"Provided you don't blow the roof to matchsticks," said Reg. "Because just between you, me and the cobwebs, sunshine, one of those thaumic agitators didn't look entirely stable."

"What?" He frowned. "Are you sure? Because I've realigned the wretched thing four times tonight! I don't understand what's going on, it won't hold its settings, but I could've sworn I-"

Bibbie rolled her eyes. "Just check it again, Monk, or else you will blow the roof to matchsticks and we'll never hear the end of it."

"Right," said Monk, backing up the staircase. "Right. Yes. Ah-look-this might take a while. I'll have Dodsworth drive you home, shall I? Yes. Just give him a shout, Bibs, and he'll bring round the jalopy. Thanks for coming, girls. I'll see you both soon."

"On second thoughts, madam," said Reg, as Monk disappeared round the first bend in the staircase, "at the rate you two are progressing there's absolutely no need at all to worry about the children."

Melissande, staring after him, swallowed a sigh. Not even a chaste little peck on the cheek. Trust Reg to notice that. Sometimes I wonder, I really do wonder, if he remembers I'm Bibbie's friend and not her sister.

"Come on," she said. "Let's go home, shall we?"

CHAPTER FOUR.

Morning. Melissande groped for her gla.s.ses, slid them on, then rolled back onto her pillow.

After growing up as a princess in a palace, complete with courtiers, servants, extensively manicured gardens and frequent public outings to fulfil her "being ogled" duties, there was something deeply satisfying about living in a tiny bedsit in a tiny rented office on the top floor of an elderly four-storey building in a nook-and-cranny corner of a large and crowded city. It offered the kind of freedom she had never expected to experience, what with being a princess and then a prime minister, crushed beneath the burden of an entire kingdom's welfare. Until Gerald hurtled into her orbit she'd more or less resigned herself to a life of duty, of obligation, of walking on eggsh.e.l.ls around unpredictable, kingly Lional.

But Gerald... and Lional's insanity... had topsy-turvied all her glum expectations and suddenly she'd found herself bereft of duty and obligation, given the chance to spread her wings, so to speak, and fly into a different future.

She'd s.n.a.t.c.hed it with both hands and hadn't looked back.

Here in Ottosland's sprawling, cosmopolitan capital she was practically anonymous. She could walk the streets day or night and n.o.body stopped to point and stare. Or if they did it wasn't because she was the local Royal Highness. The novelty of that was yet to wear off.

She'd definitely made the right decision... even if things weren't entirely working out the way she'd planned.

As the city's post-dawn symphony sounded beyond the bedsit's single open window-chugging motor cars and clopping horse-drawn drays, optimistic street-sellers and barrow-girls and shrill messenger boys, barking dogs and rattling milk cans-she stretched beneath her blankets, luxuriating in the ongoing deliciousness of being plain Miss Melissande Cadwallader.

"Oy," said Reg, gliding in between the faded curtains to land neatly on the bedsit's single bookcase. "How much longer are you going to glorm about in bed, madam? The sun's up, in case you hadn't noticed, and witching agencies don't run themselves. You're not a pampered princess anymore, you're one of the downtrodden working cla.s.s, that's what you are. So it's time to rise and shine and think of how we're going to keep the office door open when we haven't had a single nibble of a client in over three weeks!"

Of course, nothing was ever perfect...

Melissande sat up, looking for Boris, but he'd let himself out through the open window already. At first she'd worried about him, wandering about in a brand new city, but it seemed Boris was a cat blessed with a mult.i.tude of lives. He always came home no matter how creatively Reg insulted him.

"Your hair's a rat's-nest, by the way," the bird added helpfully. "You should sleep with it in a nightcap. I always did."

"And good morning to you too, Reg," she muttered, and fell back against her lumpy pillow. "Now go away."

Reg sniffed. "So much for the royal work ethic. Come along, madam, you've got to rally to the cause, you've got to spit the world in the eye, you've got to hunt us up some clients before I starve to death! You can't just lie there dreaming about that Markham boy. He's probably blown himself to smithereens by now anyway."

