“You sound really funny!” Micky laughed, his buzzing giggle like a sound effect off a synthesizer.
“You sound normal,” Molly replied.
“Really?”
“Of course you don’t, you numbling. You’re the size of a lentil!”
“Did you say hello to your ladybug? You know, sort of introduce yourself before you took over?” Micky squeaked.
“Yes. Well, it seemed like the kind thing to do,” Molly replied.
Just then, there was an enormous, windlike noise in the room as Black coughed. The ground shook as he walked to his desk. He opened a drawer.
“Let’s see what he’s up to,” Micky suggested, his voice so comically high that Molly began to laugh.
“How?” she spluttered. Now her own voice made her laugh, too. On top of this, Micky’s seriousness was making the situation even funnier.
“Fly, of course,” Micky said. This reply had Molly the ladybug on her knees. “Why are you laughing?”
“I don’t know! It’s just that we’ve both turned into ladybugs, and you’re behaving as though—” Now Molly was laughing so much she could hardly talk. “You’re behaving as though it’s completely normal, and you sound like a cartoon character.” Molly was in stitches.
“Molly, pull yourself together,” said Micky. This made Molly laugh even more, as now having a bossy ladybug tell her what to do was even funnier. “It’s probably the shock of being a ladybug,” Micky said, with the coolness of a doctor analyzing a patient’s illness.
At this point, Molly rolled onto her back from mirth. And there she lay, laughing, with her feet up in the air. Micky stayed quiet, and after a while she calmed down. “Now you’re stuck, aren’t you?” he said. “That was a bit stupid. Haven’t you ever seen how ladybugs can’t get up from their backs?”
“Oh!” Molly spluttered a bit more and then tried to sober up.
“Lucky I’m here.” Micky went around to her side and rocked her back onto her feet.
“Okay, okay, I won’t laugh anymore,” Molly promised. “Oh. Phew. So how do we fly?”
“It’s easy,” Micky replied, “because as a ladybug, you were born to do it. Just stretch out.” He extended his wings, and Molly copied him. “And just kind of reach for the air and cup it in your wings and push it down to the ground with them.”
“Like thi—?” Before Molly could finish her sentence, she had shot up into the air.
“Yes,” Micky said, now flapping beside her. “It’s great, isn’t it?”
“Amaaaaazing!” Molly yelled back as she dived upward, her laughing fit now completely behind her. “It’s a bit like swimming underwater! Except the air is thinner and easier to push than water.”
“Brilliant, isn’t it?” he shouted, laughing as he landed on the top of the sofa back.
Now they could both see Black beside his desk.
“Book, book, book,” he grunted under his breath. These words weren’t actually decipherable to Molly and Micky, because they now only spoke Ladybug, but they could understand exactly what Black was doing. He had slipped the hypnosis book into a large black shoulder bag and was gathering his coat from the back of the chair.
“We’d better follow him,” Molly buzzed. “Before he shuts the door.” Micky wiggled his front legs in agreement.
From her window-ledge vantage point, Miss Hunroe twitched her tail furiously.
“Black’s got the book,” she hissed angrily to the fat ginger cat. “And somehow those children have morphed.”
“All is not lost,” Miss Oakkton, the ginger cat, replied. “Zay probably read ze lesson on morphing into humans. We can at least get zat information from zem. Zay have no idea who we are yet, so we have ze advantage. If we can learn zose lessons from ze brats, we are halfway to achieving our aims.”
“We just need to follow Black,” purred the fluffy Miss Suzette, who had hopped back up beside them.
“Shh,” meowed Miss Hunroe, highly irritated by the turn of events. “Follow me.” Turning, she leaped off the window ledge.
Micky and Molly took flight and, still a little unsteady, followed Black out of his office, slipping past him as he switched off the light. Micky, it had to be said, was better at flying than Molly. She tipped from left to right like an erratic seesaw. She found the noise of her wings much louder than she’d expected. Not as loud as the blades of a helicopter, but the whirring, flicking noise meant she could hardly hear Micky when he called over to her.
“Relax, Molly. You look so serious!”
“How can you tell?” she yelled back.
“Your antennas are too stiff!”
Molly noticed there was a distinct smile on the black, glossy face of Micky the ladybug. Now it was his turn to laugh.
“Okay, I’ll try to relax!” she shouted, and she gave a sigh as she flew. Immediately the flight improved. “Less turbulence now!”
Molly and Micky flew high in the casino room, dodging the massive golden chandeliers that now seemed as big as buildings. Molly looked down. The green baize card tables seemed like green fields, and the casino customers were like huge giants. Ahead of them, Theobald Black’s head bobbed slowly up and down as he negotiated the crowds and crossed the room.
