Page 19 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

Joan woke to Ruth and Aaron arguing.

“ Any of those clothes would be okay!” Ruth was saying to him.

“ Okay is the antithesis of style,” Aaron said.

Everyone else looked like they’d just crawled out of bed, hair awry and eyes bleary, but Aaron was pin neat as always. His

pale hair glowed as if from some spotlight that only ever focused on him. He flicked through a clothes rack that he’d apparently

dragged in from the dressing room so that he could examine everything in natural light.

“I’m not just dressing us for an occasion,” he said. “I’m dressing us in character. It’s like you said last night—we’re going

to be out in the world. We have to look right.”

“What does an executioner wear?” Nick asked him, and Aaron stopped flicking to glare at him.

The glare only lasted a moment, though, before Aaron’s expression turned thoughtful. “There’s the stereotype of the hooded

cloak, of course, but I think it’d be a bit much.”

Joan sat up tiredly. Someone had opened the curtains, and outside, it was just barely dawn. Under the near-black sky, the

Oliver estate was a swath of rolling hills stretching all the way to the Thames.

“You’re awake,” Nick said to Joan. He had his hands in his pockets, and Joan had the feeling he’d been keeping an eye on her. “There’s food on the trays. Apparently, we’re not allowed to dress yet.” This was clearly directed at Aaron, who grunted.

“Where’s Jamie?” Joan asked.

“Walking Frankie,” Aaron said. He eyed her. “You should eat something.” He was worried about another fade-out.

But this was the first morning in a long time that Joan had woken more grounded than not. She pushed away her blanket, and

remembered she was still wearing Aaron’s pajamas. They all were. “We look like an Aaron cult.”

“Speak for yourself.” Ruth pointed at her breast pocket; she’d pinned a paper cutout of a fox over the mermaid sigil. Behind

her, Aaron rolled his eyes.

In the end, Aaron styled himself from his counterpart’s huge selection, emerging from the dressing room in a cream suit with

a gauzy pocket square that he’d somehow folded into a loose fan.

For Joan he paired a gray tweed dress from the Serpentine market with a blue silk scarf the exact shade of his tie; the scarf

must have belonged to his counterpart.

“Dowdy,” Ruth said when she saw the dress laid out on Aaron’s bed.

“Invisible,” Aaron said, with a glance at Joan. He didn’t want her clothes drawing the attention of predators. Joan felt a

rush of gratitude. She’d been trying to push away her fear about going back into the world as a human, and now that fear receded

slightly. The scarf wasn’t just intended to protect her neck, she realized. It would hide the pendant—still on Aaron’s desk.

She wouldn’t have to look at it.

Joan got ready quickly in the dressing room and examined herself in the mirror.

The gray had a little blue in it. It might have been invisible at a glance, but Aaron had an eye for clothes.

The dress that had been plain draped on the bed looked expensive now that she was wearing it.

It fit perfectly, skimming over her as if it had been tailored.

In the mirror, she seemed subtly untouchable, like a diamond in the window of a jewelry shop.

And her scarf, in the same shade as Aaron’s tie, was a clear message: She belonged to Aaron. She was under his protection.

No one will touch you , he’d said to her last night. That was what he’d been thinking about, she realized, as he’d agonized over the racks of clothes

this morning.

When she came back out, Aaron tied her scarf into a bow, shifting it so that it was canted to the right under her chin. He

fussed with it until every inch of her neck was covered.

It was Nick’s turn next. Aaron dressed him in pale gray trousers and a cream shirt, buttoning it just halfway. “Your counterpart

was scarred,” Aaron explained. “As long as your shirt’s open, people won’t believe you’re him.” He gave Nick a silk cravat

that protected his neck completely. He fastened a small pin to the tie—a mermaid—and then came over to put a brooch on Joan’s

pocket. Joan’s mouth was suddenly dry as he straightened it. The three of them were wearing mermaid sigils like they all belonged

together.

Ruth wasn’t so pleased when she saw the brooch a minute later. “If Gran knew Hunts were in this house, wearing all this stuff...”

A burst of fierce love hit Joan. She’d always consider herself a Hunt. She’d hoped Ruth still did, but she’d been afraid to ask. In the monster world, power was family and family was power, and Joan didn’t have the Hunt power anymore.

“Why don’t I—” Joan found a pen on Aaron’s desk and drew the Hunt fox on her own wrist in tiny marks. “Better?”

Ruth looked mollified. Then, to Joan’s surprise, she threw her arms around Joan. Joan hugged back. “We’re going to get out

of here,” Ruth said.

“I actually like the house.”

