Never a Hero, page 21
“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 theatergoers 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 color 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?”
Joan had wondered about Aaron’s disinheritance too. She’d wanted to ask him about it last time, but it had clearly been a tender subject for him.
“Whatever happened, both families kept it from public record,” Jamie said. “Everything about the disinheritance is scrubbed.”
“Imagine doing something so bad that even the Olivers draw the line,” Ruth said.
Jamie shrugged, and to Joan’s surprise he walked on in silence, as if he had nothing more to say.
“That’s all you know about him?” Joan said to Jamie. Didn’t he remember that Aaron had been on their side?
Jamie thought. “I suppose everyone knows he’s the child of Edmund’s second marriage. And his mother was executed by the Court.” He saw Joan’s expression and tilted his head. “What else is there to know?”
Joan felt another pang. The Liu power only gave Jamie fragments of the previous timeline. He didn’t remember. “Aaron was with us last time. He helped us stop Nick.”
For a moment, all their expressions were the same. Blank—as if Joan had said something so nonsensical that they couldn’t process it. Then Ruth’s mouth pursed in incredulity. “We’re talking about Aaron Oliver,” she said, like Joan had gotten him confused with someone else.
“I escaped the massacre with him,” Joan said. “He and I fled together, and you found us later.” Her heart constricted when Ruth just kept staring at her. She’d never get used to having memories that no one else did. “I saved his life, and he saved mine. You saved his. He saved yours. . . .”
“No.” Ruth’s voice was certain. Apparently, she could believe that she’d broken into the Monster Court, but not that she and Aaron Oliver had saved each other’s lives.
“Yes,” Joan said. “He helped us. We got really close. By the end of it, I trusted him completely.”
Disbelief flickered across Ruth’s face, and then something more protective. “How much time did you actually spend with him, Joan?”
Joan had to think for a second. “A—A few days.” It felt weird to quantify it like that. It had seemed so much longer.
“Oh my God,” Ruth said. She lifted her eyes to the dark sky. “You did not know him.” As Joan opened her mouth, Ruth went on fast, “I’m not saying you didn’t meet him. I believe you, okay? I’m saying that Aaron Oliver has a reputation. If you trusted him, he was hiding his true self from you.”
Joan shook her head. “He wasn’t.” Aaron had had his secrets, but Joan had known him. Aaron had taken them all to his mother’s safe house. He’d risked himself to protect them all.
“Let’s talk about this later,” Ruth said.
They turned onto a quieter street. The night was cooling. Joan didn’t want to talk about it later. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised by the pushback. The Olivers and the Hunts were enemies. And the three of them—Aaron, Joan, and Ruth—had met under such different circumstances last time.
“We’ll need a plan,” she said. They needed to find out where Aaron had taken Nick. But how? He wasn’t likely to give up the information easily.
“Aren’t we just going to kidnap him?” Ruth said. “Force him to talk?”
“What?” Joan was startled by the idea of violence against him. “No.”
“Joan—”
“We can’t,” Jamie said to Ruth before Joan could protest again. “He’s not the most beloved of the Olivers, but he’s still Edmund’s son. We can’t actually kidnap him from Oliver territory.”
Joan took a relieved breath. They did still need the information, though. She remembered the Griffith security guard outside the Wyvern Inn. He’d gotten information out of Joan with ease. “Can we pay a Griffith to come with us? To induce truth from him?” Subtly, so Aaron wouldn’t know it had happened.
“Not many Griffiths would risk antagonizing Edmund Oliver in his own house,” Ruth said, but she looked thoughtful.
“George Griffith might do it,” Tom said to Jamie.
“George won’t make a move like that against Edmund Oliver,” Jamie said. “Not on Oliver territory.”
“He might take some persuading, but his father’s a Nightingale,” Tom said. “It’s like you said—they hate Aaron Oliver. I’ve heard them talking about him.”
Joan felt uneasy at that phrasing. She chewed her lip. “What about getting into the party?”
“In and out will be easy enough,” Ruth said. “We’ll just need the right clothes.”
“And masks,” Joan said. You have to stay far away from me. From me and from my family, Aaron had told her on their last day together. She suppressed a shiver. She’d promised him she would, and now here she was planning to walk into his own home.
Sunday evening was crisp and very clear. A crescent moon hung in the sky. Tom pulled Tranquility into a Richmond mooring. Dense weeping willows obscured the platform, their heavy branches brushing the water. This wasn’t the Oliver mooring—Tom had been worried that someone would spot the double-headed hound—but it was close enough that Joan could see fancy pleasure boats lined up farther along the river.
