Praise for the series

‘A full-speed joy of a book; funny, quick-footed, and wildly, magically inventive’

Katherine Rundell, author of Impossible Creatures

‘Exciting, mysterious, marvellous and magical … quite simply one of the best children’s books I’ve read in years’ Robin Stevens, author of Murder Most Unladylike

‘Rewrites the genre of the Chosen Child Novel. This is a special book’

David Solomons, author of My Brother is A Superhero

‘Extraordinary worldbuilding’ The Guardian

‘Nevermoor is wunderful!’ Sonny, age 12

By Jessica Townsend:

Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow

Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow

Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow

Silverborn: The Mystery of Morrigan Crow

www.hachettechildrens.co.uk

Dedicated with love to all the mothers who are missed.
Most especially to Mary Munday, Dianne Gordon
and Ingrid Hansen, who raised three of the
most Wundrous women in my life.

CHAPTER ONE

The Changing of the Skyfaced Clocks

Spring’s Eve, Winter of Three

Winter’s last midnight ticked closer.

A cluster of clocksmiths idled outside the Nevermoor Houses of Parliament, watching and waiting. The sky above them was black and filled with stars, but the Skyfaced Clock in its tower wore a pale wash of Morningtide pink, unchanged these past three years.

Across town, a second group of observers gathered in Bohemia beneath a similar clock set atop a glittering music hall, surrounded by a crush of Spring’s Eve revellers. A third stood beneath the old mercantile clock tower at the docks, ignoring the sailors and fisherfolk roaring obscene shanties from brightly lit boats. A fourth lingered near the small, almost hidden clock above the stone entrance to the Gobleian Library, and a fifth stood outside the Lightwing Palace, eyeing the royal family’s extravagant golden timepiece from a respectful distance.

There were more of these uncommon clocks scattered across the pockets of the Free State. Their faces bore no hands or numbers, only a circle of empty sky inside the glass. Tonight, every one of them had drawn an audience.

Olly Wainwright was on his way to the parliament clock tower himself, clutching a leather portfolio under one arm, beating a path through the festive hordes and very nearly running late (not a good look for a clocksmith’s apprentice). He should have realised the streets would be heaving, though in truth he’d never been allowed out on Spring’s Eve before. His mum always said it was a time for family, but even she agreed this was much more important than seeing in the new year with his obnoxious brothers and noisy cousins. This was official clocksmith business.

Olly arrived breathless and bright-eyed outside parliament, and scanned the crowd for his teacher. Spotting her surrounded by other chronologists, he slicked back his hair, neatened his bowtie, and made his way over to stand proudly at her side.

Just three months into his four-year apprenticeship, Olly had already learned more from Alejandra Rojas than all his previous school teachers combined. She was one of Nevermoor’s greatest living clocksmiths, and Olly knew how lucky he was to be learning the trade from an industry legend. He only hoped he hadn’t messed it up already.

‘So sorry I’m late, Ms Rojas,’ he whispered. ‘The Brolly Rail was ridiculous, I had to let four of them go—’

But she was already deep in conversation.

‘… and nobody wants a repeat of last Eventide, but I really believe we need to let all that go and allow ourselves to be bold again, don’t you?’

There was a general noise of assent from the others, except for one older gentleman who shook his head, puffing up like a pigeon in a rainstorm. ‘I am simply not convinced, Alejandra. The signs are weak, if you ask me.’

‘Your scepticism has been noted, Sir Benjamin.’ Ms Rojas flicked a furtive smirk in her apprentice’s direction, and Olly pretended to scratch his nose to hide a grin. Sir Benjamin Church had been knighted for his work in chronology, but was most famous for being a contrarian. ‘Though one might wonder, if you truly don’t believe the clocks will change tonight, why you’re here at all?’

The group laughed appreciatively, and even the old man gave a sheepish smile.

‘Curiosity,’ he admitted. ‘And a fear of missing out. I’ve been wrong before, after all.’

‘We’ve all been wrong before,’ said Ms Rojas.

There was an uncomfortable murmur among the clocksmiths, and for a moment nobody could make eye contact. They had all been wrong, only three years ago. Publicly, spectacularly wrong. The embarrassment of last Eventide – the end of the previous Age, which had come seemingly from nowhere, an entire year earlier than anyone had forecast – still stung. Nobody wanted to be wrong again. That sort of inaccurate projection could sink a clocksmith’s career.

‘But if we’re right …’ Ms Rojas let her words trail off like an untethered balloon.

Olly knew exactly what she was leaving unsaid, and he shivered with excitement. If they were right, the bells would toll at midnight and the realm would enter a glorious and treacherous new phase.

Basking: the second phase of the Age.

The empty skies inside the clockfaces would turn from the pastel rose of dawn to the blinding yellow-gold of the sun at midday. The colour was a warning. Historically, Basking brought equal splendours and dangers, just like the heat and brightness of the midday sun. It was a time of high-risk and high-reward; a time when a course for the current Age could – would – be set, for better or worse.

Ms Rojas had once told Olly that the face of Basking was like a roulette wheel. A wheel of fate. You had to let it spin, and hope it landed somewhere good.

