stepped over Millicent Grimwade’s prostrate body to snatch Bibbie’s chocolate-daubed hands in a convulsive clasp. Incredibly, she seemed on the verge of tears. It made her all of a sudden more human. Less dislikeable.
“Oh, thank you, Miss Markham. Thank you.”
Reprehensible Bibbie grinned. “You’re welcome, Miss Wycliffe. We guardians of the Baking and Pastry Guild have to stick together, after all.”
Permelia Wycliffe leaned close, still clutching, her black silk-clad bosom painted with sloppy vermilion icing. “I must speak to you on another matter, Miss Markham,” she said, eyes narrowed with purpose. “Now that I know I can trust you implicitly. The Wycliffe honour is at stake and I feel you might be my only hope.”
Smeared with cream and bits of gooseberry, Melissande turned away from incoherently gushing Eudora Telford, determined to step in before Bibbie had the bright idea of volunteering their unpaid services in the name of Baking and Pastry Guild sisterhood.
“I’m sure it sounds most serious, Miss Wycliffe,” she said briskly. “And of course Witches Inc. would be only too pleased to undertake any commission on your behalf. Perhaps we might discuss the particulars tomorrow morning, at ten?” She fished in her reticule for the account she’d prepared last night, and held it out. “When you come by the office to settle today’s successfully concluded assignment?”
Permelia Wycliffe stared at her blankly for a moment, then nodded and took the sealed envelope. “Why, er, yes. Yes, certainly.” She turned. “You will be in attendance, won’t you, Miss Markham?”
“We’ll both be there, Miss Wycliffe,” said Melissande firmly. “The agency is our joint endeavour.”
Permelia Wycliffe drew breath to say something blighting, but before things could go from wonderful to woeful she was swept away by a gaggle of voluble Invigilators and various other agitated Guild members.
Melissande felt a plucking at her stained sleeve, and turned. Oh, dear. “ Yes, Miss Telford?”
“I must go, Your Highness. Permelia will need me,” Eudora Telford whispered. Tears sparkled in her faded brown eyes. “I just wanted to thank you, again. This was so important to her… and I couldn’t help.”
Honestly, she really was the soggiest woman. “It was my pleasure, Miss Telford.”
“Gosh,” said Bibbie, emerging from under Millicent Grimwade’s table with the sprite trap as Eudora scuttled after her friend. “So that’s another job for Witches Inc., eh? Hmmm, didn’t someone recently say that using Monk’s interdimensional escapee to solve the Case of the Cheating Cake Cook might well work out to our advantage? Who could that have been, I wonder?”
Melissande sighed. “Yes, yes, rub it in, why don’t you?”
“Don’t worry, I will,” said Bibbie, grinning, the sprite trap dangling on the end of one careless finger. “I’m going to rub it in until-”
“I say! I say!” an excited voice called out. “Can you look this way?”
“What?” said Melissande, turning. “I know that voice! It’s-”
And then she was blinded by a flash of thaumically-enhanced light as the appalling photographer from the Times assaulted her yet again with his camera.
A tide of red and righteous wrath rose within her. “ You! What are you doing here? Give me that camera, you revolting little man!”
The photographer yelped and ran. Hurdling the still-prostrate Millicent Grimwade, scattering spectators like skittles, she chased the mingy weasel out of the chamber, down the Town Hall steps and into the busy carriage- filled street.
“That’s right, you little rodent!” she bellowed after him. “Run, go on! And just you keep on running, you hear? Keep on running and don’t look back!”
“Now, now,” said Reg, landing on her shoulder in a fluttering of brown-and-black feathers. “That’s not very nice of you, ducky. I mean, in a roundabout way he did get us this job.”
Hotly aware of the stares and imprecations she was collecting from various shocked pedestrians and carriage-drivers, Melissande leapt back onto the sidewalk and lifted her chin, refusing to be embarrassed. “I don’t care. It’s an invasion of privacy, that’s what it is. He’s a weasel and a toad and I’ve half a mind to slap Millicent Grimwade silly with a soggy cooked noodle until she gives up the name of the witch or wizard who devised that hex of hers. Could be I might have some business for them. There’s a certain camera I need to futz with.”
