“Quick!” Micky shouted as Black reached the revolving door. “We have to get through.” He dived kamikazelike toward the revolving segment of the door with Black. Molly misjudged her speed and hit the glass. Surprisingly, the collision didn’t hurt as much as she thought it might, but it did cause her to tailspin.
“Pull out, pull out!” Micky screeched, and like some sort of super bug he jetted below Molly and budged her upward so that she moved forward as the door turned. In the next second they were blown out into the cold night air of the street.
“Thanks! I could have been squashed there, Micky. Thanks.” Molly shuddered as she regained control of herself. Both ladybugs treaded air and watched Black set off. “The best thing to do would be to land on him, and get a free ride.”
“Good idea!”
Opposite the casino, standing on the marble porch of a very smart jewelry shop with his brown collar up, AH2 heard his red tracking device beep. Pulling off a glove, he quickly tugged it out of his pocket to consult it.
Molly Moon was coming out of the casino. AH2 looked up expectantly but, to his puzzlement, saw only a dark- haired man in a camel-hair coat. As he stepped out to turn right, so AH2’s gadget told him that Molly Moon was also turning right. In fact, she seemed to be following him. She was
Then something else grabbed AH2’s attention. Those cats! There they were again! They’d come out of the alley and were darting from shadow to shadow in pursuit of the man. AH2 waited until Black, the Molly Moon alien phantom, and the cats were all a safe distance away, and then he began to follow.
Up in Black’s office, Lily sat in the dark cupboard. Her father had left the room and turned off the light. She thought about the cats. She wondered what the twins were doing. And she waited for them to start talking in low voices again. But they didn’t. Minutes ticked by.
Full of trepidation, Lily silently and slowly opened the cupboard door and slipped out. The room was dark except for some street light that was coming through the slit window where the cats had been. She glanced up at the open air vent. Perhaps the two children had escaped through the vent, or maybe, just maybe, they were still behind the sofa. With her heart pounding and her mouth dry, Lily tiptoed aross the room. She could, she knew, simply unlock the door and run, but now her curiosity had gotten the better of her. In the semidark, she peered over the sofa.
The twins had gone. Vanished. Now Lily rushed back to the desk and turned on the lamp. There on the floor behind the sofa were two heaps of clothes. The clothes that the children had been wearing!
For a moment Lily was confused. Then she realized what had happened. Those kids had morphed. There was no other way they would have left the room and left all their clothes behind.
Lily scrambled over the sofa and rummaged through the clothes. She delved in the jeans pockets for anything that might tell her who these children had been. But the pockets were empty. Whoever they were, it was clear they were after the hypnotism book.
Lily’s temper began to stir, and then guilt began to smolder like a fire inside her. She wished she had warned her dad when she had had the chance. Because of her, the book was in danger of being stolen. Maybe
Hundreds of miles away, Petula walked along a muddy country road. Petula followed her senses, for she could feel where Molly had been. It was as if there was radar inside her head, and Molly glowed there.
When Petula had set out, she was so full of determination and fury that this had kept her going for a good few miles. The country lanes edged with brambles and the fields full of sheep or cows or horses kept her amused for a while. She sniffed the air as she walked past unfamiliar farms where strange dogs barked. She raised her nose as she went through cottaged villages. There were hundreds of different smells, from baking smells to engine oil to hives and honey. How had she not guessed that the woman might be a threat? She shook her head at herself as she walked, making her collar rattle. When she stopped at puddles to drink, she saw her black reflection and frowned at herself. She prided herself on the way she’d kept an eye on her friend Molly. How had her guard slipped? She dropped the pebble she’d been sucking into the puddle so that her reflection was cut up by ripples.
“Stupid!” she barked at herself.
After ten miles, Petula really was beginning to flag. Her legs were aching. Fit as she was, Petula wasn’t used to marathon walks.
She felt as though she had hardly made any progress. She realized that she was going to have to get some help. She sniffed the air for inspiration.
Looking about, she saw that she was approaching a farm, an establishment that smelled of flowers. This one had high wooden gates. A battered sign with writing on it and pictures of flowers hung to the left of them. Beyond the gates was a large yard with a big corregated-roofed building and, to the side, huge greenhouses. Three men were lifting boxes into an open-backed truck. The boxes, Petula could smell, were full of flowers.
Cautiously, she went closer to get a better look. It was then that she saw a white bulldog sitting on a pile of sand. At the same time, he saw Petula. After raising his nose to the air to catch her scent, he began to make his way over.
“Good afternoon. Interested in April showers?” was how he introduced himself.
And that was how Petula met Stanley.
Now Petula was forty miles outside London, sucking a small pebble in the back of the open truck, her black ears flapping in the wind. They were en route for the flower market in London. Petula had found out that April showers meant flowers. Stanley sat beside her, and all about them were boxes full of freshly cut flowers tied together with rope.
“Thank you for giving me a lift,” Petula said, watching the tarmac drop away from under the back wheels of the truck.
“My pleasure, sweet’eart,” the handsome bulldog replied. “Would have taken you days to walk to London.”
“It was so lucky I came across you,” Petula said. “How often do you pick up flowers, erm, April showers for the