Monk, and his unsanctioned, brilliant, mysterious experiments. Heart thumping, Melissande leapt out of bed. "I know you think you're being funny, Reg, but you might actually be right for once. G.o.d alone knows what he's getting up to in that stupid attic of his. You've got to fly over there, quick, and-"

"I'm way ahead of you, ducky," said Reg, sounding smug. "Great-uncle Throgmorton's legacy is still standing and that Markham boy is in one piece... but he won't be for much longer if those old fogies in the Department find out what he's been up to."

Chilly in bare feet and a sensible nightdress, Melissande s.n.a.t.c.hed her green flannel dressing gown from the battered bedpost and hauled it on. "What do you mean? What's he working on?"

Once, Reg would have used the question as an excuse to make pointed remarks about the manifest inadequacies of Madam Rinky Tinky and her correspondence witching course. Since the humiliations of Madam Olliphant's exclusive Academie of Witchcraft, however, the bird had been mercifully-not to mention uncharacteristically-restrained.

Oddly, the restraint hurt worse than the pointed remarks.

"Well," said Reg, scratching the back of her head. "It's a bit hard to say, really. But I'll tell you this much, ducky: you wouldn't catch me getting cosy with thaumic generators, etheretic quantifiers and multi-dimensional wavelength gauges. Not all together under the same roof, at any rate."

Feeling faint, Melissande dropped to the edge of her bed and pulled the dressing gown more tightly round her ribs. "Yes, but you're not Monk. He's a thaumaturgical genius."

"He's a thaumaturgical genius today," said Reg, looking down her beak. "By this time tomorrow he could be a nasty stain on the carpet."

"Oh, Reg." If there'd been a slipper handy she would've thrown it. "Do stop being so melodramatic."

"Only if you get dressed," said Reg. "You'll catch your death sitting about the place half-naked and if you think I'm going to be mopping your fevered brow you've sadly misread the situation."

"Oh, all right," she groaned, and hunted up some clean tweed trews and a not-too-wrinkled white shirt, her everyday attire of choice. Even in modern Ottosland such a masculine outfit raised eyebrows, but she was loath to abandon it for skirts and dresses. Baggy trousers were comfortable. During her hard-fought campaign to avoid a royal marriage of convenience she'd first grown accustomed to having the shape of her legs more-or-less on show, and then positively attached to the habit of walking fast without tripping over flounces.

And the ruder Reg got about princesses who couldn't tell if they were Martha or Arthur the more determined she became never to dress like a girl again.

Ignoring the wretched bird's eloquent stare and heavy sighs, she swapped nightwear for daywear, wrestled her rat's-nest hair into submission with a brush and tidied it into a long plait. Then she made her way down the four flights of rickety stairs to the outside convenience in the building's rear courtyard, checked for spiders, twice, washed her hands afterwards under the recalcitrant water pump-Saint Snodgra.s.s, how she missed the palace's plumbing-and trudged all the way back upstairs to face a breakfast of two cold hard-boiled eggs left over from last night's supper. Without salt or pepper, because she'd used up the dregs yesterday.

Of course if she'd followed Bibbie's example and taken a room at Mistress Mossop's Boarding House for Refined Young Ladies, she'd be eating a hot breakfast in style right about now. Fresh eggs scrambled in b.u.t.ter, juicy fat sausages, toast and marmalade, sweet, creamy coffee...

But she couldn't do it. Partly because of the money-she was determined not to be a drain on Rupert's strained royal purse-and partly because she wasn't certain she could face hordes of Refined Young Ladies, even if one of them was Emmerabiblia Markham... the first real friend of the female persuasion she'd ever made.

Reg didn't count.

"So, what's the plan for today, then?" the bird enquired, perched on the bedrail. "Seeing as how we've got no clients there's an awful lot of time to fill between now and sunset."

