Just before dawn, when the starlit black sky began to lighten ever so slightly, Morrigan crept out of her room. She’d thought to sneak in early to the Smoking Parlor and put the tea on, ready to tell Jupiter everything about the gala and hear everything about the bazaar in return. But Jack was already there, lingering outside in the hallway.
He held a finger to his mouth, then pointed to the parlor door, which was slightly ajar. Raised voices—and a faint, sunshine-yellow trail of lemon smoke—came from within.
“—little more than speculation at this point, of course.”
“What are you going to tell the public?” The second voice was Fenestra, and she was pacing. Morrigan could tell because of the rhythmic, agitated thumping of her tail hitting the wall. “You are going to tell the pub—”
“Fen, I’ve told you, it’s not up to me. Elder Quinn believes it would only cause more panic. Inspector Rivers thinks that if it makes no material difference to public safety, we should keep a lid on it. If it did come from—”
“Typical Wunsoc,” Fen growled. “Always thinking they know what’s—Oi!”
Morrigan and Jack jumped in surprise as the door flew open and Fenestra pounced in front of them. She gave a low growl. “Don’t you know it’s rude to eavesdrop?”
“Fenestra, just let them in,” came Jupiter’s weary voice from inside his study. “They’re going to hear about it anyway.”
Fen gave a resentful, snuffling grunt and herded the pair of them into the parlor, pushing them forward with her great fluffy head.
“Ow—careful, Fen!” Morrigan protested as she stumbled into an armchair.
“Are you two all right? Fen’s told me all about the gala.” Jupiter sighed, and added in a dispirited mutter, “Shame, I could have had a lovely surprise when I read about it in the papers later.”
“We’re fine,” said Jack. “What are we going to hear about? What’s going on?”
Perched on the edge of the windowsill, Jupiter rubbed his face with both hands.
“I spoke with Inspector Rivers last night. She has sources in the Wintersea Republic who believe that’s where the Hollowpox originated. A couple of years ago they had an epidemic that only affected Wunimals. They called it something different, of course, but their eyewitness accounts are identical: agitation and loss of language followed by a reversion to unnimalistic behaviors, leading to violence and finally ending with the Wunimal in a comatose state. Or worse.” Jupiter paused, taking a deep breath.
“If it happened two years ago, why’s the Stealth only finding out about it now?” asked Jack. “Don’t they keep an eye on everything that happens in the Republic?”
“Do they?” asked Morrigan. That was news to her.
“They knew about the dwindling Wunimal populations,” said Jupiter. “But they attributed it to other factors; Wunimals have been under attack across the border for a long time, and nobody had heard anything about a disease. And Wunimal groups in the Republic are small and scattered; they don’t really talk to each other.”
“I don’t understand,” said Morrigan. “There are no Wunimals in the Wintersea Republic.”
Fenestra gave a derisive groan. “Of course there are! Just because you never saw them, doesn’t mean—”
“Easy, Fen.” Jupiter pressed the spot between his eyebrows, dropping a couple of headache tablets into a glass of water. It fizzed and bubbled and turned a cool, calming shade of lilac. “Yes, Mog, there are Wunimals in the Republic. Lots of them. But they don’t live the way Wunimals in the Free State live. They have their own communities, mostly in secret.” He downed the glass of lilac water in one.
“Why do they want to live in secret?” Morrigan asked.
“They don’t want to,” said Fen. “They have to.”
“The Wintersea Party doesn’t officially acknowledge their existence,” Jupiter continued. “It makes life dangerous for them. There are some Wunimals living in the Free State who came here to escape the Republic. It’s possible one of them brought the Hollowpox with them.”
“But the borders are closed,” said Morrigan.
“Yes, the borders between the Republic and the Free State are, officially, closed,” said Jupiter, “but there are ways in and out if you know what you’re doing. They’re risky, but if somebody is in serious need of help, there are people in the Free State who are willing to take the necessary risks. And many Wunimals in the Republic are in serious need of help. Fen is part of a group that specializes in bringing them to safety.”
“She’s… part of a smuggling ring?” Morrigan said, just as Jack blurted out, “Fen, you’re a smuggler?”
