Through the sparse woodland and over the crest of the hill, a dark and shapeless form approached Crow Manor.

To Morrigan it looked like a swarm of locusts or a cloud of bats, but it was too low and loud to be either. The sound of hooves became deafening as the dark mass grew closer. Among the black were hundreds of specks of fiery red light, getting brighter by the second.

The amorphous figure began to take shape. Heads and faces and legs grew out of the swarm, and Morrigan felt her stomach drop; the glowing red lights weren’t lights at all. They were eyes. The eyes of men, the eyes of horses, and the eyes of hounds.

Not individuals made of flesh. More like a single living shadow. They were darkness—a pure absence of light. And they moved with purpose.

They were hunting.

Morrigan couldn’t breathe. Her chest heaved in and out as she tried to take in enough air to fill her lungs properly. “What are they?”

“Not now,” said Jupiter. “We have to run.”

But Morrigan’s feet felt stuck to the floor. She couldn’t turn away from the window. Jupiter grasped her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes.

“No fear. Remember?” he said, giving her a little shake. “Save it for later.”

Jupiter led Morrigan away, into the hall. She paused at the door.

“Wait! What about them?” she said, looking back toward the Crows. They were still gathered around the curtain on the floor, oblivious to the sound and sight of a hundred ghostly hunters barreling toward the house. “We can’t just leave—”

“They’ll be fine. The Hunt can’t touch them. I promise. Come on.”

“But—”

Jupiter pulled her onward. “It’s you they’re hunting, Morrigan. You want to help your family? You need to get yourself far, far away from this house.”

“Then why are we going upstairs?”

Jupiter didn’t answer. When they reached the third floor he ran to the nearest window and flung it wide open, sticking his head out. “This’ll do. Ready? We’re aiming for the skylight.”

Morrigan looked out the window at the strangest machine she’d ever seen.

As state chancellor, her father had been fetched from Crow Manor in all sorts of vehicles over the years. Corvus still favored his old-fashioned horse-drawn carriage for daily use, but sometimes the Wintersea Party would send expensive dark-windowed coaches with rumbling mechanical engines, and once even a small piloted airship that needed a special permit to land on the roof. Neighbors had gathered to gawk at it and take pictures.

But Corvus had never, to her knowledge, traveled in a gleaming brass pod standing two stories high on eight spindly legs like an enormous metallic spider. What would the neighbors think of THIS? wondered Morrigan, her eyes like saucers.

“I didn’t park close enough,” said Jupiter. “We’ll have to push off a bit when we jump.”

Jump? Surely he didn’t expect her to jump out of a third-story window?

Jupiter climbed onto the sill and levered his body so that he was mostly out of the window, then held out a hand to Morrigan. “On the count of three, okay?”

“No.” She shook her head, backing away from the window. “Not okay. The opposite of okay.”

“Morrigan, I admire your instinct for self-preservation. I really do. But I think if you look over your shoulder, your instinct might tell you to jump out the window.”

Morrigan looked.

Perilously close to the top of the staircase was a wolflike hound with glowing red eyes, its teeth bared in a low snarl. Its pack crept slowly up the last of the stairs behind him. At least a dozen, maybe more. They jostled for position, snapping their ferocious jaws and growling as they stalked Morrigan, frozen at the window.

“N-no fear,” she whispered, and every cell in her body replied, Yes fear.

“Count of three.” Jupiter took Morrigan’s hand to guide her up onto the ledge. “One…”

The hound was joined on the landing by a second pack member, then a third, all with the same sharp yellow teeth and fiery eyes and the swirling, smoky fur as black as pitch. Their growls vibrated all the way to Morrigan’s toes.

“Two…”

She stepped backward and scrambled for Jupiter’s support as her foot touched nothing but air. He wrapped his arms around her chest and she felt him lean back, pulling her with him. The hounds launched themselves at Morrigan.

“Three!”

Cold, sharp air whipped around her ears as she fell. There was an almighty shattering of glass and then they landed hard—Jupiter’s arms wrapped tightly around Morrigan, his body cushioning her fall—on the floor inside the body of the giant brass spider. Above them, the hounds disappeared from the window.

“Ow,” Jupiter moaned. “I’ll regret that tomorrow. Off you get.”

He rolled Morrigan onto the floor. She winced as a stray piece of glass embedded itself in the heel of her palm.

“Where did they go?”

“Dunno. But they won’t be gone for long. Hold on to something,” said Jupiter. He ran to a control deck at the front of the vehicle and began pulling levers. The engine roared to life and the spider lurched forward, pitching Morrigan face-first into a wall. She felt nausea rising in her stomach. “The first bit’s always bumpy. And the last bit. But don’t worry; the middle bit’s as smooth as silk. Sometimes. Depends, really.”

Morrigan stumbled into the cramped cockpit and held on to the back of an old leather chair, where Jupiter sat at the controls. She picked the piece of glass out of her hand and threw it away, wiping the blood on her dress. “What were they?”

