Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow Read online

“Hm. What flavor is it?”

  “Lemon butter raspberry ripple layer cake with crumbled meringue pieces and raspberry cream filling,” he said, looking hopeful. “Your favorite.”

  It was her favorite.

  “All right.” Morrigan nodded once and stepped aside to let him in. “I hope you brought plates.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DANGEROUS LEVELS OF CHEER

  Ohhhhh, he took up his bag with the toys inside and he snapped at the reins of his magical ride and the reindeer took to the sky with pride and the elves sat right by Saint Nick’s side and the flight was—”

  “How many verses does this song have, exactly?” Jack muttered.

  Morrigan counted on her fingers. “I’ve heard… sixteen, so far.”

  “What? No. It’s easily been twenty. Remember he sang all those verses about responsible sleigh maintenance yesterday.”

  “—but the chimney was narrow and Nick was wide, and the elves couldn’t help him although they tried—”

  “Yes, I was counting those,” she said. “What does it look like now?”

  Jack—or John Arjuna Korrapati, as he was also known—lifted his eye patch cautiously. It was the one barrier he had between seeing the world as an ordinary person would, and seeing the world as a Witness—with all its hidden threads and connective tissue, all its secrets and dangers and histories laid bare in full, moving, sometimes hideously confusing color. It was a dubious gift he’d inherited from Jupiter.

  “Very… shiny.” Jack winced a little and snapped the eye patch back into place. “Potentially dangerous levels of cheer.”

  Morrigan leaned her elbows on the rail of the spiral staircase, peering down into the lobby. It was her and Jack’s favorite spot in the Hotel Deucalion for people-watching.

  Today, though, they’d mostly been Jupiter-watching—partly for entertainment, and partly out of a genuine concern for his safety. He’d gone a bit mad on tinsel, carols, and eggnog, and Jack was worried that his uncle’s Christmas spirit had risen to such dizzying heights that he just might… burst a valve, or something.

  Morrigan tilted her head to one side, watching as her patron leapt around the lobby like a ballet dancer, throwing handfuls of sparkly red and green confetti over the guests checking in, and bellowing tunefully all the while.

  “Do you think he’s making new bits up?”

  “—all round the Realm in just one night, in his smart red suit, what a splendid sight! Susie got a truck and Millie got a kite and the elves got into a big fistfight—”

  Jack snorted. “Absolutely.”

  “So much for Jupiter not being a Saint Nick supporter, then,” said Morrigan casually, casting Jack a sideways glance. He flicked his shiny black hair out of his face irritably. “I don’t think I’ve heard him singing any Yule Queen carols yet… have you?”

  The dual figureheads of Nevermoor’s holiday season, Saint Nicholas and the Yule Queen, were in an Ages-long war over who best embodied the spirit of the season. Nevermoorians were expected to show allegiance to one or the other by donning their colors—red for flashy, jolly Saint Nick or green for the elegant, understated Yule Queen—and people took it far more seriously than Morrigan considered strictly necessary.

  Each year, the conflict culminated with the Battle of Christmas Eve, a spectacular magical combat between the two champions. If Saint Nick won, his promise was a present in every stocking and a fire in every hearth. If the Yule Queen won, she pledged a blanket of snow on Christmas morning and a blessing on every house. (Of course, it was an open secret that every single year, the pair would declare a truce so that everybody won.)

  Jack scowled at her. “It’s not Uncle Jove’s fault that Saint Nick has catchier songs. The old fraud’s probably got a whole team of jingle composers on staff!”

  Morrigan grinned. Jack was firmly pro–Yule Queen, and it was almost too easy to get him riled up about it. It had become her favorite holiday activity.

  There was less than a week now until Christmas Day and Morrigan was feeling rather festive herself. It was her second Christmas since making her home at the Hotel Deucalion—a Wundrous, living building that often altered itself without warning, according to its own mysterious whims—and she thought the place had really done them proud this year.

