“You eat something. How does he know so much about the Hollowpox? I thought the Public Distraction Department was keeping it under wraps.”
“There’s no keeping anything under wraps now, Mog. Not after what happened at the Gobleian.” He sighed and took a bite of dry toast, made a face, and swallowed it reluctantly. “It was already out there, anyway, really. Bits and pieces have been leaking for weeks now, it was only a matter of time.”
Morrigan suddenly remembered something. “We saw a man with a megaphone shouting about it on Grand Boulevard on Thursday! He called Wunimals abominations. He said they were… what was it? An ‘affront to humanity.’ What a pig.”
Jupiter scowled. “Posh bloke in a fancy suit?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll be him. Laurent St. James. Loves nothing more than getting up on his soapbox. He’s trying to stir trouble.”
One of the kitchen staff came to clear their plates, and Jupiter sent away all of the untouched food with a sigh.
The rest of the summer flew by in a frightening whirl. Every day more posters appeared on the streets, every day the Concerned Citizens held another rally and broadcast their message on the radio, encouraging people to turn on their Wunimal friends and neighbors. The government, afraid of instigating mass panic, had yet to directly address the growing whispers about the Hollowpox, instead asking the Wundrous Society to continue trying to contain it. But in many ways the lack of official information made it worse. Rumors and inaccuracies spread like wildfire, until nobody knew what to believe.
Jupiter was constantly out helping the Stealth identify infected Wunimals, and he spent every Friday night patrolling the Nevermoor Bazaar. If there was an attack in a crowd of thousands of people, the knock-on effects could be dire. It could cause a stampede. He’d even enlisted Jack’s help; his nephew’s ability as a Witness was coming along in leaps and bounds, and Jupiter said he was a great asset to the Hollowpox task force.
Every Saturday morning at dawn, Morrigan would be waiting in the Smoking Parlor to make Jack and Jupiter sit and inhale waves of rosemary smoke, eat a proper breakfast, and drink some tea.
To her great disgust, Jupiter had forbidden Morrigan to attend the bazaar at all that summer, and to the great disgust of everyone in Unit 919, he had contacted their patrons and parents to suggest the same. It was simply too risky, he’d said. There were fewer Wunimals at the bazaar than ever before—most having apparently taken on the message to stay home—but plenty were still out and about. Some were just trying to make a living, some either didn’t understand or didn’t care. And some were there as a counterprotest to the Concerned Citizens of Nevermoor.
“Why don’t they just cancel the bazaar this summer, if it’s so dangerous?” Jack had asked him at the time.
“If you can convince the Nevermoor Chamber of Commerce to shut down their mammoth midyear economy boost, by all means do,” Jupiter replied. “Believe me, we’ve tried. The best we can do is get out there and try to head off any trouble before it arises.” He’d squeezed Jack’s shoulder then, looking him dead in the eye. “You’ve no idea what a help you are, Jackie. I’m proud of you.”
Jupiter had also managed to bring in another two Witnesses to help, people he knew from outside Nevermoor. So far they’d identified sixteen infected Wunimals at the bazaar. Morrigan could tell Jack was glad to be involved, even if it was draining work.
The worst things they’d reported to Morrigan weren’t any attacks committed by Wunimals themselves, but attacks against them. At a Sweet Street stall that sold hand-stretched caramel by the yard, Jupiter had stepped in to physically remove a man yelling at a ten-year-old rabbitwun to go home. A pigwun glassblower was heartbroken when his stall in the South Quarter got destroyed by vandals, and all his delicate creations smashed to pieces.
The Concerned Citizens had set themselves up in the same spot on Grand Boulevard every Friday night to shout their hateful words for a public audience, and every Friday night their audience had grown. Jupiter and the Stealth had tried to have them moved on, but the Stink had stepped in, insisting that what they were doing was perfectly legal. Jupiter grew more furious about it with every week that passed, and on the seventh Saturday of summer he returned to the Deucalion at dawn positively incandescent with rage.
“—ill-bred halfwit with a bad haircut and an undersized heart!” he was shouting as he and Jack entered the Smoking Parlor.
“Yeah, I know.” Jack shot a wide-eyed look at Morrigan, rubbing his temples, and gratefully accepted the cup of chamomile tea she’d poured. “You said that.”