Morrigan didn’t know why she was surprised. She knew the Magnificat well enough by now to realize she was capable of pretty much anything.
Fen casually clawed at the rug. “We prefer the term rescue ring.”
“Hang on,” said Jack. “Uncle Jove, are you saying the Hollowpox came from one of—?”
“AS I have been telling Jupiter, it absolutely did NOT come from one of ours,” Fen said fiercely. “Impossible. Every Wunimal we smuggle across the border stays in a safe house for a month before we find them someplace permanent in the Seven Pockets. Any sign of sickness in that time and they go straight into quarantine and stay there until they’ve been treated. There is no way—absolutely no way—that Hollowpox Patient Zero came into Nevermoor through me.”
“Fen, it wasn’t an accusation, it was a warning. Your safe houses better be airtight, because there’ll be raids before long. And tell your lot to be extra careful. The borders are being watched more closely than ever.”
“I thought the Free State was supposed to be impenetrable?” asked Morrigan.
Jupiter made a face. “I wouldn’t say impenetrable.”
“But Ezra Squall can’t get in.”
“No, he can’t,” said Jupiter. “Because our borders specifically keep Squall out. They’re impenetrable to him, but not necessarily to ordinary people in the Republic. It’s just that most ordinary people in the Republic have no idea the Free State exists, and if they do, they don’t know where it is or how to get here. But, as I say, there are ways inside.”
“Such as through a clockface in a giant mechanical spider piloted by a madman,” said Morrigan, recalling her own strange journey to Nevermoor, two and a half years ago. Jack laughed at that as he dropped into an armchair next to hers, swinging his legs over the side.
“Well, quite,” Jupiter said with a small, quick smile. “If you’re fortunate enough to know a handsome and enterprising redhead with friends in border control, that’s one way. If not, there are various other… informal passages into the Free State.” He cast a fleeting look at Fen, who yawned widely. “Or for those trying to go it alone, there’s a long and dangerous trek through the Highlands. They’d have to get up over the cliffs first, though, and before that they’d have to sail from the east coast of Prosper across the Harrow Strait, which is very treacherous water.”
“And they’d have to do it in a small enough boat to go unnoticed by the Coast Patrol,” Fen pointed out.
“But it takes days to cross the Harrow. Someone infected with the Hollowpox would probably never make it that far.”
“And if they did, there would still be wild dragons to contend with, and the cave-dwelling clans of the Black Cliffs,” said Jupiter. “And if they survived all that, it would take weeks to come down through the Highlands, and then—”
“I’m telling you, Jove, that’s not the way they came,” Fen interrupted. “Without inside help, the only viable way to make it from the Republic into Nevermoor within a matter of days would be via the River Juro, flowing in directly from the Harrow Strait. And the Coast Patrol monitors the water traffic and checks all boats in and out, every single one.”
“What if they swam?” Jack suggested.
Fenestra scoffed. “Good luck to them.”
Morrigan remembered what Francis had said about the venomous river serpents, Great Spiny Demonfish,
waterwolves, and Bonesmen lurking in the Juro. No one could swim through all that. The whole thing seemed impossible without… a vessel.
Morrigan felt an idea gathering in her mind. She sat up very straight. “Fen, what if they weren’t in a boat above the water? Then they wouldn’t be seen by the Coast Patrol, right?”
Jupiter’s brow furrowed. “Mog, what are you getting at?”
She told them about the vessel she, Francis, and Thaddea had found in the pawnshop on Grand Boulevard, and what Francis had told her about submarines and spies.
“And the shopkeeper said something about—oh, what was it? He said it wasn’t a local design,” she said. “That it was bona fide property of the Wintersea Party.”
Jupiter narrowed his eyes. “I’ll have Inspector Rivers look into it. Good intel, Mog.”
Morrigan inched forward to the edge of her seat, suddenly remembering what she’d most wanted to tell him. “Jack saw the green eyes! In the three Wunimals last night.”
Jupiter looked from one to the other in surprise. “He—you did?”
