Midnight Hour Read online

  He had mentioned several times already, but Emily smiled and nodded. Who’s a good boy then? Yes, you are.

  ‘How is the Great Working involved, and why does the Nocturne want you? A conundrum.’ Cornelius stroked his chin fur in thought.

  Tarquin smacked his hand on the bench, causing a chorus of ‘Ois’ from the miniature workforce smoking pipes beneath it. ‘We know she wants to escape from the Midnight Hour. It must be to do with that!’

  Emily made a face at him. ‘But she can get out! That flippin’ Bear already has. It chased me up the street with its stupid magic brolly!’

  Cornelius’s ears flicked again.

  ‘A Night Shade! Necessary for any magic outside.’

  Emily’s brow wrinkled.

  ‘So . . . why doesn’t she just use the Night Shade then?’

  ‘Ah ha! Because she’s a . . .’ He clicked his claws, and bared a significant row of teeth, stuck for a word. ‘You know, great big things, endless amount of them in the sea – use them for lamp oil and women’s support doodahs.’ He gestured at his sides.

  ‘Whales?’ said Emily with horror as she recalled an old history lesson.

  ‘That’s the ones!’ said Cornelius, his tail wagging.

  ‘She’s a whale?’

  ‘No, but would you keep one in a teacup?’ said Cornelius.

  ‘What?’ said Emily. She was going to have a good sit-down somewhere quiet after this conversation was over.

  ‘She’s huge, huge!’ Cornelius stretched his arms out, a fisherman showing the size of the biggest thing he’d ever caught. ‘Magically, at least. She’s quite petite, in the flesh, as I remember. Yes, indeed.’

  He stared off into the distance, until Emily coughed.

  ‘Ah yes. She needs an ocean of magic to keep her going and that’s all inside here. Some brolly made with a teacup-full of midnight charm just isn’t going to cut it.’

  Cornelius started to stride back and forth as he explained.

  ‘Without the magic contained within the Midnight Hour, an Older Power such as the Nocturne would turn to dust on the wind in an instant. She cannot leave, for it would be her doom.’

  ‘Then what is she planning? The Library said she thought the clock was at the heart of it,’ said Tarquin.

  ‘And what has it got to do with me and my mum and dad?’ said Emily.

  Cornelius flopped back into a grotty old armchair at the end of the workbench, causing a scattering of tiny, shouting men from beneath it.

  ‘I have not a clue.’

  Emily groaned and put her head in her hands.

  ‘Fret not, we will reason it through. I relish a challenge.’ He rubbed his furry paws together. ‘Why is she after you? What do you represent? Do you carry anything of moment from the Daylight realm?’

  Emily left her face in her hands while she replied.

  ‘Only my Hoggins, my mum’s necklace, and some sandwiches.’

  ‘Hrrrrmmmm . . . Do you have the items mentioned?’

  ‘Yes. Well, not the sarnies. I ate them.’ Emily groped in her pocket. ‘Hog, meet Cornelius.’

  The Hog nestled in her palm and opened an eye. He looked Cornelius up and down, nodded once and went straight back to sleep.

  ‘Sorry, he’s been busy.’

  ‘A most venerable beast and clearly sagacious, but I see no reason for his pursuit. The necklace?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, here.’

  She tugged her T-shirt down and pulled the coins out. Cornelius leant in, then reared back.

  ‘By the great old ones!

  His ears had gone flat, and his hackles were raised.

  ‘What? It’s just Mum’s old lucky necklace.’

  ‘Indeed! Lucky, you say? Could you just hold them out?’

  Cornelius pushed his chair further back as he spoke, but still leant forward, fascinated. Emily unclipped the necklace and dangled the coins out in front of him.

  ‘So, merely out of curiosity, has anything terrible happened to you recently? Piano landed on you, that sort of thing?’ said Cornelius.

  ‘I just told you my parents have been kidnapped!’

  ‘Mrrrrrmm, peripheral but not personal enough. Anything else?’

  ‘A demonic bear chased me! That was pretty personal.’

  ‘Ah! Did it catch you? Rip any bits off?’

  He studied her for missing limbs, frowning.

  ‘No! What’s the matter with you? Do you want me to have had an accident?’

