Morrigan awoke on an empty platform. She groaned quietly as she tried to sit up on the cold concrete, pain shooting down her side. Her stomach reeled.

Blinking to bring the world into focus, she found she recognized the old-fashioned posters and advertisements lining the walls. It was the Gossamer Line platform. She picked up her oilskin umbrella and rose unsteadily to her feet. Her eyes landed on an unwelcome bit of news: She was not alone.

Forty yards along the platform, sitting on a wooden bench, was Mr. Jones.

No, Morrigan thought, not Mr. Jones. Ezra Squall. The Wundersmith.

He stared across the rail tracks at the tunnel wall, lost in his thoughts, humming his strange little tune. It sounded like a nursery rhyme, but wrong.

Morrigan’s heart drummed faster.

She heard a low growl. Wisps of black smoke feathered out from the gaping mouth of the tunnel, and pinpricks of red light peered through the blackness. Morrigan jumped as a high-pitched whinny cut the air. The Hunt of Smoke and Shadow waited patiently in the dark… for what? For an order from their master, the Wundersmith?

There was only one way out.

Morrigan walked slowly down the platform, her footsteps echoing. Ezra Squall was unnervingly still. He just kept humming, kept staring at the wall.

If she could just get past him, Morrigan thought, maybe she could run for it—up and up the mazelike stairwells and hidden pathways of the Wunderground until she found a Nevermoor Transportation Authority officer or a friendly crowd of passengers, or until she stumbled outside into the bright, noisy safety of a Saturday night in Nevermoor.

She took another tentative step, and another.

“Little crowling, little crowling, with button-black eyes,” Squall sang softly. A smile crept across his features, small and slow, never quite reaching his eyes.

“Swoops down into the meadow, where the rabbits all hide.”

Morrigan paused. Hadn’t she heard this song before? Perhaps she’d learned it in nursery school, before they’d kicked her out for being cursed. Squall’s voice was high and clear. Sinister in its sweetness.

“Little rabbit, little rabbit, stay by Mother’s side.” He turned to look at her, and as he did, one by one the green and white tiles that lined the platform walls turned gloss black, as if by some silent command.

“Or the crowling, little crowling, will peck out your eyes.”

He finished his song, but the terrifying smile remained. “Miss Crow. You look like a person who’s figured something out.”

Morrigan said nothing.

“Go on,” he prompted, his voice barely a whisper. “Show me how clever you are.”

“You… you’re Ezra Squall,” she said. “You’re the Wundersmith. There is no Mr. Jones, it was all a lie.”

“Good.” He nodded. “Very good. What else?”

Morrigan swallowed. “The Courage Square Massacre—that was you. You murdered those people.”

He inclined his head ever so slightly. “Guilty. What else?”

“It was you who sent the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow after me.” The lights on the station platform flickered. Tendrils of black smoke drifted from the tunnel, curling around the walls and the ceiling, choking out the light. Morrigan trembled. She felt the darkness might devour her too.

“Correct. You and every other child unfortunate enough to be born on Eventide. It was meant to be a mercy.”

“A mercy?” said Morrigan. “You tried to kill me!”

He closed his eyes as if disappointed. “Wrong. I don’t try to kill people, Miss Crow. I simply kill them. You may have noticed you are still alive. Not, I assure you, because your Captain North made his daring rescue, but because I intended for you to live.”

“Liar!”

“I am a liar. Yes. But not always, and certainly not this time.” He rose from his seat and stepped closer. “You were only half-right. I sent the Hunt after you, but not to kill you.”

At the mention of their name, the black-smoke hounds emerged from the tunnel, stalking low to the ground, followed by a wall of hunters on horseback. They moved slowly, dreamlike. Waiting for an order to attack.

Morrigan stepped backward.

“Don’t run,” Squall warned her. “They love it when children run.”

She froze, unable to take her eyes off the Hunt. Her pulse was thrumming all the way down to her fingertips.

“Quite frightening, I agree,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder. “Some of my best work. They are the perfect murder machine—ruthless, unfeeling. Unstoppable. Believe me, Miss Crow, if I had ordered them to kill you, you would not have lived past Eventide. You would be nothing but a pile of ash. The order I gave was not to kill. It was to herd.”

He smiled. The skin on Morrigan’s neck prickled. For the smallest of moments, a brief flash, she could swear she’d seen the shadow of the Wundersmith on his face. Black eyes and black mouth and sharp, bared teeth. The hollowed-out face of a creature who was neither man nor monster, but something else Morrigan dared not imagine.