“I’d like to shove his megaphone right up his—”
“You said that too. A few times.”
“—nose!” Jupiter paced the parlor floor, hands on hips, chest heaving. “And I’ll tell you what else, he’s making it more dangerous for himself and everyone else at the bazaar, only he’s too stupid to know it. Every week, more Wunimals join in the counterprotest at Grand Boulevard. Any one of them could be infected, any one of them could attack him, and, frankly, who would blame them?”
“The Concerned Citizens of Nevermoor would probably love it if one of them got injured.” Jack sighed. “Think of the publicity.”
“Can I come next week?” asked Morrigan. “I want to help.” (She also wanted to see the bazaar at least once before summer ended.)
“Absolutely not. Even Jack’s not coming next week.”
Jack cracked open his one visible eye. “I’m not?”
“He’s not?”
“He’s not,” said Jupiter, then turned to Jack. “You’re not.”
“But we stopped two attacks last night!” Jack sputtered indignantly, sitting up and glaring at his uncle. “You wouldn’t even have seen that second one if it wasn’t for me!”
“You were brilliant,” Jupiter admitted, “and I couldn’t have done without your help this summer. But I’ve got a bad feeling about next Friday night. It’s the last night of the bazaar and the Concerned Citizens of Nevermoor Party are stirring the place up like a hornets’ nest. Dr. Bramble’s been hearing rumors that some of the Wunimal rights activists are organizing some kind of response. If there’s going to be a clash, I don’t want you anywhere near it.”
“But I can help!” Jack insisted, pressing a hand to his chest. “You need me.”
“I need you to be safe, is what I need.” Jupiter looked from Jack to Morrigan with an apologetic smile. “Besides, I’ve ill-advisedly told Frank he can throw a very small end-of-summer dinner party in my absence, since his events schedule has taken such a hit this summer… so actually what I need is for you two to be here and supervise so he doesn’t completely wreck the place.”
Jack opened his mouth to protest one more time, closed it again, and shook his head. Both he and Morrigan both knew it was pointless arguing with Jupiter when he’d set his mind to a course of action. Jack got up and made for the door. “Fine. I’m going to bed.”
“Jack—”
“I said it’s fine.”
The door slammed shut behind him. Morrigan and Jupiter sat in an awkward silence, sipping their tea, until finally Jupiter lay down on the chaise longue, heaved a deep, weary sigh, and closed his eyes.
“I’m not trying to be boring, Mog. Just… responsible.”
She thought about it for a moment. “Same thing.”
That, at least, made him laugh.
That night, Morrigan was woken by a soft tap-tap-tap on the black door in her bedroom. A glance at the clock told her it was eleven thirty.
Tap-tap-tap.
Throwing off the bedclothes, she crossed the floor and pressed her imprint to the glowing circle in the middle of the black door. She tiptoed through the unlit wardrobe and opened the station door, yawning.
At first, she thought there was nobody there. Then a quiet, calm voice came from somewhere down near her feet, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Good evening, Morrigan. Having a nice summer?”
“Sofia!” She rubbed her eyes, trying to wake up. This was the last person she’d been expecting. She hadn’t really been expecting anyone at all, on a Saturday night during the school holidays. “Er, yes, very nice, thanks. I… is everything okay?”
“Quite okay, yes,” Sofia assured her. Morrigan thought she detected a tremulous note of excitement in her words. “But there’s something I think you’ll want to see.” The foxwun ran to a little brass railpod waiting at the platform, looking back over her shoulder at Morrigan.
“We’ll have to hurry. Come on!”
LOCATION: Rooftop of Proudfoot House, southern end
PARTICIPANTS & EVENTS: Gracious Goldberry, Avis Ku, Henrik Reiner
An advanced lesson in the Wundrous Art of Inferno, given by Goldberry to Ku and Reiner
DATE & TIME: Age of Industry, Seventh Saturday, Summer of Four
23:42–01:15
On the cold, dark rooftop of Proudfoot House, Morrigan and Sofia stepped through an incision in the air and felt time shudder around them.
The night was on fire.