‘It will happen tonight, friends, I’m sure of it.’ Shimmering with excitement, Ms Rojas nodded at Olly, who took his cue to open the leather portfolio he’d carried from her office. ‘The measurable signs have all been observed, yes? Look here – planetary alignment, confirmed. Climatological conditions, perfect. Geopolitical landscape, primed for sweeping change.’ As she spoke, Olly handed her the relevant supporting documents to pass around the group. Sir Benjamin gave them a sceptical squint.

‘And of course,’ Ms Rojas went on, ‘I think most of us agree we’ve already seen the first two Disturbances.’

Old Sir Benjamin gave an indignant huff, but the rest of the group nodded eagerly.

Olly had only recently learned about the Disturbances: three unusual, spontaneous and highly visible events which signalled – to those who knew what to look for – that the phase of Morningtide was coming to an end. The kind of signs that clocksmiths watched for, waited for, obsessed over, but most regular folk had never heard of. Ms Rojas made Olly memorise them on the first day of his apprenticeship.

The First Disturbance is a Rising Tide.

The Second Disturbance is a Falling Star.

The Third Disturbance is a Waking Giant.

‘Are we in agreement?’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘You lot can’t even seem to decide what the Rising Tide was.’

Ms Rojas smiled. ‘Well, I’m decided. It was quite obviously the Hollowpox. A mysterious wave of sickness sweeping through nearly the entire Wunimal population bears all the typical markers—’

‘That’s an obscenely Nevermoor-centric view and you know it,’ interrupted a woman in a green tweed coat. ‘The Hollowpox was contained before it affected anyone outside the capital, which doesn’t fit the universality of a Rising Tide at all. Additionally, the First Disturbance is typically an ongoing event and therefore, in my opinion, can only be the mounting unrest in the outer pockets of the Free State. Dafydd, tell her what you were saying earlier. Go on, man.’

She poked the younger clocksmith. His cheeks turned bright pink and he cleared his throat, looking deeply uncomfortable. ‘I—Well, I was only saying … That is, I’ve heard whispers of a call for reunion. You know, between us living here in the Free State and, er … the Wintersea Republic. My cousin lives near the Black Cliffs, and she says there’s a growing movement in the Sixth and Seventh Pockets—’

Alejandra snorted. ‘I’m not sure a handful of grumbling cliff-dwellers qualifies as a movement, Dafydd, but all right – let’s accept that the First Disturbance could be either the Hollowpox or this so-called unrest in the outer pockets. Moving on. We are all on the same page regarding the Second Disturbance, yes?’

Alejandra pulled several newspaper articles from the portfolio and handed them round the group; this time there was wholehearted agreement.

BRIGHT YOUNG STAR OF THE DRAGONRIDING WORLD KILLED BEFORE WINTER TRIALS

‘HEARTBREAKING WASTE OF PHENOMENAL TALENT,’ SAYS COACH OF MURDERED RIDER

SLAIN IN HIS PRIME: THE TRAGIC MURDER OF DRAGONRIDING’S MOST PROMISING YOUNG ATHLETE

‘Such a textbook example of a Falling Star,’ said Ms Rojas, ‘one might call it a little on the nose.’

‘And the Third Disturbance?’ Sir Benjamin’s question was met with silence. ‘Ah. Is this perhaps where your theory disintegrates, Alejandra? Where is our Waking Giant? We have, after all, only minutes to go.’

Olly glanced at his watch. Sir Benjamin was right. If a giant was to wake, it would wake tonight, on Spring’s Eve. There’d been plenty of speculation as to what it could be – something meteorological or political, most seemed to think, though one expert had warned of a dormant volcano in the Highlands that was due for an eruption.

‘You know as well as I do, Sir Benjamin: when it comes to the Third Disturbance, guesswork ahead of time is pointless.’ Ms Rojas shrugged. ‘We’ll know at midnight.’

As the hour drew nearer, nervous hands stilled. Silence descended. Olly dared not even blink.

When midnight finally arrived, a hurricane of held breaths was released into the air.

Pink turned to gold.

The Basking bells began to ring.

Hugs were shared and shouts of triumph rang in the air, and as his teacher clapped him joyously on the back, young Olly Wainwright felt a kind of excitement and belonging he’d never felt before.

Only in a tiny back room of his mind did he feel the slightest sense of unease. Just a prickle on his neck. A strange, quiet discomfort from the knowledge that somewhere, a giant had woken.

CHAPTER TWO

Nightbeacons and Fireblossoms

Four months earlier

Hallowmas, Autumn of Three

They lit the candles from the fireblossom trees this year. It was Morrigan Crow’s first time marching in the Black Parade on Hallowmas night, so she wasn’t sure how the Wundrous Society usually did it – regular old matches, she supposed. It gave her a small thrill of pride to see the brass candleholders passed from hand to hand, each wick held up to a low-hanging branch in its blazing autumnal coat of orange and gold.

