Room 85 on the fourth floor was slowly becoming Morrigan’s bedroom. Every few days she noticed something new and brilliant, something she loved instantly. Like the mermaid bookends that showed up on her shelf one day, or the black leather armchair shaped like an octopus that curled its tentacles around her while she read.
One night several weeks earlier, the bed had changed from a plain white headboard to an ornate wrought-iron frame while she slept in it. The Deucalion obviously thought it had made a mistake, though, because two days later she woke up swinging in a hammock.
Her favorite thing of all was a small framed painting of a bright green molded gelatin sculpture, which hung above the toilet.
At first she thought it was Jupiter or Fen changing things in secret, testing her gullibility. Until once, in the middle of the night, she stepped into her bathroom for a drink of water only to see the bathtub growing four talon-shaped silver feet before her eyes.
Strangest of all, the size and shape of the room were changing. Where once there was a single square window, she now had three arched ones. One day her bathroom was the size of a ballroom and had a tub like a swimming pool. The next day it was no bigger than a closet.
Soon there were window boxes full of red flowers, a skeleton hat stand wearing a gray fedora in her size, and thick vines of ivy twisting halfway up a stone fireplace—and for the first time ever, Morrigan Crow felt that she was in exactly the right place.
Midway through spring, a man in a mud-brown uniform came to the Hotel Deucalion. His moustache curled all the way to his cheekbones, and the light glinted off a silver badge on his chest. He stood at the concierge desk, his hands stiffly behind his back, appraising the hotel foyer with undisguised contempt.
Kedgeree had fetched Jupiter and Morrigan from the Smoking Parlor, where they sat in a cloud of forest-green vapor (rosemary smoke: “for sharpening the mind”), playing a game of cards. Neither was certain of the rules, but Frank whispered advice in Morrigan’s ear, and Dame Chanda did the same for Jupiter, and every now and then someone would yell “Huzzah!” and the others would scowl or throw something, and all things considered, Morrigan thought it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
They both felt a bit put out when Kedgeree insisted they hurry to the foyer, and Morrigan was even more annoyed when she saw the moustachioed man sneer disapprovingly at the small, misshapen chandelier, which was still regrowing.
Rude, she thought. It’s not ready yet!
The chandelier was creeping back to health day by day, but it still had a long way to go. At this stage it was impossible to see what form it would take. Fenestra had opened a betting pool. Frank swore up and down it would be a magnificent peacock, but Morrigan was still hopeful it might come back as the same pink sailing ship Jupiter had loved.
“What’s the Stink doing here?” Jupiter murmured to Kedgeree, who shrugged as he scooted off behind the concierge desk.
“Who’s the Stink?” whispered Morrigan.
“Ooh—ah, I meant the Nevermoor City Police Force,” Jupiter said under his breath. “We, er—probably shouldn’t call it the Stink. Not to his face. Actually, just let me do the talking.”
Jupiter approached the man and shook his hand amiably. “Good afternoon, Officer. Welcome to the Hotel Deucalion. Checking in?”
The man scoffed. “Not likely. You’re the proprietor, correct?”
“Jupiter North. How do you do?”
“Captain Jupiter Amantius North,” said the man, consulting a notebook. “Esteemed member of the Wundrous Society, the League of Explorers, and the Federation of Nevermoorian Hoteliers. Secretary of the Wunimal Rights Commission, volunteer bookfighter for the Gobleian Library, and chairman of the Charitable Trust for Decommissioned Robot Butlers. Discoverer of seventeen previously undocumented realms and Snazzy Man Magazine’s Snazzy Man of the Year four years running. Very impressive, Captain. Anything I’ve missed?”
“I also give tap-dancing lessons to underprivileged hoodlums, and I’m on the judging panel for the annual blackberry pie bake-off at the Nevermoor Maximum Security Rehabilitation Center for the Criminally Insane.”
Morrigan laughed out loud at that, although she wasn’t sure whether Jupiter was joking.
“Well, aren’t you just a saint?”
“I’m only in it for the pie.” He winked at Morrigan.
The officer sneered. “Think you’re funny?”
“I often do think that, yes. Is there something I can help you with, Inspector?” Morrigan followed Jupiter’s gaze to the man’s badge, which read INSPECTOR HAROLD FLINTLOCK.
Inspector Flintlock sucked in his paunch and tried to look down his nose at Jupiter, which was difficult, as Jupiter was several inches taller than him. “I’m here acting on an anonymous tip. One of your Wundrous pals has turned you in, North, for harboring an illegal refugee. That’s big trouble, that is.”
Jupiter smiled serenely. “It certainly would be big trouble, if it were true.”
“You’re entering a candidate for the Wundrous Society trials this year, is that correct?”
“Correct.”