  The Smoking Parlor was particularly overexcited and kept changing its mind about what seasonal smoke to roll out from the walls. In the space of ten minutes it could change from brandy butter smoke (which Morrigan thought was lovely, if a little rich), to deep purple waves of pickled sugarplum smoke (so tangy and sweet it was almost dizzying), to the gently comforting, smoky scent of roasting chestnuts. Jupiter found it funny, until khaki-colored waves of boiled sprout smoke began wafting from the walls, at which point he’d kindly asked the Smoking Parlor to pull itself together.

  Throughout December, the lobby had changed slowly, day by day, as if wanting to savor each step of its holiday transformation. It started on the first of the month with a single sapling fir sprouting from the black-and-white checkerboard floor. The tree shot straight upward, splitting the marble with ease, spilling broken rubble from the base of the trunk, and frightening the life out of poor old Kedgeree, who’d been minding his own business at the concierge desk nearby.

  By the next morning, the sapling was all grown up, nearly to the full height of the room. It stopped just beneath the sparkling blackbird chandelier, which had turned silver for the occasion and looked a bit like an angel perched on top of a Christmas tree, if you squinted sideways at it.

  A mere three weeks later, the entire lobby was a wintry evergreen forest, filled with birdsong and the earthy smell of fir trees, their branches dusted with snow.

  It wasn’t real snow. But that was part of what made it so magical. The thick, sparkling blanket of white on the lobby-forest floor never melted, never turned ice-slick or went to slush. Day after day it was crisp and glittery, powder-soft, dry to the touch… and so satisfyingly crunchy to stomp through in boots.

  After the first few days, Dame Chanda Kali—opera singer extraordinaire and Dame Commander of the Order of Woodland Whisperers—had decided she’d quite like to see some wildlife among the trees, so she threw open the Deucalion’s front doors and sang her favorite carol (“The Yuletide Hymn”) until a cohort of enamored woodland creatures gathered in the lobby, drawn irresistibly to the sound of her voice, and made themselves at home among the trees. Morrigan’s favorite was a friendly red robin who greeted her each morning after breakfast and left tiny little tracks in the snow.

  Kedgeree the concierge took to wearing his coat, scarf, and mittens indoors, and he and Charlie the chauffeur had to dig out a few fire pits here and there so that the guests could gather around them for warmth while waiting to check in or check out. But these minor inconveniences aside, staff and guests alike were altogether delighted with the transformation. Jupiter was so full of Christmas cheer, he began studding his prodigious ginger beard with tiny bells and fairy lights every morning.

  “As if he wasn’t noisy enough,” grumbled Fenestra the Magnificat, the Deucalion’s head of housekeeping, every time she heard him jingling down the halls.

  But even cranky Fenestra, who like most cats wasn’t terribly fond of cold weather—or change in general—was eventually taken by the holiday spirit.

  “I actually saw Fen frolicking today,” Martha, the young housemaid, whispered one evening as Morrigan drew a bath in her talon-foot tub. “Frolicking! In the snow! Like a playful little kitten!”

  “What?” Morrigan’s eyes had shot up from the dresser, where she was choosing an elixir. In her shock, she managed to knock over her favorite pink rose bubble oil, splashing half the bottle into the water. The bubbles turned into floating rosebuds, and within seconds the bath was in full bloom—hundreds of flowers spilling out of the porcelain and onto the marble floor. “Fen? Are you sure?”

  Since Fenestra the Magnificat was roughly the size of an elephant and scornful of most things that brought
others joy, Morrigan found this hard to picture in her mind.

  “On my life, I did.” Martha held a hand to her heart, her face utterly solemn. “She swears she was chasing a hare through the trees, but I know a frolic when I see one.”

  The only person who hadn’t been overly pleased about the festive décor was Frank the vampire dwarf. The Deucalion’s resident party planner was rather put out that his chosen theme for the annual Hotel Deucalion Christmas Soiree had been vetoed by the hotel itself.

  “I had everything planned!” Frank moaned, when it was becoming clear the forest was here to stay for the season. “I’ve got the invitations all ready to go out. Now I’m going to have to do them again. I was going for dark glamour this year—all black and gold and dripping red. Tuxedoes and evening gowns. Diamonds and dim lighting. It’s impossible to do dark glamour with a bunch of big-eyed woodland unnimals hopping around, looking cute. I try to bring a touch of class to this place and look what it gives me in return. Bunnies and badgers.” He downed a full teacup of eggnog in dramatic fashion, then wiped his mouth and stared miserably at a little bluebird singing on a branch. “My talents are wasted again.”