I did that, she thought with satisfaction. The ever-burning trees lining the driveway up to her school building, Proudfoot House, had been bare, black-limbed spindly things for over one hundred years. Cold and dead. She’d brought them back to life using the Wundrous Art of Inferno – a power she couldn’t quite fathom and a skill she hadn’t entirely mastered, though her grasp of both grew stronger every day.

And here they were, weeks later. Still burning brightly.

‘Loving yourself sick right now, aren’t you?’ said Cadence Blackburn, following Morrigan’s gaze up to the trees. Her face was deadpan, but her eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘Just carve your name into the trunks and be done with it.’

‘Shush,’ Morrigan muttered, shoving her friend in the side.

Together they watched an older Society member reach up to a fireblossom branch, a black wax candle held in his trembling hand. The wick flared into life, illuminating the man’s sad smile.

Extremely rare and valuable, the long-burning ‘nightbeacon’ candles were brought out of storage every year for Hallowmas and carried into the grounds in a heavy wooden chest. The nightbeacons had an actual job to do that night, but they also played an important symbolic role in the Black Parade. Each one represented a member of the Wundrous Society who had died, and was carried by a member of their own unit who marched in their memory. Morrigan wondered who the old man was remembering. She tried not to imagine lighting a candle for anyone in Unit 919. The friends she’d met three years ago were now considered her siblings, and the idea of any of them not being by her side was unthinkable.

She shivered, pulling her heavy cloak tighter against a sudden sharp breeze. Autumn had curled its bony fingers tight around Wunsoc and strangled every breath of warmth from it, and tonight it felt as if winter wasn’t far behind.

But any displeasure Morrigan might have felt at the cold was smothered by her nervous anticipation of the Black Parade. Hundreds of members of the Wundrous Society stood in rows with their respective units, the formation stretching all the way up the long tree-lined drive, ending on the broad marble steps of Proudfoot House. They were waiting for a signal from the Elders and then they’d be off, through the gates and along the memorised parade route through Nevermoor.

On Morrigan’s other side, Hawthorne Swift was chatting with Mahir Ibrahim and fidgeting as if he had itching powder in his trousers. When he hitched up his cloak to adjust the clothes underneath, Morrigan caught a confusing glimpse of brown fur and plastic talons.

‘What in the Seven Pockets are you wearing?’ Mahir demanded, before Morrigan could open her mouth. ‘We’re supposed to be in uniform!’

‘On Hallowmas ?’ said Hawthorne with disdain, picking a stray bit of lint off his furry chest. ‘No, thank you. I’m ditching this cloak as soon as we get to the end of the parade route. I won’t waste another second of my night not being a werewolf. You not wearing yours?’

Morrigan snorted. ‘Hawthorne, nobody’s wearing a costume yet except you.’

He raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly over Morrigan’s shoulder. She turned to see Cadence briefly open her cloak, showing a glimpse of an old-fashioned ivory lace frock and two painted bite marks on her neck, dripping with red.

‘I’m a vampire,’ Cadence said flatly. ‘Grr.’

On Mahir’s other side was Francis Fitzwilliam, whose eyes darted around restlessly, though the rest of him was frozen like a rabbit in a hunter’s beam, and on his other side was Lambeth Amara – perfectly still, small and solemn, perhaps the most dignified thirteen-year-old Morrigan had ever met.

‘I don’t want to march in the Black Parade,’ Francis whispered. ‘It gives me the heebie-jeebies.’

‘Oh, it’ll be fine,’ Mahir said in what sounded to Morrigan like a deliberately hearty, bracing tone. ‘Nothing bad’s going to happen. Right, Lam?’

Lam looked up in surprise. ‘How should I know?’

‘You’re the one who’s meant to … you know.’ Mahir made a vague wiggly fingered gesture around her head. ‘See what’s coming!’

‘Some things,’ she corrected him. ‘Not everything. I’m a short-range oracle, Mahir, not the weather report. Anything could happen.’

On Lam’s other side, Thaddea Macleod towered above the rest of their unit, shoulders back and eyes ahead, blazing with pride and eager to get going. Next to her, Anah Kahlo was a bundle of nervous excitement and had been told three times already by the older scholar behind her to stop bouncing on her toes. Finally, on the end of Unit 919’s row was Archan Tate, who’d chivalrously insisted on swapping spots with Anah, taking the outside position himself. He’d said it was in case of any shenanigans from the crowd, but they all knew it wasn’t the people in the crowd Arch was worried about. Not the living ones.

Morrigan craned her neck to look up the long driveway behind them, trying to spot a certain head of bright red hair amongst the crowd of black cloaks. Jupiter would of course be marching with his own Unit 895, none of whom Morrigan had met. Earlier that day she’d wondered aloud whether she might finally meet some of them tonight, but Jupiter was doubtful they’d stick around after the parade.

‘Busy people, Mog,’ he’d told her. ‘A bunch of busy, boring grown-ups. Things to do, places to go, people to see. You know how it is.’

Yes, she’d refrained from saying. I know exactly how it is.