Two young Wundersmiths stood back, watching a third wield Inferno in a way Morrigan had never seen before. The woman was tall and statuesque and cut an impressively frightening figure, with long waves of red hair that whipped around her in the wind.
“Gracious Goldberry,” Sofia told her. “And the students are Avis Ku and Henrik Reiner.”
Morrigan looked down at her, dragging her eyes away from the spectacle. “Wasn’t Gracious Goldberry sort of… horrible? Didn’t she—”
“Call for the imprisonment of all Wunimals?” Sofia finished for her. “Yes. She was a nasty piece of work. Very good at Inferno, though. Maybe the best I’ve ever seen.”
Gracious sent a tiny spark of flame dancing on the wind. It curled around Avis and Henrik, coming dangerously close to their hair and clothes and skin without burning a single bit of them. The small flame was followed by another, and another, and dozens more, one after the other. They were as tiny and delicate as dandelion puffs blowing on the wind, and yet they weren’t at the mercy of the wind at all. They were being directed, every single one of them at every single moment, by Gracious Goldberry, whose focus never wavered.
Flames danced between her fingertips. They grew and reshaped and swam in perfect patterns through the air, like a school of fish underwater.
“Wow,” Morrigan whispered.
“I told you you’d want to see it,” murmured Sofia. The firelight reflected in her eyes. “I come here every year on this night. I’ve seen it seven times now. It never stops taking my breath away.”
This feat of Gracious Goldberry’s, while perhaps not quite so visually spectacular as a golden firebird flying high into the sky, was breathtakingly good. Only someone with an intimate knowledge of how Inferno worked would know how incredibly difficult it was to do something this precarious, this precisely. Gracious never lost control for even a moment. Morrigan relished the display of skill, while simultaneously feeling slightly heart-sunk.
“I could never do this,” she whispered. “Not even if I lived for a hundred years.”
“If you live for a hundred years, Morrigan, you will do a great many things you wouldn’t believe.” Sofia paused. “And as a Wundersmith, you may live a great deal longer than that. Griselda Polaris lived to nearly three hundred. Wundrous energy is a great preserver.”
Morrigan’s eyes widened. She knew that Ezra Squall had lived an awfully long time, even though he still looked like the young man he was when he was thrown out of Nevermoor a hundred years ago. But three hundred? Would that be her one day, she wondered? Three hundred years old, still hanging around Wunsoc, all her friends long gone? She didn’t like to think about it.
The display went on, and Gracious talked through her actions, encouraging her Wundersmith students to imitate her. They tried (rather clumsily and with mixed success), and so did Morrigan (rather clumsily and with mixed success).
Unlike most of the other instructors Morrigan had seen, though, Gracious had no patience. She never slowed down, never repeated herself, never paused to allow Avis and Henrik a moment to think or catch up. She was a relentless, unyielding teacher.
Morrigan moved closer, trying not to get distracted by the show itself, but peering through the flames to observe the woman conducting them. She noticed tiny things she’d never seen any other Wundersmith do before.
Gracious held her head on a peculiar angle as she breathed out; Morrigan tried it, and her airways felt instantly clearer, unimpeded.
Gracious, at times, seemed to be inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth at the same time. Morrigan couldn’t believe such a thing was possible.
“Sofia, can you see what she’s doing?” She beckoned the foxwun closer. “She’s inhaling air and breathing fire simultaneously. How is she doing that?”
Sofia gasped. “How extraordinary. It’s called circular breathing; notoriously difficult, but very much a learnable skill—certain musicians can do it, and opera singers. I can’t believe I’d never noticed before. Excellent, excellent observation, Morrigan.”
Finally, the ghostly hour began to darken and fade, signaling its end. In seconds, Gracious Goldberry and her two students had disappeared from the rooftop, as had the warmth from their Inferno.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” Morrigan asked Sofia, shivering as the last spark died and a cool summer breeze blew past. “About Gracious Goldberry? What she tried to do to Wunimals, I mean.”
Sofia twitched her bushy tail closer around her and seemed to think about the question for a moment. “When I first spotted this hour in the Book, seven years ago, I came up here because I wanted to see what she looked like. I was convinced she’d be some awful crone with black eyes and—” Sofia cut herself off, looking up guiltily at Morrigan. “Oh—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
Morrigan snorted. “No offense taken. Go on.”