  ‘You misunderstand. Answer me this; have you experienced any direct, ghastly, personal misfortune since wearing that necklace?’

  He got up and started to rummage in one of the drawers under the workbench.

  ‘S’pose not. Apart from my whole life disintegrating,’ she muttered.

  ‘Then something is very wrong.’ He produced a set of black metal feathers and, with notable caution, held them out towards the coins. ‘These were your mother’s, you say?’

  ‘Yeah, she wore them every day.’

  ‘Ah! Was her life riven with horrific and regular tragedy?’

  ‘Only from her taste in clothes.’

  The feathers were making an angry beetle ticking noise.

  ‘Her legs didn’t fall off though?’

  ‘NO!’

  As she shouted, the feathers went from black to grey, then turned to ash and dust and sifted down on to the floor. Cornelius held the stubs up and gazed at them with wonder.

  ‘Well, I never.’

  He screwed his face up and threw his head back like he was going to howl, but then just coughed and adjusted his spectacles.

  ‘I specialize in the alchymic science of the charming of metals, so you can believe me when I tell you those coins are a potent charm of malignant fortune.’ He tapped his furry finger against the end of his snout, deep in worrisome thought. ‘They are a terrible force of bad luck, and I suspect to even touch them would bring instant and terrible misfortune. Wearing them is beyond most people’s imagining.’

  Tarquin sat open-mouthed. He too inched away from her.

  ‘The Bear said I smelt of bad luck . . .’ she said. ‘Wait, so why can I touch them then?’

  ‘No idea.’ Cornelius beamed. ‘It’s fascinating.’ He started to rummage deeper in the drawers behind, pulling out complex implements of brass and crystal. ‘Perhaps you’re some kind of anti-magic vortex?’

  ‘Is that a thing?’ said Emily.

  ‘No, I just theorized it right now,’ said Cornelius, as he squinted at her through a device that resembled a cross between a telescope and a robot spider.

  ‘Made it up, you mean.’

  ‘Speculation is all part of the alchymic method, young man,’ said Cornelius, as he frowned down at the telescope-spider and banged it on the table.

  ‘Lady,’ said Emily.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m a girl!’ she said and jumped off the bench.

  ‘In trousers?’ Cornelius sniffed the air. ‘How extraordinary. Of course, you all look the same to me.’

  He discarded the telescope and waved a long silver fishing rod-looking-thing at her.

  ‘Could be anti-magic; could be a powerful force of good luck countering the bad luck. Are you especially lucky?’

  ‘I just told you about my week!’

  ‘Good point.’ He glanced at the fishing rod, sighed, then dropped it on the desk. ‘Hmmm . . . could be an equally vast force of bad luck acting as a counterweight, but it seems unlikely. I’m sure you’d know about it if you were a beast of ill-omen. Ha!’ He shook his head. ‘No, I simply don’t know, but the coins and your ability to carry them must be what they’re after. I wonder why?’

  As he spoke, Emily leant back on to the workbench and the dangling coins in her hand brushed the grandfather clock Big Ben. It quivered, rocked, bonged with racing speed to thirteen, then all of the faces sproinged off with great force, bobbing and clattering, like mad glass cuckoos on the end of long springs.

  Emily, Tarquin, and Cornelius
all looked at each other.

  ‘Oh.’

  Emily and Tarquin walked out of the Bell Foundry in silence. She wandered down the street, not caring where she went, and the slope of the hill took her down towards the Tower of London. Tarquin paused at a hatch in the wall, grabbed a grubby cone of newspaper filled with fish and chips, and handed them to her. She eyed the steaming food with suspicion then started to shovel it in with her fingers, without checking if it was made of three-headed fish or magic potatoes or anything. She didn’t taste it as she chewed, but the food filled the hole inside her.

  They sat on a wall alongside the Thames, which had a lot more sea serpents and merfolk in than at home. She was pretty sure Tower Bridge was missing too but didn’t have the heart to bring it up. She couldn’t even finish her chips. She poked one into her pocket for the Hog, then sat unmoving as the moon-silvered water flowed past.

  ‘Can you say something? I’ve not heard you stop talking before, so this is unnerving,’ said Tarquin.

  ‘I just don’t know anything.’

  ‘We do know something. It’s to do with the coins. They want them, not you.’

