they’ll have conniptions. You know what they said about Peculiar Goings On. We’re already up to our fifth official warning and we’ve only been here three and a half months. One more incident and we’ll be out in the street!”
Bibbie sighed. “Mel, relax. Our landladies aren’t going to see me up here, the old dears are as blind as a herd of bats. But even if they do see me they’ll just think I’m a well-dressed weather balloon. Or a novelty kite.” She frowned. “I wonder… is there such a thing as a herd of bats? Maybe it’s a flock. Or a gaggle. Or possibly a school…”
“Trust me when I say I neither know nor care,” said Melissande grimly. “But if there were more than one of you, for which I thank Saint Snodgrass daily there isn’t, you’d be known as a Headache of Emmerabiblias! And don’t call me Mel!”
Bibbie pretended to pout. “Monk calls you Mel.”
“You’re not Monk!”
“Sorry,” said unrepentant Bibbie, back to grinning.
She took a deep and goaded breath. “This is not funny! You just about frightened the life out of poor Reg! Now would you please be serious for five consecutive minutes and come inside? It’s well after half-past nine, which means you’re horribly late.”
“Sorry,” said Bibbie, still unrepentant. “I over-slept. After I got back to the boarding house Demelza Sopwith and I ended up in an argument about the accurate measuring of etheretic fluxes and it went on for hours. Oooh, she’s such an ignorant hag. She says you need to take five readings to be certain of the thaumic variations but I say you only need three, provided you-”
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said impatiently. “That’s fascinating, Bibbie, and I’d love to hear all about it, honestly, only not now. Now you need to come inside before I drag you inside. I want your help.”
“Help?” Bibbie looked pleased. “With what?”
She felt her chin tilt. “Nothing much. Hardly anything at all, actually. Just-”
“She’s forgotten how to make tamper-proof ink,” said Reg. “So if you’re quite finished impersonating a deranged bumblebee, ducky, perhaps you’d care to join us and earn your keep.”
When it came to Reg, Bibbie had a hide like a rhinoceros. Instead of arguing, she just nodded and smiled. “Not a problem, girls. Don’t go away.” And with a jaunty little wave she dropped out of sight, plummeting like a hydraulic lift with its cables cut.
“ Bibbie!” Melissande threw herself precariously across the windowsill, sure that Monk’s mad sister would end up smashed to pieces on the ground. But no-she was touching down on the cobbles quite safely with a gentle clatter of hexed dustbin lid. “And don’t forget to check the mailbox on your way upstairs!” she shouted.
Another jaunty wave was the only reply.
Sighing, she hauled herself back into the office. “It doesn’t matter how many times I remind her, she always forgets to fetch the first post.”
Reg snorted. “Too busy levitating. She’s as bad as her brother, that girl, and that’s saying something.”
Despite her aggravation Melissande smiled as she picked up the scattered bits and pieces of the discarded Ottosland Times.
“Well, I suppose it’s to be expected. They are related, after all. And really there’s no harm in her. She’s just young and high spirited. I expect I’d be the same if Lional-” She cleared her throat. “Well. If he hadn’t turned into a homicidal maniac.”
“You’d be young and high spirited if you had tighter buttocks,” said Reg. “I’m telling you, ducky, flab is not your friend.”
The bird was saved only by Bibbie’s arrival. Witnesses to murder were so inconvenient.
Melissande swallowed a bubble of unbecoming envy as Monk’s sister sauntered into the office, the morning mail tucked under one arm. Every so often-like right this moment, for example, probably thanks to the spirit- crushing debacle of the exploding tamper-proof ink-she found herself struck speechless by the girl.
Simply put, Emmerabiblia Markham looked like a princess. Well, the way people imagined a princess should look, anyway. And despite being the genuine royal article, Melissande Cadwallader regrettably didn’t. Not even when she went to the trouble of sprucing herself up.
Slender and shapely in watered green silk, with the kind of complexion oft-compared to strawberries and cream, Bibbie also enjoyed luxuriously waving hair the obligatory colour of a sun-ripened wheat field, cherry-red lips, eyes like blazing sapphires and so on and so forth ad absolutely nauseum and sometimes-galling as it might be to admit-it was hard to feel anything but inferior. Especially since Bibbie was also a phenomenally gifted witch.
Beautiful and talented: it was a daunting combination.
But at least there was one tiny glimmer of salvation: talented, beautiful Bibbie was practically bereft of common sense. Without Captain Melissande’s pragmatic hand on the tiller, the good ship Emmerabiblia would have capsized some time in the first week of the agency’s operation. In her weaker moments, like this one for example, Melissande hugged that comforting knowledge tight.
“Well, that was fun,” said Bibbie, nudging the office door closed, her face alight with mischievous amusement. “One of the boys from Briscowe’s Bootlaces pulled a shell game with all our postboxes. Nobody’s letters were where they’re supposed to be and there was so much squawking the foyer sounded like a poulterers’ convention run amok.”
“But this is our mail?” said Melissande, snatching it from her and perching on the arm of the client’s chair. “You’re sure? Because that Mister Davenport swore blind he was posting us payment and there’s the milk account due tomorrow and-”
“Of course it’s our mail,” said Bibbie, waving a negligent hand. “A simple locati locatorum and hey presto, confusion resolved. It was so simple I did one for everybody.”
She groaned. “For free? Emmera bib lia! What did we say about handing out free samples!”
Bibbie heaved a theatrical sigh. “ We didn’t say anything. You said don’t, I said yes sir and I think Reg was eating a mouse at the time so she just burped.”
“Exactly! I said don’t!” Melissande tugged at her stubbornly unluxurious rust-red plait. “ Honestly, Bibbie, how can we expect to make ends meet if you keep on handing out free samples?”
Bibbie patted her on the shoulder in passing, then stopped in front of her desk to stare down at the woeful results of the tamper-proof ink experiment.
“Oh, stop fussing. Think of it as free-”
“ Don’t say it,” she snarled. “I’ve heard more than enough about free advertising for one day.” She took a deep breath and shoved her temper aside. Quarrelling wasn’t going to find them new clients. “Oh well. What’s done is done. And since you can’t very well go back downstairs and take back the locati locatorum we’ll call it your very last charitable act of the year and leave it at that. Agreed?”
Bibbie shrugged. “Sure, Mel. Whatever you say.”
“And don’t call me Mel!”
“Bullseye,” said Bibbie, grinning.
Ignoring Reg’s snickering, taking refuge in dignified silence, Melissande retreated to her own desk and started to sort the morning’s post. “Bill-circular-bill-” she muttered, flicking through the envelopes.
“What does a circular Bill look like, I wonder?” mused Bibbie, still staring at the forlorn test tube and beaker on her desk. “Positively rotund or just pleasantly plump? What do you think?”
“I think I’m going to smack you if you don’t work out why that ink won’t take a tamper-proof incant,” said Melissande, still mail-sorting. There was absolutely no sign of payment from Mister Davenport. Saint Snodgrass preserve them, if they didn’t make some money soon…
Bibbie picked up the test tube. “So what happened?”
“I don’t know. It just went kablooey. Three times.”
“Kablooey?” Bibbie raised one impeccable eyebrow. “That’s a technical term, is it?”
Melissande glowered. “It is now.”
Holding the test tube up to the light from the window, Bibbie inspected it from every angle, her lips pursed in concentration. Then she waved it under her nose and inhaled the lingering stink like a wine taster at a festival. Finally she clasped the test tube gently between her palms and with her eyes closed hummed a strange harmonic under her breath. A stiff breeze sprang up out of nowhere, and Melissande had to clutch at her pile of bills to stop them blowing straight through the open window.
