Trick or Treat Part 7

'It matches how I feel, Midshipman. I was up until all hours with a magical problem of Meroe's.'

I poured myself another cup of coffee. The first ones had gone down without touching the sides. Jason gave me a considering look from under his white cap.

'All the bread is on, m.u.f.fins are ready to be mixed, we've just the fairy cakes and the carrot cake. You could grab a couple more hours' sleep,' he suggested.

'Nice thought, but I can manage. Thank you, Midshipman.'

'You said there was a magical problem, Captain?' he asked hesitantly.

'Yes?'

'There's a horrible thing stuck to the door of Insula,' he told me. 'I saw it when I went out to empty the bin. Maybe it's a curse or something?'

'Show me,' I said, and he led me round to our elaborate front door.

Horrible was right. A lump of red tissue, smelling strongly of blood, was fixed to our beautiful Roman ironwork. I didn't want to, but I examined it more closely with the aid of my torch. It was, I judged, a sheep's heart, wound around with barbed wire. It had thorns or nails stuck in it. Altogether as nasty an object as I had seen since I last saw the Attorney-General smiling.

'I'm going to put on gloves and get this off,' I told Jason. 'Someone might see it and have a heart attack-sorry. Then we can take it to Meroe when she wakes up.'

'You're going to touch it?' He recoiled.

'Only as much as I have to,' I said, hurrying him back to the bakery. 'Go get me a cardboard box and the red-handled pliers.'

I left Jason to compound m.u.f.fins in the nice safe lighted bakery and went back to the door with my pliers. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make sure that this... thing, this fetish, was going to be hard to remove. It was pitch black, and I could feel a cold breath down the back of my neck. The dark lane developed odd clunking and cracking noises, like footsteps. I wished that someone was with me, even the Mouse Police. I had to hold the torch in my mouth to see what I was doing because I needed to use both hands, and I wondered what the police patrol would make of me if they saw me.

Eventually I untwisted all the wires and dropped the heart, with a sickening thud, into one of my nice cardboard boxes, and I took it away. What to do with it? The person who had attached it to our door meant us ill, that was clear. The whole object was soaked in malice. I didn't want to take it inside.

I left the box by the back door in Calico Alley, peeled off the thin plastic gloves and dumped them in the bin, and washed my hands very thoroughly with rose-geranium scented soap and water.

'You got it?' asked Jason nervously.

'I got it. It's outside. Not to worry, Jason. If this is a magical duel, we've got Meroe on our side.'

'Oh, right,' he agreed, a smile beginning to dawn on his face. 'We do, don't we?'

'Yes,' I affirmed.

'Boy, is that dude going to be sorry,' he said.

'He is,' I agreed.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The Mouse Police had investigated the box, sneezed, and left it alone, which led me to believe that it wasn't just a lump of meat, upon which they would have dived with cries of joy. On the occasions I have brought them the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs from a steak, for instance, there has been a scrimmage which would have disgraced a parliamentary banquet or Roman orgy. I rescued it from the hands of Ma'ani when he came to collect the bread. It is no part of my charitable duty to curse the homeless. When he saw what was in the box his face drained of colour, leaving it grey.

'Bad magic,' he stammered, backing away.

'Yes, and when Meroe sees it, the curse will be winging its way back to the sender with additional postage,' I told him. He smiled.

'That Meroe!' he said admiringly. 'She's a strong-minded woman all right. Good morning, Corinna,' he added. He hefted the sack of bread and went away down the alley, keeping to the side away from the object.

86.

Jason said hopefully, 'Can I go and call Meroe? It's seven am, she ought to be up to feed the cat by now.'

'No, she gets to sleep as long as she likes,' I said firmly. 'You're safe in here, Midshipman. Show some command of yourself, man!' I snapped, and his spine, I swear, stiffened. After he has read his way through Hornblower I am getting him onto the works of Patrick O'Brian. I always wanted to be the captain of a sailing ship.

'Aye, aye, sir!' said Jason, showing backbone, pluck and grit.