  Emily pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms round them, and didn’t answer.

  ‘You heard what Cornelius said after he’d stopped howling about the clock,’ Tarquin said. ‘They’re bad, but there’s no way they can destroy the real Great Working. It’s much too powerful for that. Anyway, it sounds like only you and your mum can pick them up.’

  A knot of hot lead flared up in her stomach when he said that. She didn’t want to think about it.

  ‘I don’t care. Everything I know about everyone and everything is wrong.’ The words were thick in her mouth. ‘I can’t cope with any more.’

  ‘I know it’s difficult being somewhere strange. You mustn’t give up.’

  ‘You have no idea how I feel!’ she snarled, ‘And I don’t need a motivational lecture right now, thank you Tarquin!’

  ‘My name is Tarkus actually.’ He stood up. ‘Tarkus Poswa. We changed it when we came here. To fit in.’

  He waited, hands laced so tightly together his knuckles went white.

  ‘Oh. Right. Erm . . . well, it’s a definite improvement on Tarquin, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘Our country wasn’t safe anymore, and this place was. We had no choice.’ As he spoke, he reached into his jacket, pulled out a bunch of dandelions, sighed and bit the head off one. ‘I’m just saying I know how it feels when everything falls out from under you, that’s all.’

  Her cheeks flushed with heat. ‘Okay, well, maybe you do know— LOOK OUT!’

  She dived forward and grabbed at Tarkus, as a big black post bike dropped out of the air where he’d been standing, and screeched to a halt right by them. The rider, a tall woman with owl eyes, a beak and a white-feathered face, slid off in a smooth, weightless move. The owl-lady stretched, her neck turning much further round than it should have done. She looked at Emily, whose eyes were as wide as an owl’s herself.

  ‘Express delivery for yoooo-hoo.’ She pulled out a small, purple envelope from her leather shoulder bag, her fingers gnarled into black talons at the ends.

  ‘Haven’t had one of these for an age. They cost a fortune. Whoo are yooo then?’

  ‘Erm, Emily?’

  ‘I know that. The stamps wouldn’t have brought us here otherwise, would they, nestling?’

  Her beak opened in what Emily hoped was a smile, revealing thick pink gums and a pointy black tongue.

  ‘I mean, whoo are yooo to be getting a letter in the grandest way, from the grandest house in the land? Last time I did one of these, it was to the Prince Regent himself.’

  She puffed her feathers out, then deflated again.

  ‘Shot at me before I landed tooo. Thought I was a grouse.’

  She still held the letter out of reach. Emily, who was fascinated by the ‘oooo-ing’ but too scared to risk a joke, elected to go with the truth.

  ‘I don’t know who I am anymore.’

  The owl-lady cocked her head to one side. The huge eyes were bright and warm.

  ‘Takes us all a while to figure that one out, fluff. Sometimes yooo fly a long way from the nest, only to find out you’re still the shape of the egg yooo hatched from, eh?’

  ‘Erm, if you say so.’

  ‘I doooo. Here.’ She handed Emily the letter, smiled again and turned away. Emily didn’t want her to go though.

  ‘My, my dad’s a postie too. A Night Postman.’

  The owl-lady turned her head all the way round to look back over her shoulder.

  ‘Whooo?’

  ‘His name’s Alan Featherhaugh.’

  ‘Yoooo don’t say?’ The head spun back round with a quiet laugh. ‘If that’s the shape of your egg, then you’ll be fine, no matter how far you fly.’

  She flitted on to the bike, and flapped a weightless, feathered hand at Emily.

  ‘Good hunting, little one.’

  And with that, she was gone into the air.

  The envelope was a rich, thick purple silk. The front had ‘Emily Connolly’ written on it in an ink silver as moonlight. It was her name, but mixed up with her mum’s maiden name. She’d never been called that before. In the corner was a huge blood-red stamp with a fierce-faced woman on, the same as the ones she’d seen in her dad’s drawer.

