Midnight Hour Read online

  ‘Start with the clock. It holds the answer.’

  ‘No! Just help me get my mum and dad back. At least tell me where they are?’

  Emily knelt in front of her and grabbed her hand. As she did, the Library’s eyes filled all the way to the top with black ink, and her face changed to that of something cunning and malicious.

  ‘Far out of reach; prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you feel that you have lost her?’ She spoke in a cruel voice, unlike her own.

  Emily let out a wail and let go. Tarquin put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  ‘She’s gone again. Come away, this isn’t a good place to be now.’

  As she and Tarquin inched back, the Library floated up and, seizing the nearest book, drifted down the corridor without looking back, lost in memories, speaking the words that consumed her.

  Emily crashed out of the huge museum doors and was halfway down the steps before Tarquin emerged behind her. She turned back to him and spread her arms wide.

  ‘What just happened?’ Her hands were shaking with anger. ‘I thought you said she was in charge? She’s absolutely bonkers!’

  The light of Tarquin’s eyes flickered brighter.

  ‘She is less than she was, true, but she founded this sanctuary with great sacrifice, and guards us all. Her words have merit.’

  ‘Her words are mental! What am I supposed to do now?’ She stomped down the rest of the steps and flung herself on to a bench by the outer wall. She was about to start slamming her heel back against the wood when Tarquin hoicked his cape up and sat down by her.

  ‘You heard her. If you’re to regain your parents, you must foil this plot.’

  She jammed a hand in her pocket. At least the Hog was a steady point of sanity and warmth, although she suspected he might have had a wee in there.

  ‘How can you say that? I’m not going to fight the Knockers or whatever her name is.’

  ‘The Nocturne, who once was Music.’

  ‘Oh great. I repeat, not going on a quest.’ She poked him. ‘I just want to get my folks and go home.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I understand. My people also take family seriously. It does you credit.’ He stood up again. ‘I understand being far from home too.’

  Their eyes met. He nodded his head, making a decision.

  ‘I think we should try and investigate at least. Perhaps you could locate them that way, then maybe the Watch can help after that.’

  ‘We?’ Emily squinted at him.

  ‘I’ll help. You are my prisoner, after all.’ His mouth twitched into half a grin as he spoke.

  ‘Was that an attempt at humour, Violet? This is not the time.’ She maintained her grumpy expression, but it was a struggle.

  ‘Unless you want to wait for the scent to wear off and get eaten by the Bear instead?’ He held his hand out and, after a second’s hesitation, she grabbed it, and he pulled her to her feet.

  They walked out of the museum’s courtyard and back on to the almost deserted street. It was quiet round here compared to most of the city. As she walked along Emily had to step out of the way of a huge black dog with red eyes that trotted up the pavement, whistling. Wait, could dogs whistle? She turned back but it was gone round a corner. She caught up to Tarquin.

  ‘Right then, it’s all something to do with the clock. Let’s just go to Big Ben and figure it out.’

  ‘We can’t just go there. It’s the most important place in the whole Hour, and completely restricted.’ He shook his head. ‘If someone of your background tried to get near it, I dread to think—’

  ‘What do you mean, my background?’ she said.

  He flushed a deeper colour again and the glow from his eyes dulled.

  ‘Well, it’s just that being from out there; Day Folk, as we would say . . .’

  ‘What’s that other thing I keep getting called? “Daysie”, is it?’

  He grimaced.

  ‘That’s not a very nice word, and only not-very-nice people would use it.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why are people so anti my world?’

  ‘They’re not, not all of them, but there’s some ill-feeling out there, because we were forced to leave.’ He was examining the tips of his boots with great interest as he spoke. ‘I’m afraid some of my people think of your kind as, well, monsters.’

  ‘What? But that’s . . . you’re . . .’ she spluttered.

  He nodded in sympathy.

  ‘I know, it’s completely unfair. You were just misguided, clearly. You destroyed all the magic in the world out of blind ignorance and stupidity, not actual malice.’

  Even spluttering was beyond her this time.

