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Astrid held up a cup. Joan hesitated. Astrid had drugged her last time. But she didn’t get the feeling that any harm was intended now. Astrid was projecting something closer to a truce.

The cup was hot enough that Joan had to hold it by the rim. She blinked down at the chrysanthemum pattern. It was the kind of cheap blue-and-white cup you could get at any Chinese grocery—Dad had them at home.

‘Where do you think they are?’ Astrid’s voice seemed gentler.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes, you do.’

Joan shook her head again.

‘Humans had a protector,’ Astrid said. ‘A hero. And you unmade him. You undid every action he’d ever done; would have ever done. Did you think there’d be no consequences?’

‘I …’ I wasn’t fighting against anyone except Nick, Joan wanted to say. But where was Mr Larch? Where were all the missing people? Joan’s body spasmed again. It already knew. Joan knew. Deep down, she’d known the truth as soon as Margie had said, Who’s Mr Larch?

And suddenly Joan’s hand was shaking too much to hold the cup. She put it on the counter, spilling tea on the dark wood.

Mr Larch wasn’t missing. He wasn’t at another school. He was dead in this timeline. Monsters preyed on humans—they shortened human lives; sometimes they killed them outright. You undid every action he’d ever done. Joan had brought back every monster Nick had ever killed. How many humans had they killed?

‘It’s complicated for us, isn’t it?’ Astrid said. ‘We have human family on one side; monsters on the other. We’re human and monster ourselves. If we fight for one side, that means fighting against the other. Our choices aren’t clean or clear.’

When Joan had unmade Nick, she’d thought she was making a choice between him and her family—her monster family. She hadn’t been thinking about her human family, her friends, strangers. All the people he would have protected. She should have been thinking about them. Guilt washed over her. She couldn’t justify it.

You fucked everything up, Astrid had said.

‘You chose humans?’ Joan whispered. ‘You went the other way?’ She felt something on her face and touched her cheek. Her fingertips came away wet. Was she crying? How many people were dead in this timeline? How many people had Nick saved? It was too big—too terrible—to take in.

‘No,’ Astrid said.

It took a second for Joan to hear it. ‘What?’

Astrid was looking out the window. Outside, the lawn was overgrown; pink and yellow daisies sprinkled the long grass all the way to the water. ‘No, I didn’t choose humans or monsters,’ she said. The flatness was still there, but there was a thread of emotion underneath now. She did still feel things, Joan saw then. Astrid’s flatness was a thin cover over something roiling and deep. ‘That wasn’t why I fought with him.’

You fucked everything up.

Dread started in Joan’s chest, joining the thick feeling of guilt. Astrid was looking at that view like it was something precious and ephemeral. Like it was something that could be lost. Like there might be a fate worse than Nick’s massacres of monsters; than the loss of all those humans he’d saved.

Astrid sat down on a stool, her own cup clasped in her lap. The stools had been built for the giant Hathaways, but Astrid was tall enough that her long legs reached the floor.

‘The Lius have perfect memory,’ Astrid said slowly. ‘And some of us have a stronger power than that. Some of us remember fragments of previous timelines. But there’s a stronger version still. Only a handful of Lius have ever possessed it.’ Astrid didn’t look proud of it; she looked as sick as Joan felt. Astrid took a shaky breath, and suddenly the emotion she’d been containing was all over her face. It was horror, Joan saw. Horror and fear. ‘We remember things that haven’t happened yet,’ Astrid said. ‘And I’ve seen—’ Her voice failed her. She tried again. ‘I’ve seen what’s coming.’

The hairs rose on the back of Joan’s neck. ‘What do you mean?’ Astrid seemed much older suddenly; resigned and weary. Her horror was weary too, and matter-of-fact. Joan had a vision of her as a soldier who’d fought hard and lost.

‘I’ve seen the end,’ Astrid said simply. ‘The end of everything that matters. People will die. People on both sides—monsters and humans in uncountable numbers. So many more than he ever killed or saved. You want to know why I fought with him? It’s because I saw how to stop it. He would have stopped it. He was already on the path.’ Her hands curled into fists. ‘But you stopped him.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Joan whispered. ‘What’s going to happen? What’s coming?’

Astrid’s gaze in return was strangely defeated, and Joan felt a wave of frustration.

‘Well, tell me,’ Joan said. ‘Is it in the records? What would he have stopped? When?’

‘What do you want me to say? That you need to step into his shoes and be the hero yourself? Or maybe we could work together. You and me. Stop the apocalypse together. Rally the troops.’

‘If you really believe something’s going to happen … something he would have stopped—’

A blaze of emotion overcame Astrid, and for a second she was here—the Astrid that Joan remembered, full of life. ‘I know it! I’ve seen it! And I just—’ Self-recrimination flashed over her face. ‘I knew we had to eliminate you. I told Nick that you were dangerous—even in that room, all by yourself. I told him we had to kill you, but he wouldn’t let anyone touch you.’

Joan swallowed. She hadn’t known that Nick had protected her like that. And then her frustration was anger again. What did all this mean? The end of everything that matters? ‘You didn’t tell me any of this!’ she said hoarsely. ‘You didn’t even tell me you were a monster! I would have—’