Jack nodded. “It was really weird. Bright, glowing green, and… sort of…”
He trailed off, and Morrigan took over, telling Jupiter all about the three Wunimals and how the light had flown out of their bodies just as the Hollowpox peaked, as if the light was the Hollowpox itself.
As he listened to the story, Jupiter’s jaw clenched and unclenched repeatedly, the way it did when there was something he’d been holding back. “Jack… one thing I don’t understand about what happened last night. If there were infected Wunimals at the party, why didn’t you say something to Fen or Kedgeree? Couldn’t you see they were—?”
“They weren’t infected,” Jack said emphatically. “It wasn’t like what we’ve seen at the bazaar, Uncle Jove, I swear. They weren’t, you know, hollow. Then, when everything went dark”—Jupiter glanced at Morrigan; Fen had evidently told him about the shadowmaking too—“it was like the culminations we’ve seen at the bazaar, but… faster. Like the Hollowpox was on fast-forward.”
Morrigan described what it was like when the green lights left the infected Wunimals’ bodies, how they’d swarmed around her and then split apart. “And I’ve been thinking. Jupiter, what if it’s not really a disease?” she finished in a breathless rush.
Jupiter’s forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
“Remember when I asked you about the posters, and why you didn’t tell people about the green eyes? You said if we described the infected as having glowing green eyes, people would claim they’d been possessed by demons. But Jupiter, that’s exactly what it acted like! Like something living inside them, squatting inside them like a toad, like a… what do you call it, a living thing that takes over another body—”
“A parasite?” suggested Jupiter.
“Yes!” Morrigan snapped her fingers. “Or a—a monster. It acted like one. I think it wanted to take me over, but it couldn’t because I’m not a Wunimal.”
“A living parasite that acts like a disease,” Jupiter said thoughtfully. “It would explain the strange pattern of infection, why the Hollowpox seems to spread so haphazardly. If it can think for itself, it can seek out the most hospitable host.” He fell silent for a moment, and Morrigan could almost hear his brain whirring.
But she wasn’t finished speculating. “And, Jupiter, what if… what if it was Squall who made it and sent it into Nevermoor? That’s what he does, he makes monsters! He can’t come in himself, but maybe—”
“It’s possible,” Jupiter agreed. “I’ll need to discuss this with the task force, but in the meantime, this conversation does not leave this room. Understood?”
Fen peered at him closely. “Jove. Don’t you think the Wunimal community deserves to know—”
“It’s them I’m thinking of.” He stared miserably into the dregs of lilac water in the bottom of his glass. “Fen, last night those guests thought you were an infected Wunimal. Why? Just because you were angry. They could have hurt you, they could have attacked you—”
“Pfft, don’t worry about me—”
“I do worry about you, Fenestra! And I worry about our friends and guests and every Wunimal in this city!” He looked from Fen to Morrigan to Jack, wide-eyed, trying to make them understand. “Because if that’s how people act when they think it’s a disease, imagine what will happen if we tell them it might be a monster, or that Squall might be involved! It would be as good as telling them that Wunimals are monsters. We’d be declaring open season on the whole lot of them.
“Just—please—promise me you’ll keep this quiet for now.”
They promised. Even Fen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
FROM BAD TO WORSE
Autumn of Three
You can’t do this, Jove. I won’t stand for it. I’m not coming down until you take it back!”
Frank was swinging from the chandelier, and Morrigan wasn’t entirely surprised. He’d been threatening drastic action all day.
“You’re being ridiculous, Frank,” Jupiter called in a tense, weary voice from where he lay on top of the concierge desk, ankles crossed and fingers intertwined across his stomach. He added under his breath, “As standard.”
“Come down, Frank, there’s a good chap,” said Kedgeree coaxingly. He, Martha, and Charlie were running back and forth beneath the chandelier, holding the four corners of a bedsheet up as high as they could, hoping to catch Frank when he inevitably fell. “Come on now, we’ve got you.”
“NEVER!” Frank roared. His black cape billowed in the slipstream as he swung wildly, casting light and shadows across the lobby.
