Pure Dead Magic (2 page)

“Nightmare Nanny,” said Pandora.

“What does that make old furry-legs downstairs?” said Titus, allowing the screen saver to appear. A lurid pattern of purple bats flittering across a computer-generated landscape replaced the view of the ideal candidate downstairs.

“Come on, stinkpod,” he said, picking up his baby sister and opening the door for Pandora.

“She
hasn’t,
has she?” Pandora glared at Damp.

“Oh yes, you have, haven’t you, horrible? Phwoarrr …” Titus held Damp at arm’s length. “Let’s go and meet Nanny, shall we?”

“Shall we dress up?” said Pandora. “Flour in the hair? Lipstick blood? Fangs?”

“I suppose so,” said Titus, with little enthusiasm. “Rats too?”

“Perfect,” Pandora called over her shoulder as she ran downstairs holding her nose. “Although Damp’s derriere ought to be quite enough to put any nanny off.”

Titus followed downstairs, breathing through his mouth. He opened the kitchen door and sighed. Interviewing prospective nannies had been fun at first—introducing them to the pregnant rat Multitudina, meeting Strega-Nonna in her deep freeze, Tock the croc, and all the other scream-inducing creatures that were part of life at StregaSchloss—but after one had watched the nannies turn pale and begin to twitch twenty times or more, the novelty and the glee began to pall. Frankly, it was boring. Nannies were boring. Frightening them was boring. And listening to them try to ingratiate themselves with the family was MEGAboring.

Titus watched as Pandora sprinkled flour in her hair in preparation for greeting the new nanny.

“Do we
have
to meet her?” Titus said, opening the fridge and gazing at the woeful lack of contents within.

“If we don’t,” Pandora said in the voice used for explaining large ideas to small people with even smaller IQs, “Mum might go ahead and hire her, and then we’d end up with someone as horrible as that one who said, ‘Much as it pains me to admit, children occasionally need to be spanked soundly for their own good.’ ”

Titus slammed the fridge shut and kicked it. Hard. “I wonder if she tasted as bad as she sounded?” he said.

Pandora hauled Damp out of the compost bucket, scattered
a handful of flour over the baby’s head, and smiled at her brother. “Only Tock could answer that,” she said.

Upstairs the doorbell rang.

Latch Undone

W
ith a sound that set his teeth on edge, Latch undid bolts, opened padlocks, and turned a vast key in a rusty lock. “You rang?” he said, stating the obvious.

Latch believed in wearing the classic butler’s costume of white shirt, black tie, and black jacket. Admiring his reflection in the hall mirror for the seventeenth time that morning, he thought how the overall effect was ruined by the sight of his own hairy knees peeking shyly from beneath a kilt of uncertain provenance.

He scratched furiously, for his butler’s kilt had been pressed into service as a dog blanket before it became the uniform of a servant. In all other respects, his job as Schloss butler was perfect, for it gave him a large salary, use of a small car, three rooms in the Schloss attic, and all in return for a pleasant manner with a door, being able to iron newspapers, balance the morning mail on a silver tray—and wear this unspeakable woolly skirt.

Scowling horribly, Latch opened the door. On the doorstep stood a woman. She was middle-aged, plump, carried a large handbag of battered plastic, and smelled of lavender.

“Good morning,” she said, dragging her gaze upward from Latch’s knees to meet his eyes. “I have an appointment with Mrs. Borgia.”

Latch stared with a momentary lapse of manners. The woman’s rolling R’s sounded like the deep purr of a fireside cat and the lilt in her voice spoke of midges, peat bogs, sheep’s wool ensnared in barbed wire, and the underfoot resilience of heather. Latch was briefly transported back in time to his youth and then instantly hurled back into the present.

“Are you going to keep gawking at me like a sheep or are you going to let me in, laddie?”

Latch cleared his throat, shuddered slightly, and said, “If modom would be good enough to furnish me with her name?”

