Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow Read online

  Cadence had heard the whisper too. Without missing a beat, she called out, “Bite your tongue,” and a second later there was a cry of pain and a muffled “Ow!” as the perpetrator obeyed. Cadence smirked sideways at Morrigan, who shot back a grateful smile. She couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit pleased; there were benefits to having a mesmerist for a friend.

  “I saw that, Cadence,” said Anah quietly, coming up beside them. “You know we’re not supposed to use our knacks on other students.”

  Cadence groaned and rolled her eyes. “And you’re not supposed to be a boring crybaby who’s constantly telling everyone what to do, but here we are.”

  Anah scowled at her. “If you do it again, I’ll tell your Scholar Mistress.”

  As she stomped up the path ahead of them, Cadence muttered to Morrigan, “I liked her better when she couldn’t remember who I was.”

  If Anah really was inclined to tell the terrifying Scholar Mistress for the Arcane Arts, Morrigan thought she’d have her work cut out for her. She’d been trying to speak with Mrs. Murgatroyd herself for weeks now, but it was proving impossible. Every time she saw her in the halls of Proudfoot House, she seemed to get lost in the crowd, or even worse, to suddenly transform into her School of Mundane Arts counterpart, the awful Ms. Dearborn. It had happened so often lately, Morrigan was beginning to wonder if Murgatroyd was deliberately avoiding her… or if Dearborn was trying to interfere.

  Until about six weeks ago, Morrigan had been a graysleeve—a scholar of the Mundane Arts, just like Hawthorne, Anah, Mahir, Arch, Francis, and Thaddea. Overseen by Scholar Mistress Dulcinea Dearborn, the School of Mundane Arts was the larger of the two educational streams in the Wundrous Society, comprising three departments: the Practicalities on Sub-Three, Humanities on Sub-Four, and Extremities on Sub-Five.

  The School of Arcane Arts was much less populated but still had its own dedicated three subterranean floors, deep beneath the redbrick five-story building of Proudfoot House and only accessible to Arcane scholars.

  They were much harder to navigate than the orderly Mundane floors. They weren’t divided into three departments so much as countless covens, workshops, clubs, labs, top secret mini-societies, and top top secret guilds dedicated to various esoterica—none of which seemed to acknowledge their own existence, or each other’s. There were an awful lot of locked doors and unanswered questions in the Arcane school, but in the past six weeks Morrigan had learned to simply go where her timetable sent her and nowhere else—certainly not, for example, down a mysterious fog-laden hallway that hadn’t been there the day before. Detours like that were guaranteed to make you late for class.

  Dearborn had been furious to learn that Murgatroyd had swiped Morrigan from the Mundane into the Arcane Arts. Not, of course, because she had any warm feelings toward her—just the opposite, really. Dearborn didn’t think she should be in the Wundrous Society at all; she couldn’t tolerate the idea of Morrigan learning anything more than the absolute bare minimum. It would be so like the icy, silver-haired Scholar Mistress, Morrigan thought, to sabotage her education from afar.

  “You’re being paranoid,” Cadence said when Morrigan mentioned it later that afternoon. They were lurking in a hallway on Sub-Seven waiting for Lam, so they could all head to their final class of the term together. “Anyway, why would you want to talk to Murgatroyd? Personally, I try to avoid it as much as possible.”

  Morrigan found that most people tried to avoid the unsettling Mrs. Murgatroyd as much as possible, and with good reason… but she still preferred her to Ms. Dearborn.

  “Look at this.” She sighed and held out her timetable, pointing to that morning’s roster of lessons. “Peering into the Future. Finding Your Familiar. Yesterday it was Opening a Dialogue with the Dead.”

  “You said you loved that class! You love spooky stuff.”

  “I did,” Morrigan admitted. “I do. I just don’t know why Murgatroyd keeps putting me in all these weird subjects, when she’s the one who said I should be learning”—Morrigan paused, glancing around to make sure nobody could overhear. She lowered her voice a little—“the Wretched Arts.”

