“How do you know, Monk? The sprite’s invisible!”
“I know,” he insisted. “I’m a thaumaturgist, remember?” When she didn’t say anything, he adopted a wounded expression. “What? Don’t you trust me?”
She gave him an incendiary look. And to think he nagged Gerald for turning Tavistock into a lion… “ Of course I do, Monk. When it comes to inventing new ways of getting into trouble I trust you implicitly.”
Reg sniggered. “You tell him, ducky.”
“And speaking of invisible,” she added, “since we can’t see this wretched sprite, how exactly are we supposed to catch it?”
“Easy,” said Monk, so effortlessly confident. So completely unmoved by her righteous indignation. He was the most infuriating man… “There’s an etheretic normaliser built into the trap. You activate it with this switch here, see?” He pointed. “If the sprite’s within range the multi-phase thaumaturgic agitation will render it visible.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough, I promise.”
“And how do you define “within range”?”
“A few feet.”
“Is that all?” she said, dismayed. “Monk-”
“I know, I know,” he said, carelessly apologetic. Infuriating? He was impossible. “Sorry, Mel. What can I say? It was a rush job.”
As solutions went it was far from perfect, but with time and circumstances against them it would have to do. “Fine. And what happens once we’ve caught our uninvited guest?”
“You can leave me a message at the Department and I’ll drop by the agency and pick it up,” said Monk. “Better yet, come to dinner tonight and bring it with you.”
She stared at him. He was serious. He was actually, deadly, serious. If I wasn’t in lo-quite fond of him, I really would punch him in the nose. “ Monk-”
“Oh, save your breath, ducky,” said Reg, and flapped down from the tree branch to take up her favoured shoulder-perch. “Let’s just take care of this, shall we? I don’t know about you but I want a bath!”
“ One bath?” Melissande stared down at her invisible-sprite-shit-covered self. “I won’t be getting out of the tub for a week! I don’t care how many times I have to tramp up and down those stairs with kettlefuls of hot water!”
“Does that mean you’ll do it?” her infuriating, impossible young man asked hopefully.
Yes, indeed. She so wanted to punch him. “Do I have a choice?”
Beaming, Monk kissed her swiftly and chastely on the cheek. “Terrific!” He shoved the sprite detector and sprite trap into the carpetbag then thrust the bag at her. “Knew I could count on you, Mel.”
“And me,” said Bibbie, offended.
“Yes, yes, you too,” he added hastily.
“Oh? And what am I, then?” demanded Reg. “A bowl of chopped chicken liver?”
“Of course not!” said Monk. “I can count on all of you.” He fished out his fob watch and flicked it open. “Only I’m going to have to count on you from afar, because-”
“Not so fast!” said Melissande. “You have to show us how this sprite trap works.”
“I wrote down some instructions,” he said. “They’re in the bag. Honestly, Mel, you’ll be fine.”
“You hope,” she retorted. “I mean, what if your precious sprite does have a mind of its own and doesn’t want to be caught? What if it fights back? What if-”
“It won’t. I doubt it’s aware of what’s going on. To be honest, Mel, I don’t even think it’s intelligent.”
“Well, that makes two of you,” she snapped. And to think that an hour ago she’d thought the darkest clouds in her sky were shaped like sagging buttocks. “Honestly, Monk. Why does your problem have to become my problem?”
He winced. “I am sorry. Truly.”
And he was, she didn’t doubt it. The trouble was, being sorry this time wouldn’t stop him next time. When metaphysical madness struck again, and it would, he’d not be strong enough to resist it. Asking Monk to turn his back on a new discovery was as futile as expecting Reg to be ladylike.
The only question is am I strong enough to endure the consequences? Because any moth fluttering around Monk Markham’s flame is going to get its wings singed, sooner or later.
The thought must have shown on her face, because Monk took an alarmed step towards her. “Melissande? I mean it. You’re not in any danger. I wouldn’t put you in harm’s way. Not any of you.”
She let out a gusty sigh. “Not on purpose, no.”
“Not ever,” he insisted. “Look-if you don’t want to do this-”
“No, no, I’ll do it,” she said. She glanced at Bibbie and Reg. “ We’ll do it. But you owe us a tin of tamper- proof ink.”
“A big tin,” added Bibbie.
Reg snorted. “ Three big tins.”
“Three big tins of tamper-proof ink,” said Monk, a relieved smile lighting his face. “Absolutely. I’ll make it myself.”
“All right then, girls,” said Melissande, watching Monk beat a hasty retreat. “Let’s go catch ourselves an invisible sight-seeing interdimensional sprite, shall we?”
As they hurried back to the agency, still on foot unfortunately, given the parlous state of their finances, she could only hope the stares they attracted were the usual ones on account of the tweed trousers, and had nothing to do with the invisible sprite shit becoming inconveniently visible.
Clustered with Bibbie and Reg in the dingy corridor outside their office-Saint Snodgrass be praised the other two offices on their floor were empty-she stared at the agency’s locked door. “So… how do we know the sprite’s still in there?”
Bibbie shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out.” She grabbed her brother’s carpetbag and took out the portable sprite detector. “Stand back,” she added, turning it on. “This could get interesting.”
Melissande flattened herself against the corridor’s far wall and watched Bibbie pass the sprite detector’s copper wire-wrapped rod over their recently painted door.
“Does that answer your question?” Bibbie shouted above the detector’s hysterical shrieking.
Melissande nodded, hands clapped over her ears. “Yes! Yes! Now turn it off before we have everyone in the building up here asking inconvenient questions and calling the landladies!”
Bibbie turned off the detector then unhexed the agency door’s lock. Not that it needed hexing and a key. It barely needed the key, since there wasn’t anything in there worth stealing. But they were a witching locum agency. It was a matter of professional pride.
“Right,” said Bibbie, as the hum from the unhexing faded. “Got your key, Mel? I left mine at the boarding house.”
Of course she did. When it came to “scatty,” Bibbie was a dictionary listing all by herself. She fished out her key, unlocked the door-then hesitated. “Wait. We need a plan first.”
“We’ve got a plan,” said Reg. “Find the sprite, catch the sprite, make that Markham boy eat the sprite for dinner, without mustard. That’s the plan.”
Melissande frowned. “That’s not a very specific plan, Reg. For starters I think that before we go charging in there we’d better make sure we know how to work Monk’s sprite trap.”
“Oh, well, if you’re going to insist on being all sensible about things,” said Bibbie, grinning.
“I don’t know,” she said, suddenly uncertain, while Bibbie read Monk’s hastily scrawled operating instructions. “Perhaps we should wait until Monk’s finished his meeting at the Department. I mean, this isn’t ordinary thaumaturgy we’re dealing with, is it, it’s uncharted territory, and-”
“Bollocks to that,” said Reg, nipping her on the ear. “Since when do we need a man to do our dirty work? We’re Witches Incorporated, ducky, and it’ll take more than some cheeky sod of a sprite on an interdimensional sightseeing safari to get the better of us! Perhaps we should wait for Monk.” She snorted. “I’m surprised at you, madam. And not in a good way!”
“All right, all right,” she muttered. “It was just a suggestion.”
In truth, she was a little surprised at herself. It seemed her confidence had taken more of a battering lately than she’d been willing to admit, even in the privacy of her own thoughts.
