the whole night patrolling the city for infected Wunimals. But somehow, he’d already picked up a copy of every newspaper in Nevermoor, attended a Hollowpox task force meeting, spoken with the Elders and brought coffee, pastries and fresh orange juice back to the Deucalion. Morrigan hadn’t seen him this energised in weeks. ‘Free tours, all weekend! Can you believe it?’
‘Who?’ asked Jack. ‘Tours of what?’
‘The Public Distraction Department. Tours of Wunsoc.’ Jupiter tossed him a brown paper bag with a delicious-smelling cinnamon roll inside, and another each to Morrigan and Kedgeree.
The three of them were hovering at the concierge desk, Jack and Morrigan still in pyjamas and Kedgeree in his usual pink tartan uniform with the gold-embroidered pocket square, despite the Deucalion having been closed for nearly a week. Jupiter had offered paid time off during the closure to anyone who wanted it, but some of the staff said they preferred to stay and keep busy, and others – like Kedgeree and Frank – lived at the Deucalion anyway, and had nowhere else to go. Kedgeree still had plenty of work to fill his days, though it was mostly taking messages for Jupiter and fielding complaints about the closure.
‘What, they’re letting people inside Proudfoot House?’ said Morrigan. She could immediately think of at least twelve reasons why that was a terrible idea. ‘Are they mad? There are dragons in there! And explosions. And … Hawthorne, sometimes.’
‘Goodness no, not inside the house. Just the grounds. Well, just the front drive, really. Can’t let people near the Whinging Woods – they’d be bored to death. But even so –’ (he paused for a mouthful of much-too-hot coffee, spat it into a potted plant, and stuck out his scalded tongue to frantically wave cool air over it) ‘– outfiderv in Wunfoc? Unhearb of! And looh ah thif!’
He pulled out a stack of newspapers from under his arm and triumphantly slapped them down, one by one, onto the desk. The headlines all said things like, FIREBLOSSOMS RETURN! and ARBOREAL MIRACLE OR ARSON MYSTERY? and BACK FROM THE DEAD: THE NATURAL WUNDERS WE THOUGHT WE’D LOST FOR GOOD.
‘Howwiday Wu if a – ’ang on.’ He paused to drink a cooling mouthful of orange juice. ‘Whew. Holliday Wu is a GENIUS. If anyone noticed your involvement, Mog – or should I say, your spectacular achievement – if any witnesses mentioned you to the papers, none of them are printing it. No mention of you or the Stealth in any of these, and I’ve read them all. Twice.’
Morrigan wasn’t totally surprised she’d managed to fly under the radar – after all, in the chaos, who among the protestors would have noticed a single scholar standing with her hand pressed to a tree, and who could have guessed at what she’d done?
But the Stealth? Even in those moments of shocked silence, no one could have failed to see the entire brigade of Stealth officers that materialised seemingly out of nowhere, swooping in to take control. They’d arrived just in time to take full advantage of the shift in energy, calmly rounding up the bewildered protestors and escorting them off the premises with minimum fuss.
Morrigan thought there was something unsettling about the Stealth. As the Wundrous Society’s own private law enforcement, they had a particular kind of mystery and presence. A slightly menacing aura that followed wherever they went. They gave Morrigan goosebumps, and she couldn’t understand why they hadn’t rated a mention in even one eyewitness account.
‘Even better,’ Jupiter went on, ‘have you noticed what else is missing from these front pages?’
Jack sorted through the stack. ‘No mention of the Hollowpox.’
‘No Hollowpox,’ his uncle echoed. ‘No Wunimals. The fireblossoms are all anyone wants to talk about. Nobody’s seen one burning in over a hundred years, not in all the Seven Pockets, and now – boom! All that noise from the so-called Concerned Citizens has been completely smothered by the tree mystery. The protest isn’t mentioned anywhere! Mog, you’ve no idea how glad the Elders are to have a bit of a reprieve. I think they’re secretly pleased your Wundrous Arts lessons have paid off in such a timely fashion.’
‘Secretly p-pleased?’ spluttered Jack, coughing as he swallowed a mouthful of pastry. ‘That’s big of them. Maybe next time someone saves them from being trampled by a dangerous mob, they’ll stretch to mildly tickled.’
Morrigan secretly felt a little bit pleased herself, at Jack’s indignation on her behalf. She picked up the Nevermoor Sentinel, whose front-page headline, above a full-colour picture