Chapter Forty-Five The Battle of Beauregard House
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The Battle of Beauregard House
A numb, staticky sensation had settled over Morrigan. It felt like she was wrapped in a cloud of pins and needles, and there was a faint buzzing in her ears.
It was all a lie. Everyone had lied to her. She’d been living in this house for months, believing that these people loved and wanted her just because she was her mother’s daughter, because she was family . That their discovery of her existence had been unexpected and joyful and new, that it had upended their lives just like it had upended hers.
There was a particular feeling she should be having, Morrigan thought, and she strongly suspected it was anger or sadness. Or humiliation. All three, probably. But those feelings only existed on the other side of that pins-and-needles cloud; all she felt was numb.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, on the floor at the foot of her bed, surrounded by unfolded letters and empty envelopes. Every time her thoughts tiptoed towards action, every time the little voice in her head whispered, Go find Cadence and Hawthorne or, Get out of this house right now or, The Deucalion is just on the other side of your station door , the buzzing in her ears got louder and more insistent and her limbs grew heavy.
Who knows how long she’d have stayed there, waiting to feel something, if there hadn’t been a soft knock on her door? And then a louder knock. And then her door flying open and the arrival of Louis and Lottie St James in a whirlwind of barely contained excitement. She hurriedly swept the letters underneath the bed.
‘Morrigan, we have two pieces of ELECTRIFYING news!’ Lottie announced. ‘ Where were you during today’s matinee of The Maledictions in the open-air theatre? You missed the most THRILLING thing that has EVER happened in my LIFE.’
‘It’s not thrilling, Lottie.’ Louis frowned at his sister. ‘It’s actually quite dreadful.’
‘Yes , dreadfully thrilling,’ Lottie agreed emphatically. ‘Morrigan, guess who showed up at Devereaux House today demanding to be let in and banging down the door ?’
‘They knocked quite politely,’ said Louis.
‘THE POLICE!’ finished Lottie.
‘The police …’ repeated Morrigan, who hadn’t processed a single word.
‘Not even our police – it was the Stink. Brownsuits, in the Silver District!’ Lottie paused for a gasping breath. ‘Our cousin Penny says the Silver Council had to have an emergency meeting this week, about granting them special permission to enter.’
‘The Council voted against it, but the police went to court and got a special warrant instead,’ Louis added. ‘Penny is a Choi, so her father was at the meeting. Your aunt would have been there, too. Didn’t she mention it?’
Morrigan shook her head dazedly.
‘It was so dramatic,’ Lottie practically swooned. ‘They roared through the waterfall gate in a horrid big motorboat, and they looped the Pleasure Gardens twice before they found the right house, and the engine was so loud the opera had to pause, so EVERYBODY saw them jump out of the boat and MARCH up to the house—’
‘Stop shouting , Lottie,’ hissed Louis.
‘—to arrest Lord and Lady Devereaux !’ Lottie finished in a stage whisper, before ruining it with a high-pitched, overexcited squeal.
‘They weren’t arrested,’ Louis explained to Morrigan, whacking his sister’s arm to make her stop. ‘They went voluntarily to the police station in Ogden Town for questioning.’
‘Same thing,’ said Lottie. ‘Everybody’s saying they’re being questioned about Dario’s murder! Someone called in an anonymous tip-off to the police, saying they’d witnessed Georgette Devereaux confessing her unrequited love for Dario Rinaldi at the boathouse, only TEN MINUTES before he was murdered!’ She took a deep breath, and Louis shoved a pillow in her face just in time to muffle her second squeal.
Morrigan felt her stomach drop. ‘ What? ’
‘They said she made him take her out on the canal in his boat during the wedding, getting him alone so that she could beg him to leave Modestine and run away with her to Bohemia,’ Lottie went on, shoving Louis and the pillow away, ‘but he refused and said she was mad for even thinking it and that he loved his wife more than life itself and would never leave her, and Gigi SLAPPED HIM and stormed off, swearing she’d have her revenge on him if it was the last thing she did—’
‘Gigi didn’t say any of those things,’ Morrigan murmured, but her words were lost beneath Lottie’s monologue.
This was all happening because of what she’d told Noelle at the feast. The fake tip-off about Gigi was so close to what Morrigan had actually witnessed at the wedding, somebody had obviously twisted it into this unrecognisable story and told the police. Since it seemed highly unlikely Noelle would make up a lie to frame her sister for murder, Morrigan could only think of one other possibility.