Morrigan had never known anyone with quite so many things to do, places to go or people to see as her patron. Jupiter North was many things: the owner and proprietor of Nevermoor’s finest hotel, a captain in the League of Explorers, a volunteer bookfighter at the Gobleian Library and a Witness, which gave him the ability to see things others couldn’t … meaning he tended to stick his nose into every problem, riddle, adventure and escapade that came his way (and an awful lot of those seemed to come his way). All this combined to make him just about the busiest grown-up in the entire Unnamed Realm.

She spotted him, finally – his ginger head nearly as bright as the candle he held – and began to wave, then stopped.

‘Oh,’ she said aloud, to nobody in particular.

Jupiter was holding a candle.

Morrigan swallowed, counting the members of his unit. There were six in the line-up, but only Jupiter carried a nightbeacon candle. That meant one member of his unit was dead – someone he’d been close to, probably – while another two simply weren’t marching tonight. (That was unusual, but not unheard of. Participation in the Black Parade wasn’t mandatory, only very strongly encouraged by the Elders.)

Feeling a prick of sympathy and curiosity, Morrigan resolved to ask Jupiter later who his candle was for. (Though how to ask such a sensitive question politely, she didn’t know.)

In the second it took her to make that mental note, something strange happened in Morrigan’s head. It felt like a shadow streaking across her vision, but not her actual vision. Sort of … across her brain. She’d seen, or rather felt something in the corner of her mind, but somehow she knew if she tried to examine it too closely, it would disappear. Like an urban fox stepping into the edge of a streetlamp’s glow, and then dashing out again before anyone could spot it.

What was that?

Was it something she’d forgotten? Something … she was supposed to do ?

Morrigan stayed still, hoping the flighty thought would crystallise into something she could see or touch or remember.

‘Oi. You all right?’

‘What?’ Morrigan looked up, her unfocused vision resolving into a clear image of Cadence’s frowning face. ‘Sorry … what?’

‘You went funny again.’

‘Again?’

‘Yeah, all moony and faraway.’ Cadence narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you scared of the Unresting?’

Morrigan thought for a moment.

The Unresting.

Was that it? Was she scared of the Unresting? That must be it.

‘Yeah,’ she agreed, feeling oddly relieved that this explanation had been offered up. ‘Are you?’

‘Be an idiot if I wasn’t.’

‘I’m not scared,’ Hawthorne announced.

‘I rest my case.’

Before Hawthorne could respond, there was a sudden squeal of feedback from a microphone, and Elder Gregoria Quinn’s frail but amplified voice boomed from the steps of Proudfoot House. The gathered Society members hushed, turning to face her.

‘On this Hallowmas night,’ Elder Quinn began, her words ringing out across the grounds, ‘when the walls between the Living and the Dead grow thin, we will do our sacred, time-honoured duty. We will walk the streets trodden for hundreds of years by our Wundrous Society predecessors in the Black Parade.’

In the chill autumn air, the stooped woman looked like a small but mighty dragon breathing white frost from her nostrils. Elder Wong and Elder Saga stood to either side of her, as usual.

‘I shall remind you,’ Elder Quinn continued, ‘that each unit must watch over the younger unit marching ahead of them, according to tradition. Unit 919, this means you have the most important job of all. Unit 920 – the youngest and most vulnerable among us – need your care tonight. I know you won’t let them, or me, or your patrons down.’

At these words, Morrigan sensed Unit 919 standing taller, their shoulders straightening. The moment was slightly ruined by a giggle from behind them, and a boy from Unit 920 whispering, ‘Bit dramatic.’

‘Yeah, it’s just a long walk,’ his friend agreed with a snort of derisive laughter. ‘Most vulnerable to what? Blisters?’

‘Oi,’ Cadence said in her low hum of a voice, twisting around to glare at them. ‘Why don’t you save this conversation for next Hallowmas, when you might have a clue what you’re talking about?’

The two younger scholars stared at Cadence with wide eyes, as if she was a ghost that had appeared out of the Gossamer. (Her ability to go unnoticed was one of the dubious benefits of being a mesmerist.)

Morrigan wasn’t sure how she felt about the responsibility of watching over these clueless numpties, but she couldn’t really blame them for their cluelessness. To Unit 920, the Black Parade was just another weird Wundrous Society tradition, a bit of pomp and ceremony to remind the city how very special they were in their black cloaks and gold pins – how very important.

Unlike Unit 919, the youngest scholars hadn’t yet learned the true purpose of the Society they’d pledged their lives to. As far as they (and the rest of Nevermoor) knew, the Wundrous Society was an elite academic institution and lifelong members’ club. A highly prestigious organisation of extraordinary people with extraordinary talents.

But the members of Wunsoc had another, much more secret role to play in Nevermoor. This was a dangerous city – beautiful and magical and ridiculous, but dangerous – more than most people would ever know, because its greatest perils were deliberately hidden from sight. The Wundrous Society saw to that.

These dangers were the relics left scattered across the city by generations of Wundersmiths – people like Morrigan, born with the ability to summon and control and create with Wunder, the mysterious energy source that powered the realm and had a mind of its own unless you knew how to wield it.