Bread happened. Because it was the end of the week, I sat down to do the accounts, and found that things were bad. Not dire, but not good. If Best Fresh continued to take my custom away for a few months more, I would be barely breaking even. I could, of course, close the shop and tout for some more bread orders from the restaurants. That would mean I'd have to sack Kylie and Goss though, and until their film and TV careers took off, I was their sole source of revenue, apart from their parents. I really didn't want to disappoint them. d.a.m.n.

I was still staring at these uninspiring calculations when Meroe came in and I gladly left the books and escorted her into the alley, where sunlight now fell on the cardboard box. She knelt to open it with the tips of her fingers and then shut it again, very fast.

'Where was it?' she asked tersely.

'On the front door,' I said. 'Jason saw it first, and I went and got it before anyone else could see it. It's a curse, isn't it?'

'Oh yes, a very old one,' she answered, still on her knees. 'I'll take it. You didn't touch it with your naked hands, Corinna?'

'No, I had gloves on. Why? Is it poisoned? The Mouse Police sneezed at it.'

'As well they might,' said Meroe abstractedly.

'Does this have anything to do with your treasure hunters?' I asked.

'Hard to think not,' she said. 'But we shall find out soon enough. Bella and I will be busy tonight. Well done, Corinna, it would not have been at all fortunate to leave that object where it was. And brave of you to go near it,' she added, getting to her feet and picking up the damp cardboard box.

'Not at all,' I said, and watched her walk away, very glad to banish my doorstep of that horrible burden.

'Good riddance,' said Jason, echoing my thought.

I wondered what Meroe was going to do with the heart and what she would subsequently do to the person who sent it, then decided that I didn't really want to know, and it was time to open the shop and let my poor starving midshipman run to the galley for his breakfast.

Today I had Goss in a blue miniskirt and matching sort of tied up at the front bodicey thing. In eyelet lace. When I think that Grandma Chapman's grandma used to make reams of that eyelet lace to trim the unmentionables of the virtuous, I could giggle. Fashion doth make fools of us all. Except, of course, me. In the event that shabby blue tracksuits become fashionable, I may have to resign from the human race. And I should be careful with that sort of comment, because look what happened with Ugg boots . . .

Goss bounced into the shop, clanged the racks apart, slammed the cash float into the register and announced at the top of her voice, 'I've got a part! Me and Kylie both! It's, like, excellent!'

'Wonderful,' I said, much soothed in conscience. 'When do you start?'

'Monday,' she said. 'But Cherie said she could do the shop for you, Corinna. Some of the time. But isn't it great?' she demanded, launching herself at me and hanging around my neck. 'I'm first shop girl and Kylie's second shop girl in a new soap called Visitors! We've got three lines!'

'Wonderful,' I said, hugging her thin little body. 'Each or between you?'

'Each,' she replied, giggling.

'Great.'

She skipped into the bakery to tell Jason.

Daniel came at about eleven, just when the shelves were beginning to look empty. He seemed pale and distracted.

'Come to dinner tomorrow night?' he asked. 'George is cooking. She's hauled in a whole load of stuff.'

I was about to snap that I was in need of sleep rather than George's company, that in fact I would rather dine with the prime minister or any other pond dweller than George, when I saw how drained he looked and relented. Whatever George wanted with Daniel, it wasn't making him a happy camper.

'All right, tomorrow is fine,' I said. 'I'll be in bed early tonight. I was up late last night.'

'Trouble?' he asked, taking my hand.

'Trouble,' I agreed. 'Magical trouble. Meroe is dealing with it,' I added.

He smiled faintly. There were dark marks under his eyes and his hand had a gash across the back. 'That ought to make it really sorry that it bothered you,' he said. 'Come up to my place about seven?'

'Seven it is,' I agreed, and Daniel went away. d.a.m.n. I hadn't asked him why we had gone to see Old Spiro, which I had meant to do as soon as he surfaced.

'What's wrong with the dude?' asked Jason. 'I used to look like that when-'

'No,' I said firmly. 'I don't think so.'

'No,' Jason concurred, shaking his head. 'But he's not good, is he?'