Aunt Margot had been waiting for her outside the willow branches. She acted like she’d only just arrived when Morrigan ran into her, but then … she said she’d heard her and Noelle talking. How much had she heard? Enough to frame Gigi for murder? And why ? Just to get revenge on the Darlings’ rival house?
Or because she was covering her own tracks?
‘—and now they’re saying Gigi’s on the run and maybe her parents are covering up for her. Isn’t it shocking ?’ Without waiting for an answer, Lottie barrelled onwards. ‘And – AND! Guess what else has happened? You tell her, Louis!’
‘Beauregard House is back on the lintel chain.’ Louis was better at containing his excitement than Lottie, but he still had to clench his fists at his sides, as if he was trying not to explode. ‘It just arrived tonight, out of nowhere! We hopped from Lalaina Rakoto’s walk-in wardrobe expecting to land in the McAlisters’ wine cellar as normal, but instead we came out in the garden shed of Beauregard House! All we have to do is break into the house and find the new out-lintel, and we’ll have stitched a WHOLE SECTION OF THE MAP back together, which means we can go almost anywhere !’
‘Right,’ said Morrigan, barely listening.
Lottie, meanwhile, was running around grabbing Morrigan’s coat and boots and socks and jumper and tossing them towards her one by one.
‘We’ve got to go now, though,’ Louis went on. ‘The Pleasure Gardens are quiet because it’s night two of the Splendid Canal Chariot Races, so nobody should be close enough to hear or see anything.
‘Right,’ Morrigan repated numbly.
‘I did think you’d be more excited,’ said Lottie, looking a little put out. ‘We’ll need to smash a window to break in and I said to Louis, if anybody would enjoy smashing a window as much as us, it’s Morrigan.’
‘Are you all right?’ Louis was looking at her curiously, his head tilted to one side. ‘You look a bit peaky. Is something wrong?’
Morrigan stared at the twins, and knew she had a choice. She could put on her coat and go along with them to commit a crime – an actual crime – that might get her and them in a lot of trouble.
Or she could take a deep breath, grit her teeth and show them the letters. She could tell them about her fight with Jupiter, and how her discovery of what he’d written to her grandmother had just changed everything , and how nothing looked the same to her as it did an hour ago. And perhaps talking it out with friends would unblock something inside her, would fix this horrible numbness , and maybe they could even help her figure out what to do next.
Morrigan took a deep breath and chose.
‘Lottie, I would absolutely love to smash a window.’
Twenty minutes later, Morrigan, Louis and Lottie creaked open the door of a tiny, musty-smelling garden shed and emerged in the unkempt grounds of Beauregard House. Its hulking facade towered above them in the moonlight, and there wasn’t a single light coming from within.
‘Nobody’s home,’ whispered Louis.
‘Nobody’s ever home,’ Lottie whispered back. ‘He doesn’t have a family or any staff. I don’t even think he stays here most of the time.’
‘Probably sleeps in his factory.’
‘Probably sleeps in a coffin .’
‘If nobody’s home, why are we whispering?’ whispered Morrigan.
‘Er, good point.’ Louis cleared his throat and spoke normally. ‘What we’re looking for is a ground-floor window or one that’s easy to climb up to – preferably one the Vulture won’t notice is broken for a while.’ He paused to pull his navy cashmere jumper over his head. ‘I say we rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to do the honours. The lucky winner can wrap their fist in my jumper to muffle any—’
He was interrupted by the sound of a fist-sized rock hitting the large bay window beside the front door with a disappointing THWACK and bouncing right off.
‘Huh,’ said Morrigan, already looking around for another stone to throw. ‘That’s not what I thought would happen.’
Louis and Lottie stared at her for a moment, open-mouthed, before scrambling to find rocks of their own and lob them one by one at the same window.
Same result.
THWACK. THWACK. The two rocks bounced off the glass.
Morrigan narrowed her eyes, remembering a conversation she’d had at the Feast of the Manyhands.
‘Vesta Rinaldi told me the Vulture is an inventor,’ she told the twins. ‘She said his company makes travelling chairs and mechanical dog butlers and … I think she said he’s invented unbreakable glass .’
Louis pulled a thoughtful face, then nodded. ‘Challenge accepted.’
The three of them spent ten increasingly frustrating minutes lapping the house, picking up rocks and bricks and bits of wood and hand tools from the garden shed to hurl with all their strength at every window they could see. It was the same outcome every time. The glass was certainly unbreakable.