Morrigan and Jack sat at the bottom of the spiral staircase, watching the spectacle unfold. Between the flickering light from the chandelier and the whole dramatic cape situation, the scene should have had the soothing sort of mad-ghost-haunting-an-abandoned-theater aesthetic that Morrigan enjoyed. But the past twenty-four hours had given her a growing sense of unease.
As Jupiter had predicted, within hours of the gala’s abrupt ending, the newspapers were already ablaze with news of the famous Hotel Deucalion. Its famously mad ginger proprietor, a mysterious incident, AND Wunimals behaving badly all added up to excellent tabloid fodder. It didn’t seem to matter that Jupiter wasn’t even there.
The Concerned Citizens of Nevermoor were louder than ever. Their spluttering, fist-slamming founder went head-to-head with prominent Wunimal rights activist Senator Guiscard Silverback—himself a gorillawun—in a fierce debate about the dangers of allowing Wunimals in public spaces “in these troubled times.”
The mood in Nevermoor was tense; it felt like everyone was simply waiting for the next attack. Jupiter made the decision to close the Deucalion’s doors until the Hollowpox was under control. Frank had, predictably, been wailing ever since.
“Jove, do something,” Dame Chanda urged, pushing Jupiter’s feet off the desk and forcing him to sit up with a groan. “Make him stop this foolishness!”
Jupiter scoffed. “Really? If I had the ability to make Frank stop any sort of foolishness, do you think I’d still have a monthly bill for cocktail umbrellas that runs into the thousands? I told him he could have a dinner party and he threw a whole stinking gala, so I don’t know what kind of mystical powers you think I have over him!”
Dame Chanda fixed him with her sternest look and he groaned again, sliding reluctantly off the desk.
“Fine.” He glared up at the swinging vampire. “Frank, please come down. Let’s talk about this.”
“NO! I SHAN’T COME DOWN, JOVE, NOT UNTIL—ARRRGHH!”
Frank lost his grip on the chandelier, came plummeting downward, and was caught at the last second in the bedsheet and lowered gently to the ground. He scrambled to his feet and scowled at them one by one, furious at the indignity of it all.
Jupiter stuck his hands in his pockets and sighed. “The Federation of Nevermoorian Hoteliers has given their recommendation to temporarily close, Frank, I can’t just—”<
br />
“The Aurianna is still open,” Frank protested, scrambling to his feet. “They’re ignoring the recommendation. They’re positively gleeful that we’ve closed, Jove! Do you realize they’re throwing a party every night this—”
“The Aurianna has banned Wunimals,” Jupiter snapped, running a hand over his face. “Do you realize that? That is how the Aurianna is staying open.”
Frank turned away. Martha covered her mouth with her hands while Morrigan and Jack exchanged a look of dismay. Nobody spoke.
Jupiter pushed on through the uncomfortable silence. “Is that what you’d like me to do? Turn away some of our friends while welcoming others?”
Frank huffed and adjusted his cape a little irritably. “I’m sure they’d—well, it is only temporary, after all!”
“We don’t know that, Frank,” said Kedgeree. “We can’t possibly know how long this will go on.”
“What about all our other guests, then?” Frank continued, looking to Charlie and Martha for support. “Don’t we owe them—”
“I think,” Martha began in a halting voice, “that we owe all of our guests the same consideration. What they’re doing at the Aurianna… Well. It’s not right.” She pursed her lips, making it clear that was all she had to say on the matter.
“It’s bang out of order,” agreed Charlie, and Kedgeree gave a sober nod.
Jupiter spoke quietly. “You know, I’m surprised at you, Frank. For goodness’ sake, there are still establishments in Nevermoor that refuse to welcome you because you’re—”
“A vampire, yes!” Frank’s eyebrows shot upward. “Exactly. And do you hear me complaining? Honestly, I don’t blame them. I’m a liability! I bit a man at the supermarket last week!”
Dame Chanda gasped. “Frank!”
“Oh, it was just a nibble,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “I sent flowers. My point is—”
“This isn’t up for discussion.” Jupiter hadn’t raised his voice, but the muscles in his jaw were clenched tight. “This is my hotel. I decide what it stands for, and the Deucalion does not stand for that.”
Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow Page 25