Magicalamity (7 page)

Iris raised the place where her eyebrows should have been. “Pindar! Are you sure?”

“Oh yes.” Lorna took a swig of tea. “I’d know him anywhere.”

“It was two visits,” Tom said. “I think he’s following us.”

“But Tiberius swore he’d never let Pindar anywhere near an important job ever again! Not after the fiasco with those flying coaches.” Iris was thoughtful. “The last I heard, he was working in a circus, cleaning up after the elephants. His mother said that was all he was fit for.”

Even though he was the enemy, Tom was starting to feel a little sorry for his cousin Pindar. Aunt Dolores—the Bad Fairy—sounded horrible. He saw why Dad had cut off all contact with her. The clumsy teenager he’d seen in the crystal ball had looked perfectly harmless, and it must be awful to have a mother who kept telling you that you were stupid.

“Of course,” Iris went on, “they might have sent Pindar to check up on you because they didn’t think it was an important job. I mean—who takes godmothering seriously nowadays?”

“I do.”

“You’re old-fashioned. Nobody else bothers.”

“Please,” Tom burst out, “you keep talking as if it’s all hopeless—there must be something we can do!”

His two godmothers looked at him in silence.

“It’s a challenge,” Iris said coldly, “but as I tell my girls, we must see challenges as opportunities. The Realm is ruled by a set of very old laws, and even Falconers must obey them. The first thing we should do is get some really expert legal advice—there has to be some kind of loophole.”

Lorna knocked backed the rest of her tea. “I bet Dahlia would know—don’t you remember how brilliant she was in college?”

“Of course,” Iris mused, “she
is
the demisprite’s third godmother. And her subject
was
fairy law. She’d be a judge by now, if she hadn’t been so shallow. Have you consulted her?”

“We haven’t found her yet,” Tom said. “Do you know where she lives?”

Iris’s eyes were like little cold gray pebbles. “Not exactly—but I know where to find her.”

“Tell us, and we can go and look for her,” said Lorna.

“You can’t do it without me,” Iris said. “Can the demisprite fly?”

Tom was sick of being ignored. “You can ask me, you know. I do understand English. Yes, I can fly.”

“Oh.”

“And we’ve still got twenty minutes of the invisibility you gave me for my christening.”

“Hmm.” Iris’s expression did not change, but she said, “I’m glad it was useful. For the time being, however, I’ll provide invisibility. It’s fiendishly expensive—but one of my sixth-formers just made me several million with her math project, which was a stock-market scam. I’ll use it to fund the expedition.” Her cold face softened, though it might have been a trick of the light. “I owe that much to Jonas.”

Lorna was grinning. “You’re not such a bad old bat after all, Iris Moth. Where are we headed?”

“Harrods,” said Iris.

“Really, Lorna! What frightful wings,” Iris complained. “And do you have to festoon yourself with all those bags?”

“What does it matter, if I’m invisible?”

“You’re still visible to me.”

Tom wished his two godmothers would stop bickering. It hadn’t boiled over into a real argument yet, but he could tell they were getting increasingly irritated with each other—Iris produced a pair of sleek, streamlined wings of a dazzling white, and Lorna muttered “La-di-da!” under her breath. The three of them were on the roof of the school, getting ready for takeoff.

Iris saw Tom looking at the wings, and another ghost
of a smile crossed her wintry dinosaur face. “The latest model,” she told him smugly. “Sat-nav and up to five hundred miles an hour.” She measured out the invisibility very precisely and scattered the powder neatly across them.

Tom was nervous about taking off from this dizzy height. He felt confident about his flying, but he had never had to jump off a roof—if his parents had been able to see what he was doing, they would have had heart failure. His mouth was dry, but he wasn’t going to show Iris he was scared. Taking a deep breath, willing himself to stay calm, he muttered the flying spell and floated easily onto a smooth current of summer air.

“Nice takeoff,” Iris said behind him. “The demisprite has been well taught.”

“For the last time,” Lorna snapped, “his name’s Tom!”

They were all quiet now, concentrating on the job of skimming across the warm landscape towards London (Tom had one sad moment of wishing he could fly home to his parents). The built-in sat-nav on Iris’s wings guided them to Harrods. They landed on the pavement outside the famous shop. Iris performed a textbook landing, with pointed toes and graceful arms. Lorna accidentally landed with one leg in a rubbish bin, and there was a lot of muttered swearing as she wrestled herself free.

