a cheerful-looking black dog trotted out from the interior and settled so that the man could lovingly brush its woolly fur. Without stopping his task, the man repeated the woman’s unmelodic whistle.

  And now the tune jumped across the walkway to a group of people chatting under an umbrella. They stopped their talking just long enough to echo the whistle in a mismatched chorus.

  “It’s a language,” Ruth said before Joan could ask, “but not a complicated one. They’ll just be saying that there are strangers coming in with Tom and Jamie.”

  “A language like the Hunt hand signals?” Joan asked. Did all families have a secret language?

  “Yeah, but ours is better,” Ruth said so seriously that Joan had to bite back a smile. Apparently, the rivalry between monster families extended into every corner of their lives.

  Up ahead, the others had pulled out of earshot with their longer strides. Joan watched Frankie dart under a card table to investigate a morsel of dropped food. She darted back out again, a bit of buttered bread in her mouth.

  “Hey . . . ,” Joan said to Ruth tentatively. Part of her was afraid to ask, and part of her wanted to know desperately. “How’s my dad?”

  Ruth’s eyes went soft. “He’s okay. Gran told him some of the truth.”

  “She told him about monsters?” Joan said, shocked.

  “Not all of it; just enough to explain what happened to you.” Ruth took Joan’s hand and squeezed. “He was trying so hard to find you himself—to start this big campaign in the media. She had to tell him to keep you both safe.”

  Joan took a shaky breath, near tears suddenly.

  “I can tell him you’re alive,” Ruth said, “but you can’t go see him; you can’t talk to him. You’re a fugitive—we can’t risk it. We can’t risk him.”

  Joan knew it, but she couldn’t bear it. “How is he actually?”

  “He’s sad,” Ruth said honestly, and Joan swallowed hard. “He’s doing okay. He’s still in the same house. He met someone last year—Elsa. She moved in with him last spring.”

 

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