Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,55
a look. If the elite, highly secretive Wundrous Society Investigation Department was involved, something weird was definitely going on.
Morrigan furrowed her brow and took a deep breath of soothing milk-and-honey smoke. Fen’s description had made her think of Golders Night, and suddenly it was like she was there. The rampaging bearwun. The horrible, claustrophobic feeling of being smashed by waves, over and again. The sudden, searing pain in her leg. The flash of … the flash of green light.
‘Fen, did you see his eyes?’ she asked. ‘Was there anything strange about them?’
‘His eyes?’ Fen looked puzzled by the question. ‘Not that I noticed.’
‘Really?’ Morrigan pressed. ‘Are you sure? They didn’t … turn green, or start glowing, or—’
‘Positive.’ The Magnificat gave another sleepy yawn, stretched out and rolled over on the rug. ‘Now if you’ve finished pestering me, I’d like to catch up on the seven scheduled naps I’ve already missed today.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hollowpox
If Jupiter returned at all that night, Morrigan never saw him. The next time she laid eyes on him was the following morning, from a distance, when everyone at Wunsoc was called to the Gathering Place first thing for a critical announcement.
It wasn’t good news.
‘For some weeks now,’ Elder Quinn told them as she took to the dais, ‘we have been quietly investigating a series of incidents in Nevermoor that we believed to be related. We’re now certain they are.
‘Several of these you may know about – the highly publicised mystery illness of the designer Juvela De Flimsé, for example. I know some of you are also aware of a recent attack on a junior scholar, and rumours about this have been circulating.’ As she said this, Unit 919 all turned to look at Morrigan, but she kept her eyes straight ahead. ‘I regret to confirm what many have suspected: the attacker in that instance was one of our own. A teacher.’
The room grew still, the gathering momentarily silenced by the shock of this dreadful announcement. Then a rising tide of whispers swelled as people shared their disapproval, their dismay – and their guesses as to the perpetrator.
‘A third incident,’ Elder Quinn said in a raised voice, quelling the chatter, ‘occurred this past weekend. You will have seen it reported in the news. Again, a Society member was the victim of a violent attack at the Nevermoor Opera House – thankfully, in both cases, the injuries were minor and the victims have made a full recovery.’
Morrigan felt an indignant twinge in her enormous claw-mark scar.
‘Minor, was it?’ she said under her breath. ‘Lovely.’
Hawthorne grinned at her. ‘Got to keep your leg, didn’t you?’
Elder Quinn continued. ‘However, these are not the only incidents we’ve been investigating. There have in fact been nearly a dozen so far, and that number continues to rise. These attacks present a formidable threat to the people of Nevermoor, and we are building a task force to deal with the problem as swiftly and thoroughly as possible, overseen by Elder Alioth Saga and led by Captain Jupiter North. I’ve asked Captain North to bring us all up to date. Jove?’
Cadence leaned over to Morrigan. ‘Did you know he’d got himself involved?’
‘Not exactly,’ she admitted. ‘Though if you look very carefully, you’ll notice my complete and utter lack of surprise.’
‘Doesn’t he have about four hundred jobs already?’ asked Hawthorne.
She sighed. ‘Yup. Just what he needed, another responsibility.’
How often would this one take him away from the Deucalion, she wondered.
Jupiter hit a switch and an enormous three-dimensional map of Nevermoor was projected upwards above the dais, so bright that it illuminated the whole room. Sprinkled across the city were glowing red dots. Morrigan noticed immediately that one of them was hovering at the far western point of Grand Boulevard, where the Nevermoor Opera House was located. There was also one just outside Tenterfield Wunderground Station – where Brutilus Brown had chased her and Heloise. She counted nine others scattered randomly over the map.
Had there really been so many attacks? How had they been kept secret?
‘I think we’re all agreed that this is deeply unusual and worrying behaviour, especially from one of our own,’ said Jupiter. ‘I will say, firstly, that this is not a case of coordinated attacks or copycat crimes. The Stealth ruled that out early in the investigation. Yesterday our resident unnimologist Dr Valerie Bramble, and Dr Malcolm Lutwyche from the Wunsoc Teaching Hospital, confirmed what they have suspected for some time.
‘The attackers have all contracted the same unknown, highly aggressive virus. It causes normal brain