calm down so we can-”
“ Don’t call me Mel! ”
Monk’s shoulder blades collided with a Botchaki Silk Tree. “Okay. All right. I get it. You’re upset. I don’t blame you. I’m upset too.”
“Really? Because it looked to me like you were congratulating yourself. It looked to me like you were patting yourself on the back so hard it’s a wonder you haven’t dislocated your shoulder.”
“Well, all right, fair enough, I’m excited about my new invention,” he confessed, “but I am sorry it’s causing this slight difficulty. And I swear I had no idea that there was anything living in the spaces between dimensions. I mean, how could I? I had no idea there were spaces between dimensions. I had no idea-”
“So you admit you’re mucking about with things you don’t understand?” Melissande demanded. “Just-just- plotzing about tra-la, tra-la, not having the first wretched clue of what might-”
“Plotzing? Plotzing? I’m not plotzing!” said Monk, offended. “You seem to be forgetting that I’m a research thaumaturgist, Mel-issande. This is what I do. I reveal hidden metaphysical truths, I chart uncharted mysteries, I-”
“Need your bloody head examined!” she shouted at him. “ What’s come through that door you opened? ”
Monk shoved a finger between his shirt collar and his throat and wiggled it, hard. “Um… well… I’m not sure, exactly. I haven’t seen it. As far as I can tell it’s most likely invisible, due to the incompatibility of the comparative dimensional vibrations.”
Melissande exchanged another look with Reg. “How delightful.” Only her intimate acquaintance with homicidal maniacs and rampaging dragons kept her voice steady. “And where do you think our invisible friend might be right now?”
Monk swallowed convulsively. “Ah. Yes. Well, I’m not entirely sure… but I think you’ve got it.”
CHAPTER SIX
Once the shouting and squawking had died down, and Monk had picked himself up and brushed the leaf mould off his sober blue suit and rubbed the bits that Reg had poked with her beak, Melissande clapped her hands for order.
“All right,” she said sharply. “If everyone can just calm down? Good. Now, Monk. Do you have any idea what it is you think we’ve got?”
“Well,” said Monk, frowning, “after a lot of careful consideration and by a comprehensive process of elimination I’m pretty sure it’s a concatetanic conglomeration of uber-parallel-dimensional antietheretic particles supercharged with extraneous thaumaturgical emissions on a scale of seventeen to the eleventh power, cubed.”
Melissande blinked at him. “I see,” she said, after a pause. “Ah-let me put that another way. Would you have any idea what it was if you weren’t a thaumaturgical genius working in a secret government Research and Development facility?”
“Of course,” said Monk, as though surprised she’d even ask. “It’s a sprite.”
“A sprite?” Bibbie’s eyes lit up yet again. The wretched girl really was as bad as her equally wretched brother. “Really, Monk? You’re positive? Because according to Herbert and Lowe-”
“Sprites are just another postulation of theoretical thaumaturgical metaphysics,” said Monk eagerly. “I know, I know. But now I’m not so sure!”
Melissande groaned. “Well, I’m sure. I’m sure I don’t understand a word the two of you are saying. Now start talking Ottish or I swear I’ll walk away and let Reg do her worst!”
“Sorry,” Monk said, sheepish. “Basically, what it means is I seem to have proven the actual existence of a theoretical construct, which when you think about it is pretty bloody exciting, really, even if it’s proving a trifle inconvenient, because-”
Melissande grabbed him by both ears and pulled his face towards hers until their noses were touching. “Dearest Monk, I don’t care if it’s the most exciting thing since the invention of expanding corsets. As far as I’m concerned this sprite of yours is nothing more than a pain in the bu-” She glanced at Reg, who’d perched herself on a handy low-slung palm branch, and smoothly changed tracks. “Nothing more than a huge inconvenience. Incidentally, is it alive?”
With enormous care, Monk disengaged her fingers from his ears then inched himself away from the Botchaki Silk Tree. “I suppose that depends on how you define ‘alive’.”
“Does it have thoughts? Feelings? Can it communicate?”
“Mel, I don’t know,” he said. “Honestly. It exists, I know that much. But until I can study it that’s all I’m prepared to say.”
“And how is it you’re so sure we’ve got it?”
“ Oh!” said Bibbie suddenly, and danced a little on the spot. “Of course! Great-uncle Throgmorton’s ghost! The sprite’s incompatible with our dimension’s etheretic vibrations so it’s causing physical manifestations on our plane. The housemaids being tossed out of bed and the exploding strawberry syllabub and-”
Monk nodded vigorously. “Exactly!”
“And the ink, Mel,” Bibbie added, still dancing. “This explains your debacle with the tamper-proof ink!”
“What debacle with the tamper-proof ink?” said Monk.
Melissande sighed. “I tried to brew up some tamper-proof ink this morning,” she muttered, cheeks heating. “And it went kablooey. Three times.”
“But now we know it wasn’t your fault!” said Bibbie.
“Perhaps if you could manage not to sound quite so surprised?” she said, teeth gritted again. “That would be nice.”
“Heh,” said Reg, flapping back to her shoulder. “Fat chance of that, ducky.”
Bibbie ignored both of them. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Assuming a sprite is an agitation of super-charged inverse etheretic particles with a cohesive substructure in direct reverse proportion to our dimension’s thaumaturgical vibrations. Monk?”
“That’s the idea, more or less,” he said, nodding.
Bibbie slitted her eyes. “Can you come up with a better definition?”
“Ah…” He shook his head. “No.”
“ Right, then,” said Bibbie, and dusted her hands. “That means the sprite’s likely to have a particularly deleterious effect on any ambient thaumaturgic processes. In other words-the ink!”
“So I was right,” said Monk, vastly relieved. “I knew you had the rotten thing because it’s not in the house any more and it’s not at work, either, and when I called Mother nothing untoward was happening there so it didn’t go home with Dodsworth and the others.”
“But why would it have left with us?” said Melissande.
“Well, if my theory on the nature of interdimensional sprites is correct, they’re attracted to the corporeal essence of something substantial in their immediate vicinity.”
Reg snorted. “Are you quite sure you don’t want me to show you those buttock-reducing exercises, ducky?”
“ Amazing, Monk,” said Bibbie, forestalling an imminent outbreak of hostilities. Her eyes were burning with a resurgence of thaumaturgical fervour. “And it’s all because you accidentally shifted the polarities of your portable portal prototype.”
“ Precisely!”
Bibbie threw her arms around her brother and kissed him enthusiastically on both cheeks. “ Monk, you’re a genius!”
He hugged her back, laughing. “Yeah, well, I dunno-”
“You are, you are! This’ll be your second article in The Golden Staff. Oh, I’m so proud of you!”
“ Proud of him?” Reg snorted, and gave her tail feathers a peevish rattle. “He’s a menace to society, that’s what he is.” More rattling of tail feathers, and a pointed glare. “And only you could fall arse over teakettle for him,