“No, don’t do that,” said Monk, behind her. “Black market thaumaturgy is kept strictly hush-hush. If you stick your nose in I’ll have to report you to the Department and that could get a bit awkward. And speaking of awkward, Mel, what have you done with my sprite?”
Melissande spun on her heel. “Monk? What are you doing here?”
“Reg came and got me,” he said, his eyes warm, his expression guarded. “Now can I have my sprite back, please? We’re up to our armpits in a controlled thaumic inversion back in the lab, and Macklewhite won’t cover my absent arse forever.”
“The wretched thing’s inside,” she said, desperately attempting to recover her poise. If only she wasn’t wearing quite so much whipped cream…
“Inside?” Monk repeated, horrified. “What do you mean, inside? You mean inside the Town Hall? Where people can see it? Mel, what were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t!” she said hotly. “This was all your mad sister’s idea! So if you want to shout at someone I strongly suggest you shout at her!”
Monk scrubbed a distracted hand over his face. “Mmm. Yes. That never turns out well for me.”
“And you think this conversation is destined for a happy ending?”
“Quit while you’re ahead, sunshine,” said Reg, snickering. “Want me to go and fetch Mad Miss Markham?”
They stared at her in mutual dismay. “ Absolutely not! ”
Reg sniffed. “Suit yourselves.”
Melissande watched her flap away, then sighed. “Wait here, Monk. I’ll fetch Bibbie and your precious sprite.”
But there was no need, for as she turned to trudge back into the Town Hall Bibbie came out with the deactivated sprite trap.
“ There you are!” said Monk, wrathfully advancing. “Bibbie, are you completely cracked?”
Ignoring the question, his sibling thrust the seemingly-empty birdcage at him. “Here’s your sprite, Monk. Lucky for you it came in handy or I might’ve had to devise a truly awful payback hex. As things stand, we’ll call us even.”
“ Even?” he said, flicking on the etheretic normaliser. “Not bloody likely!”
“Honestly, it’s in there, Monk,” said Bibbie, with unrestrained sisterly scorn. “Do you really think I’d-oh.”
Oh was right. The interdimensional sprite was puddled on the bottom of the birdcage, its only sign of life a faint, pulsating blue twitch.
Melissande stared at it, aghast. “Oh yes? My imagination, was it? I said the thing didn’t look very well, didn’t I say that? But no-one ever listens to me. Just because I’m not a thaumaturgical genius I get ignored!”
It was true. Bibbie was ignoring her now. “You’d better do something, Monk. If the stupid thing dies it’ll be your fault.”
“ My fault?” He looked in danger of falling to the pavement in an apoplectic fit. “Bugger that, Bibbie! If you’d done what I asked in the first place and brought me the damned sprite as soon as you caught it-”
“ Not here!” said Melissande, acutely aware of the unfortunate attention they were attracting from the public-at-large. She grabbed brother and sister by an elbow each. “Let’s find somewhere to discuss this in private, shall we?”
Monk wrenched himself free. “There’s no time. Can’t you see the rotten thing’s dying? And if it dies in this dimension I have no idea what the thaumaturgic fallout might be. And I really don’t want to find out the hard way! Do you?” Clutching the birdcage with its ailing occupant close to his chest, he made a dash for the pool of shadows cast by the Town Hall’s wide, imposing front steps.
“What are you doing?” said Melissande, following him, with Bibbie at her heels.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he retorted, harassed. “I’m sending this bloody sprite back where it came from!”
“Here? This minute?” said Bibbie. “Monk, you can’t! There are too many people around, what if-”
Now it was Monk’s turn to do the ignoring. Deeply frowning, he pulled a rock out of his pocket and hummed complicatedly and untunefully under his breath, then held it above the sprite trap he’d so casually invented.
