Nevermoor: Chapters 15–19

Frank finished his song with a grand flourish and a high note that made Morrigan and Hawthorne wince.

The guests fell for his ruse.

“Oh, Ree-Ree, she’s bound to find out sooner or later. Better to hear the truth from us, don’t you think, than a load of hogwash from some other fool?”

The parade was led by a marching band dressed as demons, conducted by a flickering ghostly apparition.

Morrigan wondered how anyone could be frightened of something so daft, but then she remembered the story of the Courage Square Massacre, and Dame Chanda’s words rang in her head: He was a man who became a monster.

“Two frights befall you this All Hallows’ Eve,” they said in unison.

To Morrigan’s right, the ladder had returned, illuminated by ambient street light from the open manhole above.

A full moon shone over rolling hills covered with jagged tombstones, concrete angels, and hulking mausoleums.

She was standing on a grave, and the grave had a corpse, and the corpse had a head, and the head was emerging from the sodden earth with an eerie, rasping moan.

She was standing on a grave, and the grave had a corpse, and the corpse had a head, and the head was emerging from the sodden earth with an eerie, rasping moan.

With one wrenching kick, she dislodged the zombie’s arm from its body and sent its skull flying halfway across the cemetery. She stumbled to her feet and, feeling a wave of revulsion, pulled off the disembodied hand that still gripped her ankle.

These were nothing like the costumed zombies on the Black Parade float, with their artfully torn clothes and caked green makeup. These were the rising dead.

He held a burning torch with both hands and swung it at the zombies in wild, haphazard blows.

At the opposite end, an apple tree had dropped its mottled red harvest on the ground.

To Morrigan’s great surprise, Fen waved off their harried explanations and apologies with a careless flick of her tail.

“Why do you think I pretended to be distracted while you tiny reprobates scurried away? Now, hurry up. If we miss the last train you two are carrying me home.”

The halls were decked with ribbons and evergreen boughs, the foyer lit up by shining, shimmering fir trees dotted with silvery baubles.

There was a pervasive feeling of goodwill, but the season also inspired a competitive spirit between friends and neighbors, many of whom went to great lengths to out-Christmas each other.

Houses were lit up in almost every neighborhood, each one brighter than the last, each street an extravaganza of tackiness and wasted Wundrous energy, flashing and twinkling and blinding anyone within a mile radius. It was garish and absurd.

“What? No. You’re so bleak.” He laughed. “They battle each other on Christmas Eve to see who has the best Christmas spirit. If the Yule Queen wins, her promise is a blanket of snow on Christmas morning and a blessing on every house.”

Her insides writhing with guilt, she opened her mouth to apologize to Jack, but before she could speak he barreled on, apparently unfazed by Morrigan’s unkindness.

The look on Jack’s face was familiar. She’d had a lifetime of looks just like it, back in Jackalfax. It was fear and mistrust, mingled with reluctant curiosity and just a touch of abject horror.

Frank the vampire dwarf had painted his fingernails red to complement his red-lined cape, and Kedgeree was bedecked in layers of red tartan and tinsel.

A pair of elves jumped off the sleigh and began waving feverishly at the crowd, goading them like promoters at a troll fight to cheer more and more loudly for the jolly, white-bearded man as he heaved himself out of the polished mahogany-and-red-velvet sleigh.

The Queen’s diaphanous green gown fluttered delicately behind her, flowing like silk underwater.

Morrigan gazed at the star-bells, breathless and enthralled, until each one jingled its last jingle and turned into a distant star once again.

He began pointing erratically, and Morrigan at first thought he was doing his rock star thing again, until pockets of the audience began squealing and stumbling over each other.

“Predictable. Pandering to the greedy masses.”

Nick and Yule supporters swapped items of clothing—a crimson mitten for a sage scarf, a fuchsia flower for an emerald beanie—until nobody was discernible as supporting one or the other.

After weeks of anticipation Morrigan jumped out of bed on Christmas morning, excited to see what had been left overnight, and found an envelope at the foot of her bed. Inside was an itemized bill for every cent Corvus had spent that year paying reparations to the Registry Office for Cursed Children on her behalf.

Fifteen minutes later, however, Jack was dutifully plowing through a heaped bowl of trifle and two mince pies, while Morrigan demolished a fluffy white meringue with cream and blackberries.

She could just make out two figures through the thick waves of smoke rolling out from the walls—elegant Dame Chanda dressed in flowing silks of red and green, and spry, snowy-haired Kedgeree Burns in his Christmas kilt.

“It’s worse than that,” added Dame Chanda in an ominous voice. “If the Stink finds out she’s here illegally, think of what Jupiter risks. It’s treason. He could go to prison, Kedgeree. His reputation, his career...gone. And not only that, but—”

His face was impassive, and so very still that she thought it might crack, like a porcelain mask.

It was never available for public use. Too volatile.

Morrigan was surprised to see that Grandmother had cleared a premium space for her between venerable Great-Aunt Vorona, who was killed when she fell off her racehorse, and Uncle Bertram, Corvus’s brother, who had died young of a fever.

“The last thing I need is for people to be reminded of all that, just when I’m making inroads into federal government. If anyone in the Wintersea Party—’’ Corvus cut himself off, pressing his lips into a thin line.

“The one I left on the platform.” He grinned. “A precious personal object left behind on departure, tethering you to Nevermoor with a single invisible Gossamer thread. Waiting to pull you back home. Can you picture it?”

Exhaustion crept into Morrigan’s limbs as she shuffled to her room, thinking longingly of her many pillows and thick duvet and hoping her fireplace was still alight, somehow knowing it would be.

In her head she could still hear flashes of that mortifying conversation between Kedgeree and Dame Chanda. At least if he'd failed with the Deucalion, it wouldn't have mattered so much.