The Midnight Hour Read online

  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 umbrella made with a teacup-ful 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 mom and dad?” said Emily.

  Cornelius flopped back into a grimy 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 mom’s necklace, and some chip sandwiches.”

  “Hrrrrmmmm … Do you have the items mentioned?”

  “Yes. Well, not the sammies. 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 leaned in, then reared back.

  “By the great old ones!”

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

  “What? It’s just Mom’s old lucky necklace.”

  “Indeed! Lucky, you say? Could you just hold them out?”

  Cornelius pushed his chair farther back as he spoke, but still leaned 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 toward 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 gray, then turned to ash and dust and sifted down onto 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 smelled 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 leaned back onto 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 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 one another.

  “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 toward 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 it 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 it 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 around 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 mom 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 around than it should have done. She looked at Emily, who had eyes 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 around to look back over her shoulder.

  “Whooo?”

  “His name’s Alan Featherhaugh.”

  “Yoooo don’t say?” The head spun back around 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 onto 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 mom’s maiden name. She’d never been called that before. In the corner was a huge bloodred stamp with a fierce-faced woman on it, 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 mom 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-colored 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.

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

  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 leaned 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 mom 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 mom 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 mom 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 lives here. All our families live here!”

  “It’s my family I care about right now! Are your mom and dad prisoners? Are they?” She was shouting now, to
o.

  They stopped and faced each other.

  “Look, I’ll make sure it’s all okay when I do the swap. I’ll … I’ll make sure.”

  He shook his head. Grave determination came to his face. She had seen it before when he had put himself between her and the Bear’s gang.

  “I can’t let you do this.”

  “What are you going to do, perfume me?” She took a step back regardless.

  “No, I’m taking them to safety.”

  As he spoke he lunged at her and grabbed the necklace. His nails grazed her skin and pain burned in her neck as he yanked her forward.

  “Argh!”

  He was so close that the coarse, dark-blue fabric of his uniform pressed against her face. As he pulled sideways the necklace started to strangle her and, as she panicked, the hot liquidness started to form in her chest again, but then it was over. The pulling stopped, and she fell backward. She scrabbled around to fight him off, but he wasn’t there. The necklace! For one dreadful moment she thought it was gone but a pat at her chest jangled the comforting touch of warm coins. Tarkus, though, had vanished.

  “I think I’ve broken something.”

  His voice came to her all echoey and hollow.

  “Have you gone invisible? Is that one of your things? You can’t have them, you git.” She spun around, hands out, feeling for anything coming at her.

  “No, I’m down here.”

  Right in front of her, where they’d been struggling, invisible against the blackness of the night, was a large open manhole. Tarkus’s voice was coming up from below.

  “Oh god, are you … ?”

  She leaned over and made out the faint glow of his eyes in the dark. He was a long way down and wedged against a wall at a funny angle. His constant background flowery smell was still present but there were a number of other odors wafting up, too, none of them good.

  “How did you—”

  “I touched the pennies, and the next thing I knew: wham! I think I might have slipped on a banana when I landed, too.”

  “Are you okay?”

  His head bobbed as he tested his various bits.

  “My ankle hurts but everything I landed on is soft. I don’t want to know why.”

  “Okay, I’ll get a rope—Wait, what am I saying?” She glared down the hole. “You just nearly strangled me, you twit. What did you think you were doing?”