Once upon a time, the Wundrous Society had existed to educate and elevate the Wundersmiths. Nine of them, always, born and reborn and reborn again through the Ages, one generation after another. The Wundersmiths were servants of the realm, but they were also powerful – infinitely more powerful than those they served. And power, Morrigan had learned, could be a dangerous and corrupting currency.

Until Morrigan, the Wundersmiths had been gone from Nevermoor for over one hundred years, and their creations – even the good, the great, the supremely well-intentioned ones – had been neglected and unmanaged in all that time. Which meant the Wunder that suffused and supported them, that was their lifeblood and skeletal framework all in one, had been left entirely to its own devices.

In some cases, that worked out just fine – the Wunderground train network, for example, was so meticulously engineered there’d been very little wiggle room for it to run wild and unchecked. Yes, occasionally a train gained sentience and held its passengers hostage, or a tunnel mysteriously blocked itself off for days at a time. But these minor inconveniences didn’t present much of a threat to the lives of ordinary Free State citizens.

Some Wundrous Acts, however, had gone rogue, become monstrous. They had to be dealt with. That was what the Wundrous Society did: cleaned up the messes left by Wundersmiths past.

They called this secret purpose ‘Containment & Distraction’, or C&D for short. The Society contained the dangers by any means necessary, keeping them under control while simultaneously distracting the public from their existence. It was a never-ending, exhausting battle – a battle that every member of the Wundrous Society signed up for as children, without having the slightest clue what they were getting themselves into. Just like Unit 920.

Part of Morrigan felt smugly superior, knowing she and her friends shared a terrible and thrilling secret with the older Society members. That they were grown-up enough to be trusted with the most frightening of truths, while these younger scholars – these mere children – were still being kept in the dark.

Another, quieter part of her wished she was still one of them. A mere child, kept safe in the dark.

‘We will march in a dignified manner that befits our standing in the community,’ Elder Quinn was saying when Morrigan refocused her attention. ‘Remember, the eyes of Nevermoor will all be on you tonight. Make the Wundrous Society proud.’

With those words, a clock tower somewhere in the distance struck midnight, sending a chill down Morrigan’s neck. Elder Quinn gestured for them all to turn around. Hundreds of pairs of black boots swivelled, crunching softly on the gravel.

There was something waiting outside Wunsoc. Morrigan felt a wave of disquiet enter the campus like a gust of wind as the gates swung open.

Like the rest of her unit, she’d been told what to expect, and how to respond. That she wouldn’t see them, but she would feel them.

That she mustn’t react. Mustn’t let her eyeline stray. Mustn’t, in fact, show by any word, gesture or expression that she was aware of their presence. They wouldn’t like that.

The Unresting didn’t like to be noticed.

CHAPTER THREE

The Unresting

One Week Earlier

‘Agony. Shame. Guilt. Fear. Existential dread. Deepest horror at the unending ignominy and pain of an eternity you can never escape. Imagine what those things might feel like … then slap ’em on a nasty old ghost face and you’ll have a rough idea of what the Unresting look like.’

Seven days before Hallowmas, the retired clairvoyant, Conall O’Leary, had delivered to Unit 919 the first in a series of lectures called Spectre Specifics: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classification of the Incorporeal Dead. The semester-long course would teach them to identify the various spirits, ghosts and ghouls occupying Nevermoor and determine what must be done with them: which ones could be safely ignored, and which must be dealt with by the Society. This introductory session was meant to prepare them for their first time marching in the Black Parade.

Morrigan sighed, dropping her chin to her chest. She’d so been looking forward to her first Hallowmas march. Nice tradition. Pleasant little walk to honour the dead. But no, of course nothing at Wunsoc could possibly be that straightforward.

The Black Parade, it turned out, was a ghost trap.

‘Sounds quite chilling, I know. But you might find it settles your nerves to think of it more as … paranormal pest control,’ Conall told them. ‘Now, most folks’ll never see the Unresting, because they don’t want to be seen. But fortunately – or perhaps unfortunately – for us, the Unresting have been immortalised by many artists throughout the Ages. Some claimed to have seen the spirits themselves, others relied on the accounts of others. Here are a few depictions from history to give you an idea. Brace yourselves.’

Unit 919 shrank in their seats as Conall clicked through a dozen ghastly images projected into the air above their heads in the lecture theatre. Morrigan didn’t close her eyes, but she really wanted to.

The artists’ interpretations differed wildly in aesthetics, but their general vibe was as Conall had described: lost, guilty, miserable. One piece showed them with monstrously wide mouths twisted into a horrified ‘O’ as if screaming for help, their eyes no more than sunken, unseeing hollows in skull-like faces. Another depicted red flesh stretched taut across bone, with black veins creeping all over them like ivy, as if the blood had curdled inside, turning toxic and tar-like. Another showed them as pale, membranous, slug-like creatures, crawling along the ground.

The thing they all had in common was that none of them looked like a fun time.

‘Our nightbeacon bearers,’ Conall went on, fixing his bright, piercing gaze on each child in turn, ‘including yours truly, have the unenviable task of counting the Unresting as we gather them, and watching they don’t stray towards the public. We must manage this without looking directly at them or making eye contact or in any way acknowledging their presence, lest we agitate or frighten them.’