  ‘Either way, one of the Day Folk approaching the Great Working . . . it would not end well. There are combat sorcerers on guard. Zap! Frog. Most unpleasant.’

  Fair enough. The only thing that might make the day worse was if she had to eat flies for dinner.

  ‘What are we going to do then?’

  ‘We’ll have to investigate elsewhere. Like detectives.’

  He beamed at the thought, all of a sudden very young in his uniform. It would have been sweet, if he wasn’t excited about them chasing some musical nightmare from the dawn of time.

  ‘You know,’ said Tarquin, ‘it’s odd that she said “clock”. We never call it that. It’s always “the Great Working”. Hmmm . . . I wonder if that means something?’

  ‘All right Sherlock, who built the clock bit?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. A coven of our wisest sorcerers and alchymists.’ Tarquin shook his head. ‘I do know they all went mad afterwards though. It was another brave sacrifice.’

  ‘Eh? How come?’ said Emily.

  ‘We need magic to survive, but everybody knows doing big magic is bad for you. It’s why witches end up going a bit . . . gingerbread.’ He gestured in Big Ben’s direction. Even from here the green glow lit the sky. ‘The Great Working was the biggest magic of all.’

  ‘Oh.’ Emily stopped walking and leant against a mushroom-covered wall. Behind Tarquin, three large plants, giant Venus flytraps, dragged themselves along the pavement by their roots.

  ‘This is useless. We can’t talk to them if they’ve all gone bonkers.’

  ‘I wonder if we’ve got anything on file at the Night Watch . . .’ He paused, face lost in thought, and his hand tapped a pocket in his uniform where a silver chain disappeared inside it. ‘ . . . Watch, clock . . . Night Watch! I’m an idiot.’

  ‘I’m not arguing.’

  He didn’t even notice.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. I know someone we can talk to. Cornelius Snark. He does work for the Night Watch, and I think he was involved with the Great Working.’

  Emily bounced up off the wall. The fungus behind her burst into a spreading cloud of multi-coloured spores, and the walking plants snapped them out of the air with long purple whip-tongues.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s over in Whitechapel at the Bell Foundry. We’ll need to walk down towards the main road to get a hackney carriage.’

  Emily favoured Tarquin with a grin. He flushed with pride.

  ‘Great. Let’s go. It’s a good job he hasn’t gone bonkers like the rest of them.’

  ‘Ah.’ Tarquin turned away. ‘I never said that.’

  They walked down from Bloomsbury, back towards Oxford Street. Emily started to have a prickling, static-electric sensation on the back her neck. When she turned round, the big black dog from up by the museum was walking down the street behind her. It was definitely the same one, as it had a blaze of white in the middle of its black head. It was also definitely staring at her with its glowing red eyes.

  ‘Erm, Tarquin?’

  ‘Yes?’

  As she spoke, the dog stopped, grinned a big, pink, doggy grin full of teeth, then turned and walked through the open door of a pub. She could have sworn it winked before it did, too.

  She was about to tell him what had happened, when he jumped into the
road and waved his hands up and down. Was he trying to take off? A giant black coach, pulled by spectral horses, all flame-eyed and see-through bones, screeched to a halt in front of him. A huge and ominous figure, with bolts through his neck and jagged stitches in his forehead, loomed up from the seat.

  ‘Where to, guv’nor?’

  Now they were rattling through the busy streets towards Whitechapel. She was saddened to discover that cushions hadn’t been invented yet, and every cobble they bounced over imprinted itself right into her bum. It was not improving her mood.

  With time to think, the tidal wave of strangeness she was experiencing was starting to freak her out. A moonlit monster world was one thing, but her parents not being normal was quite another. (Well, her mum had never been normal, but this was a whole new level.) What did it mean that her mum was some kind of secret agent? Worse, that she had been there before the Midnight Hour. What did that mean? She did have some wrinkles, but there wasn’t much grey under her multicoloured hair dyes. How old could she be? Was she . . . Night Folk?

