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‘You’re going to tell me exactly what happened after this,’ Ruth said hoarsely.
Joan was relieved to hear her voice; it was the first thing Ruth had said in a while. ‘You got us out of the Monster Court.’
Ruth’s eyebrows went up disbelievingly, but Joan was relieved by that too. The exchange seemed to have reinvigorated her slightly.
‘Tom got us in,’ Joan said. ‘He was looking for Jamie.’ Tom grunted, seeming curious. ‘You told us how to fake being on the guest list,’ Joan said to him. She had a flash of Aaron watching her worriedly; she’d had to talk her way past the guard at the entrance. Her heart constricted. Aaron had known he’d be an enemy to her in this timeline, but it was like Joan still couldn’t process that. Some part of her couldn’t believe it.
‘There!’ Tom said. There was a patch of light suddenly on the other side of the seal.
‘Go!’ Ruth said. ‘I won’t be able to hold it!’
Tom didn’t waste time speaking. He pushed Jamie through and scooped up Frankie to jump through too. On the other side, he bent over and took the deep, gulping breath of someone who’d emerged from water. ‘Come through!’ he called back. ‘You’ll feel better too!’
Jamie blew out a breath. ‘Almost forgot what it was like not to feel nauseated.’
‘Go on!’ Ruth said to Joan.
‘We’re going through together now,’ Joan told her.
‘I don’t think that’s going to work,’ Ruth whispered shakily.
It had to. No way was Joan leaving Ruth in here. ‘It worked last time. You ready?’
‘No,’ Ruth said. But she allowed Joan to take her free hand.
Joan took a deep breath, focusing on the hoop in front of them. She gripped Ruth’s hand tighter. ‘One,’ she said. ‘Two—’
‘What if I can’t—’ Ruth started.
Joan ducked through the clunky construction they’d made, dragging Ruth with her. Ruth stumbled through.
As they reached the other side, Ruth exhaled hard. Joan felt it too—the sudden lack of nausea was an intense relief.
‘The Hunt power is not made for that,’ Ruth gasped.
‘That was amazing,’ Joan told her. Ruth rolled her eyes, but her mouth twitched up.
Joan glanced back. There was no sign of the barrier. No sign of the jackets and jumpers or the chairs they’d used to support them. And where it had been daytime on that side of the café, now the whole room was dark, lit only by the streetlights outside.
Tom followed her gaze. ‘That thing is still in there. The seal doesn’t feel like enough.’
‘What was it?’ Jamie said. ‘What did we see in there?’
The pause afterward was telling; that jagged wound in the world—and the vision they’d seen—had been so unnatural that no one really wanted to delve deeper. Joan had so many questions, though. Why had it been there—in the place where she’d once used her power? Why had Gran been investigating this? Why had she left an opportunity symbol on the floor?
‘From my angle, it looked like the whole room changed inside the seal,’ Ruth said. ‘Floor, ceiling, view through the windows …’
Joan wished she could unsee that view. It was still there in her head, like the afterimage of a flash of light: worse now that the immediate shock was over. The corpses in the van, limbs tangled. The blond man slumped on the pavement like rubbish.
I’ve seen what’s coming, Astrid had said.
Even now, even with the seal closed, the horror of that terrible London lingered like the scent of black smoke. ‘Is this what Astrid was talking about? What she was warning about?’ Joan asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Jamie said.
‘That police van with the Court motif,’ Tom murmured. ‘It was out in the open. In broad daylight for humans to see.’
‘But there’s no future like that in the records,’ Jamie said. ‘Monsters never live openly among humans. There’s never a time where monsters rule.’