  Frank was further offended (though no doubt quietly relieved) when the last-minute change of theme resulted in the Deucalion’s most successful Christmas party ever. The society pages in all Nevermoor’s major newspapers the next day were plastered with full-color photos of celebrities and aristocracy throwing back candy cane cocktails and cooing over the sweet woodland unnimals (while Frank bared his fangs broodingly in the background).

  It had been such a very silly season so far, and there was still nearly a week to go.

  On Christmas Eve, in the sanctuary of her bedroom, Morrigan was practicing. Just as she had done every night that week, and the week before that, and in all the weeks that had passed since the night she’d shut down the Ghastly Market. She had started the nightly ritual at Jupiter’s suggestion, to manage the ever-growing volume of Wunder that was drawn irresistibly to her as a Wundersmith. That energy was constantly swarming around her, invisible and undetectable but nonetheless there, waiting impatiently for her to do something with it. But only an accomplished Wundersmith could wield it, and while Morrigan had picked up a couple of new skills in the past year, she was nowhere near accomplished.

  She knew now what a dangerous position it had put her in, that great yawning chasm between her potential as a Wundersmith and her actual ability. It was this gathering of Wunder—this critical mass, as Ezra Squall had called it—that had allowed him to take control of her power and use it for his own purposes.

  Most people in Nevermoor knew Squall as “the last Wundersmith,” and spoke about him only in hushed, fearful tones, as if he were some imaginary bogeyman. Morrigan, however, knew that he was very much a real, living threat.

  Not that she was about to share that with anyone, outside of her closest friends. It was bad enough that everyone at Wunsoc now knew she was a Wundersmith too. If they knew she’d also met Nevermoor’s greatest enemy several times—had even reluctantly learned from him—she’d likely be driven out of town with torches and pitchforks.

  Morrigan didn’t know if or when Squall would return. Though the ancient magic of the city prevented him from physically entering Nevermoor, nothing could stop him from traveling there incorporeally on the Gossamer—the invisible web of energy that connected everything in the realm. If Morrigan allowed too much Wunder to gather around her unchecked, Squall could use it to “lean” through the Gossamer and manipulate her powers, making her his puppet. Summoning Wunder and using it was the only way Morrigan could keep the city she now called home safe.

  “Morningtide’s child is merry and mild,” she sang quietly. The tingling feeling came to her fingertips with barely any coaxing. She was getting better at this. Even if her voice was still a tiny bit wobbly. “Eventide’s child is wicked and wild.”

  To her endless frustration, Morrigan still knew very little about the Wretched Arts. But the knowledge she had, she treasured.

  The Wretched Art of Nocturne. The summoning of Wunder. Singing to make it so.

  And the Wretched Art of Inferno. The creation and manipulation of fire.

  Those were the two things Squall had taught her.

  She raked over this meager knowledge again and again, every night, polishing and perfecting her technique. Hoping the next steps in her journey to becoming an accomplished Wundersmith might just one day be miraculously laid out for her.

  “Morningtide’s child arrives with the dawn. Eventide’s child brings gale and storm.” Morrigan smiled to herself, eyes closed. She could feel the gentle yet insistent hum of energy swimming around her, pooling contentedly in her upturned palms. “Where are you going, o son of the morning? Up with the sun where the winds are warming.”

  She didn’t really understand why singing should be the signal to Wunder that you were ready to put it to use… but then, there were lots of things she didn’t understand yet about being a Wundersmith.

  Most of it, really.

  Almost all of it.

  “Where are you going, o daughter of night?” Morrigan opened her eyes cautiously and saw that her bedroom was bathed in a now familiar white-gold light.

  This was at least one thing she could understand: she had called Wunder, and Wunder had come. It danced all around, throwing speckled patterns across the floor and pulsating as if to say that it was happy to see her.

  Morrigan grinned. She didn’t even need to finish the song.

