‘Me neither. But I was always frightened that she would.’
And he gave a nervous laugh. There was a pause, and he thought for a moment. I could see there were hundreds of questions going around in his head, and he really didn’t know where to start.
‘What happened to the Great Zambini?’
‘It’s plain “Mr Zambini” these days,’ I told him, ‘he hasn’t carried the accolade “Great” for over ten years.’
‘You don’t have it for life?’
‘It’s based on power. See the one dressed in black over there?’
‘The grumpy-looking one?’
‘The dignified-looking one. Sixty years ago she was Master Sorceress the Lady Mawgon, She-Who-the-Winds-Obey. Now she’s just plain Lady Mawgon. If the background wizidrical power falls any farther, she’ll be plain Daphne Mawgon and no different to you or me. Watch and learn.’
We stood there for a moment.
‘The fat one looks as though he’s playing a harp,’ said Tiger, with a lot less respect than he should have shown.
‘He’s the once-venerable Dennis Price,’ I told him testily, ‘and you should learn to hold your tongue. Price’s nickname is “Full”. He has a brother called David, but we all call him “Half”.’
‘Whatever his name, he still looks like he’s playing an invisible harp.’
‘We call it harping because the hand movements that precede the firing of a spell look like someone trying to play an invisible harp.’
‘I’d never have guessed. Don’t they use wands or something?’
‘Wands, broomsticks and pointy hats are for the storybooks. Can you feel that?’
The faint buzz of a spell was in the air. A mild tingling sensation, not unlike static electricity. As we watched, Price let fly. There was a crackle like scrunched Cellophane, and with a tremor, the entire internal wiring of Mr Digby’s house, complete with all light switches, sockets, fuse boxes and light fittings, swung out of the house as a single entity—a three-dimensional framework of worn wiring, cracked Bakelite and blackened cables. It hung there in midair over the lawn, rocking gently. After a moment, Full Price nodded to Lady Mawgon and then relaxed. The network of wires—which closely resembled the shape of the house—simply hovered a couple of feet above the ground. Price had managed to do something in an hour that trained electricians would have taken a week to do—and he hadn’t even touched the wallpaper or plasterwork.
‘Well held, Daphne,’ said Price.
‘I’m not holding it,’ said Lady Mawgon, ‘I wasn’t ready. Moobin?’
‘Not I,’ he replied, and they looked around to see who else might be involved. And that’s when they saw Tiger.
‘Who’s this little twerp?’ asked Lady Mawgon as she strode up.
‘The seventh foundling,’ I explained, ‘Tiger Prawns. Tiger, this is Full Price, Wizard Moobin and Lady Mawgon.’
Price and Moobin gave him a cheery ‘hello’ but Lady Mawgon was less welcoming.
‘I shall call you F7 until you prove yourself worthy,’ she remarked imperiously. ‘Show me your tongue, boy.’
Tiger, who to my relief was quite able to be polite if required, bowed politely and stuck out his tongue. Lady Mawgon touched the tip of his tongue with her little finger, and frowned.
‘It’s not him. Mr Price, I think you’ve just surged.’
‘You do?’
And they then fell into one of those very long and complex conversations that enchanters have when they want to discuss the arts. And since it was in Aramaic, Latin, Greek and English, I could understand only one word in four—to be honest, they probably did too.
‘Tongue in, Tiger.’
When they had decided that it might indeed have been a surge of wizidrical power, such as happens from time to time, they drank some tea out of a thermos, nibbled a doughnut and talked some more, then began the delicate work of replicating the worn-out wiring with an identical model hanging in the air next to it, only from new wires, switches and fuse boxes. They would then reinsert the new wiring into the old house, separate out the copper from the waste for recycling—and then do it all again for the plumbing, both domestic water and central heating.
‘I have to go back to Zambini Towers,’ I said. ‘Will you be okay here on your own?’
They said they would, and after nodding to the Quarkbeast, who jumped in the back of my Volkswagen, we left them to get on with it.
Zambini Towers
‘So what are my duties?’ asked Tiger as soon as we were on our way.
‘Did you do any laundry at the Sisterhood?’
He groaned audibly.
‘There’s that, and answering phones and general running around, but not any cooking. We have Unstable Mabel to do that for us. Stay out of her kitchen, by the way, she has a nasty temper and is a demon shot with a soup ladle.’
‘Can’t the sorcerers do their own laundry?’
‘They could, but they won’t. Their power has to be conserved to be useful.’
‘I’m not sure I want to be called F7 by the grumpy one.’
‘You’ll get used to it. She called me F6 until only a month ago.’
‘I’m not you. And besides, you still haven’t told me what happened to Mr Zambini.’
‘Ooh,’ I said, turning up the radio to listen to the Yogi Baird Radio Show. I liked the show but didn’t really need to listen to it. I just didn’t want to talk about Mr Zambini’s disappearance. At least, not yet.
Twenty minutes later we pulled up outside Zambini Towers, a large property that had once been the luxurious Majestic hotel. It was the second-highest building in Hereford after King Snodd’s Parliament, but was not so well maintained. The guttering hung loose, the windows were grimy and cracked, and small tufts of grass were poking out from the gaps between the bricks.
‘What a dump,’ breathed Tiger as we trotted into the entrance lobby.
‘We can’t really afford to bring it back to a decent state. Mr Zambini bought it when he was still Great and could conjure up an oak tree from an acorn in under a fortnight.’
‘That one there?’ asked Tiger, pointing at a sprawling oak that had grown in the centre of the lobby, its gnarled roots and boughs elegantly wrapped around the old reception desk and partially obscuring the entrance to the abandoned Palm Court.
‘No, that was Half Price’s third-year dissertation.’
‘Will he get rid of it?’
‘Fourth-year dissertation.’
‘Can’t you just wizard the building back into shape or something?’
‘It’s too big, and they’re saving themselves.’
‘For what?’
I shrugged.
‘To earn a crust. And what’s more, I think they prefer it this way.’
We walked through the lobby, which was decorated with trophies, paintings and certificates of achievements long past.
‘The shabbiness adds a sense of faded grandeur to the proceedings. And besides, when you don’t want to draw attention to yourself, it’s better to look a bit down at heel. Good morning, ladies.’
Two elderly women were on their way to the breakfast rooms. They were dressed in matching shell suits and cackled quietly to themselves.
‘This is the new foundling, Tiger Prawns,’ I said. ‘Tiger, these are the Sisters Karamazov—Deirdre and Deirdre.’
‘Why do they have the same name?’
‘They had an unimaginative father.’
They looked very carefully at Tiger, and even prodded him several times with long bony fingers.
‘Ha-ho,’ said the least ugly of the two, ‘will you scream when I stick you with a pin, you little piglet you?’
I caught Tiger’s eye and shook my head, to convey they didn’t mean anything.