Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,15
and the flight was—’
‘How many verses does this song have, exactly?’ Jack muttered.
Morrigan counted on her fingers. ‘I’ve heard … sixteen, so far.’
‘What? No. It’s easily been twenty. Remember he sang all those verses about responsible sleigh maintenance yesterday.’
‘—but the chimney was narrow and Nick was wide, and the elves couldn’t help him although they tried—’
‘Yes, I was counting those,’ she said. ‘What does it look like now?’
Jack – or John Arjuna Korrapati, as he was also known – lifted his eye patch cautiously. It was the one barrier he had between seeing the world as an ordinary person would, and seeing the world as a Witness – with all its hidden threads and connective tissue, all its secrets and dangers and histories laid bare in full, moving, sometimes hideously confusing colour. It was a dubious gift he’d inherited from Jupiter.
‘Very … shiny.’ Jack winced a little and snapped the eye patch back into place. ‘Potentially dangerous levels of cheer.’
Morrigan leaned her elbows on the rail of the spiral staircase, peering down into the lobby. It was her and Jack’s favourite spot in the Hotel Deucalion for people-watching.
Today, though, they’d mostly been Jupiter-watching – partly for entertainment, and partly out of a genuine concern for his safety. He’d gone a bit mad on tinsel, carols and eggnog, and Jack was worried that his uncle’s Christmas spirit had risen to such dizzying heights that he just might … burst a valve, or something.
Morrigan tilted her head to one side, watching as her patron leapt around the lobby like a ballet dancer, throwing handfuls of sparkly red and green confetti over the guests checking in, and bellowing tunefully all the while.
‘Do you think he’s making new bits up?’
‘—all round the realm in just one night, in his smart red suit, what a splendid sight! Susie got a truck and Millie got a kite and the elves got into a big fist fight—’
Jack snorted. ‘Absolutely.’
‘So much for Jupiter not being a Saint Nick supporter, then,’ said Morrigan casually, casting Jack a sideways glance. He flicked his shiny black hair out of his face irritably. ‘I don’t think I’ve heard him singing any Yule Queen carols yet … have you?’
The dual figureheads of Nevermoor’s holiday season, Saint Nicholas and the Yule Queen, were in an Ages-long war over who best embodied the spirit of the season. Nevermoorians were expected to show allegiance to one or the other by donning their colours – red for flashy, jolly Saint Nick or green for the elegant, understated Yule Queen – and people took it far more seriously than Morrigan considered strictly necessary.
Each year, the conflict culminated with the Battle of Christmas Eve, a spectacular magical combat between the two champions. If Saint Nick won, his promise was a present in every stocking and a fire in every hearth. If the Yule Queen won, she pledged a blanket of snow on Christmas morning and a blessing on every house. (Of course, it was an open secret that every single year, the pair would declare a truce so that everybody won.)
Jack scowled at her. ‘It’s not Uncle Jove’s fault that Saint Nick has catchier songs. The old fraud’s probably got a whole team of jingle composers on staff!’
Morrigan grinned. Jack was firmly pro-Yule Queen, and it was almost too easy to get him riled up about it. It had become her favourite holiday activity.
There was less than a week now until Christmas Day and Morrigan was feeling rather festive herself. It was her second Christmas since making her home at the Hotel Deucalion – a Wundrous, living building that often altered itself without warning, according to its own mysterious whims – and she thought the place had really done them proud this year.
The Smoking Parlour was particularly overexcited and kept changing its mind about what seasonal smoke to roll out from the walls. In the space of ten minutes it could change from brandy butter smoke (which Morrigan thought was lovely, if a little rich), to deep purple waves of pickled sugarplum smoke (so tangy and sweet it was almost dizzying), to the gently comforting, smoky scent of roasting chestnuts. Jupiter found it funny, until khaki-coloured waves of boiled sprout smoke began wafting from the walls, at which point he’d kindly asked the Smoking Parlour to pull itself together.
Throughout December, the lobby had changed slowly, day by day, as if wanting to savour each step of its holiday transformation. It started on the first of the month with a