  A brief look of discomfort crossed Cadence’s face. She knew as much as Morrigan did about the Wretched Arts—which was to say, not very much at all.

  Morrigan knew the Wretched Arts were the tools of the so-called accomplished Wundersmith, and that she’d have to learn how to use them if she was ever going to understand what it really meant to be a Wundersmith. She’d picked up a few little scraps, and she’d been practicing them on her own. But there was only one other person in the entire realm who could properly wield the Wretched Arts… and it was an uneasy feeling indeed, to have something so important in common with him.

  “I just mean… I’m not a clairvoyant!” Morrigan went on. “Or an oracle, or a sorcerer, or a witch, or…”

  “Yeah, I know, you’re a mighty Wundersmith. Dry your eyes, mate,” Cadence replied quietly. She spotted Lambeth emerging from her Transcendental Meditation class in her usual daze and waved to get her attention.

  There weren’t nearly as many Arcane students as Mundane, but with teaching staff, graduates, academics, and researchers, as well as visiting members of the Royal Sorcery Council, the Paranormal League, and the Alliance of Nevermoor Covens, the Arcane halls were usually busy. Today they were filled with junior and senior scholars celebrating the end of term, in ways that most of them were strictly forbidden to do so outside the School of Arcane Arts. Illusion scholars could practice their craft anywhere in Wunsoc, because illusion—in the words of Murgatroyd—was “a bunch of tediously innocuous trickery.” (Morrigan thought this freedom was wasted on the illusion scholars, because they mostly used it to gross people out, creating false images of dog poo and scurrying rats in the hallways. Even Hawthorne, who loved grossing people out, was unimpressed with their efforts, declaring them “unimaginative in the extreme.”)

  But if a junior scholar was caught practicing—for example—sorcery or witchery anywhere outside of the Arcane floors, they’d almost certainly regret it. Some of Murgatroyd’s favored punishments included cutting the arms off winter coats, shaving eyebrows, and dangling people by their ankles over the side of the footbridge above Proudfoot Station.

  In the Arcane halls, however, nothing was off-limits.

  This afternoon, in some sort of bizarre end-of-term celebration, a group of sorcery scholars had stolen a case of unlabeled elixir bottles from the Witchery Wing and were shaking them up, daring each other to drink them, and howling at the results, either with laughter or pain. One of them burned her throat breathing piping-hot steam for a solid minute, one burst all the capillaries in his eyeballs, and another fell deeply and publicly in love with the first inanimate object he laid eyes on—a fire extinguisher.

  “Lam, hurry up, will you,” Cadence groaned as she saw their friend dawdling several yards behind.

  “Stop,” Lam said, holding up one hand. Morrigan and Cadence both halted instantly, just before they reached the intersection of two long hallways.

  Lam was a gifted short-range oracle… which meant she had visions of the future, but only the immediate future—mere moments ahead. Unit 919 had realized by now that heeding Lam’s warnings often helped them avoid some minor disaster like stubbed toes or spilled tea. Sometimes it even saved lives, as Morrigan had learned last Hallowmas night, when she’d deciphered Lam’s cryptic predictions and shut down the illegal Ghastly Market—just in time to save Cadence and Lam from being auctioned off to the highest bidders.

  If Morrigan hadn’t figured it out, someone would almost certainly have paid a lot of money to steal Cadence’s knack from her… but Lam’s fate could have been much, much worse. Because their friend Lambeth Amara was, in fact, the Princess Lamya Bethari Amati Ra, of the Royal House of Ra, from the Silklands in the state of Far East Sang. She’d been smuggled into the Free State illegally from the Wintersea Republic to trial for the Wundrous Society, just like Morrigan—but unlike Morr
igan’s, her family had been in on the plan, and if their treason against the ruling Wintersea Party was ever discovered, they could face execution. Nobody in the Republic was even supposed to know the Free State existed.

  Unit 919 had vowed to keep Lam’s secret. There were certainly others out there who knew—Lam’s patron, of course, and Miss Cheery and the Elders. A few wretched people who’d escaped the destruction of the Ghastly Market and scurried away into the night. But there was a feeling in Unit 919 that if they buried the secret between them and never said it aloud, they could protect Lam from anyone who might wish her harm.