  Even so, it was easier to imagine her mum as coming from a different world than it was to imagine her dad as . . . well, as more than her dad. How was her clinically boring dad in charge of ‘Dangerous Deliveries’ for a magical midnight post office? Japonica had sounded proud, and that wasn’t an emotion Emily associated with him at all.

  Her hand worked at her neck, gripping the pennies through her T-shirt and grinding them together. None of it made sense, and as the moonlit surrounds slipped by outside the window, everything she knew to be true was slipping away too. Who were her parents? If they had always lied, or at least never told her the whole truth, then who was she? It was too much right now. She wanted to be anywhere rather than here. If only everything would go back to normal.

  During this mental avalanche, Tarquin had taken it upon himself to explain what Cornelius did for the Night Watch. The excitement of the mission from the Library and the general super-importance of everything that was going on had brought out the eager schoolboy in him. This was not helping her mood either.

  ‘. . . So, it’s always midnight here, you see, but it’s not always midnight out there, in your world.’ He was waving his hands around. ‘When it’s midnight in both places at the same time, that’s when the doors that exist in both places open, for the length of the bongs.’

  He paused, awaiting a response. She made a grunting noise in the hope he’d stop talking. It didn’t work.

  ‘It is the calling of the Watch to guard our borders, so we must know when the doors are open.’

  He paused again. Another grunt.

  ‘And thus . . .’ Tarquin said with great ceremony, as he rooted around in the pocket of his uniform that the silver chain disappeared into.

  ‘ . . . We are the Night Watch and this . . .’ he pulled out the chain and something round and shiny dangled off the end, ‘. . . is a night watch!’

  In his hand, he held a large silver fob watch case, attached to the end of the chain. It was engraved with a whirl of symbols and lines, like a shiny clamshell. Emily tipped her head on one side and glared at him.

  ‘Right.’

  Tarquin flushed.

  ‘It’s a, well, it’s a play on words, you see. I’m in the Night Watch, and this—‘

  ‘I get it. Great. Nice one.’ She scowled at her reflection in the window.

  ‘I don’t think you do. This is what Cornelius makes for us to show the time in both worlds. Look.’

  There was an indistinct clicking, as of tiny clockwork, and then a faint musical noise. Tarquin had opened the lid of the watch and held it flat in his hand. Now, a miniature version of Big Ben concertinaed impossibly out of the flat case, and stood eight inches proud of it. It was very real somehow, and rippled with a green witchlight. As he turned it, the various clock faces each showed a different time. The musical sound became clearer now. It was the one, two, three, four, quarter chime of the clock.

  ‘All through this hour, Lord be my guide; that by thy power, no foot shall slide.’ She whispered the words as the chime sounded again, and her mum was with her, just for a moment.

  ‘Ah, we have different words.’ He sang in a light, clear tenor. ‘All through this night, moon be my faith, and by its light, all shall be safe.’

  They smiled at each other, and the cloud of her bad mood passed on.

  The coach rattled to a stop and the cabbie banged the roof with a massive hand.

  ‘We’re here’, Tarquin said, and opened the door.

  ‘Hey, do you think you had better perfume me again, in case it does wear off? I don’t want to get eaten.’

  ‘I was joking,’ said Tarquin as he got out.

  ‘Oh good.’

  ‘Yes, I’m not sure if it’ll ever wear off actually.’

  ‘WHAT?!’

  There was a distant sonorous murmur of chimes and the occasional loud bong, well before they rounded the corner to the Bell Foundry. Behind double-height doors was a cavernous room filled with the throbbing heat of a furnace and BELLS! Bells were everywhere. Big bells, small bells, bronze bells, iron bells, bells split in half, bells hung from the roof on heavy chains, bells stacked on pallets, bells being polished with great care, or tapped with tiny hammers. Their gentle sound echoed all around as the movements of the place made them sing.

  A bandaged mummy glanced up from shining a small golden bell as they came in. One look at Tarquin’s uniform, and its duster-wrapped hand pointed to the back of the workshop. Emily followed Tarquin as he weaved through the hot iron and noise, then ran straight into him when he stopped dead.