“We’re still invisible,” Iris said. “We’ll stay invisible
until we spot Dahlia—if she sees us first, she might try to give us the slip.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Lorna stowed her wings back in their plastic bag and peeled off an ice cream wrapper that was sticking to her jumpsuit. “You’d better lead the way, Iris—I don’t know anything about posh shops.”

“You astonish me,” Iris said sarcastically.

Tom was glad he couldn’t be seen as he walked into Harrods. Everything in the shop, including the customers, was gleaming and smart and expensive. He felt like a total scruff in his dusty T-shirt and crumpled jeans. They were walking through the perfume and makeup department. Every few minutes they were assaulted with another brand of perfume, until Tom—who hadn’t eaten for hours—felt slightly giddy. Sticking close to Lorna, he dodged through the crowds of shoppers.

“Blimey, all these lipsticks!” exclaimed Lorna. “If they were different colors I could understand it—but they all look exactly the same!”

“There!” Iris hissed, halting in front of a counter that said
CHANEL
.

Tom saw a very thin, very elegant lady holding a tiny Chihuahua on one arm and browsing among the anti-wrinkle creams. Her hair was smooth and platinum blond. She wore very high heels and very red lipstick,
and her fingers sparkled with diamonds. Every now and then she halted and sniffed the air curiously.

“Good grief—Dahlia Pease-Blossom!” whispered Lorna.

“She’s holding up very well,” Iris whispered. “I know for a fact she’s two years older than me.”

“What d’you reckon she’s had done?”

“Ha! What hasn’t she had done? There’s enough Botox in there to paralyze a herd of buffalo!”

Both fairy godmothers tittered quietly—being snide about Dahlia had finally brought them together.

Dahlia Pease-Blossom was alone at the Chanel counter, so Lorna and Iris quietly went over and stood on either side of her. At the same moment their invisibility ran out.

“Hello, Dahlia,” Lorna said.

“Oh my g—” Dahlia was so shocked that the Chihuahua on her arm suddenly yelped and changed into a poodle. “Lorna Mustard—Iris Thingy! I thought I smelled magic!”

“MOTH!” Iris snapped furiously.

“Yes, of course—what on earth are you doing here?” Dahlia had recovered her glossy smile. “I know—you’re arranging a college reunion!”

“Not quite,” Lorna said. “This is about the godmother-summons—don’t pretend you didn’t get it. Jonas Harding is wanted by the Falconers, and they’re hunting for
his son.” She pulled Tom forward. “This is Tom, our godson.”

“Tom, darling!” Dahlia bent over to kiss him, wrapping him in a cloud of perfume. “Lovely to meet you! I see you got my handsome-token.”

“Hi,” Tom said politely.

“I’m sorry I missed the summons—I never take much notice of stuff from the Realm because it’s mostly junk mail these days. And I have been frightfully busy.”

“Don’t tell me,” Iris said. “You were having your nails done.”

Dahlia arched her perfect eyebrows. “If you must know, I was at my husband’s funeral.”

“Oh.”

“We didn’t have long together,” Dahlia sighed, “but we were blissfully happy until that coffee machine exploded! And after the funeral I had a lot of meetings with the poor darling’s bankers; then I had to sell his fleet of planes and the Impressionist paintings.…”

Lorna whistled. “Trust you to marry money!”

“Darling, I ALWAYS marry money.” She glanced at her gold watch. “Well, what do you want me to do for this handsome godson of ours?”

“Your duty,” said Lorna.

“You mean”—Dahlia looked into all their faces, one by one—“godmother duty?”

Tom’s spirits sank. Here was another godmother who
didn’t want to help him. Were all fairies except Lorna this unreliable?

Dahlia saw his disappointment and gave him a proper smile that made her tight face more wrinkled and much kinder. “Good gracious, you’re the spitting image of your father! I used to go out with him, you know. I think you’re going to be even more handsome.”

“Don’t embarrass the boy,” Lorna said. “He needs your help.”

Dahlia stopped smiling. “Magic help?”

“Obviously! We can’t do anything without magic.”

“Frightfully sorry, darling—I’m not involved in that sort of thing these days. I’ve forgotten every word of it.”

“What about the dog?” said Tom.

“What?” Dahlia looked down at her ex-Chihuahua, who was now a poodle. “Oh—I forgot you saw that. But really, it’s the only magic I use.”