'No,' I had to agree with my apprentice. 'No, he isn't.'

And there being nothing else I could do, I sold bread until three, when I closed the shop, loaded the sack for the Soup Run, paid my helpers and bade them have a happy weekend, and carried myself and my cat up to my own apartment, where we needed some lunch and a quiet afternoon reading our detective story.

And that is precisely what we got. I settled down on the sofa with Horatio initially on my lap, and then snuggled in next to my hip, where he likes to be. He does not trust me not to leap up if the phone rings, and this way he is not displaced if I move. I made myself a cup of herbal tea which Meroe had prescribed for stress. It tasted like old, curried gra.s.s but seemed to counteract the effects of the coffee I had been drinking. I read, enthralled, of the impossible romance about which Jade Forrester writes so convincingly, and when her Harry got together with his lover, it was both triumphant and utterly likely. In another universe, of course, but that was where I had been for the last four hours. And very nice too. I did not much admire the universe I was coming back to inhabit.

And I was dining alone. I put a block of my own sauce into the microwave to thaw and put on the pot for orecchiette pasta. I was not in the mood to struggle with anything, much less fettucine, by which I have been defeated before.

The bell rang. It was Meroe. She held up a basket.

'I've got half of dinner,' she told me.

'And I've got the other half,' I said. 'Puttanesca, if that suits you.'

'It does,' she said.

90.

I added another block of frozen sauce to the microwave and threw the pasta into the boiling water. Meroe laid out plates, put her salad leaves into my wooden salad bowl and poured the dressing over it. I know that this dressing is only composed of lemon juice, virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano, because I have watched Meroe make it, but it tastes better than any combination of those ingredients I have managed to produce. I left her to crush garlic for the garlic bread and stirred my pots. I heard a thud and turned to see Meroe enjoying this culinary task. She was crushing garlic with the flat of a knife and her fist, and that garlic knew it had been in a fight.

'That's one allium bulb which will never threaten us again,' I said.

'I'm full of negative emotions,' she confessed.

'Because of Barnabas?' I asked.

'Because of Barnabas, and this whole flood of witches into my s.p.a.ce. In the old days in Rumania the number of witches in any coven was one and if a witch strayed into another witch's territory she would be warned off.'

'Or turned into a frog.'

'That, too,' she agreed, slathering garlic and b.u.t.ter into slits cut in a baguette. 'But here there are a hundred witches, all proclaiming that they are witches, and it...'

'Makes you nervous?'

'Yes,' she admitted.

'And you think they might have something to do with the outbreak of madness in the city.'

'That's very astute of you,' she observed, wrapping the bread in foil and stowing it in the oven. 'You must have been watching my reactions.'

'I watch everyone's reactions,' I told her.

She dragged back her long black hair and knotted it behind her neck.

'True. Yes, I did wonder. It's only been happening since they came to town. All this magic must have some sort of psychic effect.'

'Yes, but... hang on, the pasta's done.'

The next few minutes were spent in decanting and lavishing the thin, spicy tomato sauce onto the pasta, adding freshly ground pepper and Parmesan cheese and the laying out of the garlic bread and the salad. I know that garlic bread is a fashion which has come and gone, but I don't give, as Jason would say, a flying. I like garlic bread. So does Meroe. And garlic is good for you. It keeps away colds, although that may work by repelling all other humans who might breathe germs on you.

I poured myself a small gla.s.s of chateau collapseau, but Meroe only wanted water. The pasta was perfectly cooked, just beyond al dente. If I want something to bounce back when bitten, I'll eat erasers.

'Why do they call it puttanesca?' Meroe asked, taking a big mouthful and relishing the taste.

'In the manner of wh.o.r.es? Because the working girls came home to their apartment and made a sauce out of whatever was in the cupboard-olives, anchovies, tomato pa.s.sata doubtless sent from their home village by their doting mothers. Some people put chili in it but I don't like chili. I cook up a big pot of it now and again and then freeze it in one person serves for when I don't feel like cooking.'

'I'm glad you do. I didn't feel like cooking either.'