  He was gawping at another version of Big Ben, this one the size of a grandfather clock. It stood on an enormous workbench, and a crowd of tiny men dressed in brown boiler suits clambered all over it. They were each no more than six inches tall and had matching beards and sour expressions. Alongside, a hefty six feet of angry werewolf in a tweed waistcoat and spectacles towered over them, supervising, and (literally) barking orders. The little men held shards of a shattered mirror. They were using them to angle moonlight from a window in the roof on to the grandfather clock, and also a small, empty, silver watch case that lay beside it. The case was the very image of the one Tarquin had just shown her.

  Tarquin bit his lip.

  ‘Probably better if I introduce us first.’

  ‘Oh, after you.’

  He edged into the werewolf’s line of vision.

  ‘Erm, Doctor Snark, I’m Constable-in-Training Postlewhite from the Watch. Can we talk to you, plea—?’

  The werewolf snarled, gave him a talk-to-the-paw gesture, and turned back to the clock, which the little men were now hammering at with tiny tools. Tarquin retreated. Some of the little men were definitely jeering at him.

  ‘Good job,’ Emily said.

  ‘I, he’s . . . well, he’s famously difficult.’

  ‘So am I.’

  She marched forward, sticking her chin out. Her tummy was doing flip-flops though. He was very big and hairy. It didn’t help that all the little men had stopped work and were nudging each other and watching. She flushed, but stepped up and tugged the edge of the werewolf’s waistcoat.

  ‘Excuse me, Doctor Snarl or whatever, I’ve got to speak to you, it’s very important.’

  He ignored her, so she tugged harder. His rabid gaze fastened on her.

  ‘Do you,’ he growled, big teeth mangling his words, ‘have any idea how hard it is to get THIS into THAT?’ He gestured at the big clock then to the tiny watch case.

  ‘Erm, what, no? That’ll never fit in there.’

  ‘I KNOW, THAT’S WHY IT’S SO HARD!’ he roared, covering her in a fine spray of dog spit. ‘INTERRUPTIONS MAKE IT HARDER. NOW GO AWAY!’

  Emily was sure he was going to bite her, but he just turned back to his work. All the tiny men rolled around, clutching their stomachs with laughter and banging each other on the back. She wiped the spittle off her face, and a fire grew inside her. She snarled like an an
imal herself and swept a number of tiny cackling men out of the way with her arm. As a horrified Tarquin leapt to stop her, she snatched the watch case out of the reflected moonlight. There was a discordant bonging from within the clock, and all of the mirror shards cracked at the same time. The outraged werewolf turned to her, all his fangs showing.

  ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’

  ‘LISTEN FUR-FACE,’ she shouted. ‘This is the least of your clock problems! The Library sent us because her sister is up to something with Big Ben – I mean, your flippin’ Great Working!’

  The werewolf towered over her, snarling, fangs bared and claws out. All the little men were backing off and hiding behind things. Oh dear, what a stupid way to die. She’d always wanted a dog, too . . .

  The werewolf tipped his head to one side, and his ears pricked up.

  ‘Repeat that,’ he said in a voice still half-growl but less frenzied.

  ‘I said the Nocturne is up to something that involves the Great Working.’

  ‘Well, why on earth didn’t you say so?’

  ‘Once again, I must apologize. It’s been a difficult time.’

  Emily had perched on a corner of the workbench, while a shamefaced Cornelius paced in front of her. Tarquin had his pad and pen poised, every inch the detective. Cornelius had sent the little men off on a ‘Brownie Break’ but they still peered out from in between the piles of arcane scrap all around the workshop.

  ‘I’m ashamed. I truly am. It’s just with the full moon being permanent now, I’m in wolf-shape all the time. It’s dreadful. I haven’t had a cup of tea without hair in it for over a century. My temper’s gone to pot.’

  He sighed, and his ears drooped. Emily had to restrain a strong urge to scratch his head.

  ‘Well, I’ll let you off if you can help us with the clock.’

  Cornelius’s ears pricked up.

  ‘Yes, yes. My specialist area, of course. I charmed the bells, did I mention?’