Lottie got bored first, and Louis reluctantly agreed it was time to admit defeat.
‘We ought to take you home before your aunts get back, Morrigan,’ he said with a disappointed sigh.
But Morrigan wasn’t finished.
She’d once had a ghostly hour lesson in the Wundrous Art of Ruination from the great Griselda Polaris, who’d built a glass conservatory only to destroy it by calmly and methodically unravelling it from the inside, breaking it down into smaller and smaller parts until it was nothing but a pile of fine white sand.
Anyone can throw a rock at a window , Polaris had told the class. But the art of Ruination is not about using external brute force.
The problem was, Morrigan didn’t want to be calm or methodical. She didn’t want to break down the structure of the glass again and again until it was transformed into something else.
She wanted to smash it with a rock. She wanted to use brute force. She wanted to break something.
That was a wonderfully clarifying thought, and for the first time since reading Jupiter’s letters, she felt something pierce the strange bubble of numbness around her. From that pinprick entry point a rush of emotion poured in like a river, and Morrigan quickly realised if she didn’t redirect it, she might drown in it.
She pulled out every trick she knew. Throwing her monstrous golden reach forcefully beyond her body, it multiplied in all directions at once – two arms, then four, then ten, then dozens . They picked up everything Morrigan could see and things she hadn’t even noticed – discarded rocks and tools and marble statues, a bird bath and a lawn chair and an outdoor umbrella – and launched them at every single window in Beauregard House, one after the other. THWACK-THWACK-THWACK-THWACK-THWACK like the sound of gunfire. The twins ducked for cover beneath a wrought iron table, but soon that was sailing through the air towards a third-storey window and … THWACK! It rebounded and landed in the garden pond with an almighty splash.
That gave Morrigan another idea, and she pulled all the water from the pond to weave it into a waterwhip. It slipped into her hand, and she flicked it one by one against a row of windows, CRACK-CRACK-CRACK . The glass survived, but the whip dissolved into droplets.
The serene facade of Beauregard House looked down on this display of impotent fury in silence, mocking her. She let out a strangled scream.
‘Morrigan, let’s go .’ There was an urgency and seriousness in Lottie’s voice that she hadn’t heard before. ‘Come on, it’s time to give up.’
‘Just let me try one more thing.’
Morrigan closed her eyes and tried to still her mind. She felt the night breeze caress her face. And she felt her own anger writhe inside her like an eel. She reached out with one Wundrous arm to pluck the wind right from its path, and with another she reached deep inside her chest and rummaged around for that feeling of anger, poked it and stoked it and made it bigger, made it harder . She could feel the sadness now too, swimming alongside it; two fish in one stream. But she cast that feeling aside. Too weak.
Knitting three threads together – rage and Wunder and wind – she made a small tempest and sent it howling around and around Beauregard House looking for a window to shatter.
She’d never woven like this before. It was pure instinct. She felt the eagerness of the energy surrounding her, felt it weighing her actions and intentions and running with them, amplifying her creation. It felt like Wundersmith and Wunder were a partnership of equals, a perfect collaboration.
Until they weren’t. Until a moment when Morrigan felt the balance tip away from her and Wunder took the lead. The tempest seemed to wobble on its axis, its trajectory slipping out of her control. It became bigger and wilder, circling the entire house, wrapping it up like a mummy.
‘Can you hear that?’ said Lottie.
In the distance there was a high-pitched, almost musical wailing sound, like the keening of a wild animal. Sirens.
Louis swore under his breath. ‘Somebody must have called the Silk. Morrigan, stop it , this isn’t what we came here for. Lottie and I can’t get arrested again!’
‘I know,’ said Morrigan in a tight voice. All her mental and physical strength was focused on reining in the tempest. ‘Get out of here.’
‘ What? No—’
‘Go! I’ll catch up.’ She sensed the momentum building dangerously, the powerful wind constricting the house like a snake, and felt a sudden prick of fear. She didn’t think she could pull it back. ‘I said get out of here. ’
‘Don’t be stupid, we’re not leaving you here!’
‘ Boarding school , Louis,’ Lottie reminded her brother desperately, tugging him towards Beauregard Bridge. The sirens were louder now, and purple lights were flashing from a small mooring at the back of the house.