  Cadence heaved an impatient sigh, looking at her watch. “Lam, we really need to—”

  “Wait.”

  SPLAT! Bzzzzzzzzz…

  Morrigan and Cadence watched in horror as, farther down the corridor, one of the boys from the Sorcery Department sprayed a shook-up elixir bottle all over a passing senior scholar. The older girl was engulfed by a wave of black tarry liquid, which, on contact with her skin, turned into… bees. Angry, buzzy bees that swarmed to her as if she were covered in pollen. She ran down the hall, shrieking and trying to bat them away, while the sorcery boys chased after her and tried to help, half-laughing and half-horrified.

  Lam finally lowered her hand.

  “Carry on,” she said, sauntering past Morrigan and Cadence with a very I-told-you-so look.

  Morrigan hadn’t ever had a class on Sub-Two before—although she went there most days as that was where the dining rooms, the kitchens, and the Commissariat were. The rest of Unit 919 was already waiting outside the assigned classroom when Morrigan, Cadence, and Lam arrived.

  “Crime and Donuts,” said Hawthorne, turning around to face the others as he held out an arm across the door, barring their entry. “That’s my final guess. Anyone else? Last chance.”

  “Oh, just open the door,” Thaddea groaned, pushing past him.

  The room was small—maybe a quarter of the size of a regular classroom—and empty. It was also very dark. Morrigan felt around on the wall as the group made their way inside.

  “Where’s the light switch?” she asked.

  “Ow! That was my foot, Francis, you klutz.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t see—”

  BANG. The door swung shut behind them, and the group fell silent.

  “Where’s our teacher?” Anah whispered in a voice that shook a little.

  “Shh,” said Lam quietly. “Watch the wall. It’s about to begin.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  A CAREFULLY MANEUVERED SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

  A few silent seconds passed in the darkness, and then the wall came to life with vivid, moving images. Morrigan blinked into the sudden brightness.

  They were watching a projected film of a night she remembered well.

  Nine children were lined up outside the Wundrous Society. A huge, elaborate tapestry made of real flowers covered the gates, and twisting green vines formed the words:

  The members of Unit 919 stood dumbstruck, watching their selves of a year ago and wondering what this new strangeness was all about. Most of them, anyway.

  “Does my hair really look that fluffy?” Hawthorne whispered in Morrigan’s ear.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Cool.”

  “What’re we meant to do?” asked the on-screen Thaddea. The on-screen Morrigan peeked sideways at her, looking smaller and more intimidated than she remembered feeling.

  And then something happened in the projection that made Morrigan’s skin turn instantly to gooseflesh, all up and down her arms. Something she didn’t remember.

  She felt a hand grip her wrist as Cadence came close and said, “What… are they?”

  Even if Morrigan had known the answer, at that moment she couldn’t have made her throat form words.

  The nine unwitting members of Unit 919 stood outside Wunsoc at midnight on Spring’s Eve, excited and expectant, waiting breathlessly to begin their new lives as members of Nevermoor’s most elite organization.

  And all the while, behind them, crawling out of the darkness, were dozens of… Morrigan didn’t know what they were. Monsters, she supposed.

  They were dark-scaled creatures, fleshy and many-limbed, not quite unnimals but barely human. They crawled on the ground, pulled along by powerful forearms, and dragged long, muscular tails behind them. Their strangely humanoid faces were angular and wide, their eyes as black as their scales, glittering like beetles.

  Morrigan had never seen anything like them in her life. They were like an experiment gone wrong. Snakes turned nearly human… or vice versa. Even looking at them on film, she felt a visceral, primitive urge to run. Yet she was frozen to the spot.

  “Is this a joke?” asked Anah. Her voice was high-pitched and tremulous. “Is this some sort of horrible joke? Because it’s not very funny.”

  She turned and ran for the door but found it was locked.

  “This isn’t FUNNY!” she shouted again.

