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CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Plan B

The Receiving Room and everyone in it seemed to fade around her. Morrigan checked the clock on the wall, her pulse quickening. Eight minutes to midnight.

Plan B was the contingency Gavin Squires had insisted on when he’d agreed to Conall and Lam’s risky strategy of feeding the Guiltghast on Spring’s Eve. The leaders of the Guiltghast task force had solemnly shaken on it: if midnight came and Plan A somehow went sideways, the Beastly Division would step in immediately and take care of things their way.

Plan B, Morrigan realised, had to mean that the chronologists were wrong again. It meant Lam had seen eight minutes into the future, and the Skyfaced Clocks weren’t going to change tonight … which meant the Unresting wouldn’t swarm to Eldritch Moorings … which meant the Guiltghast would remain as it was. Unfed and dangerous.

Plan B meant a pre-emptive strike. It meant killing the Guiltghast in its sleep.

Morrigan squeezed her hands into fists. The Guiltghast didn’t deserve to die just for the crime of being hungry . It didn’t ask to be abandoned and neglected for a hundred years, left alone to starve or fend for itself the only way it knew how, the way it was made for.

And what if Plan B went wrong? Did the Beastly Division know what they were doing, really ? Was the Guiltghast even killable? Jupiter thought they’d bitten off more than they could chew, and Morrigan suspected he was right. She’d seen the Guiltghast in all its glory, witnessed its size and power. If they missed their mark, if they failed to kill it, what then? The monster would wake up starving and angry, ready to defend itself from a botched attack – and someone would almost certainly get hurt. Maybe Lam, or Jupiter, or Conall.

She had to at least try to put a stop to Plan B, but how could she possibly get there in time? There were only eight minutes – seven, now.

Cadence was frowning curiously at her, and Morrigan mouthed the words Plan B . With no further explanation needed, her friend gave a decisive nod, and Morrigan knew she’d taken the baton and was ready to run with it.

‘Let’s return to the night of Dario and Modestine’s wedding,’ Cadence announced, trying gamely to bring the runaway train of their plan back on track. ‘It was late in the evening, and the groom was nowhere to be seen …’

Morrigan melted out of the spotlight and scanned the room for Unit 919. Thaddea stood within grasping distance of Aunt Margot as instructed, poised to leap into action if she showed any signs of lashing out at her accusers. Hawthorne, Mahir and Arch were dotted around the room, paying close attention to Cadence, ready to jump in if she needed them.

‘What’s Plan B?’ whispered a voice in her ear. Morrigan looked round to see Jack sidling up beside her, closely trailed by Louis and Lottie, who looked equally confused and thrilled by the whole spectacle.

Taking the blackpaper note from Jack, Morrigan jerked her head towards the door and the four of them slipped from the Receiving Room, unnoticed by the guests who were now utterly in Cadence’s thrall. Marching down the dim hallway, she hurriedly explained Lam’s note and the dangerous implications of attempting to kill the Guiltghast.

‘Louis, how many lintels from Darling House to your headquarters in Eldritch?’ asked Morrigan.

‘A couple dozen,’ said Louis. ‘But we’ll never make it by midnight.’

‘Are you talking about that thing you saved Barty from?’ Lottie asked.

Morrigan stopped abruptly, causing a collision between Jack and the twins behind her. She was picturing the glowing net she’d made to catch Barty. The way it had fallen into the water, swirling and threading itself around the Guiltghast, wrapping and suffusing it with Wunder.

She thought instantly of her Nocturne lessons with Squall. How she’d wrapped the shards of broken tile in glowing golden-white threads … and her brolly, before leaving it on the windowsill and summoning it across four boroughs.

Those small items had been hard enough, though, hadn’t they? She couldn’t summon something the size of two fishing boats all the way from Eldritch Moorings to the Silver District!

But perhaps she didn’t have to. Perhaps she could do the reverse. Squall had said as much when she’d asked about summoning big things, like Cascade Towers. He said Wunder would read her INTENTION and take the path of least resistance to execute it. It would summon HER to IT, not the other way around.

Morrigan chewed aggressively on her mouth, trying to think. It was at least possible , wasn’t it? A glance at the hallway clock told her she only had four minutes to find out.

‘What? What are you thinking?’ Jack lifted his eye patch to look at her properly. ‘It’s something stupid. You’ve just had a stupid, dangerous idea.’

‘Be quiet, Jack. I need to concentrate.’

‘ Morrigan —’

‘SHUSH.’

She squeezed her eyes shut, covering her ears to block out Jack’s objections and the muffled sounds coming from the Receiving Room.

Intuitively, she pictured her reach extending miles beyond her body, further out into the Nevermoor of her imagination, homing in on the specific collection of Wunder she’d left threaded around the Guiltghast. That was what she was calling out to across the city, through the calamitous noise and complex, many-layered chaos of the Gossamer web … drawing it towards her, telling it, I want to be there, with you.

She saw the gently bobbing boats, the busted gaslights and rusty chains. The broken-down wharf and its fathomless black water. The slow blink of an enormous eye.

She imagined reaching far beneath the surface of the water to touch the face of the Guiltghast, imagined golden-white fingertips entwining with long silvery tendrils flowing like mermaid’s hair.

