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He’d spent hours stewing.
Maybe he had been stupid and naïve for believing that Mog would actually listen to him, and he had known that she had been less than pleased with him and Holliday telling her not to go back to the Darlings until the investigation was over, but when Birdie had rushed to the Hotel hours ago to tell him that his scholar had appeared at Darling House for a memorial for Dario Rinaldi (why Birdie had been there was unclear to Jupiter since he purported to hate everyone in the Silver District was beyond Jupiter but he also didn’t care) when she had told him she was just going to Cadence’s house, he had not known what to do.
She was definitely grounded though. He had figured out everything he had to say. If she told him to his face where she had been, he would prefer it, but she wasn’t going back to the Silver District until the whole investigation was over, and preferably until the Silver Assembly had concluded too. It didn’t take a genius to work out Margot Darling’s motivation for suddenly ingratiating her previously estranged niece included the oncoming Basking, whether it be this year or next.
He wasn’t going to ground Mog until next year, of course. He really wanted to though. But for now he would be happy to hear her explanation of why she so stupidly disregarded what he had told her to do, especially since it wasn’t safe. Apart from her family which was - well, if they really cared about Mog they could see about seeing her sometimes, and making up for years of lost time, preferably tenfold - there was a murderer on the loose, and he hated to say that Holliday was right but she certainly was not wrong about that newspaper tying Mog to the murder for no other reason than her being a wundersmith.
He settled on her octopus armchair by the fire, watching the station door, fine tuning the exact words he had to say. Making it clear, respectful, unemotional as possible. Unequivocal.
The door creaked open over an hour after he sat there, and there she was, perfectly prepared to walk in like nothing had happened. Like she hadn’t lied and left under false pretenses to throw herself in danger, unaware that he would find out, that he could even find out.
He tried not to let the anger seep into his words, but it drove through anyway, “Busy day?”
He didn’t look up from the fire. He didn’t want to know what he would see on her if he did. He could hear it in her tone enough as she said, “For goodness’ sake! Jupiter, you scared me! What are you doing here?” Surprise. Fear. Guilt. Relief.
Maybe she was about to come clean, they could agree that she wasn’t going to do anything stupid and reckless ever again, and then this conversation could be done and dusted until the case of Dario Rinaldi’s murder could be closed once and for all and Laurent St James fell in the Juro and drowned. As a nice extra. Unfortunately he doubted that very much.
“Jupiter, you scared me! What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.” He studied the flames dancing in the hearth, his index finger tapping a beat against his thumb. Be calm, clear, and unequivocal.
“Right,” she said, her tone suddenly having all emotion edited from it; a practised lie. “Cadence and I were—”
His jaw clenched against his will. He picked up the note she had left him, “You were at Cadence’s place? Like your note said?”
“Mm-hmm.”
He took a breath. “So you didn’t return to the Silver District to attend Dario Rinaldi’s memorial, against the advice of the Public Distraction Department and my express wishes?”
“It’s not Cadence’s fault,” she said, shame of a kind clouding her voice. Her voice was suddenly muted. He didn’t even know how to feel about that. “It was my idea to go.”
So he got to play patron for one of Charlton’s scholars. Lovely. Another breath. That was an unfair thing to think. All the same, “Cadence went with you? Wonderful. I’ll have to speak to her family too.”
“Who told you I went to—”
He cut her off, standing up with such force that the chair underneath him flinched back, “What were you thinking?” He understood that he should probably rein himself in, keep it under control, just a little bit at least. But couldn’t she understand? “This isn’t a game, Morrigan. A man has been murdered. His killer is still free. It’s bad enough being heedless of your own safety but did you consider for one moment that you were putting Cadence at risk too? Or were you too busy playing detective to care?”
She blinked rapidly but not enough for him not to notice the sudden glassiness to her eyes, reflected in the firelight. “We weren’t— I wasn’t—” She took a breath. He could see the words mangling into shape in her head, “I’m not playing detective. We weren’t in any danger—”
How could she even say that? His legs moved before he could think about it, running him up and down the length of the hearth. “Have you forgotten what Holliday said? That article mentioned you by name. You know the Concerned Citizens are looking for any opportunity—”
“I thought the Concerned Citizens were numpties? That’s what you told me on Hallowmas, remember?” Her tone changed, almost mocking, “Big embarrassing numpties who need to get a life.” He opened his mouth to interject, to do something, say anything, but she clearly wasn’t done, “And I don’t care what Holliday says! If I want to go to the Silver District, she’s the last person I’d ask for an opinion.”