Above them, helicopters whirred as even more people arrived.
“Masks on,” Joan said. She didn’t want to risk being spotted by the wrong guest.
Ruth had volunteered to find clothes and masks for all of them, and she’d done an impressive job. Everything fit perfectly, even Tom’s dinner suit, which actually looked tailored to his huge frame.
Joan’s dress had a semitransparent black skirt. The low-backed bodice was threaded with gold beading and gold embroidered flowers. The skirt glinted in the moonlight, which surprised her; the tiny crystals of sparkle hadn’t been visible during the day. Her mask was gold too: a delicate filigree headpiece that covered the top half of her face, evoking a fire-like tiara. Underneath it, she wore a strip of black lace to obscure her eyes. Long black gloves concealed the fugitive mark on her wrist.
Ruth had found herself a slinky dress in champagne silk. Her mask was an oversize gold and royal-blue piece inspired by a butterfly. The wings were fine as lace, rising above her head, Valkyrie-like. Mirrored blue glass mimicked butterfly markings, and they’d been strategically placed to hide Ruth’s eyes.
Tom and Jamie matched. Their dinner suits were dark, dark green—almost the color of the shadowed leaves around them. Their masks were leather: single sycamore leaves in burnished autumn brown, with only their mouths showing.
Now Tom peered into Tranquility’s wheelhouse. Frankie gave him a squashed-face blink and yawned. “You’re not coming?” he asked her, surprised. “There’ll be food.” Frankie yawned again and turned in a circle to go back to sleep.
“Fair enough,” Ruth muttered. “I wouldn’t want to hang about with the Olivers either.”
They made their way up the gentle slope of the bank. As they crested the rise, Joan felt her mouth drop open. “That’s the Oliver house?” That was where Aaron had grown up?
The principal building shone from the hill: a four-story manor house with castle-like turrets and glowing windows. Beyond it, a domed conservatory shone, bright as a light box; and beyond that there was a vast formal garden. Joan stared. She’d had some idea of Aaron’s background—she’d pictured him sleeping in posh school dorms and lounging about in country houses. But this . . .
“Bit over the top, isn’t it?” Ruth murmured.
“It’s a palace,” Joan said wonderingly. The Olivers had owned Holland House in the other timeline, but this was even grander than that. No wonder Aaron had seemed so at home among the priceless paintings and sculptures of Whitehall Palace, and so out of place at the rough-and-ready rooms they’d found on the run.
Tom turned back to the grassy bank. “Where’s George?” he murmured. They’d arranged to meet George Griffith among the willows at the edge of the river.
“He’s not late,” Jamie whispered back. “It’s not quite ten yet.”
But an hour passed, and George remained absent. The moon rose and the temperature dropped. Joan shuffled closer to Ruth for warmth. Every few minutes, a slick black car rolled up the long driveway, and guests emerged in sparkling gowns and dinner suits, masks glinting in the moonlight. They followed a lamplit path around the house, guided by liveried footmen.
“We’re going to miss our window,” Ruth said. “If we arrive too late, our entrance will be memorable. And we really don’t want to be memorable.”
“Let’s give him a few more minutes,” Joan said.
Half an hour after that, Tom’s phone lit up with a message. He read it grim-faced.
Joan’s heart sank. “George is a no-show?”
“Got a better offer apparently.”
“Seriously?” Ruth said. “This is why I don’t work with Griffiths.”
Joan’s stomach squirmed. They’d really needed a Griffith for this—someone who could induce truth.
“What do we do?” Jamie said.
They were already here, dressed for the part, eyes shielded. They had to take this opportunity. “Let’s just go in and figure it out,” Joan said. Ruth was right. They were about to miss their window to get in.
They’d need to get Aaron on his own. And then . . . There had to be a way to get Nick’s whereabouts from Aaron without the Griffith power.
The path around the house led to a garden walled with a high hedge and an open iron gate. Two stone figures held the hinges. At first glance, they looked like angels, but as Joan got closer, she saw that they were Oliver mermaids with scaled tails. On the other side of the gate, a path led into the grounds. Even from here, the scent of sweet evergreen trees and flowers was intoxicating.
A red-liveried footman stood at the entrance. “Please follow the lit path,” he said with a nod.
The path wound around thickets of trees that opened here and there to lush lawn. Joan could imagine having picnics here. She wondered if Aaron ever had. “I was worried they’d ask for invitations,” she whispered to Ruth as they walked.
