Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,131
entire force of the Wundrous Society – surely someone among them had access to the prime minister. She had the utmost faith in Jupiter to change anyone’s mind if he got the chance. ‘If somebody could get Steed to talk to you, if we could create a – what did you call it, an open dialogue – would you help us then?’
Maud seemed to teeter for a moment between amusement and bewilderment, but finally made a sort of sweeping gesture, yielding to Morrigan’s persistence.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right. I will ask Steed one more time to meet with me, leader to leader. If you can somehow persuade him to accept my invitation, I’ll put our Hollowpox cure on the negotiating table. You have my word.’
Standing aboard the golden-white Gossamer train just minutes later, feeling the rhythmic chug-chug-chug of the invisible tracks disappearing beneath her, Morrigan felt a gentle tug on some corner of her consciousness.
She ought to go straight home, she knew that. She had what she’d come for, after all, even if it was from an unexpected source. She had hope, of a sort. She just had to convince the most powerful man in Nevermoor to do as he was asked. Easy.
She should go straight back to the Deucalion to make a plan with Jupiter.
But there was this little thought in the corner of her mind, a quiet nudge of her curiosity. She should go home, yes, but … since she was already riding the Gossamer, perhaps she should visit Crow Manor. Just a quick visit. Just to see if anything had changed since she’d seen it last. Surely it wouldn’t hurt just to—
And suddenly she was there, as quick as thought. Standing in the grounds of her childhood home, its hulking black façade looming above her against the grey sky.
No need to knock. She walked straight through the closed front door, incorporeal and – she hoped – invisible, just in time to see the swish of Ornella Crow’s trademark grey dress disappear around the corner at the top of the stairs.
‘Impossible,’ whispered a voice from the dining room down the hall. Morrigan jumped, wondering how she would explain herself, but the voice went on, ‘That wretched old vulture is impossible.’
‘Shhh, she’ll hear you.’
‘So what if she does? I’m sick of this place. I’m going to tell the agency that Madam Crow is the worst mistress I’ve ever—’
‘You may not want to keep your job, Hetty, but I do. Now help me clear this table before the old vulture comes back and pecks your eyes out.’
Morrigan rolled her eyes. Ornella hadn’t changed, then.
She scurried silently up the stairs and followed her grandmother down the long corridor, stopping when she saw her take a sharp left into the Portrait Hall. Grandmother’s favourite room in Crow Manor. Her favourite obsession, really. When she was young, Morrigan used to hover near the doorway, too frightened to step inside, watching Ornella stare at the oil portraits of her ancestors and deceased family members.
She was older now, and she wanted to follow her grandmother inside. But she couldn’t. The idea of it suddenly made her feel ill, and flashes of memory from her last visit choked her thoughts.
Her grandmother’s terrified face on Christmas night. You shouldn’t be here.
Corvus Crow, her father, walking straight through her as if she didn’t exist. We swore we’d never speak that name again. That name is dead.
Through her haze of dread, Morrigan was struck by a sudden wave of nausea. She swivelled on the spot, turning to hurry back down the corridor in the opposite direction, away from the Portrait Hall where her scowling eleven-year-old self was now immortalised alongside the other dead Crows.
Stupid. What was she thinking, coming here of all places?
Morrigan paused near the top of the stairs, one hand pressed to her diaphragm, willing the nausea to subside. She needed to leave.
She was going to walk out the front door. She was going to call the Gossamer train and go home to Nevermoor and never, ever return to this house. She was going to—
She was going to vomit. She was going to vomit, right here, through the Gossamer, she was suddenly sure of it. (How exactly would that work? she somehow had the presence of mind to wonder.)
A noise from behind made her turn to see her grandmother leaving the Portrait Hall, firmly shutting and locking the door behind her with a large iron key.
Don’t see me, Morrigan thought desperately. Don’t let her see me.