This was not going the way he had hoped. Maybe he should have expected it. Perhaps. The only person, aside from Fenestra, in the Deucalion who could rival him for stubbornness was this child. “What about my opinion, Mog? Do you care about that?”
He could hear her teeth grinding, frustration and anger bubbling like magma, ready to burst. He needed to get this under control now. “I blame myself. I’ve been giving you far too much freedom.” All he had to do was say the words. Maybe a week or two of the cold shoulder, but then it would be fine. They could make up. They always had before. “But I’m afraid that ends now. Your implicit permission to leave the Deucalion is hereby revoked.”
She half-laughed, but nothing about this was funny, “W- what?”
He kept going. This was the plan. He had shaped these words until they had been… well… not perfect, nothing ever was. But as good as they could be. “The only places you may go outside of this hotel are your Hometrain and the grounds of Wunsoc. I shall inform you when these circumstances change.”
“But tomorrow I’m—” she bit her lip. He couldn’t believe that she was still lying. Didn’t she know he could see it? “I’m… going to the Winter Trials. With Cadence and Hawthorne.”
He lifted three fingers for her to see, hoping his hands weren’t shaking. Now that he had stopped pacing for the moment he was afraid that the movement, the expression of kinetic energy would move to them instead. “Deucalion. Hometrain. Wunsoc.” He ticked them off. “Everywhere else if off-limits until further notice. That includes the Winter Trials.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Isn’t it?” he couldn’t dress this up any more. He let the mask fall and he let her see what was under it. What exactly he was feeling. “I trusted you, Mog, and you repaid my trust by lying to me. That doesn’t come without consequences.”
“You lied to ME!” Her voice strained at the last word, pain driving all the way through it, into him. It was better this way. Better she be angry with him. But most of all he needed her right now to be calm and to listen. “And you can’t just make up stupid rules for no reason. I’m not a prisoner!”
“No, you’re a child.”
“TEENAGER.”
This conversation was effectively over. Just one more nail in the coffin and it would be done. Maybe they could talk about it in the morning. “Teenagers are still children, Mog, and children don’t get to wander off on their own as they please — especially when there is a murderer at large. Children don’t get to make their own rules; the adults who care about them are supposed to do that, even if it makes them wildly unpopular. So that’s what I’m doing. Being an adult. Feel free to dislike it; I certainly do.”
He could see her making a decision, her hands clenching around the skirt of her dress, twisting it up. He could tell that he wasn’t going to like it.
“Aunt Margot told me to treat Darling House as my home.”
His blood froze.
“She said I could come and go as I please.”
“We can discuss it once the police have concluded their investigation, and the murderer has been found,” he couldn’t look at her right now. He didn’t want to see anything she meant right this minute. Anything she considered true. “Perhaps you can visit after Christmas—”
“I want to go back tomorrow,” she said suddenly.
“No, Mog.”
“Jupiter—”
“Deucalion. Hometrain. Wunsoc,” he said again.
“Jupiter, I’m not—”
“DEUCALION. HOMETRAIN. WUNSOC.” He was shouting now. He needed to stop. How had this happened? How had this barrelled out of control so quickly? “Have I made myself sufficiently clear?”
“JUPITER,” she had raised her voice to match his. “I am not asking to DISCUSS anything. I am TELLING you that I’m going back to Darling House. Have I made myself sufficiently clear? You don’t get to tell me not to see my own family! You don’t get to keep them from me. Not anymore.”
He could feel his anger dissolving like spun sugar in water, and he fell onto the armchair, his legs half giving up on him. Guilt had far overtaken any other emotion now. He needed to backtrack though. He needed to tell her, somehow without saying it. The Darlings were bad news, through and through. “I’m not trying to keep anyone from you. Truly. I don’t think the Silver District is a safe place for you. And I don’t just mean because of the murder.”
Her lip curled, “What exactly do you mean?”
