Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,133

get a crick in his neck!

As Morrigan looked around the room in dismay, she filled up with a mingled anger and sadness that her body felt too small to contain.

Look at all these things, she suddenly wanted to shout. All these piles of toys and books and blocks, and yet the one thing that had been hers, the one piece of her left in Crow Manor, had just been handed over to these ungrateful little beasts like he was nothing. Just another toy for them to neglect and forget. And now he was all alone.

Morrigan wanted to reach right through the Gossamer and grasp Emmett tight and take him home with her, where he belonged.

But that was impossible.

She squeezed her eyes and fists tight and pictured her oilskin umbrella. The Gossamer train whistled in the distance.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Squid Crow Po

A red haze of anger accompanied Morrigan all the way home on the Gossamer train. It was with her when she snatched up her brolly from the platform handrail, and by the time she got to the Deucalion her anger was so unwieldy it had swung all the way back around to grief.

She ran up the spiral staircase from the lobby without stopping or even noticing where she was going. She thought she was headed for her bedroom, and was most surprised when she arrived in Jupiter’s study.

It was only when Jupiter looked up from his desk, a confused smile sliding off his face, that Morrigan realised what a sight she must be to him.

‘Mog?’ he said, suddenly stricken with worry. ‘What is it?’

What could he see, she wondered? How much of what had happened today was still hovering around her? Grey clouds and dark smudges and goodness knew what else – a visual history of the world’s longest morning. (Was it still only morning? Was it not next year yet?)

‘It’s … it’s Emmett!’

Morrigan felt herself spill over, face crumpling like an empty milk carton. Trying to herd her sadness back towards anger (an infinitely more manageable feeling), she stalked across the little room, picked up a cushion from one of the leather armchairs and threw it so hard it knocked a picture frame off the wall. Jupiter watched in bewilderment.

‘They d-don’t even need him, and he’s mine, he’s been mine since I was a baby, and Ivy always said he was so filthy, why would she give Emmett to them?’

‘Them who?’

‘Wolfram and Guntram! My … brothers.’ She paced before the fireplace, hands curling into fists, tears stinging in her eyes.

‘Okay … but who’s Emmett?’ Jupiter looked quite at sea trying to make sense of her monologue through the jagged crying.

‘My rabbit!’ she sobbed. ‘My toy rabbit. My friend.’ My only friend, she thought. ‘I left him b-behind. He was my friend and I just … left him behind.’

She was thinking of Eventide night, two and a half years ago. The night she’d been cursed to die. The night Jupiter had arrived without warning and rescued her, brought her to Nevermoor and given her an unimaginable new life.

She remembered how the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow had arrived at Crow Manor close behind him, and together she and Jupiter had run from her certain death without looking back. In all that excitement and danger, she hadn’t given a single thought to small, grubby Emmett, tucked among the pillows on her bed. Waiting faithfully for her to return.

Morrigan flopped heavily into an armchair. She knew it was irrational; she was old enough to know that her stuffed toy didn’t have a mind of his own, didn’t have any feelings to hurt. But that didn’t matter. She’d poured so much of her heart into that little rabbit, told him so many of her fears and hopes and secret wounds over eleven years. He carried them all inside him. Her one friend in a cursed, lonely childhood.

Jupiter clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘Oh, Mog. You didn’t leave him behind. You were running for your life. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I’m the one who swept in and spirited you away without any warning.’

‘I want to go back,’ she said, jumping up to pace the floor again. She felt skittery and electric, full of nervous energy. ‘Not on the Gossamer. For real. I want to rescue him—’

She stopped when she saw the alarm on Jupiter’s face.

‘We can’t do that. You know we can’t,’ he said in a careful voice. ‘I’m so sorry your brothers haven’t cared for Emmett as they should have. As you did. But,