‘How do you get chosen for the job?’ asked Thaddea.

‘Someone in your unit has to die first, Thaddea,’ Mahir reminded her. ‘Which one of us are you hoping to kill off?’

She grinned. ‘Shall I write you a list?’

Conall waited for them to settle down before continuing. ‘If you’re lucky, you’ll never carry a nightbeacon, and the last time you see the wretches will be today, in these pictures.’ Leaning on his cane, he pointed the clicker at the horrible image above them. ‘The Unresting may look terrifying, but in truth they are pitiful creatures. Mopey, miserable and a touch skittish.

‘However, being pitiful doesn’t mean they deserve our pity. While they lived, they were people who did terrible, unforgivable things, and got away with them entirely. They died having never paid for their crimes. No justice, no punishment.

‘They’re undeserving of rest, and so they are Unresting. They cannot change their fate or make amends, so they wander ceaselessly, and their numbers grow a little more each year, because they’ll never move on from this plane. They’re not like the Unfinished Business crowd, who exist as a temporary paranormal presence until they Finish whatever Business they need to and then skip town; perhaps off to someplace nicer – perhaps not – who knows? ‘The Unresting are different. They’re stuck here, consumed by misery, and usually they want nothing to do with us. Like all spectral beings, though, on Hallowmas even they can’t help but be drawn back to the living. To peek through the curtain at the life they once knew, the life they crave to know again.’

Morrigan glanced around at Unit 919, most of whom were wide-eyed and uncharacteristically still. This was their first lesson with Conall O’Leary, whereas she knew him well by now. She’d spent most of this school year with him and the small, secret band of researchers who called themselves the Sub-Nine Academic Group, down in the basement of Proudfoot House in the equally secret School of Wundrous Arts, where Morrigan was the only pupil. She knew Conall was kind and curious, if occasionally gruff. He taught paranormal subject matter in the School of Arcane Arts and was also the head of the Wundrous Supernatural League.

‘Are the Unresting dangerous?’ asked Lam, looking up from the notes she was scribbling.

‘Not in the way you may be thinking, Miss Amara. These aren’t poltergeists, phantasms or bogeyfolk. The Unresting sit here, in the Harmless-Rare quadrant of Doctor Saperstein’s Spirit Spectrum.’

Conall clicked to a new image. The scholars exhaled in relief as the gruesome Unresting were replaced with a graph whose X axis and Y axis crossed in the middle to make four quadrants. The X axis was labelled HARMLESS on the left and HARMFUL on the right, while the Y axis ran from rare at the bottom to UBIQUITOUS at the top. The Unresting sat a smidge below the horizontal line, in the lower left of the graph.

It was Thaddea who raised her hand to ask the obvious question. ‘If they’re so harmless, why are we wasting our Hallowmas night rounding them up when we could be doing something useful like … I don’t know, trapping something that’s actually dangerous?’

‘Or trick-or-treating,’ suggested Hawthorne.

‘Because, Miss Macleod, in the Wundrous Society’s slightly controversial opinion, Saperstein’s classification of the Unresting isn’t entirely correct. He classified them this way because they cannot touch the living, but of course physical harm isn’t the only kind of harm there is.’ Conall looked up, his expression thoughtful, and tapped his cane softly on the dais. ‘It’s hard to describe, but the Unresting exude a sort of … uneasiness. And they have an unhelpful tendency to gather, like the grit and grime that collects in the seams of the city. Leave them to build up in one place and they’ll quickly drag down the emotional health of a neighbourhood. People start having funny dreams. Find themselves getting angry for no reason. Crime rates go up. Folks feel anxious, unsafe … They move away, the neighbourhood empties. In the long run, it’s better for everyone if we intervene before that happens. Sweep out the grit before the machine breaks down.’

‘Sweep them to where?’ asked Morrigan.

He gave her a grim smile, tapping his cane again. ‘We’ll be relocating them to a non-residential area in the borough of Eldritch. Lots of dark, dangerous things in Eldritch. They’ll fit right in.’

Morrigan frowned. They did this every year ? Eldritch must be bursting at the seams with Unresting, she thought. She wanted to ask how many there were, and how the Society made them all stay in one place, but Conall turned away, moving to drag a stool from the side of the dais. Arch jumped up to lend a hand.

‘Good man,’ the teacher said, sitting down with a sigh of relief. He clapped a hand on his knee. ‘Now, you may recall our parade last year was cancelled. That means this year’s will attract more Unresting than usual, so it’s more important than ever to stick to the rules. Let’s go over them one more time …’

CHAPTER FOUR

Monsters Welcome Never More

Hallowmas Night

One foot in front of the other.

Don’t react, Morrigan repeated in her head. Don’t let your eyeline stray. Pretend you’re not surrounded by dead people.