Melissande looked up from sweeping bits of eggsh.e.l.l into the bedsit's tiny rubbish pail. "And you think I need reminding of that yet again because..."

"No point getting snippy with me, ducky," said Reg, shrugging. "We're floundering and that's all there is to it."

"We are not floundering," she retorted. "We are experiencing a temporary dearth of clients. It's not the same thing at all."

"Well, if you'd just make more of the fact that you're a princess and your brother's a king, madam, we'd have so many clients we'd be beating them off with a stick!"

"How many times do I have to say it, Reg?" Melissande demanded, glaring. "I left New Ottosland so I could stop being a princess. I'm not going to-to flaunt myself in Ottish society just so we can-"

Reg rattled her tail feathers. "Flaunt? Flaunt? Who said anything about flaunt? I never said you should flaunt. But you could wear a regal dress and your mother's tiara, couldn't you, and let the local sn.o.bs draw their own conclusions? Drop them a hint, where's the harm in that?"

"Oh, Reg!"

"Don't you Oh, Reg me!" said Reg crossly. "Because you know that I know the piggy bank's pretty much run out of oink!"

Yes, she knew it. She wished she didn't. She wished-well, she wished a lot of things. But wishing wouldn't change the facts. Reg was right, drat her. They were facing dire financial straits, and without some kind of miracle the agency's doors wouldn't stay open much longer than another week. Maybe two, if they were lucky.

I don't understand. It wasn't supposed to be this difficult.

"It's one thing for that Markham boy's sister not to use her family's connections," Reg continued, relentless. "She doesn't turn twenty-one for two more years so they've still got some say over what she does. But what's your excuse? Cutting off all our noses to spite your freckled face, that's what you're doing, madam, and I for one don't approve!"

"Really?" she replied. "I had no idea, Reg. You'll have to stop being so subtle." She shoved her hands in her pockets. "Look, I know you think I'm being contrary. I know you'd give anything to get your old life back. You liked being royal, which is fine, but I'm not you. I'm me. And I want to find out who I am. The real me, not the me who's spent her life being a-a-t.i.tle. A function. Just one more portrait in a long line of portraits. Is that so unreasonable?"

"Weeeeell..." Reg let out a grudging sigh. "No, I suppose not, when you put it that way."

"Besides, things will improve around here," she said. "Every new venture takes a little time to find its feet. It's not like we haven't had any clients. We just haven't had enough. But they'll come. And in the meantime we'll just have to economise."

Reg looked around the tiny room, which had started life as a smaller second office. "Ducky, this place is worse than Gerald's bedsit in the Wizard's Club and that's not something I ever thought I'd hear myself say. The only way you're going to get more economical is by moving into the outdoors convenience." She sniffed. "Or you could try tapping that Markham boy on the shoulder. He's got plenty of empty rooms going spare in that new house of his, I'm sure."

Melissande turned away so Reg wouldn't see the tell-tale flush of colour in her cheeks. "Don't be ridiculous, Reg. I might wear trousers but I'm not completely abandoned. Bibbie could move in with him, she's his sister. I'm not."

The truth is I'm not sure what I am to him. Honestly, things were much less complicated when we were in the middle of an international crisis.

Another sniff. "All right, all right. Untwist your knickers, ducky. It was only a thought."

But not the kind of thought she wanted to be thinking. Besides, she had far more immediate concerns. "Well, those kinds of thoughts are best kept to yourself," she said briskly. "Anyway, I've already come up with one way for us to pinch our pennies. I'm going to brew up a fresh batch of tamper-proof ink. I might not be a patch on Miss Markham when it comes to proper witchcraft but I'm a dab hand at brewing tamper-proof ink. I went through gallons of the stuff once Lional-"

And there he was, tripping her up again, curse him. Ottosland's wizards were wrong. There really were such things as ghosts.

I wonder if it's like this for Gerald, too? Wherever he is. Whatever he's doing. I wonder if he thinks of Lional every time he remembers he's only got one good eye.