  The rest of 919 instinctively drew closer together, watching in creeping horror as the snakelike creatures slithered up behind their on-screen counterparts. If Morrigan hadn’t lived this night herself, if she didn’t know how it ended, she’d be convinced she was about to watch herself and her friends get attacked and eaten by monsters.

  It didn’t happen, of course. Seconds before the prowling creatures would have reached them, more figures came out of the darkness—human figures this time, sorcerers in black Wunsoc cloaks—and silently herded the beasts back into the shadows, wielding firelit branches and swinging strange smoking talismans.

  Improbably—impossibly—the Unit 919 of the past hadn’t noticed any of this. Their eyes were fixed keenly on the gates as they creaked open, inviting them into a secret world of opportunity and adventure.

  All except Lambeth, Morrigan noticed. She watched her carefully on the screen. Lam stood at the end of the row of children, peering back into the darkness, her eyes wide with terror.

  “You never said anything,” Morrigan said quietly, turning to look at Lam. The light from the projection illuminated her face. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  Lam’s chin trembled a little. “I… it just… seemed kinder not to.”

  The nine children marched eagerly into the grounds of Wunsoc, all but Lam oblivious to the danger behind them.

  Morrigan exhaled in relief, looking at Hawthorne and Cadence in the dim classroom, and they stared back at her in mute bewilderment. At last, with the gates shut behind them and the monsters no longer visible, it felt like some air had returned to the room. Then an amplified voice spoke over the footage, and they all jumped in shock.

  “I suspect you are all wondering why you’re here.”

  Morrigan knew those brittle tones. It was Elder Quinn.

  Gregoria Quinn was one of the High Council of Elders, the three most revered people in the Wundrous Society. The High Council was elected by all members of Wunsoc at the beginning of each Age, to lead and govern them until the next. Morrigan could see why Elder Quinn had been chosen for this honor; she might have been small and frail and very, very old, but she was a formidable woman. Her fellow Elders—Helix Wong and Alioth Saga—were nearly as impressive, Morrigan thought. (But not quite.)

  “For many years,” Elder Quinn’s voice echoed around them, “the Wundrous Society has had one mission. One unified, secret purpose, expressed in two discrete yet equally important tasks. We call this purpose, for want of a grander title, Containment and Distraction.”

  “So… not Chips and Dip,” whispered Hawthorne, and, absurdly, Morrigan had to clap a hand to her mouth to suppress a hysterical giggle.

  “Shh,” said Cadence, elbowing her in the ribs. “Look.”

  Elder Quinn spoke while the footage continued—of an inauguration night that was entirely different from the one they had experienced. And yet it was the same night.

  Morrigan remembered marching up the drive to Proudfoot House feeling a little nervous, perhaps, but not afraid. She re
membered seeing the cloaked Wundrous Society members holding candles, perched high in the dead fireblossom trees that lined the drive, and feeling strangely comforted by their presence. She remembered thinking that the hard part was over. That she’d gotten through the trials and into the Society and everything was going to be easier from then onward.

  She’d been wrong, of course. But it wasn’t until now that she knew precisely how wrong she’d been.

  Behind the nine new scholars, jumping down from the trees, the figures were not members of the Wundrous Society. They weren’t even human… just doing a good imitation of it.

  “What in the Seven Pockets are we watching?” breathed Arch.

  The figures seemed to unfold from their vaguely human facsimile, shifting into what must have been their true form: enormous vulturelike creatures, hunched and haunted-looking, with yellow eyes and great, hooklike talons.

  Morrigan couldn’t believe she and the rest of the unit could have been so oblivious.

  “Run, for goodness’ sake,” Arch whispered to the projected Unit 919, quite pointlessly. Morrigan understood the impulse. She wanted to shake her past self, to force that other Morrigan to turn around and see the danger.

  Because it wasn’t just the things slithering out of the shadows and perching in the trees. There was more, so much more.

  She’d believed—they had all believed—that the splendor and spectacle of their inauguration were meant to be a celebration of their success.