“And this is the candidate, is it?”
“Her name is Morrigan Crow.”
Inspector Flintlock narrowed his eyes at Morrigan and brought his face down close to hers. “And where exactly are you from, Morrigan Crow?”
“Nunya,” replied Morrigan.
Jupiter tried to turn his snort of laughter into a cough. “She meant to say she’s from the Seventh Pocket of the Free State, Inspector. She just… pronounces it funny.”
Morrigan glanced at her patron. He had the same cool, confident air as when he’d spoken to the border control guard on her first day in Nevermoor.
Inspector Flintlock slapped his notebook in the palm of his hand. “Now, listen here, North. The Free State has strict border laws, and if you’re harboring an illegal refugee, you’re breaking about twenty-eight of them. You’re in a lot of trouble here, sonny. Illegals are a plague, and it’s my solemn duty to guard the borders of Nevermoor and protect its true citizens from Republic scum trying to weasel their way into the Free State.”
Jupiter turned serious. “A noble and valiant cause, I’m sure,” he said quietly. “Protecting the Free State from those most in need of its help.”
Flintlock scoffed, smoothing his oily moustache. “I know your type. You bleeding hearts, you’d let anything in here if we gave you half a chance. But I think you might find this scummy illegal of yours is more trouble than she’s worth.”
Jupiter looked him dead in the eye. “Don’t call her that.”
A chill crept up Morrigan’s spine. She recognized the cold wrath in Jupiter’s voice, the ice in his hard blue eyes. Flintlock, however, wasn’t so quick to catch on.
“I’ll call her what she is, which is a dirty, stinking, rotten illegal. You can’t fool me, North. Either hand over her papers—her legitimate citizenship papers—or hand yourself over for arrest, and this filthy illegal for immediate deportation!”
The inspector’s words echoed in the lobby, bouncing off the high ceilings. A few of the staff wandered in, drawn by Flintlock’s raised voice.
“Everything all right here, Captain North?” asked Kedgeree, leaving the concierge desk to stand beside them with Martha.
“What a terrible ruckus,” said Dame Chanda. She put her arm around Morrigan and glared at Flintlock.
“Did somebody call for security?” Fenestra said from the staircase, where she sat casually cleaning her enormous claws as if preparing for a meal.
“Shall I bite his kneecaps, Jove?” asked Frank the vampire dwarf, sticking his head through Jupiter’s legs.
“That won’t be necessary. Everything’s fine, thank you. You can all go.” They all reluctantly left, except for Fen, who stayed just where she was. Jupiter was silent for some time, while Flintlock shot nervous looks in the Magnificat’s direction.
When Jupiter finally spoke, it was in a quiet, measured voice. “You have no right to demand the papers of someone who falls under the jurisdiction of the Wundrous Society, Flintlock. We deal with our own lawbreakers.”
“She’s not in the Society—”
“You need to brush up on your Wun Law handbook, Flinty. Article ninety-seven, clause F: ‘A child who is participating in the entrance trials for the Wundrous Society shall for all legal purposes be considered a member of the Wundrous Society for the duration of said trials or until he or she is removed from the trial process.’ All legal purposes. That means she’s already ours.”
A feeling of righteous relief coursed through Morrigan. Already ours. She glared up at Flintlock, emboldened by the knowledge that Wundrous Society law was on her side.
Flintlock’s face colored bright red, then purple, and finally white, contorting with rage. His moustache quivered. “For now. She’s yours for now, North. But as soon as she fails the trials I’ll be wanting to see those papers of hers.” He stroked his moustache and straightened his mud-brown uniform, looking down at Morrigan as if she were something disgusting on the bottom of his shoe. “She’ll be back to her filthy Republic before you can say, ‘Please, Inspector,have pity.’ And you, my friend, will be in so much trouble that even your precious Society won’t be able to help you.”
Flintlock marched out of the Deucalion’s foyer and down the steps of the forecourt and was gone. Morrigan turned to Jupiter, who looked as tense as she’d ever seen him.
“Can they really kick me out?” she asked, a lump forming in her throat. She thought of the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow, of its black shapeless form looming in the darkness. The back of her neck felt prickly and cold. “What happens if I have to leave Nevermoor?”
“Don’t be silly, Mog,” Jupiter said bracingly. “That’s never going to happen.”
He left the foyer without looking at her.
When Morrigan went to bed that night, her hammock had changed again, this time into a wooden bed frame with stars and moons carved into the legs. She slept restlessly and dreamed of the Show Trial. In her dream she stood silently before the Elders, unable to speak, until finally she was dragged away by the Stink and handed over to the Hunt while the audience jeered and booed.
By morning, her bed was a futon. Perhaps the Deucalion hadn’t made up its mind about her after all.