“It’s…” he felt goldfish-like as he searched for the thing to say. The thing that would make Mog warier around the Darlings without mentioning that at the very least her grandmother had known about her for almost half her life and hadn’t given a damn. Something. Something. Whom did Morrigan— “Your mother famously ran away from that place, Mog. I for one trust that she did it for a good reason. I just think we ought to consider what she would have wanted for you, that’s all. Try to… try to honour her wishes—”
“My mother also joined the Wintersea Party,” she pointed out, obliterating the point he had been trying to make in one fell swoop. “And married Corvus Crow. So, actually, I can’t say I’m as impressed by her judgment as you are. Did you know her?”
“No, I didn’t.” But he knew people who had known her. Damn Birdie for making this so difficult.
“You never met her? Not even when she lived in Nevermoor?”
He met her eyes. They were less full of hurt now, and just rage. Just betrayal. “I never met her.”
“Then you don’t know what her wishes were any more than I do! Don’t you dare pretend you kept the Darlings a secret from me out of some imaginary loyalty to a woman you never even met! You’re rewriting everything just to excuse what you’ve done and make yourself look better!”
Something snapped in the air. Or maybe it was in him, “Mog, please, that’s not—”
“I trusted you, Jupiter, and you repaid my trust by lying to me. That doesn’t come without consequences.”
He couldn’t tell if his face was burning from shame or from the hearth growing over a metre in height in the last half minute. “Mog,” he tried. He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t even try to.
“Your implicit permission to have a say in anything I do is hereby revoked.”
The chair shifted, throwing him onto the floor before he even registered it happening. He rolled, struggling to get to his feet as it herded him, pushing from the room with its tentacles, the door swinging open without anything touching it. He might have been the proprietor of the Hotel Deucalion, but Room 85 was absolutely taking Mog’s side here. This was a losing fight.
“Mog, that’s enough—”
“Until further notice, it’s none of your business where I go or who I see.”
“MOG!” His fingers struggled to find purchase against the door frame.
“MORRIGAN.” She snapped, bitingly clear as blinding snow. “My name is Morrigan. My mother named me Morrigan Odelle Crow, not Mog. You ought to honour that wish, don’t you think?”
He clenched his jaw enough to almost crack a tooth as the silence almost poisoned the air between them, choking him out until he couldn’t bear it anymore. “Morrigan, I would never knowingly hurt you. You must realise that? Anything I’ve kept from you has been because—”
“Because you had to?” Frustration burned on her face again. He closed his eyes briefly. The octopus tried to push him again but he clung on. “You had no choice but to LIE TO ME about my OWN FAMILY being in Nevermoor, is that right?”
A name almost passed through his lips but he kept them locked. Not a Darling name. Another family member of Morrigan’s kept from her. Someone he’d helped obscure from her.
The octopus finally managed to grasp around his chest before he could think to say anything else, manage to capture some sentence that would solve everything. It threw him as easily as a ball by a child, his body collapsing onto the floor in a way he would probably feel come tomorrow when he could feel anything other than the series of very complicated and intertwined emotions about this.
The door has already slammed shut and locked itself. He still tried it, “Morrigan. Open the d—” He flinched as the sound of a second barrier made itself known between them. All sound from inside the room: the roaring fire, Morrigan’s slightly laboured breathing, her feet against the floor, that damn chair disappeared.
He looked up to the ceiling, never quite clear on what the best way to address a hotel was, “Open the door, please?”
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. One of the lights dimmed, flickering out. Then another. And another, and another. All down the corridor, one by one they went out, out, out, out outoutoutoutout, reaching him quickly enough. Leaving him in the dark.
“I’m not going,” he tried again, but it was even stiffer than it had been before. The handle wouldn’t even move. “I need to talk to her.”
A cold breeze blew through. Not like a winter’s day in Nevermoor. But like a snowstorm on top of Mount Ridiculous, when he had nearly lost two toes to frostbite. It bit right through him. His bones trembled against it but he held up, clutching the door handle.
“Please.” He tried again. Some noise slid back up. The door gave and he burst through.
“Mog— Morrigan, we can talk—” He halted, mouth hanging open in the bedroom, anger and sadness and betrayal still steaming up from every surface. His eyes clocked on several things immediately. Unlit and already cooled hearth, despite it blazing five minutes ago, no oilskin brolly, no Emmet. No Morrigan.
His eyes caught the station door. The only other way out of the room. Most likely. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out where she had gone. It didn’t even take an absolute idiot.
He turned on his heel, slamming the door shut again. He needed to talk to Birdie now.