Page 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

Eldritch Moorings

Their search ended in the dirtiest part of the river Morrigan had ever seen. Eldritch Moorings was a tiny, tucked away harbour – barely more than a crumbling jetty with a handful of rowboats bobbing beside it – accessed through a broken-down wire fence at the end of an alley, behind an old bait shop. Morrigan wrinkled her nose as she peered off the edge of the wooden walkway. A cold, sour-smelling fog rose from the black surface of the water.

‘And you’re sure it’s down there?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘I can’t see anything. How can you tell?’

‘Several ways.’ Squall took a deep breath. ‘The first and most obvious, to me at least, is that Hani Nakamura – like all Wundersmiths – had a signature energy to her creations. You will develop a sense for these things. You will learn to feel a Wundrous Act before you see or hear it, and eventually you’ll be able to pinpoint when it was created and by whom. But in the absence of that finely honed intuition, there are other things even you might notice. Look around. Tell me what you see.’

Morrigan turned in a slow circle, surveying their surroundings. ‘Boats. There are seven – no, eight little boats. And this narrow boardwalk surrounding the water. And the crooked little wooden buildings hanging over the top of it.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Well, there isn’t much light, is there? It’s hard to see anything.’

She frowned. That was a little odd, come to think of it. And in fact—

‘There are lampposts,’ she went on, pointing to them spaced out along the boardwalk. ‘They’re just unlit.’ Several of them had smashed glass, and most were covered in seagull droppings and in desperate need of a paint job.

‘What else?’

‘These buildings are all empty,’ Morrigan observed, squinting. It seemed obvious, now she was really looking. Half of them were boarded up, and in the far corner the door of a grotty pub was half hanging off its hinges. ‘And those chains holding the boats, they’re all rusted. This place is abandoned, isn’t it?’

‘Seems that way,’ Squall agreed, turning to face her. ‘If you’re ever in search of a monster, look for an absence of life. Nevermoorians – human, Wunimal and unnimal alike – usually have good instincts when it comes to avoiding certain places, even if they’re not entirely conscious of it. The Guiltghast tends to move around, settling into the cracks of the city and sucking them dry before moving on. But it looks like it’s been here for some time.’

Morrigan wrinkled her nose. ‘And … you’re saying this thing, this … Guiltghast – it eats the Unresting?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘It eats … ghosts?’

‘It eats guilt .’

An unwanted image entered her mind of the Unresting swarming to the light of the nightbeacon candles. She could still see the hollow misery in their faces, still feel the guilt and despair radiating from them. What was it Conall had said in his Spectre Specifics lecture? We’ll be relocating them to a non-residential area in the borough of Eldritch. Was ‘relocating’ really just code for ‘delivering on a silver platter’?

‘I’m surprised it hasn’t woken yet,’ Squall went on. ‘It’s used to having a delicious banquet delivered every Hallowmas, but as the last Black Parade was cancelled, this will be the second year it’s missed out. It must be famished by now.’

Morrigan resisted the urge to point out that last year’s Black Parade was cancelled because of the Ghastly Market, which was Squall’s fault. So, she wasn’t entirely to blame for the Guiltghast going hungry.

‘And this is the whole point of the Black Parade?’ she asked in disbelief. ‘ This is why the Society marches every year, just to … just to pick up a takeaway and shove it down the Guiltghast’s gob?’

Squall winced, appalled by her choice of words. ‘I wouldn’t say it’s the whole point. I doubt they consider their glum little march in memoriam to be a complete facade.’ He gave a cynical eyeroll. ‘But yes, it’s more or less a front for the foraging of the Guiltghast’s annual supper, which will hopefully put it back into hibernation for another year.’

‘Seems like a lot of trouble to feed one monster.’ Morrigan leaned over to look warily at the water again. ‘Why don’t they just let it fend for itself?’

‘It’s complicated.’ His expression was unreadable. ‘The long-term problem of the Guiltghast is something we’ll have to deal with in the future. For now, we shall adopt the Wundrous Society’s chaotic sticking-plaster solution. Aren’t we daring. ’

‘I don’t understand why they didn’t just tell Unit 919 all this,’ Morrigan said, dumbfounded. ‘We’re a part of C they were now screaming with laughter and pretending to push each other into the water.

‘Is everything—’ The boy hesitated, then stepped slightly closer, looking half frightened and half concerned. ‘Are you quite all right?’

Morrigan retreated deeper into the shadows, grasping for a bit to cloak herself in. When she was certain the stranger couldn’t see her anymore, she turned and ran after Squall before the Gossamer bridge disappeared completely.

Squall refused to discuss their failed undertaking any further that night but, at her insistence, he had at least reinstated the Hush. For one more week only , and that was final, he’d warned, before leaving her at Station 919 outside the glossy black door that led to her wardrobe.

It was a delicate thing, the timing of it. The Hush would take a minute – maybe two – to fully descend, dampening the noisy edges of her mind like a blanket over a birdcage. If Morrigan entered the Deucalion too soon, she risked running into Jupiter before her memories of the evening and Squall and the apprenticeship were sufficiently occluded.

On the other hand, if she waited too long, she might just find herself standing in Station 919 in the middle of the night with no memory of how she got there. That would be terrifying, and Morrigan knew the first person she’d tell would be Jupiter. A can of worms best left unopened.

There was, however, a sweet spot of maybe fifteen seconds when she couldn’t quite remember where she’d been or who she’d been with, but somehow knew instinctively that the not-remembering was part of her plan. Morrigan stood with her hand on the door, counting down, and when that strange and contradictory sensation arrived, she went home.

The journey to the top of the treehouse was longer than her usual walk back to bed. Her fifteen seconds were up even before she’d finished climbing the spiralling tree-trunk stairs. By the time she was back in her cosy nest between her two best friends, and Cadence stirred drowsily from sleep to ask where she’d been, Morrigan could answer without hesitation, without guilt, without treachery.

‘Nowhere.’