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.
Get a grip, woman. You’re a royal princess and a former prime minister. This is no time to be going to pieces.
She turned to Bibbie. “Well? What do you think? Will Monk’s sprite trap work?”
“It ought to,” said Bibbie, thoughtfully. “I mean, his theory’s sound enough-as far as I can tell.” Then she rolled her eyes with sisterly scorn. “Although if he’d bothered to ask me I’d have told him you get much better etheretic cohesion if you use two parts powdered shloss-root to one part dried dragon-tongue, not three. But did he ask? Of course not. Just because he works for the Department he think he knows every-”
“ Excellent,” she said briskly. “So let’s get this over with, shall we? When I open the door, Reg, you fly left. I’ll dart right. And Bibbie, you forge straight ahead with the trap activated. As soon as we spot the sprite, Reg, you play sheepdog and herd it into a corner so Bibbie can get it into the trap.”
“And what are you going to do?” said Reg.
“Take notes for the post-mortem.” She took hold of the door handle. “Right, girls. On three. One-two-”
There was a click and a brief, high-pitched buzz as Bibbie activated Monk’s invention.
“ Three!”
She flung the door wide and they charged into the office like a very small herd of maddened wildebeest.
“There it is!” shouted Bibbie, as the sprite trap’s flux capacitor illuminated the sprite. “Oh look-it’s so pretty!”
Kicking the door shut behind them, Melissande stared at the creature. Bibbie was right, drat her. The sprite was pretty, beautiful even, all dancing blue etheretic particles. Not much bigger than one of Rupert’s late lamented butterflies, it shimmered with an incandescent brilliance as it perched on the test tube of ruined tamper-proof ink. And floating deep within the blue sparkles, a face. Or something that maybe, possibly, looked like a face…
No. No. It’s my imagination. And I am not about to get attached or feel sorry for it just because it’s a long way from home.
“ Ha!” she said. “A pretty big pain in the arse, you mean.” Abandoning her plan, she snatched the sprite trap from Bibbie and advanced. “Come here, you horrible little creature! I’ll teach you to cover me in interdimensional sprite shit!”
“No! Wait!” chorused Reg and Bibbie, for once in perfect harmony. “Don’t do that, you’ll fri-”
Too late. Temporarily brought into dimensional phase by Monk’s sprite trap, the startled sprite emitted a shrill squeak and launched itself into the air.
“After it, Reg!” cried Bibbie. “Melissande, you raving nutter, give me the trap!”
Shamed by her loss of control, Melissande surrendered the sprite trap and stood back as Reg and Bibbie ran and flew to and fro beneath the agitated blue sprite. Cries of “ Go left-watch out for the armchair-go right-higher-mind the umbrella stand-lower-it’s on the curtain rail-no, no, now it’s behind the curtain-yes, ducky, I can see it. I’m old and ensorcelled but I’m not blind yet!” bounced from window to wall and back again as they pursued the agitated escapee from the dimension-next-door.
“Yes! Yes!” shouted Bibbie as Reg, panting like an antiquated racehorse, chased the sprite into the drooping embrace of the potted Weeping Fireblossom Monk had given them as an office-warming present.
With a shout of triumph Bibbie leapt at the sprite, the trap’s door open wide to swallow the creature. “ Gotcha!”
Too late, Melissande realised she was standing in precisely the wrong place. Bibbie’s spectacular leap carried her clear over the potted Fireblossom and “ Ow!” she cried as Bibbie sent her sprawling. “Get off me, get off me!”
“Shut the trap door, shut the trap door!” shrieked Reg, hovering above them. “I’m too old for all this excitement!”