“Sorry,” Sofia said again. “Well, anyway, I came up here filled with hatred and spite, ready to scorn this awful person, and what did I find? Quite possibly the greatest wielder of Inferno who ever lived.”
“That must have been annoying.”
“Very annoying,” Sofia agreed. “I was incredibly angry at the time. I spent the next year being outraged that someone so awful should have been blessed with such a singular gift. But the following year I went back anyway, and I decided that this extraordinary talent could not be wasted on this wretch of a woman. I wouldn’t allow it to be. I would render it useful somehow. Someday.” She fixed her gaze on Morrigan. “And then you came along. So, tell me, Morrigan Crow. Did you get something useful out of that lesson?”
“Yes,” Morrigan said truthfully, making a mental note to ask Dame Chanda about circular breathing. “I did.”
“Good.” Sofia nodded and turned back to where the ghost of Gracious Goldberry had stood moments earlier. “Take that, you nasty old fool.”
Morrigan grinned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE SUNSET GALA
As the event planner for Nevermoor’s most glamorous hotel, Frank was the city’s undisputed Lord of the Party, but his mood had taken a dark turn this summer. As the Hollowpox took hold of Nevermoor, event after event had been scaled back or postponed or, in most cases, altogether canceled. Jupiter didn’t want to put any of the guests or staff at risk, nor could he bear to hurt his Wunimal friends by singling them out and asking them to stay away. It had been a very quiet summer at the Deucalion indeed… except for Frank’s constant, very loud complaining about the injustice of it all.
After weeks of wailing, Jupiter finally relented and said Frank could throw a little themed supper for guests staying at the hotel.
Then, while Jupiter was distracted by his all-consuming work on the Hollowpox task force, Frank added a few valued regulars and longtime friends of the Deucalion to the guest list.
At some point in the week, Morrigan noticed he’d stopped referring to it as a supper—now it w
as a “little soiree.” Then a “dance.” By the time Jupiter left for the bazaar on Friday evening and the guests began to arrive, Frank was welcoming people to the “Hotel Deucalion end-of-summer Sunset Gala.”
“Gala?” Kedgeree said heatedly. “Frank, this was supposed to be a dinner. Do you know what the difference is between a dinner and a gala? About two hundred people, that’s what.”
“Goodness, I know. Isn’t it dreadful?” Frank was utterly unable to hide his glee as a cavalcade of motorcars pulled up noisily in the forecourt. “I suppose word got out that I was throwing a little do, and people just couldn’t stay away. Bless them.”
Kedgeree rounded up Fen and the rest of the staff, and they decided the only thing to do was to keep things under control and shut it down at the first sign of trouble. It wouldn’t do to bother Jupiter now—it was the last night of the bazaar, after all, and he had much bigger fish to fry.
Morrigan realized Jupiter would be furious, but she couldn’t help feeling a little excited about the party, even if she knew it was somewhat ill-advised. The summer had been so long, tense, and boring, punctuated by disappointments and terrible news… truly, she’d been yearning for a bit of fun.
Frank had chosen his “Sunset Gala” theme to celebrate the end of summer and usher in the autumn chill. The lobby had transformed from floor to ceiling into the most beautiful sunset Morrigan had ever seen. The checkerboard tiles had turned all black, and the walls looked like they’d been dip-dyed in shades of peach, pink, and yellow. The blackbird chandelier had given itself a temporary makeover, becoming an enormous ball of shimmering gold, high up near the ceiling. As the night wore on, it deepened to orange and then to a brilliant red, sinking lower and lower like a sun slowly setting. Guests had been asked to wear all black, and the effect was breathtaking: they were silhouettes against a fiery horizon.
Trees had grown up from the lobby floor again, reminding Morrigan of the Christmas forest—but these were the leafy, deciduous kind. They swayed in a breeze that seemed to come from nowhere. Early in the evening it smelled of jasmine, citrus, and the ocean, then later as the sun set and the leaves began to curl and change color, it smelled of rain and apples and rich, dark soil. By midnight, the leaves were a thousand shades of orange and red, the temperature in the lobby had subtly dropped, a fire was roaring in the hearth, and the scent of woodsmoke filled the air.
Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow Page 23