Ruth smacked her arm. “You know what I mean. We’re going to get out of this timeline.” She eyed the pendants on the desk,

and Joan sighed. She’d been putting off that part of the costume.

The pendant was some kind of metal Joan didn’t know: bronze in color, and as heavy as a hammerhead. As an object, it was horribly

beautiful, designed to look as if the numbered piece was lying on a shell, with a mermaid curled around it.

There were two rows of numbers. Joan remembered again Jamie’s explanation: The top line showed how much life the human had

left—in years, months, and days. The bottom line showed the time still owed in service.

“What numbers should we enter?” Joan tried to rotate them, but they seemed locked.

“There’s a”—Jamie pointed gingerly at the flat metal base of the shell—“fingerprint reader.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Joan said.

Aaron came over and pressed his thumb to it, expression utterly blank. With his thumb on it, he could turn the numbers.

“What’s average?” Joan asked Jamie. He’d be able to remember every pendant he’d seen on humans so far.

“Someone your age and Nick’s... about forty years left of life. You’d owe twenty years of that in labor or life to a monster family.”

If they were setting it for real, Joan’s and Nick’s remaining lifespans would be far shorter than that; they’d both time-traveled

using their own time. They’d taken decades from themselves.

“You said that high-value humans could be designated as labor-only,” Aaron said tightly. “How do we indicate that?”

“They have pendants made of a different metal—some kind of gold alloy,” Jamie said. “I’ve only seen a couple of humans wearing

them. Seems rare enough to be noteworthy—it stood out to me.”

Joan sighed. They couldn’t risk standing out—Joan was wanted by the Court, and Nick was supposed to be dead.

Once it was on, the pendant felt even heavier than it had in Joan’s hand. It sat in the hollow of her throat, on a fine chain,

and for a second Joan felt like she was choking. She’d never been able to stand anything tight against her neck—she couldn’t

even wear roll-necked tops.

“The numbers have to be visible by law,” Jamie said as Joan went to tuck it under the scarf.

Joan gritted her teeth and pulled it out again.

They walked out of Aaron’s suite together. As they reached the corridor outside, Joan felt a jolt. Aaron’s uncle Lucien was

standing on the floor below, staring up at them.

Aaron nodded to him in greeting. As soon as he’d left his rooms, he’d transformed himself into the person they’d seen in the interrogation recording, his posture arrogant and dangerous. He gave an assured order now to a servant below: “Bring a car around! Not a chauffeured one—I’ll drive.”

“So these are the two humans you brought home,” Lucien said in his gloomy manner. He always sounded like he was talking about

his own funeral. In the daylight, his features were still striking, but his heavy brow and sharp nose weren’t quite so vulture-like.

Joan braced herself as they reached the ground floor. Would Lucien recognize her from the poster; would he recognize Nick?

Jamie had applied makeup with a skilled hand, raising Joan’s cheekbones and hollowing her cheeks until she’d looked like a

stranger. Nick had been even more transformed; Jamie had straightened his distinctive curls and reworked his hair into a style

he’d called Ivy League . As a final touch, he’d added black-framed fashion glasses.

Clark Kent , Aaron had said. He’d probably meant it sarcastically, but Joan had had the same thought. Nick had a kind of Superman quality,

and the glasses added a slight scholarly air to that. At the end of it, Joan had been sure that no one would think of his

counterpart when they saw him.

To Joan’s relief, Lucien clearly didn’t recognize either of them. He only said: “How avant-garde” as he examined Joan’s carefully

placed scarf, Nick’s silk cravat. “Let’s hope you don’t start that trend among the humans.”

“These two are not to be touched,” Aaron said tightly.

“Yes, you have rather made that clear.” A hint of disgust touched Lucien’s stern face. “You know... people are talking about the humans you bring home. The ones you use and dispose of.... Everyone sees the van pull up and take the bodies away....”

Aaron reddened. Nick’s expression was unreadable behind his glasses, but by his sides, his hands squeezed, his knuckles whitening

as he turned slowly to look at Aaron.

“I must say,” Aaron said, his voice tight, “Geoffrey got quite the wrong end of the stick last night. About the purpose of

these two.”

“Oh?” Lucien managed to make it sound like he was rolling his eyes, even though he wasn’t.

“They’ll be my personal assistants for a few days.”

“Indeed?” If you say so , Lucien’s expression said. “Well, if that’s the story you wish to tell, that’s the story we’ll tell.”

A servant appeared. “Your car is ready, my lord.”

Lucien opened a door to a large paved area at the back of the house. A gleaming black Jaguar waited for them—the signature