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And when she thought about it like that—in spite of her own vow of never again—a tiny voice in her head asked, Would you have taken it from yourself again if he hadn’t set an example first? Or would you have bought a piece of this jewellery?
It took Nick a moment to grasp what she’d meant. He looked sick then too. He opened his mouth, and Joan could almost see what he was thinking: I didn’t mean for you to do it too.
The reality of it hit her again. Don’t take it from yourself, she wanted to say to him. Take it from these strangers who I don’t know. ‘I did love him,’ she blurted. ‘You asked if I did.’ I love you. I think I always will.
Another flash of emotion on Nick’s face, ruthlessly suppressed. He opened his mouth, and Joan braced herself for what he was about to say.
But as Nick drew a breath, Jamie called from the equipment room. ‘Come over here! Look at this!’
The equipment room was surprisingly big—maybe a quarter of the size of the clothes room. Near the entrance, there were tables full of second hand phones: chunky nineties bricks, familiar phones, and—strangely—in the same trays, bracelets and rings in a rainbow of metallics. Could those be phones of the future? Joan slipped on a smooth rose-gold bangle with a black-agate stone. She was startled when a white square appeared on her palm with the word Hello in black, crystal sharp. Apparently, the stone was a kind of projector.
She took off the bangle and kept walking. Farther in, she found drawers full of knives and guns. She walked on, opening and closing drawers of cameras, microphones, drones, and, in the same section, black sticker dots on white sheets. Were they cameras as well? Trackers?
Farther still, there were drawers of sunglasses and little figurines on key chains and enamel brooches that lit up when touched. Joan could guess at the technology embedded in the sunglasses, but what about the figurines and the brooches? What period did they come from? What did that time look like? What might she see if she travelled two centuries forward? Maybe—She cut off the thought as she felt herself drift toward yearning. She really didn’t want to fade out again.
‘Holy shit,’ Aaron said from the doorway. ‘There’s stuff from the next three centuries in here. If the Court knew—’
‘How would they find out? You going to snitch?’ Ruth said.
Aaron rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, the second I’m out of here, I’m going to snitch about anachronistic sunglasses.’
‘Over here!’ Jamie called from the far end of the room.
Joan found him with Tom, surrounded by boxy machines that could have been anything from 3D printers to espresso makers. They’d pushed them aside, clearing a square of bare floorboards.
Jamie pointed down. There was a piece of white plastic on the wood—it looked almost like a bread tag without the slot.
Ruth came over and peered at the thing. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘Just here,’ Jamie said soberly. ‘Just among this stuff.’
Aaron arrived then, Nick just behind him, and spotted the thing straightaway. ‘That is—’ Aaron seemed truly shocked. ‘That is illegal. That is far future technology!’
Aaron’s tone, more than his words, triggered the memory. Joan had retrieved a device like that from the Monster Court. Jamie had left it in his prison cell—it had contained the recordings of the hero’s creation.
‘It just looks like a bit of plastic,’ Nick said.
‘It’s a recorder,’ Jamie explained. ‘It takes images and sounds directly from your mind.’ He frowned down at the device, concentrating. A moment later, a window opened up in the wall.
To Joan’s horror, the view was the gloomy street they’d seen through the café window. The dark, not-quite Victorian buildings, the frightened people in drab clothes, the statue of Eleanor with roses at her feet.
‘What is that?’ Aaron said.
‘It’s the other London—the one we saw through the hole in the timeline,’ Joan whispered. It took her a moment to realise that the view was frozen: none of the people on the street were moving. And this wasn’t an actual window; this was Jamie’s memory of what they’d seen in the café. He was using the device to record and project what he remembered.
‘It looks so real,’ Nick murmured.
It did. The café window could have been right here, in this room. Joan was awed again by Jamie’s perfect memory.
And then the tableau unfroze. Joan held her breath. She registered more details this time: Eleanor’s bronze statue stood on a plinth, a winged lion etched at the base. But it wasn’t the usual lion of the Monster Court. That lion was always posed as if stalking the viewer. This one was outstretched in attack, its mouth an open roar.
Movement caught Joan’s attention. It was the blond man, running from around the corner. Joan could hardly watch. It was somehow so much worse now that she knew the outcome. The hearse-black van pulled up, and the guard got out. The blond man’s face contorted in fear and resignation. He knew he was about to die; he knew that no one was coming to help him.
And no one did. The frightened onlookers snatched glances at the scene and just kept walking.
The guard killed the blond man, and then wrenched open the back of the van. Joan gasped. Her mind had blurred it out—at the time, she’d barely been able to look. But Jamie’s memory had perfectly captured it.
The corpses were stacked in undignified tangles, necks and ankles and elbows at unnatural angles. All the people looked so ordinary. They could have been Joan’s own human family, her friends at school, her neighbours. Joan saw again the black shoe with the broken strap. This time, she made herself follow the person’s foot to their leg, to their face. The dead woman had a sharply cut bob of black hair and a round face with kind lines.