“Heavens, laddie, what a pompous little person you are. My name’s Flora Morag Fionn Mhairi ben McLachlan-Morangie-Fiddach. Mrs. McLachlan to youse. Now will you let me in?” And pushing past Latch, Mrs. McLachlan strode into the great hall of StregaSchloss.

The morning sun highlighted the fact that the house had been sadly neglected. Cobwebs drooped across the ceiling, the crystal chandelier didn’t twinkle, and crumpled envelopes filled the empty marble fireplace. Breathing in the combined perfumes of beeswax and old dog with an undertone of log fire and full diaper, Mrs. McLachlan came to a halt at a large hall table, which was strewn with bills, letters, glossy catalogs, an assortment of leashes, ropes, and chains, and some exceedingly large dog collars.

Latch closed the front door, marched past Mrs. McLachlan, and threw open a door into the darkest and most depressing room in StregaSchloss. “The discouraging room, modom. If you’ll just take a seat, I’ll inform Signora Strega-Borgia of your arrival.”

Latch bowed Mrs. McLachlan into the cramped waiting room and closed the door on her. “A McLachlan-Morangie-Fiddach!” he muttered. She’d probably brought her own kilt.

As the butler’s footsteps receded down the corridor, Mrs. McLachlan peered at the only seat in the discouraging room. This was a sofa that looked about as unwelcoming as it was possible to be without barbed wire, large signs saying KEEP OFF, and packs of patrolling Dobermans. Mrs. McLachlan waited. A clock somewhere distant chimed the hour. Far away, a phone rang several times and stopped.

Mrs. McLachlan prodded a sofa cushion and sighed. Despite her recent promise to herself, this was one of those times where just one little magical tweak would make life so much easier. With a furtive glance around herself to make absolutely sure that no one could see what she was about to do, she opened her handbag. From deep inside it, she removed a small plastic case. She undid a hidden clip and a tiny screen popped up, revealing a keyboard underneath. Hastily looking over her shoulder, she pinned her tongue between her teeth to aid concentration and typed in S.P.R.I.N.G.S., pressed a key named TRASH, re-typed G.O.O.S.E.F.E.A.T.H.E.R., then pressed a key named REPLACE. She pointed the whole thing at the sofa and undid her tongue from her teeth.

There was a noise like that of someone being punched in the stomach with a vast marshmallow. A sort of
whufffff.
The sofa
instantly looked like it had only just limped through three rounds with a heavyweight boxing champion. The sofa slumped, it bulged, it oozed saggily. Had it not been a sofa, it might have coughed and spat out a few broken teeth. Now it looked as if you could sit on it without it putting up a fight.

Mrs. McLachlan smiled. She replaced her case in her handbag and sat heavily on the sofa. The sofa surrendered. A clock somewhere chimed quarter past the hour.

Hiring Flora

“H
old
still,
” commanded Titus.

“I’m trying to,” said Pandora, “but Damp wants to hold the lipstick.… No!
Damp!
Spit it out! Look at her, Titus, she looks like she fell from a great height and used her lips as a brake. Oh, Damp, don’t dribble.…”

“What a disgusting baby,” said Titus lovingly. “I think she’s perfect for a bit of nanny-baiting, aren’t you, Damp?” He stood back to admire the effect.

Damp’s bottom lip quivered ominously.

“And now she’s crying … told you she’d be perfect,” Titus said, turning to grin at his mirrored reflection.

Pandora shifted Damp onto her other hip and gave the baby a half-eaten cookie. Stopped in mid-wail by the appearance of food, Damp gazed up at her big sister, then risked a look at Titus.

“You look
hideous,
” Pandora said approvingly.

Titus smirked, then hastily readjusted a set of glow-in-the-dark
fangs, patted his slicked-down hair and pulled the collar of his cloak tight around his throat. “This ought to do the trick,” he said.