It was even harder than she’d expected at first. Not just because of the dread that enveloped her the moment she stepped outside Wunsoc, or the occasional hostile bump to her psyche from what she knew must be a close-passing ghost, but also because of the enormous, watchful crowds gathered behind the barrier on either side of Lightwing Parade. Morrigan felt the weight of their collective attention, the rise and fall of their excitement as the parade neared and then passed them, like two big lungs breathing in and out.

She envied the spectators a little. The Society took special measures to protect the crowds at the Black Parade from the effects of the Unresting, and so there was a calm, expectant, even jubilant mood on the other side of the barriers. She could see those ‘special measures’ dotted along the parade route, mingling with the crowd, their tails wagging and teeth bared in dopey, happy grins – spaniels and setters and retrievers and poodles, standing proudly with their human handlers, radiating good feelings all around with their shielding, reassuring auras. Dogs, according to Jupiter, were some of the most powerful and cost-effective buffers against psychological harm. Morrigan wished she could have tucked a Chihuahua into her pocket.

As they went on, though, it started to feel easier. The night seemed to shrink, drawing protectively around them like a great black cloak. The soft sounds of the crowd fell away, and the light from the streetlamps fell away, and the smell of sugared hazelnuts roasting and fairy floss spinning all fell away, fell away, fell away … until all Morrigan could hear was hundreds of footsteps marching in sync, and all she could smell was the burning wax of the nightbeacons.

The Unresting were drawn to the light cast by the black candles, which had been made for this purpose by the Royal Sorcery Council, laced with various ingredients designed to lure and trap them. (The RSC were famously protective of the recipe.) The ghosts would seek out the pools of candlelight and then be unable to turn away, hypnotised like insects hovering around a flame.

Poor Jupiter, Morrigan thought. She didn’t envy him his task tonight. Having to see their ghastly faces drawing closer around him, but never to look directly at them. Never let his hands tremble. If anyone could hold their nerve all the way from the north end of Old Town to Eldritch in the south, though, it was Jupiter.

Morrigan and her friends had learned the twisting, turning parade route by heart. Conall explained that it was designed to maximise the number of Unresting they collected along the way, snaking past prisons, temples, churches, courthouses and cemeteries. Places of misery and places of absolution. Those were the city seams he’d talked about, where the grit and grime liked to gather.

When they marched by the prison, Morrigan could see what he meant. Dredmalis Dungeon was grim. A bleak, stone-grey building surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire, bordering a graveyard crammed with busted old headstones, like a skull full of crumbling teeth. Even seeing it in her peripheral vision made Morrigan shudder.

She was relieved when they emerged from their East Quarter detour into the wide, open Lightwing Parade again … but that relief vanished when she heard a hiss from somewhere in the crowd.

‘Wundersmith!’

It was whispered with such savage force there could be no doubt it was meant as an insult or accusation.

Two hands instantly grasped for Morrigan’s and squeezed, concealed from onlookers by the long sleeves of their cloaks. Cadence on her right and Hawthorne on her left. Morrigan felt a lump in her throat, but tilted her chin up a little higher.

She was used to moments like this now. Ever since she’d been outed in the newspapers several weeks ago as Nevermoor’s first Wundersmith in over a hundred years, she’d been glared at, whispered about and occasionally shouted at by perfect strangers. It didn’t always feel like fear or hatred, exactly … sometimes it just felt like curiosity. But that still wasn’t fun. She didn’t want to be an object of curiosity.

Morrigan couldn’t say she blamed them, particularly. The last Wundersmith in Nevermoor had, after all, committed the quite memorable crime of murdering a bunch of people and attempting to conquer the city with his own army of monsters. It was understandable that Nevermoorians might be a bit touchy about the arrival of another one, with dangerous, unknown, potentially unlimited powers.

The trouble was, there was no way for Morrigan to publicly reassure people that she wasn’t planning to murder a bunch of people and conquer the city, without sounding quite a lot like someone who’s maybe planning to murder a bunch of people and conquer the city.

Ezra Squall had certainly managed to mess things up for her.

Morrigan blinked and stumbled, making the person behind bump into her with an impatient huff. She righted herself quickly and carried on.

What was that?

That weird brain-flicker again. A fox in the streetlight. A shadow across the moon. Something she’d forgotten.

‘Wundersmith!’

Another whisper. And then another.

‘Wundersmith, go home! Wundersmith, go home!’

Go home? What did they mean, go home ? Home to the Hotel Deucalion, or … Did they mean …?

Morrigan blinked, swallowing hard.

The whispers didn’t stop; they grew louder as more voices joined the chorus, and others began chanting—

‘SEND HER BACK. SEND HER BACK. SEND HER BACK.’

The parade was halted in its tracks as people swarmed through the barriers and into the empty street in front of them, a choreographed stream coming from every direction to block their path. Without thinking about it, Morrigan, Cadence, Hawthorne, Thaddea and Lam stepped in front of the younger members of Unit 920, and the others followed in a heartbeat.

‘SEND HER BACK! SEND HER BACK! SEND HER BACK!’

The familiar voice of Laurent St James – founder of the Concerned Citizens of Nevermoor Party, campaigner against Wunimal rights, loud owner of terrible opinions and most notably, in the words of Jupiter North, ‘some rich idiot’ – boomed unpleasantly from his beloved megaphone.