"Good idea," said Reg, breaking the difficult silence. "That'll keep you out of mischief. And I'll help. I was brewing tamper-proof ink five minutes after ink was invented."

Melissande groaned. "Of course you were."

It was still too early to go shopping for regular ink that she could gussy up with a dash of her limited thaumaturgy, so she trudged back downstairs to see if the morning paper had arrived. Yes, it was there on the building's front doorstep beside the agency's daily half-pint of milk, which they had delivered in the frail hope that prospective clients would arrive parched and desperate for a rallying cup of tea. Sadly, Boris had been the main beneficiary of that little plan.

Of course it could be argued the newspaper was another pointless extravagance, except there was always the hope-possibly forlorn, but a hope nonetheless-that a client might be found by perusing the crime section. Or the social pages. According to Reg they were usually one and the same. And even though Bibbie was forbidden from actively exploiting her family connections, she still knew a great many people in the upper strata of Ottosland society. Inside information would never go astray.

The clunk of the stoppered milk jug against the steps brought Boris out of hiding from the shadows next door. Green eyes gleaming, black tail flicking suggestively, he wound himself endearingly around Melissande's tweed ankles.

"Forget it," she told him. "Prospective clients come first."

Boris twitched his whiskers in disgust and leapt back into the shadows. Arms full of newspaper and milk jug, Melissande looked up and down the narrow street, searching for signs of life, but it was empty. Daffydown Lane wasn't what anyone could call a bustling thoroughfare. Unfortunately, the rent for premises on bustling thoroughfares was daylight robbery. Daffydown Lane was the best they could afford.

She turned to go back inside... and was confronted by the tenant roll attached to her building's brickwork beside its slightly warped door frame. Amid the faded listings for Briscowe's Best Bootlaces, Argent Exports and Dashforth's Superior Comestibles, one entry stood out.

Witches Inc. No thaumaturgical task too large or too small. Reasonable rates, discretion guaranteed.

The bold, black-edged gold lettering leapt starkly to the eye, still so brand-new and hopeful compared with the faded announcements of the building's other occupants. Without warning she felt a flutter of fear in the pit of her stomach, as delicate as one of Rupert's b.u.t.terflies.

Please, Saint Snodgra.s.s. Don't let us fail.

Subdued, she trudged upstairs to the office and made herself comfortable with the paper in the over-stuffed, high-backed client armchair. She wasn't supposed to, because the client armchair was the only newish piece of furniture they possessed and was meant for Special People, otherwise known as clients, but it seemed a pity to let it go to waste.

Ignoring violent partnerly opposition, Reg had insisted on keeping her revolting old ram skull on top of the office's sole filing cabinet. Ensconced there now, she looked down her beak.

"Well? Find anything interesting?

The paper's front page was decorated with a splendid photograph of Rupert, diplomatically losing a camel race to his next-door neighbour Sultan Zazoor. She felt her heart skip and quickly flicked the paper open. Homesickness was like a scab: not nearly so painful if you didn't pick at it.

"Interesting?" She scanned the various stories of the day. "Well, the last injured travellers from the most recent portal accident have been released from hospital, poor things. Still no official announcement of what went wrong this time. Five accidents in four months? It's unprecedented."

"What went wrong is some fool of a government inspector fell asleep on the job," said Reg, scornful. "Portal travel might be convenient but it's only been around for five minutes. Mucking about with that kind of metaphysics is no romp in the park. What else?"

Melissande turned another page. "Not much. Lots of nattering about this upcoming symposium. The usual blowhards bl.u.s.tering in Letters to the Editor. Oh, and the Potentate of Aframbigi's lodged a formal complaint about his sanctions."

"Never mind him," said Reg. "He'll need a sight more help than the likes of us can provide, the silly old fogey. Try the social pages. With any luck one of our Miss Markham's old school chums has lost an expensive bracelet and needs us to-"

"Don't be ridiculous," she said, turning to the back section of the paper. "Why would one of Bibbie's friends need us? Any graduate of Madam Olliphant's would be perfectly capable of-oh no!"