“Exit one nanny,” Pandora agreed. “Hold Small-and-Smelly till I sort out my veil.” She passed the baby over and began to drape her head and shoulders in tattered muslin. Damp made a grab for Titus’s fangs.

“Move over, would you?” Pandora nudged her brother. “Stop hogging the mirror.”

The three children gazed at their joint reflections. From the mirror, three small vampires gazed back.

“Ready?” Titus wrapped Damp securely in his cloak and opened the kitchen door.

“
Got
you!” Pandora plucked something off the kitchen table and instantly stuffed it down the front of her dress.

“Is that what I think it is?” groaned Titus. “Oh, Pandora, you’re so
gross.
”

“Yup,” said Pandora, gliding out of the kitchen in a swirl of muslin. “Let’s hope the new nanny thinks so too.”

Latch stood statue-still inside the door of the discouraging room, watching in disgust as his employer, Signora Strega-Borgia, fell under the spell of Mrs. McLachlan (
“Call me Flora, dear”
).

Signora Strega-Borgia was enchanted. At long last, here was a
normal
person. A person whose day would be full of nursery teas, changing diapers, singing lullabies, and reading stories about happy families of fluffy bunnies. Stories in which Mother Rabbit wasn’t a struggling student witch, and Father Rabbit hadn’t hopped out of the burrow vowing never to return.…

Three weeks ago, her husband, Signor Strega-Borgia, had stormed out of their family home in a temper and since then StregaSchloss had been shrouded in a veil of gloom. Despite the fact that their school was shut for the summer, the children rapidly turned mutinous, the staff grew surly, and everyone spoke only in monosyllabic grunts. Dust and cobwebs began to accumulate, giving the whole Schloss an air of neglect. It was as if a fog had descended on the house—everything was colored in shades of gray, and every day was a Monday.

Signora Strega-Borgia choked back a sob and peered hopefully at the woman in front of her. And there, now, in tweeds and sensible shoes, sat an unlikely savior. Here was Nanny McLachlan, who brought with her a blast of bracing Highland air, a gale that might sweep away dust and cobwebs, put a gleam back in the children’s eyes, and paint the color back into all their lives. Or at the very least she would be able to rustle up a pan of fries that didn’t cause the children to make gagging noises.…

The sound of labored breathing through the keyhole interrupted Signora Strega-Borgia’s reverie. “Latch, could you let the children in? I think it’s time they met their new nanny.”

Latch opened the door with a tug, and Titus, Pandora, and Damp fell into the discouraging room, thwarted in their attempts to eavesdrop.

“Get
off
me,” roared Pandora, “you’re tearing my veil!”

“My fangs are
caught
in your stupid veil, let go of my cloak!”

Squashed under her warring siblings, Damp began to wail.

“Poor wee mite,” said a voice, “will she come to me? There, pet, what’s this all over your face, och, what a mess you’re in.” Mrs. McLachlan scooped Damp onto her lap, cradled her gently
against her pillowy chest, and stroked her baby-fluffed head. Damp felt warm and safe. She plugged her lipstick-smeared mouth with a well-sucked thumb, burrowed deeper into that chest, and fell fast asleep.

Blast, thought Latch, she’s got the job.

“I’ve never seen Damp ever do that before,” said Signora Strega-Borgia in a reverential voice. “Thank you, Mrs. McLachlan. Now, Titus, Pandora, disentangle yourselves and meet your new nanny. This, my darlings, is Mrs. McLachlan.”

“Hi,” said Pandora in a tone of colossal disinterest.

“Bride of Dracula?” said Mrs. McLachlan. “It’s a bonny costume, dear, but did you know you’ve got a baby rat dangling from your bodice?”

“For heaven’s sake, Pan!” roared Signora Strega-Borgia, losing her cool. “Did you let Multitudina out with her brood again? How many times do I have to tell you that I take a very dim view of free-range rodents.…”

“Mum! Don’t start,” moaned Pandora.