‘Ugh, not this guy again. Hasn’t he shouted about you enough for one lifetime?’ Cadence muttered to Morrigan. ‘Take a day off, mate.’

‘The Concerned Citizens of Nevermoor say NEVER MORE!’ shouted St James. ‘Never more will we allow our city to be controlled by a maker of monsters, by a wolf in sheep’s clothing, by a too-powerful, too-dangerous, megalomaniacal despot!’

‘Is he talking about me?’ Hawthorne said quietly, grinning as he lifted the sleeve of his cloak to reveal his werewolf costume again. ‘How rude.’

Morrigan almost laughed, but not quite.

‘Never more will we allow our citizens to be put at risk! The Wundrous Society has smuggled in a WUNDERSMITH from the WINTERSEA REPUBLIC, our ENEMY NATION! We must rise as one and say NEVER MORE! Never more will we let them do as they please, running their wild schemes on the taxpayer’s coin and putting our children in danger!’ He paused, picking up a small child beside him and lifting her on to his shoulders. ‘We must rise up and DEMAND that they SEND HER BACK!’

Then he handed the megaphone up to the little girl, whose tiny voice grew monstrous as she shrieked, ‘SEND HER BACK! SEND HER BACK! SEND HER BACK!’

Morrigan felt sick. She turned in a circle, but there was nowhere to go. She was surrounded by so-called Concerned Citizens holding signs with slogans like MONSTERS WELCOME NEVER MORE! and HEY WINTERSEA, WE DON’T WANT YOUR WUNDERSMITH! Though they’d grown since she’d last seen them, still they numbered only a hundred, maybe two. But there were thousands of Nevermoorians lining Lightwing Parade, and even some of them took up the chant. Unit 919 closed around her.

‘DO SOMETHING, you fool!’ came a sharp shout. Morrigan turned to the sound of the voice and saw a familiar pale face in the crowd, twisted with disgust. Her fingertips tingled with gathering Wunder. He was right, she ought to do something, she had to do something—

‘MOOOOGGGGG! MOG, I’M COMING!’

The sea of black cloaks parted to let Jupiter through, still holding his candle aloft. He launched himself to the front of the parade, blazing with righteous anger, shouting, ‘How dare you!’ and Laurent St James put the child back on the ground, squaring up to Jupiter and bellowing, ‘SEND HER BACK, SEND HER BACK,’ right into his face.

Several things happened at once.

Unbalanced, Jupiter dropped his nightbeacon. It rolled into the crowd of Concerned Citizens, still alight. The little girl reached down to pick it up. Time slowed to a crawl and Morrigan felt every drop of water in her body turn to ice. She wanted to shout a warning but the words stuck in her throat, so she ran for the candle instead, fingers tingling as she grabbed it just in time and—

They were everywhere.

Everywhere.

There was no Wundrous defence against this. No way of unseeing it.

The artists were all wrong, they were too gentle. They lied. The misery they’d painted wasn’t big enough, it wasn’t hard enough, it wasn’t frightening or painful or ghastly enough.

The Unresting wore their guilt on the outside like chains. Like thick vines creeping around their hands and feet, wrapped round their necks, forever twisting, tightening, squeezing.

The nightbeacon didn’t just let Morrigan see them, it let her hear them too. And that was worse. It was so much worse, it was unbearable.

No rest, they sang without words. No rest.

Morrigan wanted to weep. She wanted to run. She could hear words beneath the wailing, could hear her name spoken in familiar, panicked voices, but they felt so far away, and all she could see was the Unresting.

A ghoulish woman advanced on her, mouth open in a silent scream, reaching out with pale, grasping hands through a tangle of vines.

‘GET AWAY FROM ME!’

Before the words even left her mouth, Morrigan regretted them. A sea of faces turned towards her, black-socket eyes and gaping maws growing wide with horror or hunger.

She’d broken the rules.

She’d noticed the Unresting. And they’d noticed her right back.

For one breathless moment, Morrigan was certain they would swarm her … but what happened was somehow worse. They scattered, screaming a demonic chorus and howling into the night. Morrigan felt their collective anguish billow upwards like a mushroom cloud and then dissipate, leaving her dizzy and nauseous … and leaving the Black Parade utterly empty of the dead.

The Concerned Citizens watched, bemused, as their too-powerful, too-dangerous, megalomaniacal despot swayed where she stood, trembling violently, face drained of colour.

‘Mog. It’s all right. Give it to me.’

Morrigan was dimly aware that someone had been tugging fiercely at the nightbeacon, but her fingers were closed tight like talons around it, unable to let go.

‘They were everywhere,’ she said quietly, blinking against the sudden wash of light.

‘I know.’ Jupiter uncurled her fingers one by one.

‘I heard them.’

‘I know.’

‘I want—’

Morrigan didn’t know how to say all she felt. She wanted to unsee what she’d just seen, wanted to cut the memory of it out of her brain forever. To forget and forget and forget.

‘I know,’ Jupiter said again.

And she looked at him and knew that he did.