"What?" said Reg, and flapped from her ram skull to the arm of the client chair. "What's wrong?"

Mortified, Melissande stared at the photograph in the paper's breathlessly overwritten social section. "What do you think?"

"I think that bustle was a big mistake," said Reg, peering at the offending picture. "You've got more than enough b.u.m to be going on with, madam. No need to go enhancing it."

Melissande gritted her teeth. "Yes, so you said at the time, Reg. But-"

"Her Royal Highness Princess Melissande of New Ottosland," Reg said aloud, reading the photograph's caption, "only sister to the King of New Ottosland and co-proprietor of Witches Inc., the capital's newest thaumaturgical agency, escorted by Monk Markham, Esquire, younger son of celebrated thaumaturgist Wolfgang Markham, attending a performance of "The Shepherd's Revenge" at the Opera House. What's wrong with that? That's free advertising, that is. Even if most of you that isn't bustle is hidden behind that Markham boy." She chuckled. "Although he does scrub up quite nicely, doesn't he?"

Yes, he did, very nicely, but that wasn't the point. "I could've sworn I managed to fritz that wretched man's camera!" Melissande fretted. "He's always lurking around public events hoping to photograph me. Next time I'll get Monk to fritz his camera. Better yet I'll get Monk to fritz him."

"Oh, no you won't, madam!" said Reg. "Not when he's giving us free advertising, you won't!"

She threw the paper on the floor and shoved out of the armchair. "I don't care about the free advertising. I care about Rupert seeing this and thinking I'm exploiting him for my personal gain! He's been so wonderful about what happened at Madam Olliphant's, and me starting up the agency even though it's got the potential to embarra.s.s him. They're still wittering about it back home, you know, all those fuddy-duddy aristocrats. Lord Billingsley and the rest. I'm flying in the face of Tradition, Reg, and they're not impressed. But Rupert's standing firm. The last thing I want is for him to think I'm taking him for granted. Using him."

"If you think he thinks that, ducky," said Reg, surprisingly gentle, "you're daft. That brother of yours adores you. In his short-sighted eyes you can do no wrong."

Which was precisely the problem. Rupert's loyalty was limitless, so she had to place the limits for him. Otherwise he could get himself into trouble. She'd have to write him a letter, and bother the expense of postage home. If his feelings were hurt he'd never tell her. He'd just brood and look sad...

Oh, Rupes. I'm sorry. Maybe coming to Ottosland was a mistake after all.

"Mister Cripps will be at his shop by now," she said abruptly, glancing at the tinnily ticking clock on the wall. "I'm going out to buy that ink. In the unlikely event a client should turn up while I'm gone don't do anything, just let them fill out the enquiry card and pop it through the door-slot and I'll deal with it when I get back."

Reg immediately looked outraged. "Do you mind? I'm perfectly capable of-"

"Pretending to be an etheretic answering machine, getting into an argument with a client and sending them away in a huff?" she interrupted. "Yes, Reg, I know. Last week's demonstration was flawless. You could give tutorials. Which is why I'm saying don't do anything."

And on that trenchant note she picked up her slightly faded velvet reticule and swept out of the office, banging the door firmly closed in Reg's offended face.

It took her not quite three-quarters of an hour to walk to Mister Cripps's Office Supply Emporium, which was nowhere near as grand as its t.i.tle suggested, make a purchase of his cheapest black ink, convince him she was perfectly capable of carrying the tin back to her office una.s.sisted, and do so.

Reg, determined to remain offended, pretended to be asleep on her ram skull. Knowing perfectly well the dreadful bird was just aching to be appeased, Melissande pointedly ignored her. After setting up her test tube, conductive tubing, large beaker and etheretic condenser on Bibbie's desk, since Monk's sister wasn't there to object, she started the process of tamper-proofing the first batch of ink.