It was working, she could feel it. Every part of her vibrated with determination and urgency and clear, focused intention and it was going to work, it HAD to work. Everything around her seemed to fall away, and for a moment it was like being lost in those seven seconds of liminal blackness between lintels.

Morrigan was so convinced of her success that before she’d even opened her eyes, she was already thinking of what to say to Gavin Squires, how to convince the Beastly Division not to attack the Guiltghast. If she had to throw herself physically between them, she would.

She was so convinced of her success that when she did open her eyes to see the baffled faces of Jack, Louis and Lottie staring back at her, she felt the violent gut-punch of disappointment as an almost physical sensation.

She’d failed.

They were going to kill the Guiltghast, and she had no choice but to hope for that terrible outcome – because if they couldn’t kill it, it might just kill one of them. It might hurt someone she cared about.

Jack seemed to know what she was thinking. ‘Uncle Jove’s done more dangerous stuff than this. He never takes stupid risks. He always comes home.’

Morrigan nodded, even while the voice in her head added: So far.

The clock chimed midnight just as the Receiving Room doors swung open and Archan Tate ran into the hall, wide-eyed and slightly out of breath.

‘Morrigan! You need to come back. It’s … not going well.’

In her brief absence, things in the Receiving Room had deteriorated in a way Morrigan hadn’t even thought to anticipate.

‘… and there have been whispers among you for months now, I’ve heard them! You’ve had your doubts about this strange girl, just as I have but, like me, you’ve been too well-mannered to say them aloud. Well, I say it’s time for us to SPEAK UP!’

It was no longer Cadence holding court, but Tobias. Tobias, pacing the centre of the floor, all eyes on him. The fiery golden dragon floated around him in slow, serene circles, lending an air of drama that the Silverborn were unfortunately eating up.

‘Tobias, stop,’ said Aunt Margot. ‘I don’t need you to—’

‘We were seduced !’ he shouted, ignoring his wife’s objections. ‘Seduced by the glamour of having our very own Wundersmith again, right here in the Silver District!’

Morrigan cringed; she was reminded of Laurent St James, rallying the Concerned Citizens to hound her out of town.

‘STOP TALKING,’ Cadence ordered, but her words were lost underneath his booming voice.

‘Morrigan Crow was never really one of us, though, was she?’ He pointed up at the altered banner. ‘She’s made that perfectly clear!’

Morrigan weaved between the party guests, making her way quietly towards him.

‘Now she dares to accuse her own aunt – the aunt who took her in and gave her everything ! – of a crime so heinous, so horrific …’ He shook his head and turned to cast a loving, sympathetic look at his wife. ‘You all know Margot, and you know her heart. I don’t need to tell you she didn’t murder her own sister’s husband! But I implore you, noble neighbours, do not blame her for the mistake of bringing this wretched girl into our midst.’

‘Tobias, enough. ’ Margot’s expression was so cold, her face might have been carved from ice. ‘Stop this immediately. I won’t let you—’

‘You thought she’d be of service to our district, didn’t you, darling? That she’d help our friends and neighbours, do her duty to the very people betrayed by her own mother all those years ago. That she’d make up for Meredith’s despicable crimes.’ He spun around just as Morrigan stepped into the clearing, and his lip curled with disgust at the sight of her. ‘But instead, we have this … this wilful, headstrong, DANGEROUS girl. A girl who on her very first visit to Darling House, ATTACKED her aunts and grandmother and destroyed this very room, using the dark powers you all find so entertaining.’

Shocked, suspicious faces turned to glare at Morrigan.

‘STOP, Tobias, just STOP!’ sobbed Modestine. ‘It was an accident , she wasn’t—’

‘And the very next time she was invited back, for a family wedding – the MOST important day of her aunt’s life – once again, disaster strikes! The groom is MURDERED.’ He gave a bitter, dubious chuckle. ‘Are we supposed to believe that’s a coincidence? Do you see the pattern now? Do you see the danger this girl presents to the peace and safety of our district?’

Tobias swivelled to face Morrigan again, pointing an accusing finger. ‘Where were YOU while Dario was being murdered, Morrigan Crow?’

There came an almighty crashing sound from outside in the grounds of Darling House. Several people shrieked with terror, turning to the glass wall overlooking the Splendid Canal and the Paramour Pleasure Gardens.

Silence … and then another crash, accompanied by a sizeable wave of water sweeping up from the canal and splashing over the Darlings’ iron fence and into the garden. It was followed by something that made Morrigan’s insides turn to ice: a long, creeping silvery tendril curled its way out of the water.

‘Oh … no,’ muttered Morrigan, quietly processing the fact that she was much better at Nocturne than previously thought.

The party guests all looked on in horror as a giant, many-tentacled, milky-translucent jellyfish monster loomed up from the canal and clambered over the tall black spikes of the fence.

Cadence gripped her arm. ‘Is that … ?’

Morrigan nodded mutely.

The Guiltghast moved so much faster than an oozing primordial blob the size of a small house ought to be able to. It steamrolled the sloping lawns, crushing flowerbeds and garden furniture, destroying everything in its path and leaving a long, glistening trail as it barrelled straight towards its summoner.