Page 64 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

“How long will those gates stay open?” Tom whispered.

“I don’t know,” Joan breathed. They’d watched all the guests walk through the gates and vanish as they entered the Monster

Court. “Time inside the Court might not reflect time outside it, though.” For all they knew, an all-night party would seem to last just a few minutes from the perspective of people outside.

“We might not have long at all.”

She gestured at the field. Keeping to the darkest shadows, they crept noiselessly across the road. The world around them was

still frozen—eerily empty of the usual background sounds of cars and planes and insects and birds. It was possible that guards

were monitoring the area around the gate, and if they were, then any sound would draw their attention.

Holding her breath, Joan stepped over the low wooden fence into the field. Long grass brushed her ankles as she examined the

lines of raised welts in the ground, where the foundations of the estate had been. She beckoned the others deeper into the

field, until—she hoped—they’d be out of earshot of anyone watching and listening.

“See that line?” she breathed. She pointed at the welt closest to the wooden fence, and then traced the air with a finger.

“It aligns perfectly with the Holland House gate piers. That must have been the wall around the estate. If we follow it around the grounds, we should be able to find breaks in the wall. Places where other gates used to be. And then...”

“I’ll do my thing,” Ruth said.

It took Joan about twenty minutes to find a break in the line of raised earth—a break big enough to be the width of a gate.

So if this was the outer wall... She judged the distance from this spot to the earthworks deep in the field—the remains

of the house itself. With luck, she and the others would arrive in one of the gardens. Far enough from the house that they

wouldn’t be seen.

She nodded at Nick, and he shrugged off his backpack, digging to retrieve the telescoping metal poles they’d brought. When

Joan had described what she’d needed, Mum had found a portable clothes rack for hanging long dresses. With the dresses removed,

it was a simple rectangular frame, taller than it was wide, and able to stand up on its own.

Still trying to keep quiet, Joan helped Nick reassemble the frame, and they fitted it into the gap where the gate would have

been, adjusting the width until it was just right. When they were done, they’d made a crude gate of their own, standing in

the middle of nowhere. If someone had walked past, they’d have thought it a strange sight. Then again, very few people could walk past right now with the world frozen.

Ruth stepped forward and put a hand on the frame.

She’d opened a portal out of the Court last time, and Joan hoped she could do the reverse now.

They’d discovered that the Hunt power allowed her to hold an object in two times simultaneously—hence the need for the frame.

If Ruth could hold one side of the frame in this time, and the other side in the Court, she’d make a portal.

“Open it in bursts,” Joan whispered. “Don’t try to keep it open continuously.”

“Has anyone ever broken into the Court?” Aaron whispered. “How do we even know this is possible?”

“Shut up,” Ruth said, closing her eyes. “I’m concentrating.”

“I’m just saying—”

“You’re still talking. Just—” Ruth’s next word was cut off by Jamie and Nick making startled sounds. Something had flashed

inside the frame like a lightning strike. “Was that it?” Ruth said. “Did I do it?”

“Too fast to see,” Tom said.

“No, I saw it,” Jamie said. “I saw two things. A dead cedar in the middle of an empty lawn. It looked like it had been struck by lightning.”

“Yes,” Joan whispered. That lawn was on the northern side of Holland House. “That’s where we want to go.” This was going to

work.

“And the second thing I saw was the void,” Jamie said grimly.

“Aaand that’s where we don’t want to go,” Aaron said.

Joan tried not to imagine crawling shadows inside the door they’d made. “It’s okay,” she whispered to Ruth. “Just try again.

Try to hold it open longer this time.”

Ruth looked unnerved. Joan would have been too if she’d opened a portal into the void. “What if I send you all into oblivion?” Ruth whispered.

Aaron pushed his hair from his eyes, looking more annoyed than Joan knew he felt. “Then we’ll all haunt you.”

“You won’t exist anymore,” Ruth said, but arguing with Aaron always seemed to make her feel better. “All right, shut up for

real now.”

In the frame, the scene appeared again in a flash—long enough this time for Joan to see it. The garden was adorned for the

celebration, fairy lights hanging in the cedar, the lawn covered with snow. It was only there for a second before the view

was swallowed by a brief flash of the shadows. A glimpse of the void.

“I didn’t dress us for winter,” Aaron whispered.

“I think that’s the least of our problems,” Tom muttered. “We can’t cross in that split-second opening,” he said to Ruth.

