Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,92
‘Someone fetch me another drink,’ he added, snapping his fingers in the air.
Morrigan turned to her friends, nonplussed. ‘What’s wrong with being respectful?’
‘Obviously takes more than two brain cells,’ Jack muttered.
‘Yeah, and they’ve only got one between them,’ added Cadence with a snort of laughter.
‘What did you just say?’ said the woman. She swayed over to the desk, leaned in uncomfortably close to Cadence and repeated her question in a waspish voice. ‘What did you just say?’
Unfortunately for her, it was hard to intimidate Cadence, who squared up to the woman without hesitating. ‘I said, you’ve only got one brain cell between you. Would you like me to sing it?’
‘Why, you beastly little—’
‘Is there a problem here?’ Fenestra had arrived just in time. She planted herself at the end of the desk, stationed between each side like a referee at a tennis match.
The woman twitched with revulsion. ‘Another talking unnimal! Who in the Seven Pockets wrote this guestlist? They ought to be arrested for crimes against decency.’
Morrigan, Jack, Hawthorne and Cadence all looked up at Fenestra, holding their collective breath and waiting for an explosion.
But Fen surprised them by responding in what was, for her, a reasonably polite tone. ‘Not an unnimal. Not a guest. I work here. How can I help?’
‘A cat, working at a five-star hotel?’ said the man with a disbelieving little giggle. ‘Glad we’re not staying the night, darling, we might get fleas.’
Once again, Morrigan and the others hunched their shoulders and braced for impact. But again, Fenestra managed to restrain herself.
‘It’s a nine-star hotel,’ she told him calmly. ‘I don’t have fleas. And I’m not a cat.’
The man rolled his eyes. ‘Sorry. Catwun.’
‘Not a catwun either.’ Fen’s lip curled to reveal the tip of one gleaming yellowish fang. ‘I’m a Magnificat, it’s a whole other thing. Read a book, for goodness’ sake.’
The woman flinched. ‘You’re very rude.’
Fenestra stood up to her full height. ‘YOU’RE very rude. And your dress is ugly.’
There she is, thought Morrigan, torn between nervousness and glee.
The woman gasped. ‘EXCUSE me—’
‘No, I won’t excuse you, or your behaviour,’ Fen interrupted in a bored, impatient voice. ‘You’re a bully and a bigot and frankly I’ve no idea how either of you made it onto the guestlist. I can only assume you’re gatecrashing.’
‘Fen,’ said Jack, gently tugging at the Magnificat’s fur. An audience had begun to gather around the concierge desk, and they too looked nervous. ‘Maybe we should just ignore—’
‘We don’t ignore bigotry, Jack,’ said Fenestra. ‘That’s how cowardly bigots turn into brave bigots.’
‘How dare you!’ spluttered the man, clutching indignantly at his lapels. ‘We shan’t return to the Hotel Deucalion if this is the sort of treatment—’
‘You shan’t return to the Hotel Deucalion because from now on there’ll be a great big sign behind the check-in desk with your faces on it, saying NO ADMISSION.’
The man was struck momentarily speechless, but swiftly recovered his bluster. ‘I demand to speak with management. WHO is in charge here?’
Fen took two slow, deliberate steps towards him and pushed her face close to his, her enormous amber eyes dangerously narrowed. Her wet pink nose was almost the size of his head, and when she spoke, her voice rumbled like an idling engine. Morrigan could feel it reverberating through the floor.
‘I’m in charge here.’ Fen leapt up onto the desk, bared her teeth at the couple and hissed.
‘She’s infected!’ the woman shrieked. ‘The cat has the Hollowpox!’
‘She’s not infected!’ Morrigan shouted, running around the desk to stand between them, arms thrown wide. ‘She can’t be infected, she’s not even a Wunimal, she just told you that!’
‘CALL THE STINK!’ the man shouted.
‘IT HAS THE HOLLOWPOX!’ cried another guest, picking up a chair and shoving it violently in their direction. ‘Get back, beast!’
Everywhere Morrigan looked, people were picking up items to use as makeshift weapons against Fen, who was – naturally – firing up in response, hissing and yowling, batting away any weapon that came too close.
Jack climbed up onto the concierge desk beside her, shouting to be heard. ‘Please, everyone, calm down. This is just a misunderstanding.’
Morrigan frantically scanned the lobby and saw Charlie and Martha trying to push through the party towards them, shouting Fen’s name, and Kedgeree coming from the opposite direction, and Dame Chanda from the main doors and Frank from the spiral staircase, but they were all struggling to make a path through the swollen crowd.
It was remarkable, Morrigan thought, how quickly the situation had deteriorated. She felt as if every pair of eyes