  She really was getting better at this.

  All down the hallway outside her bedroom, Morrigan ran from gas lamp to gas lamp, candelabra to candelabra, blowing out every light until the entire fourth floor of the east wing was bathed in darkness. Then she stood very still, eyes closed, as smoke from the extinguished wicks swirled around her. She breathed in the scent and pictured a tiny spark of fire.

  A single flame, burning brightly inside her chest.

  Inferno.

  She focused for a moment on that fire, feeling it grow and warm her from the inside out. Then she opened her eyes and ran all the way back around again, gas lamp to gas lamp, candelabra to candelabra. At each one, she breathed a puff of perfect, precise flame, relighting them with ease, feeling utterly gleeful.

  “You are such a show-off,” said Jack, coming out of his bedroom a few doors down from hers. He shook his head as Morrigan breathed life back into the last wick. The hallway glowed cheerfully once again. “Is that really necessary? Every night?”

  She took one look at him and snorted, ignoring his comment. “Nice hat, broccoli head.”

  “Nice ribbon, capitalist scum.” He tweaked the scarlet bow in her hair with one hand while adjusting his strange, utterly unstylish green hat with the other. It was the same hat he’d worn last Christmas Eve, and it still looked like he was sprouting a bizarre growth from his skull. Morrigan could not for the life of her understand why he’d ever be caught dead in it. But then, she supposed he couldn’t understand why she’d ever support Saint Nicholas over his beloved Yule Queen.

  Truthfully, after last year’s Battle of Christmas Eve—the first she’d attended—Morrigan had been tempted to switch her allegiance. While she enjoyed the jolly, showy man in red Jack liked to call an “elf-enslaving home invader,” there was something deeply impressive—even moving—about the elegant, understated Yule Queen and her devoted Snowhound.

  But it would give Jack too much satisfaction to know that she agreed with him, even a little bit.

  He checked the angle of his hat one last time in the hall mirror, adjusted his eye patch slightly, and then nodded at his reflection, apparently liking what he saw.

  “Come on,” he said to Morrigan. “Let’s get downstairs before we end up sharing a carriage with Uncle Jove. I am not having another sing-along today.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SIX SWIFTS, TWO CATS

  The atmosphere in Courage Square was heavy with expectation, ready to tip over
into unbridled delight at any moment. Thousands of Nevermoorians were gathered—a sea of crimson and emerald, breathless and silent—awaiting the final moments of the annual Christmas clash.

  It had been an epic, exhilarating battle once again. Morrigan could still taste the warm, buttery, perfectly spiced mince pie that had shot from one of Saint Nick’s cannons and floated down into her hand, wrapped in a tiny red silk parachute. That had been her second-favorite moment so far, after the cloud of twinkling fireflies the Yule Queen had conducted to fly above Courage Square like a murmuration of starlings, a hypnotizing dance of light. Morrigan had been certain nothing could beat last year’s show, and thrilled to find she was wrong.

  “Candles out,” whispered Jupiter, and Jack and Morrigan—like everyone else in the square—retrieved from inside their coat pockets the candles they’d brought with them, lifting them high in the air.

  In one last spectacular effort, Saint Nicholas rubbed his hands and started to spin in a circle, around and around and around, arms extended toward the audience. One by one, the candle wicks spontaneously ignited, a spiral of light moving outward from the center of the square to its very edges in a long whoosh of flame.

  The square was aglow with candlelight. Still nobody made a sound.

  The silence was broken by the Yule Queen’s gigantic white Snowhound, who, on her command, lifted his head to bay at the moon. Answering howls rose from all corners of the city, and for one lingering moment, Nevermoor became a communion of dogs. The sound sent an agreeable chill down Morrigan’s back.

  This was her favorite part. She closed her eyes and turned her face to the sky. The air was perfectly still. She could smell the promise of snow.

  It came slowly at first, flake by flake.

  Then faster. And faster.

  The flurries and eddies of snowfall drew together, swirling and transforming into something with a life and a will of its own. Before Morrigan knew it, a wintry snowstorm had filled the air all around her. It built so quickly she was suddenly blinded by the force of its whiteness.