“We won’t make it. You need to hold it open longer.”

Ruth stepped back, breathing fast. “I’ll try—it’s not easy.” She didn’t seem as desperately drained as last time, though.

The repeated practice seemed to be strengthening her Hunt ability. “Get ready,” she said to Nick. She put her hand on the

frame again.

Joan felt a sudden wave of trepidation. Nick had died yesterday; she couldn’t bear to lose him again.

They’d already discussed this, though. Nick was the fastest and strongest of them, and his training as a monster slayer had

lingered into this timeline. If an attack was waiting just out of view, he’d be the best placed to neutralize it before the

rest of them came in.

“I’m going to count you down,” Ruth said. “On go , okay?”

Nick gave Joan a reassuring look, and then turned to Aaron, his expression less readable. Aaron seemed to understand perfectly, though. He nodded at Nick.

Nick squared up in front of the frame, shoulders set and determined, and Joan couldn’t breathe.

“Three,” Ruth said, “two , one, go !”

Nick leaped as the portal flashed into life, and then he was gone.

“Did he make it?” Joan could hear the fear in her voice, and Aaron put a hand on her arm.

“ Yes ,” Jamie said. “I saw him in the garden.”

Joan gasped out a relieved breath.

“All right,” Ruth said. She sounded a little shaky too. “Tom, you’re up next.”

Tom jumped through, and then Aaron followed.

“They’ve all made it,” Jamie reassured Joan. And then he jumped and was gone too.

“We’re going together.” Joan squeezed Ruth’s hand again. “Just catch your breath.”

Ruth shook her head. “We don’t know if time passes differently in there. We shouldn’t leave big gaps between jumps.” She straightened.

“Ready? Three, two, one—”

The frame flashed up an image, and Joan leaped, dragging Ruth with her through the frame.

For a horrifying split second, her vision was full of utter nothingness, and then she and Ruth were stumbling out into a snow-sprinkled lawn, the lightning-struck cedar stark and black ahead of them.

Joan had an impression of biting cold, of snow hanging in the air, and then Nick pulled her and Ruth down behind a hedge a few paces from the gate.

He put a finger to his lips as Tom leaned over and swiped away their footprints from the path with the sleeve of his coat.

They’d all arrived safely, Joan saw, relieved—Jamie and Aaron were crouching behind the hedge too, and Frankie and Sylvie

were snug in their backpacks. Snow stood in the air around them, eerily unmoving, although when Joan touched the nearest crystals,

they melted under her fingers. In the distance, footsteps crunched over the snow—the reason Nick had pulled her and Ruth down,

Joan guessed.

Two guards came into view from the direction of the house, walking across the snowy lawn. Joan held her breath as they drew

closer and closer, until they were right alongside her and the others, barely twenty paces away. Was this just a patrol, or

had something raised their suspicions? Did they have any clue that six people had just broken into the Court without invitation?

To her horror, one of the guards glanced in their direction. “Is that gate supposed to be open?” he asked his partner.

She chuckled. “What are you worried about? You think someone jumped in here from the void?”

The first guard rolled his eyes. “Go and close it.”

“ You close it. There’s no way I’m getting that close to the edge.”

Joan exchanged a look with Nick. She and the others were on a walking path that ran past the gate. The protective hedge bordered

the path, but it wasn’t nearly high enough to truly hide them. If the guards came over to close the gate, they’d see them

crouching here.

Joan turned slightly, wanting to see what the guards were so afraid of.

Then she wished she hadn’t. The open gate showed a shadowed world of trees and a row of Georgian houses beyond.

But some lizard part of Joan’s brain knew that the view was an illusion—created by her own brain to mitigate the true horror beyond the door.

In actuality, she was crouched at the edge of nothing.

Of annihilation. If she fell out of that gate, she’d fall for eternity, without even the eventual comfort of death.

“I thought I heard something when we were walking up here,” the first guard said.

His partner laughed again. “Maybe a creature crawled out of the void. Maybe it’s lurking.”

“You’re not funny.”

“Are you actually scared? Don’t be daft—nothing can come out of the void. There’s nothing in the void.”

To Joan’s relief, they kept walking, their bickering fading into the distance as they headed into the outer gardens. A few

minutes later, they were out of sight, out of earshot.

Joan stood slowly, and the others followed. “We should get to the house,” she whispered. “Before that patrol comes back.”

They stuck to the edge of the wall, behind the hedge line, to conceal their footprints.