Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,150
ward.
Cadence whacked him on the arm. ‘Shush. Are you trying to get us kicked out again?’
Morrigan’s heart leapt at the sight of her friends. It’d been less than a week since she’d seen them, but so much had happened it felt like an eternity.
‘Thought you were planning to stay asleep for the rest of the year,’ Hawthorne said at a slightly moderated volume, plonking down onto the end of her bed with a grin. ‘Lazy.’
Miss Cheery left soon after that to take Roshni home, with a stern reminder to Hawthorne that a bedpan is not a hat (Morrigan didn’t want to know what had happened while she was sleeping). The three reunited friends held a hushed, fast-paced debriefing of the past few days’ events, interrupting and talking over each other and unravelling every last detail. When Morrigan described what had happened in Courage Square, she left nothing unsaid, even as Hawthorne’s face turned ghost-like and Cadence gripped the edge of the blanket tight in both hands. It was one thing to keep the truth from Miss Cheery and the Elders. This was different. Cadence and Hawthorne were her two best friends in the world, and she would have no secrets between them.
‘And what you said at the Gobleian, Cadence,’ she said finally, bracing herself. ‘Maybe you were right. Maybe I have been weird lately. Sub-Nine, the other Wundersmiths … it’s strange, but … they feel so real to me sometimes. I’d started to consider them sort of … friends. I think I was getting a bit obsessed.’
‘Well, yeah,’ said Cadence, with a shrug. ‘So what? Don’t you think we’d all be obsessed if we got to hang out with dead people and learn forbidden magical arts in our own secret school? Sounds brilliant.’
Morrigan smiled ruefully. ‘Thaddea said it’s all I ever talk about.’
‘Pfft, who cares what Thaddea says?’ Hawthorne piped up. ‘She’s only jealous. I think we all are, to be honest. I wish I could see the ghostly hours.’
‘Me too,’ Cadence admitted.
Morrigan’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You can! I mean … we’d have to time it right to avoid Dearborn or Murgatroyd finding out, but I bet I could sneak you both down to Sub-Nine!’
They spent an exciting half-hour planning the clandestine mission, which Hawthorne insisted on treating like an elaborate high-stakes jewel heist with lookouts, surveillance, and grappling hooks (he didn’t yet know how the grappling hooks would fit into their plan, but he was determined to work them in somehow). They didn’t talk once about the Wunimals still in quarantine, and Morrigan was glad to be distracted from her nagging worries.
She had one more thing she needed to say to Cadence, though, before the moment passed her by. She seized her chance while Hawthorne was drawing up a wonky, very detailed blueprint of Proudfoot House on the back of one of her Get Well Soon cards.
‘I’m sorry I made you lie for me,’ she said quietly. ‘About the book.’
‘Hilarious you think you could make me do anything,’ her friend said with a shrewd smile.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yeah. It’s okay. You still owe me.’
‘Yeah.’
It was a moment or two before Morrigan realised Hawthorne had grown bored and quietly disappeared from her bedside.
‘He’s gone to find a bedpan to wear as a hat, hasn’t he?’
Cadence nodded. ‘Oh, almost certainly.’
Nurse Tim had a few grievances to air while he checked Morrigan’s vitals.
‘… and suddenly all eight of them are here, taking up all the oxygen in the room. Hanging homemade banners all over the place! Playing the fiddle! Challenging elderly patients to an arm wrestle! I said excuse me, this is a hospital, not me Uncle Clive and Auntie Trudy’s ruby wedding anniversary bash at the Clodspoole-on-Sea church hall. Spare me the shanties.’ He shifted his stethoscope from her middle back to her upper back. ‘Another big breath in and out, that’s the way.’
Morrigan breathed in deep through her nose and out through her mouth.
‘I mean you’re no trouble, pet, but can I just say? Your friends are a proper nightmare. Not being funny, but please don’t come back again.’
‘I’ll try not to.’
‘And then all that hoo-ha last night with Captain Dramatic and the Elders! Oof. One more big breath for me.’ Again he moved the stethoscope, and again Morrigan’s chest rose and fell.
‘What hoo-ha?’
‘Going off like firecrackers, they were, all four of them. Shouting! In a hospital! Grown adults, mind.’
‘What were they shouting about?’ Morrigan asked, though she had a fairly good idea.