“They failed the first time, of course, allowing that abominable ginger to spirit you away in his ridiculous mechanical spider. But I knew they wouldn’t fail again, not once I finally found a weakness to exploit on the Gossamer Line. It’s taken most of the year and one or two minor Wunderground disasters—”

“That was you,” said Morrigan. Her voice was shaking. “Those derailments. People kept saying it was the Wundersmith, and they were right. You killed two people!”

“Trial and error,” he said with a shrug. “All in the name of rounding you up like a lost sheep. And now, little lamb, it is time to go home.”

He turned to her and held out his hand. A train whistled in the distance.

Morrigan took another step back. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“I respectfully disagree.”

Morrigan heard the sound of an engine gaining speed. A silvery-gold light shone from the depths of the tunnel, growing brighter and brighter, piercing the wall of blackness that was the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow until it finally broke through, shimmering and pearlescent, too beautiful and too terrible to look upon.

The Hunt scattered, evaporating into thin air and reappearing on the platform like a tornado with Morrigan at its eye. The oilskin umbrella tumbled from her hands. They spiraled around and around her, binding her in black ropes of shadow and smoke, pushing and pulling her deep into the blinding golden light of the Gossamer train.

A whistle blew. The train departed.

There was a chill in the air, and Morrigan could feel it even through the Gossamer. It was cold outside Crow Manor. The lawn was covered in a layer of frost. Behind the tall iron gates, the house was a black silhouette against the darkening sky.

Squall stepped forward, gazing up at the house with manic, shiny-eyed anticipation. “Let’s pay a visit, shall we?”

The Wundersmith was no longer a bodiless entity, floating on the Gossamer and unable to affect the things around him. He was back in the Republic, back in his body, and relishing his freedom.

He cracked his knuckles and stretched out his arms, and with one precise flick of his wrists, the gates opened—but no, they didn’t just open. They peeled back, rail by rail, the solid iron groaning as if bent by some giant invisible hand.

The dogs came running around the side of the house, barking viciously at the noise.

“Woof! Woof woof!” Squall barked back at them like a madman. The dogs flew backward through the air as if thrown, landing with dull thuds on the lawn and then running away, yelping.

“You’ve no idea what agony it is,” he said, turning to Morrigan as he crunched up the gravel drive, “to be there, right there in my city—my city, my beloved Nevermoor—and unable to do anything. Unable to use my talents, to affect the things around me… even to touch anything.” He swallowed, staring into the distance. “The Gossamer Line is a wonderful thing, Miss Crow—I should know, I created it—but sometimes it’s a prison.” His face brightened. “Let me show you how that feels.”

He turned to the house, raising his arms in the air like a conductor ready to command an orchestra, and began.

The bricks and stones that made up Crow Manor began to shift, turning and scraping against each other, churning up clouds of dust, reassembling themselves until Morrigan’s childhood home was unrecognizable. It groaned and stretched into a tall gothic cathedral, looming above her more frighteningly than ever.

“An improvement, no?” Squall said, coughing as he waved the dust away from his face.

“Stop,” said Morrigan.

“I’m only getting started.”

With a snap of his fingers, the dark gray stone of the transformed house began to glow, lit by a million golden fairy lights. It was beautiful.

Well, that was unexpected, thought Morrigan, eyeing Squall suspiciously. He gave her a questioning look and held out both hands, as if seeking her approval.

“This is what you want, isn’t it, Miss Crow?” Another snap, and a flagpole sprouted from the uppermost spire, a black flag bearing Morrigan’s face waving proudly in the breeze. “This is why you chose that ostentatious fool, isn’t it, with his Wundrous Society and his arachnipod and his jumping off the roof at Morningtide?”

A flick of Squall’s wrist, and a bright neon sign on the rooftop said WELCOME TO MORRIGANLAND in enormous flashing letters.

Morrigan might have laughed if she hadn’t been so frightened. Ezra Squall, the evilest man who ever lived, had just turned her childhood home into a Morrigan Crow theme park.

He turned to her. “All style, no substance. That’s what Jupiter North is. Has he even told you yet?”

“Told me what?”

“No, of course he hasn’t. But you have a moderately functioning brain in that dear little head. You must have figured it out.” As he spoke, Squall fluttered his fingers and made jets of water shoot up from the fountain and freeze in midair, like ice sculptures. He wasn’t even looking. Morrigan wasn’t certain he even noticed he was doing it. “Tell me, Morrigan Crow: Why did I ask you to be my apprentice?”

Morrigan swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“Nonsense,” he said softly. He lifted his hand and made a pattern in the air. The neon sign and fairy lights stuttered and died. The spire began to crumble. A few gray stones tumbled down to the ground. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know,” she repeated. She jumped aside just as a large chunk of stone fell where she stood.

“Think.”