‘RUN!’ Morrigan barked at the twins, and they finally listened, pelting through the front gardens and disappearing across the footbridge just as the tempest reached its pinnacle and the air was filled with the deafening sound of breaking glass.
Blood rushed in Morrigan’s ears. Wunder coursed in her veins. She stumbled back from the house, absorbing the terrifying thrill of seeing every single window in Beauregard House shatter as one, exploding outwards. Glass rained down in a trillion tiny shards, turning to the finest, whitest sand before they ever hit the ground.
Morrigan cooperated with the well-mannered officers of the Silk, to a point. She calmly gave her name and admitted that she had indeed been trying to break into Beauregard House and had indeed smashed every window in its facade … though she was deliberately fuzzy on the details, and they were either too frightened or too polite to probe. Morrigan’s only other encounter with law enforcement in Nevermoor had been the terrible Inspector Flintlock from the Stink, so she was surprised and relieved to find the Silk really were another breed altogether.
But when asked which of the Grand Old Houses she was from so her family could be contacted, she’d lied and said Playfair House. Since the Playfairs were wintering in the Highlands, she thought that should buy her enough time to figure out how to escape without asking the Darlings to bail her out.
However, Morrigan could only have been in the small, comfortably appointed holding cell for fifteen minutes before Sergeant Stokes came to release her.
‘Your uncle is here to collect you, Miss Crow. There won’t be any charges.’
‘My uncle ?’
The sergeant blinked in polite surprise at her tone of dismay. ‘Unless you’d rather stay?’
She considered it, but ultimately scrambled to her feet and followed Sergeant Stokes down the hallway, puzzling over why Tobias would be there. How had the Darlings heard about her arrest so quickly? Had the twins told them? Morrigan was about to ask, when they reached the front desk and she laid eyes on her rescuer.
Curiosity turned to panic.
‘ You! ’ she cried, halting abruptly. ‘You’re not my uncle. He’s not my uncle,’ she repeated in a rush, shaking her head at the officer. ‘I don’t know this man.’
Sergeant Stokes stared at Morrigan with her mouth slightly open, eyes narrowing in confusion or suspicion. ‘Then … you were breaking into his house? Only he’s just got through telling me this was all a mistake, and you were only trying to visit, but he—’
‘—forgot to leave a key out for you,’ the Vulture finished for her in a slow, deliberate voice, with a meaningful look to Morrigan. She felt a chill. ‘Again. Silly old Uncle.’
‘Miss Crow, I can’t allow you to leave unless you’re accompanied by a family member or guardian,’ Sergeant Stokes continued, looking from the Vulture to Morrigan and back again, radiating uncertainty. ‘Sir, if you’re not actually related—’
‘She’s cross with me,’ the man interrupted smoothly. He gave a small, perfectly executed sigh of mild impatience and regret. ‘Quite right, too. It’s not the first time I’ve forgotten she was coming to visit. Morrigan, stop being silly now and tell this fine officer the truth … or she might keep you here all night,’ he finished, with the tiniest lift of an eyebrow.
Morrigan weighed her unappealing options. She could deny his story, bite the bullet and ask Sergeant Stokes to put a call through to Darling House after all.
Or, she could take the easier – but potentially more dangerous – way out. Agree to this perplexing offer of help, leave with the Vulture and make a run for it the moment they were clear of the watchhouse. She hummed a quiet note without thinking, gearing up for a fight if she had to give one, and felt the tingle of Wunder gathering in her fingertips.
‘Awfully sorry about your windows, Uncle ,’ she said finally. She levelled her gaze at him, flat and unrepentant. ‘But perhaps you’ll remember the key next time.’
‘Apology accepted, niece .’ The Vulture spoke in a solemn voice, but Morrigan thought she saw the merest hint of a ghost of a shadow of a smile in his pale eyes.
There came a sound like a tiny scoff from the sergeant.
‘ Teenagers, ’ she said under her breath, then swiftly covered it up with a cough and slid two sheets of paper across the desk, reverting to a courteous smile. ‘Very well, then, sir. Please sign here to say you’ve declined to press charges, and here to confirm we have released Miss Crow into your care.’
The Vulture signed in the places she indicated, dropped the pen on the desk, and left without another word.
Morrigan glanced down at the forms before they were snatched away. Scrawled beside the words ‘Parent or Guardian’ was a name she hadn’t seen or heard or even thought of in a very, very long time.
Her heart paused for a beat inside her chest, like a bird about to take flight.
Bertram Crow