Task completed, she returned to the client armchair with a book about the impact of cosmic rays on the etheretic field, which she'd borrowed from Monk. Her practical skills might leave a lot to be desired but there was no reason why she couldn't be a theoretical expert. And who knew? Maybe if she read enough of his books some of his genius would rub off. A forlorn thought, most likely...

But there's no law against dreaming.

Twenty minutes later the percolating ink on Bibbie's desk hissed then evaporated in a belching of noxious orange smoke.

Melissande stared at it. "What? How did that happen?"

Reg sn.i.g.g.e.red.

"Huh," she said, still ignoring the bird, and started the tamper-proofing process again with a fresh lot of ink.

Fifteen minutes after that, just as she staggered to the end of chapter five, the ink fizzed, turned bright yellow and condensed into a sc.u.m of froth around the lips of both test tube and beaker.

She let Monk's book drop into her lap. "Oh, please. I know it's Mister Cripps's cheapest ink but this is ridiculous." Muttering under her breath, she cleaned the test tube and beaker again, replaced the conductive tubing, triple-checked the etheretic condenser, poured her third batch of ink-good job she hadn't succ.u.mbed to the temptation of a more expensive brand-and settled back into the armchair.

Seven laborious minutes into chapter six, the third batch of ink erupted into bubbles. Incredulous, Melissande looked up, saw the ink morph in a flash from black to emerald and made a frantic dive for test tube and beaker.

Too late. With a last despairing fizzle the ink expired in a cloud of damp green mist. She sneezed, then broke a cardinal rule and threw Monk's book to the floor.

"Oh-oh, b.u.t.tocks!"

The cry roused Reg from her pretend doze on the ram skull. "Language, madam."

"Language yourself," she retorted, tugging off her gla.s.ses so she could clean the green mankiness off them. "You've said much worse, I've heard you." Having ruined the tail of her blouse, she shoved the gla.s.ses back on and turned. "b.u.t.tocks, b.u.t.tocks, b.u.t.tocks, so there."

Instead of scolding, Reg stared into the distance, a reminiscent gleam in her dark eyes. "I had b.u.t.tocks once," she said dreamily. With a ruffle of feathers she hopped from the ram skull to the open window, because the drifting green mist smelled like a men's locker room whose cleaners had gone on a workers' picnic. "They were lovely. All tight and firm and round like a fresh young peach." Another remembering sigh, and then a considering glance at Melissande's trouser-clad behind. "I could show you some exercises if you like."

"I really wouldn't," she said, teeth gritted.

"Well, you should," said Reg. "Tight b.u.t.tocks can take a girl a lot further than you'd think."

She closed her eyes. Count to ten, count to ten, get to ten and keep on counting... "Look," she said, s.n.a.t.c.hing up her gla.s.s potion stirrer and waving it for emphasis, "why don't you make yourself useful for once and help me work out what's gone wrong with the stupid stuff this time." Gingerly she poked the rod into the beaker and stirred the teaspoon-worth of green sludge at the bottom; the end of the rod promptly melted.

"Whoops," said Reg, with another sn.i.g.g.e.r.

"Oh bu-ugger it!" she shouted, one wary eye on Reg, and stamped about the tiny office to relieve her feelings. Thanks to the wretched bird she was aware of a slight but definite wobbling sensation in regions she had no intention of mentioning ever again. "It just doesn't make sense," she fumed, still stamping. "I followed the incant exactly. Every time!"

"Then you must've misremembered it," said Reg.

"Nonsense. I've tamper-proofed so much ink in the last two years I could do it in my sleep."

Reg tut-tutted. "Then I blame that Madame Rinky Tinky and her cut-rate under-the-counter flim-flam of a correspondence witching course. That's who taught you the technique, isn't it?"

Melissande groaned. So much for Reg's newfound restraint. I should've known it was too good to last. "There's nothing wrong with studying metaphysics by mail. Gerald studied metaphysics by mail and look where he is now-a super special secret agent in a government Department that's so hush-hush they're not allowed to tell themselves they exist!"

"True," Reg conceded, then looked pointedly down her beak. "But Gerald had me."

Slumping against the filing cabinet, she glared at the test tube and beaker. "It's got to be the ink. I'm going straight back to see Mister Cripps and give him a piece of my mind. He's got no business selling substandard ink to unsuspecting customers. It may be his most economical brand but that's no excuse for-"

"Now, now," said Reg. "Only a bad worker blames her tools." Staring at the residual mess in the test tube and beaker, she shook her head. "Deary deary dear. You really have c.o.c.ked it up this time, haven't you? Good lord, madam, what were you thinking? Gerald never-" And then she squawked as a pointed finger was jabbed between her eyes.

"I swear, Reg," breathed Melissande, "on my honour as a princess, finish that sentence and I will shove your beak where the sun doth not shine!"

Reg sniffed. "You know what your problem is, don't you, ducky? You can't take a little constructive criticism, that's your problem. You may be Her Royal Highness Princess Melissande in disguise but you don't have the authority to shove my beak anywhere. And even if you weren't in disguise and you owned up to being an HRH instead of prancing about calling yourself Miss Cadwallader and you did have that kind of authority, I'm a queen and therefore outrank you."

"Once upon a time you were a queen, Reg," she snapped. "Now you're just a bird of no fixed parentage. And disguise or no disguise, if you think I'm going to be dictated to by an ambulatory feather duster with delusions of grandeur you can b.l.o.o.d.y well think again!"

From outside the open window a coolly amused voice said, "Now now, girls. How about a little decorum?"