“Doubt there even are invitations,” Ruth murmured back. “No enemy of the Olivers would show up to an Oliver party.” She nudged Joan with her elbow. “Except idiots like us, I guess.”
“What do we have against them?” Joan knew that the Hunts and the Olivers had been enemies for millennia, but she’d never heard a reason why.
“They’re slimy, sneering snakes who pretend they’re loyal to the Court,” Ruth said. “But they’re only loyal to themselves.”
“The origins of the alliances and enmities are all forgotten,” Jamie said. “There are only myths about them now.”
“Who’s allied with who?” Joan asked.
“You don’t know the rhyme?” Tom said. He chanted softly into the night: “The phoenix and the hound. The mermaid and the starling. Dragon makes vows with the desert and undying. Griffins’ faith is found with the white horse, never yielding. Nightingale is bound with the elm tree, always shielding.”
Jamie elaborated. “Lius are allied with Hathaways. Olivers with Mtawalis. Portellis with Alis and Nowaks. Griffiths with Patels. Nightingales with Argents.”
“The Hunts don’t have allies?” Joan asked. She vaguely remembered Aaron taunting Ruth about that last time.
“Who needs allies?” Ruth shrugged. “It’s all just boring meetings and politics and compromising with each other.”
“Yeah. Can’t stand those meetings where we compromise with each other,” Tom said so mildly that Joan almost missed the grin he shot at Jamie. Jamie shook his head slightly, but his neck reddened in the darkness, and he bit at his own smile.
“The enmities shift around more, depending on the time period,” Jamie said to Joan. “The only real lasting ones are the Olivers and Hunts. Nowaks and Nightingales. Griffiths and Argents.”
Tom craned his neck ahead. They could all hear the party now, in the distance: raised laughter and sweet stringed music. Bright light glinted through the leaves. “What would actually happen if a Hunt got caught in an Oliver house?” he mused.
Ruth grimaced. “Best not get caught.” She’d gone with blue lipstick tonight, to match her butterfly mask, and her mouth was a clear downturned arch.
Joan had had the Hunt power as a child—the ability to hide objects in thin air. It had faded, though, and a new power of unmaking had emerged in its place—a power that Gran had warned Joan never to reveal to anyone, not even Ruth. A power that had turned out to be forbidden.
Until Nick had asked about it on the boat, Joan had only spoken about it with Aaron.
I’m not a Hunt, am I? she’d said to Aaron. They’d been in the corridor of his mother’s safe house. The sun had been setting, throwing golden light over his beautiful face. It was a question she hadn’t even been able to ask herself. Because for monsters, power was family and family was power, and Joan didn’t have the Hunt power anymore.
In a human sense, they’re your family, Aaron had said. You love them and they love you.
But in a monster sense, they weren’t, and Aaron had known it from the night they’d met—from the moment he’d been close enough to see the color of her eyes.
Rare among Olivers, he had the true Oliver power—he could do more than differentiate monsters from humans; he could differentiate family from family. And on the day his own power had been ratified, he’d been given a special instruction by the Court. He’d been told to kill anyone with a power like Joan’s.
He should have killed her the night they’d met—as his father had tried to do. Failing that, he should have turned her in to the Court. Instead, he’d kept her safe from the other Olivers and from the Court itself. He’d protected her.
What am I? Joan had asked Aaron. Why did she have a power outside of the twelve families?
I don’t know, he’d said. He’d looked at her with an intensity that had stolen Joan’s breath. All I know is that if you undo the massacre, you can’t ever meet me. You can’t ever trust me. I won’t remember what you mean to me.
Joan touched her mask now, checking that it was tight on her face. Ahead of them, the trees were finally clearing, revealing the great conservatory and the gardens—and the Oliver masquerade.
“Wow,” Ruth said grudgingly.
“It’s stunning,” Jamie said.
The bright light they’d glimpsed through the leaves was the glowing dome of the conservatory, connected to the house via a gilded glass passage. The gardens before it were classically formal: strolling paths crafted from low hedges. It was all fairy-lit, with ghost-white splashes of late-blooming dahlias.
But it was the masquerade itself that had Joan’s attention. The Olivers were as beautiful, and as dangerous, as she’d remembered. Her gaze jumped from one guest to another. Over there, a woman in a wedding-like dress with a long train; when she turned, her mask was a skull in the same shade of white. And over there, a man with raven hair and an imposing brass mask, elaborate with filigree and with no eye slots. And here, a woman whose golden mask rose above her head in a radiant corona; her dress was crafted from gilded feathers. Footmen wove among them, bearing trays of champagne.
