Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,48
know how to fluff pillows or didn’t care to; instead they went around stealing grapes from bedside tables and causing general mayhem, until Nurse Tim demanded that Dame Chanda either call off her menagerie or leave.
Only Wunsoc members or immediate family were allowed inside the teaching hospital, so the Deucalion staff had loaded Jupiter and Dame Chanda up with chocolates, fruit, books, flowers, cards, helium balloons and an old, half-chewed rubber toy that wheezed like a duck with bronchitis when you squeezed it (from Fen). Jack sent along a handwritten card that simultaneously managed to be quite sympathetic about Morrigan’s injury, and quite insulting about her being the precise kind of idiot who was destined to get herself mauled by a bear one day and how they should have seen it coming.
‘Well, it wasn’t a bear actually, it was a bearwun,’ Morrigan muttered as she propped the card up on her bedside table. ‘Who’s the idiot now, Jack?’
Dame Chanda regaled her and Jupiter with gossipy stories from the rehearsals for her new opera, The Maledictions, and promised to take Morrigan backstage at the Nevermoor Opera House as soon as her leg had healed. But Morrigan wasn’t really interested in the romances and rivalries of the opera world; all she wanted to hear about was Brutilus Brown, and she changed the subject the second it was polite to do so.
‘Do you think he’s … do you think it could be like what happened with Juvela De Flimsé? That he could be lying unconscious somewhere?’ she asked quietly. Dame Chanda uttered a horrified little yelp.
‘I’ve been wondering that myself,’ Jupiter admitted. ‘I’ve spoken to the Elders, and I’ve spoken to the Stealth, and they assure me they’re investigating …’ He said this with an unspoken question mark at the end, and Morrigan understood that he had his doubts but didn’t want to say so.
It was almost a week before Morrigan was allowed to go home, and in the meantime she had a steady stream of visitors. Sofia had stopped by one afternoon and sat for hours on the end of her bed, whispering stories of the most unbelievable things she’d witnessed in the ghostly hours on Sub-Nine. Miss Cheery brought her best chocolate biscuits and all of Unit 919. Thaddea was only too happy to re-enact Morrigan’s dramatic fainting over and over; Morrigan highly doubted she’d told Gavin Squires he had pretty eyes as she was loaded into the ambulance.
Hawthorne and Cadence came every day after that, and on Spring’s Eve – which was Morrigan’s thirteenth birthday – Cadence managed to mesmerise Nurse Tim and the other patients so they didn’t notice the fluffy, excitable puppy she’d smuggled in with her.
‘You didn’t tell me you got a dog!’ Morrigan gasped, snuggling him up close under her chin. He licked her neck. ‘What’s his name?’
‘No idea,’ admitted Cadence. ‘He’s not mine, I saw him at the station and thought you’d like him.’
‘You … bought me a puppy?’
‘Borrowed,’ she clarified, and then rolled her eyes at Morrigan’s horrified look of realisation. ‘I’m gonna take him back, geez. Happy birthday, you ingrate.’
Hawthorne gave her a silvery-white iridescent dragon scale he’d picked up in the stables on Sub-Five and polished to a shine.
‘Volcano In The Sky is shedding like crazy at the moment. Hold on to that – Volcano’s a featherweight champion, and it’ll be worth LOADS if she wins the tournament this year.’
Hawthorne had pestered her to tell the Golders Night story again every day that week, and today was no exception. Morrigan obliged even though she was getting sick of telling it and Cadence was sick of hearing it.
‘—and then his eyes lit up, all green and glowing, and he ran right for us, and I told Heloise—’
‘Wait, hold up,’ said Hawthorne. His feet were propped up on the end of the bed and he was sifting through a big box of birthday sweets Jupiter had left that morning. Cadence was ignoring them both and quietly reading a mystery novel. ‘What’s that about his eyes glowing green? You never said that before.’
Morrigan paused, frowning. ‘No. Well, I only just remembered. I don’t know if …’ She stopped again, as something else suddenly jolted into place in her head. ‘Wait. Hawthorne, remember Juvela De Flimsé? Didn’t her eyes flash green like that, too? Like … like someone had turned on a light inside them.’
‘Dunno,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I didn’t see any flashing green eyes.’
Cadence looked up from her book with interest. ‘Who’s Juvela De Flimsé?’