  ‘Ooh, a Bloody Mary, I’ve read about those. Very rare,’ said Tarkus.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The stamp. Very rare. They get magically delivered to anyone they’re sent to, anywhere, as long as you have a true name.’ He peered with fascination at the stamp. ‘They even work outside the Hour. Aren’t you going to open it then?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  She didn’t want to. While it still remained shut, nothing else was going to happen. But her mum and dad were still prisoners . . . She sighed and flipped the envelope over to get her thumbnail in under the hunk of black sealing wax on the flap at the back. She levered it open, wincing as the envelope’s silk ripped. Inside was a thick, creamy-coloured card, embossed with an emblem that was all scrollwork and pointy teeth. The motto beneath said, ‘Omnia Bibenda’, which was all Greek to her but sounded posh and ominous. The blank space of the card was written over in green ink in elaborate old-fashioned handwriting.

  Sweet Child,

  This has all been a Terrible and regrettable Mis understanding. I have simply been Distraught and desperate to recover my Beloved heirloom Coin collection, stolen from me long ago, and my Servants have taken it upon themselves to act in my Name. Things have got Terribly out of Hand, and we regret the Unpleasantness that has occurred. I assure You your Family are in safe hands, but It affects our Tender heart to think of you Alone without them in Unsafe territory.

  I am staying with loyal friends at the Address below. Let us meet there to discuss the Situation. The Ancient Law of Truce applies so you can come in perfect Safety. I’m sure We can soon Effect a return of the dearly Beloved items we are both currently Missing and get you back home to Safety as soon as Possible.

  Yours,

  From she called by men, the Nocturne.

  There was an elaborate curlicued decoration printed across the bottom of the card, and beneath that just one word, in thick gothic lettering:

  DUNLIVIN

  Tarkus, unashamedly reading over her shoulder, let out a low whistle.

  ‘Blimey.’

  Emily blew out a long, sighing breath.

  ‘What’s Dunlivin when it’s at home?’

  ‘It IS a home. One of the grandest in the land. It’s the family bier of the Stabville-Chests,’ said Tarkus.

  ‘Beer?’

  ‘Bier; you know, thing you lie down on in a tomb? It’s the home of one of the Deadest families in England.’

  Emily groaned.

  ‘I know I’m going to regret asking, but ‘deadest’?’

  Tarkus was nonplussed. ‘Well, you know, “Deadest”. They’ve been Dead much longer than other people, so that makes
them . . . better. They can trace their graves all the way back to the Impaler. They’re frightfully grand.’

  He looked into the middle distance, face wistful. ‘It’s the deceasing, there’s just no substitute.’

  ‘Just stop. Where’s this house then?’

  ‘It’s a mausoleum, and it’s in Chiswick. Gosh, I’d love to see it.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a pity we can’t.’

  ‘What do you mean, can’t?

  He smiled at her.

  ‘Well, it’s obviously a trap, isn’t it? She will have to stick to the Law of Truce, that’s ancient magic, but I bet she’s got something dreadful planned anyway.’

  ‘Yep. Don’t care. Let’s go and see her and give her these stupid coins.’

  ‘Oh ho!’

  He gave her an admiring look, then leant in, intent.

  ‘Right, I get it. Say no more. What’s the plan?’

  Emily squinted at him.

  ‘I don’t have a plan. I’m giving her the pennies back and getting my mum and dad.’

  He smiled and tapped a finger to his nose.

  ‘Ah ha, so we get fake coins, and then—’

  ‘No!’ Emily stamped her foot in frustration. ‘I’m giving her the real pennies, getting my mum and dad, and we’re leaving.’

  ‘But, but, we have a mission!’ He was doing his bulgy-eye face again.

  ‘You might. I have something more important: a life, and I want it back.’

  She was worried his eyes might pop.

  ‘But your mother defended the—’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Emily rubbed her face with both hands, then looked him straight in the over-bulging eyes. ‘I’m sorry, but none of this creepy old world is my problem. I want my mum and dad safe, and everything to go back to normal. I’m not a hero. I just want to go home.’

  He stared at her, his face screwed up with disbelief.

  ‘But she clearly wants them for something terrible. This could be part of a plan to destroy my whole world!’

  ‘You heard Cornelius; the coins can’t break the Great Working, and she can’t leave. It’ll be okay.’ As she said it, a flare of shame reddened her cheeks, but it wasn’t enough to stop her.

  ‘You’re just saying that because you want it to be true! What if it’s not?’ His voice got louder and louder. ‘You can run off home, but my family live here. All our families live here!’