Never a Hero, page 43
Joan managed a nod. “We’ll find him.” It was a promise.
“Owen’s missing too,” Ruth said, looking around. “Was he outside the protection as well?”
“No,” Aaron said. “I saw him when I woke up. He ran off.” He grimaced. “All the Argents are cowards. I just—” He froze.
They all heard it at the same time—an engine on the Thames.
A hearse-black boat was making its way down the river with the menacing pace of a slow patrol. A golden sigil shone on the black of the boat: a winged lion. Not the familiar Court sigil Joan knew, but the version she’d seen through the café window: the lion roaring in attack.
Joan and the others drew back into the shadows of the alley instinctively. And they weren’t the only ones afraid. On the other side of the river, people watched the boat pass, wary and tense.
Nick’s hand tightened on the hilt of the knife. Was he thinking, as Joan was, of the last time they’d seen that sigil on a vehicle? Was he thinking of the tangled bodies in the van? Of the human murdered in broad daylight by a monster guard?
Joan looked across at the looming skyline again. This world was wrong. She could feel it like the thrum of her own heartbeat. And people she loved were out there. Dad, her family, her friends . . . They might even be— No. Joan shied from the thought. They couldn’t be dead in this world. They had to be somewhere. Like Tom was.
Like Eleanor was.
“She’ll know we escaped,” Aaron said softly. “She’ll be looking for us.”
Nick’s knuckles whitened around the knife’s handle. “I’ll be looking for her too,” he murmured.
Joan watched the patrol boat disappear behind the bridge—the heart of this new, corrupted London. “We need to get out of here,” she said. They needed to regroup.
And when they did . . . Her jaw tightened. They were going to fix this world. They were going to make it right.
Acknowledgments
The last few years have been such a strange mixture of whirlwind and stasis. I wrote the first draft of this book during a series of long lockdowns where every day felt the same. And, just a few months later, it was so exciting, and such a dream come true, to see my first book, Only a Monster, out in the world, on shelves and in unboxings.
Thank you so much to everyone who read and supported Only a Monster: family, friends (and friends and family of friends!), booksellers, bloggers, bookstagrammers, booktokkers, event organizers, panel organizers, podcasters. It means the absolute world to me.
Thank you, always, to my family for all your love and encouragement, especially to Dad, Jun, Ben, Moses, Lee-Chin, Wennie, Zaliyah, and Nina.
Thank you so much to my critique partner, Cat, for reading every iteration of every scene of this book at least ten times and making every version ten times better.
Huge thanks for all your encouragement and support to: Shelley Parker-Chan, Rose Hartley, Lilliam Rivera, Mike Reid, Evan Mallon, Alison Laming, Susan Trompenaars, Jessica Boland, Sharon Brown, Kathryn Lindsay, Kelly Nissen, Noni Morrissey, Amanda Macdonald (and Tamlyn!), Emma Durbridge, Leanne Robertson, Madeleine Daniel, Kate Murray, Anna Cowan, Belinda Grant, Katya Dibb, Liana Skrzypczak, Leanne Yong, LinLi Wan, Naomi Novik, Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff, Astrid Scholte, Ellie Marney, Jess Barber, Pip Coen, Bernette Cox, Nathan Hillstrom, Becca Jordan, Travis Lyons, Eugene Ramos, Sara Saab, Melanie West, Tiffany Wilson, Elaine Cuyegkeng, Kat Clay, Aidan Doyle, Emma Osborne, Sophie Yorkston, and Suzanne Willis.
To my brilliant agent, Tracey Adams, at Adams Literary, and the team—Josh Adams and Anna Munger—thank you for performing miracles for this series!
To Christabel McKinley, thank you for all your amazing work in the UK and Australia.
Thank you so much to Vera Chok for your incredible performance in the audiobook.
At HarperCollins in the US, a huge thank-you to my wonderful editor, Kristen Pettit, for your insightful feedback and guidance, and to the whole brilliant team: senior editor Alice Jerman, associate editor Clare Vaughn, marketers Audrey Diestelkamp and Sabrina Abballe, publicists Lauren Levite and Kate Lopez, designers Jessie Gang and Alison Klapthor, cover artist Eevien Tan, production editors Caitlin Lonning and Alexandra Rakaczki, copyeditor Erin DeWitt, proofreaders Jessica White and Lana Barnes, and production managers Allison Brown and Meghan Pettit.
At Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, I’m so grateful to my incredible editor, Molly Powell, and to Sophie Judge, Callie Robertson, Kate Keehan, Lydia Blagden, copyeditor Alyssa Ollivier-Tabukashvili, cover artist Kelly Chong, and the whole amazing team.
To the incredible team at Allen & Unwin in Australia—Kate Whitfield, Jodie Webster, Eva Mills, Sandra Nobes, Liz Kemp, Simon Panagaris, Yvette Gilfillan, Anna McFarlane—and everyone else who has worked on and supported the book. Thank you so much; it means the world to me to have had so much local support.
Thank you so much as well to the amazing teams and translators at Alta Novel in Brazil (translator: Giovanna Chinellato), CooBoo in the Czech Republic (translator: Petra Badalec), Lumen in France (translator: Mathilde Tamae-Bouhon), Anassa Könyvek in Hungary (translator: Ádám Sárpátki), Eksmo in Russia (translator: Olga Burdova), Vulkan in Serbia (translator: Elena Milosavljević), Montena in Spain (translator: Elena Macian Masip), and Olimpos in Türkiye (translator: Yasemin Bayraktar). As I write this, the book is also coming soon from Piper Verlag in Germany, Mondadori in Italy, and Wydawnictwo MAG in Poland.
It has been a dream come true to see special editions of Only a Monster, and I am beyond grateful to the incredible book boxes that featured the book and brought it so many readers. Thank you so much to Anissa and the FairyLoot team, to Korrina and the OwlCrate team, to the Bookish Box team, the Librarian Box team, the Fabled team, the Duality Box team, to NovelTea Chest, and Lovinbookscandle.
Thank you so much, also, to the amazing authors who blurbed Only a Monster: Hafsah Faizal, Stephanie Garber, Chloe Gong, Adalyn Grace, Cindy Lin, Natasha Ngan, Lynette Noni, Naomi Novik, C. S. Pacat, and June Tan.
The 2021 and 2022 debut groups have been a huge support. I learned so much about every aspect of publishing, especially marketing, from you. Special thanks to Deborah Falaye, Jessica Olson, Akshaya Raman, Kylie Lee Baker, Lillie Lainoff, Leslie Vedder, Sue Lynn Tan, June Tan, Judy I. Lin, Emily Thiede, and Lyndall Clipstone.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which I wrote this book, and to pay my respect to their Elders, past, present, and emerging: the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung, Bunurong Boon Wurrung, and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation.
About the Author
Photo by C. S. Pacat
VANESSA LEN is an Australian author of Chinese-Malaysian and Maltese heritage. An educational editor, she has worked on everything from language learning programs to STEM resources to professional learning for teachers. Vanessa is a graduate of the Clarion Workshop in San Diego, and she lives in Melbourne. She is also the author of Only a Monster, and you can visit her online at vanessalen.com.
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Books by Vanessa Len
Only a Monster
Never a Hero
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
NEVER A HERO. Copyright © 2023 by The Trustee for Vanessa Len Trust. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2023 by Eevien Tan
Cover design by Jessie Gang
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023931289
Digital Edition AUGUST 2023 ISBN: 978-0-06-302471-7
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-302469-4
FIRST EDITION
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Vanessa Len, Never a Hero