“A likely story!” sniffed Iris. “You were the cleverest student in the whole college. You’d have done great things—if you hadn’t also been the prettiest.” She sounded rather bitter. “I’ve had to come out of retirement to do my godmother duty—at great personal inconvenience—and I don’t see why you can’t too.”

“Shhh!” Dahlia was suddenly still and alert. “I can smell something—we’re not the only fairies in this perfume department!”

Instantly the two other godmothers were on guard.
Lorna put a protective hand on Tom’s shoulder. He looked around at the other shoppers. They were all smartly dressed ladies, examining lipsticks and pots of face cream. Which of them was a Falconer?

“Look!” whispered Dahlia. “Over there—by the rack of exfoliating bath mitts!”

A tall lady in a yellow summer dress was stumbling about very oddly. She gazed around her with a wild, crazed look and suddenly sneezed so hard that she knocked over the rack of bath mitts, tripped and fell to the floor.

When she dragged herself to her feet, Tom burst out laughing—she had changed into Pindar Falconer, and he was still wearing the yellow dress. It was hilarious to see the look on his face when he realized and went bright red.

A second later he vanished, and a young shop assistant fainted.

None of the godmothers was laughing.

“We’re not safe here,” Dahlia said. “Let’s take a taxi to my place.”

T
om was glad they were traveling by ordinary, non-magical taxi. Flying made him very tired, and his stomach gurgled with hunger. It felt like months since he had woken up in Uncle Clarence’s bedroom. His godmothers talked anxiously about his cousin Pindar and how dangerous he was, but Tom couldn’t be scared of such a clown.

The taxi took them to a large white-painted house in a nice square in Chelsea. Dahlia was behaving like the perfect hostess—“Do come into the drawing room and make yourselves at home!” But Tom noticed that she double-locked the front door, and made the same quick
weaving movement with her hands that Lorna had used when she was “sealing” Mustard Manor.

“Cor!” Lorna dropped her plastic bags in a heap and sank into one of the sofas. “This is like something out of Buckingham Palace!”

“Yes, do put your bags down anywhere,” Dahlia said. “And do sit down.”

It was the grandest room Tom had ever been in. The curtains were pale-green silk. The wallpaper looked hand-painted and there were fat, deep sofas heaped with cushions.

Lorna kicked her shoes off. “Oof! Great to get the weight off my feet!”

“I can see that it must be quite a strain,” Dahlia said.

When she looked at Lorna there was a gleam in her eye that Tom didn’t quite like—as if she was laughing at her, and not in a kind way.

“Well, very nice,” Iris said, in a tight voice, “if a little cluttered.”

“Cluttered?” cried Dahlia. “So sorry! Is this better?”

She snapped her fingers and the room was suddenly stark and bare, with plain white walls, no curtains and hardly any furniture.

Lorna shrieked when the sofa vanished under her and she landed on the floor. “Ow! Stop showing off!”

Dahlia smiled and snapped her fingers again. The
room was back to normal—whatever “normal” meant in this house. Tom sat carefully next to Lorna, hoping the sofa wouldn’t vanish again.

“Tom, you must be ravenous,” Lorna said. “I know I am. Is there anything to eat?”

“Yes, of course,” Dahlia said. “I’ll call down to the kitchen. Which would you prefer, Tom—Pheasant Bordelaise à la Gaston, or burger and french fries?”

“Burger and french fries, please.”

“Make that two,” said Lorna. “And tell whoever it is to bring the ketchup.”

“Oh, he’ll bring everything. I have the most marvelous servants.”

Iris said, “I’ll have the pheasant—and please do something about that disgusting dog!”

The little dog on Dahlia’s arm now had the head of a poodle on the body of a miniature dachshund.

“Whoops, I wasn’t concentrating,” Dahlia said. The breed-shifting dog vanished, and she took a thin gold phone from her handbag, tapping out a text message with a red thumbnail. After this she served them all drinks from a carved cabinet—fresh orange juice for Tom and Kaulquappe and tonic for the godmothers.

The juice was cold and delicious. Tom leaned back on the soft cushions, looking more closely at the pictures around the room. They all seemed to be of old men in dark suits.

Dahlia saw him staring at a large painting of a gray-haired man with a large bald patch, above the fireplace. “That’s Mr. Grisling, my late husband,” she told him. “Such a darling man!”

Iris gave one of her disapproving sniffs. “And who are all the other old codgers?”

“My other ten late husbands.”

“ALL of them?” choked Lorna. “Did you marry a Welsh choir?”