But she couldn’t. Crow Manor was crumbling right before her eyes. The outer walls turned to piles of dust and debris, revealing the warmly lit rooms inside, untouched by Squall’s destruction: a tableau of life as normal for the Crow family.

Closest to where Morrigan stood, her father, stepmother, and grandmother sat in comfy chairs in the parlor, oblivious to the fact that Crow Manor was turning to ruins around them. Ivy fed one of the babies; Corvus rocked the other to sleep. Grandmother was reading. A fire burned in the hearth.

“Do I really need to tell you?” Squall said, coming to stand beside her with a look of puzzled amusement on his face. “Miss Crow, you are a Wundersmith. Just like me.”

At those words, Morrigan grew cold. She felt a shiver down her spine, just as real and as chilling as if an icy finger were drawing on her back. Her skin turned to gooseflesh.

A Wundersmith. Just like me.

“No,” she whispered, and then, more firmly, “no!”

“No, you’re right.” He tilted his head. “Not quite like me. But one day—if you work hard and pay attention—you might come close.”

Morrigan clenched her hands into fists. “I’ll never be like you.”

“It’s perfectly charming that you believe you have a choice in the matter. But you were born this way, Miss Crow. You are set on a path from which you cannot diverge.”

“I’ll never be like you,” Morrigan repeated. “I’ll never be a murderer!”

Squall chuckled. “Is that what you believe a Wundersmith is? An instrument of death? I suppose you’re half- right. Destruction and creation. Death and life. All tools within your grasp, once you know how to use them.”

“I don’t want to use them,” Morrigan said through gritted teeth.

“What a dreadful liar you are,” said Squall. “You must learn to deceive more skillfully, Miss Crow. You must also learn what we shall call the Wretched Arts of the Accomplished Wundersmith, and I will gladly be your teacher. Let us begin with lesson one.”

Squall stepped into the room and whispered something Morrigan couldn’t quite hear. The fire leapt from the grate and spread instantly, encircling the Crows. In moments, the parlor was ablaze from curtains to carpet. Morrigan’s family sat still, completely unaware of the danger they were in.

“Stop!” Morrigan shouted over the roar of the flames. “Please, leave them alone!”

“Why do you care?” Squall sneered. “These people hate you, Miss Crow. They blamed you for everything that went wrong in their lives. When you died—when they believed you to be dead—they were relieved. And why?”

The fire crept closer, closing in on the Crows. A bead of sweat rolled down Ivy’s forehead, but Ivy herself seemed to feel nothing. Morrigan tried to pick something up—anything, a pebble, a piece of crumbled stone—to throw at Ivy or Corvus or Grandmother, to warn them. But she couldn’t grasp anything. Her hand went right through.

“Because of a curse,” Squall continued, “that never even existed.”

Morrigan swallowed, watching him through the flames. “What do you mean, never existed?”

He laughed. “The ‘curse’ was nothing more than a convenient way to explain why all you Eventide-born have such a nasty habit of kicking the bucket before you come of a troublesome age. Before you start attracting and absorbing too much of my precious Wunder, like the greedy little lightning rods some of you have the potential to become. I couldn’t have anyone diluting the source of energy that’s made me obscenely wealthy and powerful, could I? If I am the only conductor of Wunder, its power resides with me. Of course I had to eliminate any potential threats. You can’t blame me for that. It’s good business sense.”

“There’s no such thing as the curse,” Morrigan said. She finally understood. Jupiter had told her, but she hadn’t believed him. Not really. “You’re the curse.”

Squall continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Over the years, the curse took on a life of its own. People are so dramatic. Once upon a time you little wretches were a cause for pity and compassion, having your insignificant lives snatched from you at such a tender age. But somewhere along the way, the heinous true nature of humanity kicked in, and people began to see cursed children as convenient scapegoats. Someone to point the finger at when things went wrong. Why did my crops fail? Blame the cursed child. Why did I lose my job? Blame the cursed child. Soon the cursed child was to blame for all sorts of mischief and strife. The legend grew and grew until cursed children were not only the sorrow of their families, but the bane of everybody else’s existence.”

Squall took the baby from Corvus’s arms. Corvus remained still, his eyes glassy and unseeing, reflecting the bright orange glow of the fire. The parlor had become a furnace, and the flames were throwing up billowing waves of smoke. The smoke became swirling black shapes, weaving in and out of the fire. Morrigan heard a howl. She shuddered.

The baby tried to grab at Squall’s nose with his fat little fingers. The Wundersmith made a funny face and the tiny snowy-haired boy squealed with laughter.

“So you see, Miss Crow, I didn’t make your family despise you. They did that all on their own.” He made the baby wave his little hand at her. “Shall I kill them for you?”

