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.
“Oy! Do you mind?” Reg protested as her plumage tried to turn itself inside out.
Bibbie opened her eyes and frowned at the test tube. “You’re right, Mel. This ink is well and truly kablooeyfied.”
“ Yes, Bibbie, I know.” Honestly, much more of this and she’d grind her teeth down to stumps and then there’d be dental expenses on top of everything else. “The question is why?”
“Sorry,” said Bibbie, shrugging. “Haven’t a clue. All I can tell you is the inherent thaumaturgical substructure of the incant has somehow been degraded and deconstructed then retranslated from an eighth dimensional transvibration to a sixteenth.”
Melissande blinked. “And that’s bad, is it?” she asked eventually.
“Well, I don’t know about bad, precisely, but it’s certainly interesting,” said Bibbie. “How in the name of all things metaphysical did you manage it? I don’t think even Monk’s pulled off something as outlandish as this.”
“I don’t have the foggiest idea,” she said glumly. “I was hoping you would.”
Another shrug. “Sorry.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Reg. “I was catching up on my beauty sleep. At my age I need all the help I can get.” When nobody contradicted her, she subsided into offended silence.
“I suppose we could ask Monk to test what’s left of the ink in one of his Department’s labs,” said Bibbie. “He’ll be able to-” Breaking off as the phone on her desk rang, she reached for the heavy black receiver and answered it. “Witches Incorporated, No Job Too-Monk! Fancy that, we were just talking about you. Were your ears burning? — They were? Not literally, I hope.-Well, all right, but with what you get up to down in your Department basement, let alone in your attic, I never really know for sure. And there was that time in the nursery when you-”
As Bibbie squabbled with her brother, Melissande started filing the bills in their concertina folder. Where did they all come from? And why did it seem that life was easier when she was juggling the finances of an entire kingdom? How could it be that keeping the doors open to one insignificant little witching agency was proving to be a thousand times harder than keeping New Ottosland solvent?
She snuck a surreptitious glance around the shabby office. It wasn’t much, true, but it was theirs, and if after so much hope and effort the agency didn’t work out… humiliatingly, she felt her eyes burn and her nose start to run. She had to accidentally-on-purpose knock the bills to the floor so she could dive under the desk before the other two noticed she was cry-very upse-having an allergy attack.
“-argue about it any more,” Bibbie finished. “One more word out of you and we won’t come. Fine. Good.” She hung up the phone. “That was Monk. He needs to see us. Urgently.”
Melissande scuttled backwards out from under the desk and hauled herself to her feet. “Why? What’s happened? Has Great-uncle Throgmorton struck again? Or is this something to do with one of his wretched experiments?” She turned to Reg, staring accusingly. “I thought you said the house was still in one piece!”
“Eh?” said Reg, startled. “It is! Or it was first thing this morning. Whatever he’s gone and done now, ducky, he did it after I left so don’t you go giving me the mouldy eyeball.”
She turned back to Bibbie. “So what’s wrong? What’s happened?”
Bibbie pulled a face. “He wouldn’t tell me. All he’d say was that he wants to see us urgently in the Botanical Gardens. The Tropical Glasshouse, to be exact.”
“Oh, Saint Snodgrass’s bunions,” said Melissande, and banged the office window shut. “You should’ve let me talk to him.”
“You don’t suppose it’s Gerald, do you?” said Reg. Her voice wasn’t quite steady. “You don’t suppose something’s happened to my Gerald?”
Melissande exchanged a nervous look with Bibbie then picked Reg up off the client chair and settled her onto one shoulder. “No. I don’t suppose anything of the sort,” she said firmly, collecting her reticule. “Monk’s probably got another staffing crisis on his hands, that’s all. Probably he wants to talk us into pretending to be housemaids.”