“The Hunt of Smoke and Shadow.” Jupiter looked darkly over his shoulder as the spider lumbered away from the house.

“The Hunt of…” Morrigan clamped a hand over her mouth, trying not to bring up her dinner all over Jupiter’s panel of shiny buttons and levers—or worse, the back of his head. She felt like she was in a small boat on a choppy sea. “What do they want with me?”

But Jupiter was distracted, trying to steer and change gears and stay upright at the same time. “Strap yourself into the passenger seat,” he said, jerking his head toward the battered-looking chair on his left. Morrigan pulled herself over to it with some difficulty and clicked the seat belt into place across her chest. “Ready? Hold tight.”

The spider climbed over the gates of Crow Manor in great staggering strides. The woods loomed ahead, but Jupiter steered in another direction, toward the center of Jackalfax. On the smooth road, the movements of the mechanical spider evened out as it picked up downhill speed.

Jackalfax was awash with the light and noise of the early fireworks show, and a crowd had gathered to see the night ablaze with color. Morrigan had never seen Empire Road so full of people.

The eight-legged machine scurried through the town center, skirting the edges of the crowd. Jupiter couldn’t have timed it more perfectly—the spectacle in the sky was a brilliant cover for their escape from the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow. Everyone was looking up, their ears filled with whistles and bangs.

“Shouldn’t we be heading out of town, not into it?” asked Morrigan.

“We’re taking a shortcut,” said Jupiter.

He was steering them straight toward Town Hall. The vehicle stood to full height with a grinding of its metal joints and stepped delicately through the crowd, looking for all the world as if it were walking on tiptoes.

“What is this thing?” Morrigan asked. “This spider thing?”

“This ‘spider thing,’ as you’ve indelicately baptized it,” said Jupiter, giving her a pointed look, “is called an arachnipod, and it is the most exquisite machine ever built.”

A particularly loud firecracker shattered the night sky, leaving a trail of flower-shaped smoke in its wake, the ghost of an explosion. The crowd made noises of delight.

“Beautiful, isn’t she? Her name’s Octavia. One of only two arachnipods ever built. I knew the inventor. Pull that blue lever for me, will you? No, the other one. That’s it.”

The arachnipod juddered to a halt. Jupiter frowned. He stood up and ran to the back of the pod, looking anxiously out of the domed glass walls.

“Is something wrong?”

“Interesting machines like this are out of fashion now, of course,” he continued, as if nothing had happened. “But I’ll never let go of old Occy. She’s too reliable. Hoverships and automobiles, they’re all very modern and flashy, but like I always say—you can’t roll over a mountain, and you can’t hover underwater. Octavia can go almost anywhere. Which is useful in moments like this. We appear to be rather cornered.”

He returned to the control deck, reached up to the ceiling, and pulled down a screen with four split images. Each showed a different view from the arachnipod.

The Hunt of Smoke and Shadow had caught up with them. They were surrounded on all sides by the huntsmen on horseback and their slavering hounds.

“How is any of that helpful in moments like this?” Morrigan’s heart raced. This is it, she thought. We’re trapped. This is the end. “I don’t see any mountains or water!”

“No mountains, no,” mused Jupiter. “But there is…that.”

She followed his gaze to the top of the clock tower.

“The really excellent thing about spiders,” he said, strapping himself into the driver’s seat, “is the way they crawl. Fasten your seat belt, Morrigan Crow. And whatever you do, don’t close your eyes.”

“What happens if I close my eyes?”

“You miss the fun.”

Morrigan had barely managed to check her seat belt when the arachnipod suddenly reared back, throwing her against the chair. Two great spindly metallic legs latched onto the eaves of Town Hall, and the pod heaved itself upward, lurching higher and higher toward the black, fathomless façade of the Skyfaced Clock.

“It’s not ideal, but as an improvised emergency gateway it’s not my worst idea ever.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. “Gateway to where?”

“You’ll see.”

Morrigan looked back through the glass dome. The ground swam yards below, and worse than that—the huge black-smoke hunters had dismounted and were climbing the tower.

“They’re behind us!” cried Morrigan.

Jupiter grimaced but didn’t look back. “Not for long. The Hunt can’t follow where we’re going.”

“Where are we going?”

They arrived at the top of the tower as the fireworks display reached its dramatic climax, explosions of red and gold and blue and purple lighting up the night sky.

“We’re going home, Morrigan Crow.”

The arachnipod put one spindly leg right through the clock. The glass didn’t break—it didn’t even crack. Another leg went through, gently rippling the clockface like a pebble on the surface of a deep black lake. Morrigan stared, openmouthed. One more impossible thing in a night of impossible things.

She turned back. The huntsmen were so close their breath could have fogged up Octavia’s glass dome. They reached out their skeletal arms as if to grab Morrigan through the back window and pull her downward to her death. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut—but she couldn’t look away.

With one final heave, the arachnipod pitched forward and tumbled through the clockface, spinning over and over, throwing Morrigan into the unknown.

The sound of exploding firecrackers disappeared. The world had gone silent.