“No!” cried Morrigan. “Please—no!” Squall dropped the baby in midair, but instead of falling, it floated slowly to the floor. She had to do something, had to stop him, but how? What could she possibly do, through the Gossamer? She was powerless.

“No? Are you certain? I’m not sure I believe you.” He watched her with a tiny, teasing smile on his lips. “Tell me, little crowling. Why do you think I let you live?”

Morrigan said nothing. The Hunt of Smoke and Shadow was taking form around them. Snarling hounds and faceless men on horseback grew out of the flames and surrounded her unguarded family. Closer and closer, waiting for a command from Squall. Waiting to kill.

“I’ve destroyed so many others. Been so patient all these years, waiting for the right one. A lesser man would have given up, but I knew… I knew that you would come. That one day, a child born on Eventide would rise to take my place. A child filled with dark promise, in whose eyes I would see a reflection of my own. My true and rightful heir.” He knelt down to bring his face level with hers. His voice was so soft and his smile so sincere that for a moment Morrigan saw her friend, Mr. Jones, in this madman’s face with its lines etched in shadow. “I see you, Morrigan Crow,” he whispered, his eyes glittering. “There is black ice at the heart of you.”

“No!” Morrigan shouted. Something inside her reared away from Squall, as the ocean pulls back water from the shore to build a wave. Suddenly that was what she was—a living tidal wave of rage and fear. She was not like him, she would never be like him!

Morrigan stumbled backward and instinctively threw up her arms, surrendering herself to the wave inside.

A bright, blinding light filled the room, obliterating the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow and dousing the flames with one booming golden-white pulse that lasted several seconds, or maybe several days, or maybe an entire lifetime, and then was gone.

In its wake, silence.

The Crows, still shrouded in blissful ignorance, staring but not seeing.

Squall, wide-eyed and lightning-struck, sprawled on the ground as if he’d been thrown there. Staring up at Morrigan as if he’d just now been given the gift of sight.

And Morrigan herself, trembling with the aftershock of… whatever that was.

She’d destroyed the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow. Or if not destroyed, at least sent them away. That was good enough for now. Morrigan had no idea how she’d done it, how she’d made the light come, but in those few blinding seconds she recalled once again Squall’s words to her this past summer: Shadows are shadows. They want to be dark.

Picking himself up off the floor, Squall found his voice at last.

“You see, Miss Crow,” he said, eyeing her warily. “You should have accepted my offer, but the truth is I don’t need you to. You have already apprenticed yourself to me, simply by living past your eleventh birthday. The gathering is under way. Wunder has noticed you, and you are at its mercy.”

“What does that mean?” Morrigan asked. “What’s the gathering?”

“You were born a Wundersmith, but if you do not learn how to harness Wunder, it will harness you. If you do not learn to control Wunder, it will control you. It will burn you slowly from the inside, and eventually… it will destroy you.” He shook his head, one side of his mouth curving into a rueful smile. “I told you—it would have been a mercy, letting the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow kill you. But, alas, you seem to have driven them away, at least for now. Never mind. I didn’t bring you here this evening to harm you. Or your family.”

“Then why did you kidnap me?”

“Kidnap you?” He looked amused and perhaps a little offended by the idea. “Kidnap is just another word for steal. I’m not a thief. This isn’t a kidnapping. It’s your very first lesson in how to be a Wundersmith. A master class, from a masterful teacher. Lesson two will take place as soon as you request it.”

Morrigan shook her head. Was he joking? Or just insane? “I won’t ever request anything from you. There’s nothing you can teach me.”

Squall laughed softly as he stepped through the dying embers, kicking up swirls of ash and sparks. “I am the only person alive who can teach you anything worth knowing. One day, very soon, you will come to a deep understanding of that terrible truth. My monsters and I will make sure of it.” He tilted his head to the side, all traces of amusement gone from his black, fathomless eyes.

“Until then, little crowling.”

Without looking back, he walked down the long gravel drive, disappearing into the darkness. In his wake, the last remnants of the fire were gently extinguished, the curtains and furniture unburned, the shattered windows unshattered, the stone walls of Crow Manor rebuilt themselves, and the mangled iron gates unbent, closing with a soft clang.

Morrigan stood in the middle of the now-peaceful parlor. She watched the oblivious Crows and felt a strange, yearning homesickness blossom inside her. But it wasn’t for this place. It wasn’t for these people.

Morrigan closed her eyes. She pictured in her mind the silver-handled umbrella with the little opal bird, lying on the Wunderground platform where it had fallen from her hands.

She waited. She heard the whistle of the Gossamer train. And she went home.