CHAPTER FIVE.

With a startled squawk Reg fell off the windowsill to land beak-first on the elderly cabbage-rose carpet. With an equally startled cry of "Reg!" Melissande leapt forward and scooped her up to make sure she was all right.

"Izz by deak brogen?" mumbled Reg, eyes rolling. "Id veels brogen!"

"No, no, it's not broken," she soothed, straightening Reg's mussed feathers and sitting her gently on the seat of the client armchair. Then she whipped around and glared at the face in the window. "Bibbie! For the love of Saint Snodgra.s.s, what are you doing? If anyone catches you levitating yourself we could lose-"

"Oh, relax," said Bibbie, waving one hand. "I hexed a dustbin lid, not me."

"Well don't. Now get down! Or get inside! Quick, hurry, before someone notices!"

Monk's appalling sister grinned, folded her arms along the windowsill and rested her elegant chin on her wrists. "Come on, Mel. Don't be a spoilsport."

"I am not a spoilsport, I'm trying to save our hides. If the landladies walk in and see you hovering out there they'll have conniptions. You know what they said about Peculiar Goings On. We're already up to our fifth official warning and we've only been here three and a half months. One more incident and we'll be out in the street!"

Bibbie sighed. "Mel, relax. Our landladies aren't going to see me up here, the old dears are as blind as a herd of bats. But even if they do see me they'll just think I'm a well-dressed weather balloon. Or a novelty kite." She frowned. "I wonder... is there such a thing as a herd of bats? Maybe it's a flock. Or a gaggle. Or possibly a school..."

"Trust me when I say I neither know nor care," said Melissande grimly. "But if there were more than one of you, for which I thank Saint Snodgra.s.s daily there isn't, you'd be known as a Headache of Emmerabiblias! And don't call me Mel!"

Bibbie pretended to pout. "Monk calls you Mel."

"You're not Monk!"

"Sorry," said unrepentant Bibbie, back to grinning.

She took a deep and goaded breath. "This is not funny! You just about frightened the life out of poor Reg! Now would you please be serious for five consecutive minutes and come inside? It's well after half-past nine, which means you're horribly late."

"Sorry," said Bibbie, still unrepentant. "I over-slept. After I got back to the boarding house Demelza Sopwith and I ended up in an argument about the accurate measuring of etheretic fluxes and it went on for hours. Oooh, she's such an ignorant hag. She says you need to take five readings to be certain of the thaumic variations but I say you only need three, provided you-"

"Yes, yes, yes," she said impatiently. "That's fascinating, Bibbie, and I'd love to hear all about it, honestly, only not now. Now you need to come inside before I drag you inside. I want your help."

"Help?" Bibbie looked pleased. "With what?"

She felt her chin tilt. "Nothing much. Hardly anything at all, actually. Just-"

"She's forgotten how to make tamper-proof ink," said Reg. "So if you're quite finished impersonating a deranged b.u.mblebee, ducky, perhaps you'd care to join us and earn your keep."

When it came to Reg, Bibbie had a hide like a rhinoceros. Instead of arguing, she just nodded and smiled. "Not a problem, girls. Don't go away." And with a jaunty little wave she dropped out of sight, plummeting like a hydraulic lift with its cables cut.

"Bibbie!" Melissande threw herself precariously across the windowsill, sure that Monk's mad sister would end up smashed to pieces on the ground. But no-she was touching down on the cobbles quite safely with a gentle clatter of hexed dustbin lid. "And don't forget to check the mailbox on your way upstairs!" she shouted.

Another jaunty wave was the only reply.

Sighing, she hauled herself back into the office. "It doesn't matter how many times I remind her, she always forgets to fetch the first post."

Reg snorted. "Too busy levitating. She's as bad as her brother, that girl, and that's saying something."

Despite her aggravation Melissande smiled as she picked up the scattered bits and pieces of the discarded Ottosland Times.

"Well, I suppose it's to be expected. They are related, after all. And really there's no harm in her. She's just young and high spirited. I expect I'd be the same if Lional-" She cleared her throat. "Well. If he hadn't turned into a homicidal maniac."

"You'd be young and high spirited if you had tighter b.u.t.tocks," said Reg. "I'm telling you, ducky, flab is not your friend."

The bird was saved only by Bibbie's arrival. Witnesses to murder were so inconvenient.

Melissande swallowed a bubble of unbecoming envy as Monk's sister sauntered into the office, the morning mail tucked under one arm. Every so often-like right this moment, for example, probably thanks to the spirit-crushing debacle of the exploding tamper-proof ink-she found herself struck speechless by the girl.

Simply put, Emmerabiblia Markham looked like a princess. Well, the way people imagined a princess should look, anyway. And despite being the genuine royal article, Melissande Cadwallader regrettably didn't. Not even when she went to the trouble of sprucing herself up.

Slender and shapely in watered green silk, with the kind of complexion oft-compared to strawberries and cream, Bibbie also enjoyed luxuriously waving hair the obligatory colour of a sun-ripened wheat field, cherry-red lips, eyes like blazing sapphires and so on and so forth ad absolutely nauseum and sometimes-galling as it might be to admit-it was hard to feel anything but inferior. Especially since Bibbie was also a phenomenally gifted witch.

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 amus.e.m.e.nt. "One of the boys from Briscowe's Bootlaces pulled a sh.e.l.l game with all our postboxes. n.o.body'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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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? Emmerabiblia! 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 pa.s.sing, 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 Snodgra.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, 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 surrept.i.tious 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."