Witches Incorporated Part 24

"No, of course it's not," she said. "And I do not think I was born knowing better than everyone else!"

"No?" said Reg. "Oh well. If you say so."

Melissande choked down the impulse to scream. Reg was the most impossible, infuriating, outrageous- "Hey!" Bibbie called from beyond the closed door. "Is anybody here?"

She marched to the bedsit door and flung it open. "Of course," she said, stamping into the office. "Where else would we be?"

"All right, calm down. There's no need to bite my head off," said Bibbie, perching on the edge of her desk.

"Well?" she said, ignoring that. "Did you bring the hexes?"

Bibbie rolled her eyes. "No. I just slaved through the night finishing the last of them, and making sure they worked, and then left them behind at the boarding house for Mistress Mossop to find. She snoops, you know. I'm starting to think I might have to take Monk up on his house-sharing offer after all."

"Good idea," said Reg, gliding in from the bedsit to land on her ram skull. "Then you can play chaperone and we can move in with you. I'd very much appreciate a bedroom of my own. Madam here snores like a combine harvester."

Melissande gasped. "I do not!"

"No?" said Reg. "Then get Mad Miss Markham to leave a recording incant on in the bedroom and prove me a liar."

"I don't care if Mel snores so loudly all the roof tiles fall off," snapped Bibbie. "Why would I want to share a house with two people who can't be bothered to say thank you after someone's slaved through the night on their behalf!"

Oh dear. Melissande exchanged a guilty glance with Reg and cleared her throat. "Sorry, Bibbie. Did you really slave through the night?"

Bibbie stifled a yawn. "I slaved through two nights," she said, waspish. "Because as you very well know my days have been spent slaving in here!"

"Yes, I do know," she said in a small voice. "And I appreciate it. We both appreciate it, don't we, Reg?"

"I'd appreciate a good night's sleep more," said Reg.

"Oh well," said Bibbie, with another of her lightning-swift mood shifts. "I suppose it could be worse. I could be impersonating a Wycliffe gel." She tipped her head, consideringly. "Because honestly, Mel, that awful blouse-and-skirt ensemble doesn't get any more attractive with the pa.s.sage of time."

Melissande looked down at her black-clad self and sighed. "It doesn't, does it?"

"And you being such a fashion plate I'm sure it's breaking your heart," said Reg. "But you need to glue the pieces back together again, ducky, because if you don't leave in the next five minutes you're not going to get into Wycliffe's early enough to set our trap. So haul out those hexes, Emmerabiblia, and let's get cracking."

The single most irritating thing about Reg was that too often she was right. "Yes, Bibbie," she said. "Quickly, explain what I'm supposed to do with them."

Bibbie reached into the carpetbag she'd dumped on her desk and pulled out a smoked-gla.s.s jar with its lid screwed on. "All right. So what you do is put a hex on any item you think is at risk of being stolen. Things that generally speaking stay put in the office, that don't have any business being taken out of it? Yes?"

Melissande pulled a face. "That's easier said than done. You're talking about practically everything in the place."

"Then choose the thief's favourite targets," said Bibbie. "Like Permelia's special biscuits. One hex for each item, and whatever you do be careful. Anyone who touches a hexed item with bare skin is sort of painted with a detectable thaumic signature, so whatever you do don't handle the hexes or the items you're marking without wearing gloves. Otherwise we'll be wasting a lot of time chasing you instead of our mystery pilferer." She held out the jar. "I made a hundred. Please don't tell me you'll need more than that."

"A hundred?" she said, cautiously taking the jar. "Bibbie, that must have cost a fortune. We may be getting more clients now but we can't afford-"

"Yes, well," said Bibbie, beautifully blushing. "You forget I'm a Markham, which means I'm not exactly poor."

Ambushed by sudden emotion, Melissande blinked hard then cleared her throat. "Oh, Bibbie. You used your own money? You shouldn't have done that."

"What are you talking about?" said Reg. "Of course she should. We each do what we can, ducky. You wave your tiara about, Little Miss Markham here empties her piggy bank and I-I-"

"Remind us of things we keep forgetting," said Melissande. "Especially when we don't want to remember them."

As her eyes met Reg's she managed a very small smile. Reg sniffed, pretending not to understand, but her feathers ruffled ever so slightly.

"Anyway," said Bibbie, and pulled a stoppered test tube out of the carpetbag. "Once you've marked all the at-risk items, put one of these hexes on all the doors and windows. Gloves again or there'll be h.e.l.l to pay. The two hexes react ant.i.thetically, you see. They're a lot like dogs and cats, they start snarling and spitting when they get too close to each other." She grinned. "Just like Monk and Aylesbury, actually. Probably that's what gave me the idea. Well. When that happens-" She handed over the stoppered test tube and pulled out a small blue crystal. "-this hex detector will light up. It's different from the first one we tried. Much more powerful, and operating on a different etheretic vibration."

Melissande shook her head. "That's marvellous, Bibbie." And it was. Her inventiveness was amazing. "Except-what happens if the thief triggers the hex detector when I'm not around to see it?"

"Well, if you're not on the premises then we're out of luck," said Bibbie. "But if you are-even if you're at lunch in the garden-the hex detector will still react. Its range is good enough, I made sure of that."

"And if it does go off while I'm at lunch?"

"Then you'll have to find a way to sort of-wave it past everybody," said Bibbie, shrugging. "It'll go off again when it detects the presence of the triggered hex-marker on the guilty party."

"Excellent," said Melissande. She retrieved her own carpetbag from the bedsit, stowed the smoked-gla.s.s jar, the stoppered test tube and the blue crystal hex detector inside, and straightened. "Is that it?"

"Not quite," said Bibbie, and fished again in her own carpetbag. "This is a confounder," she added, handing over a small perfume spritzer. "For the picking of locks both large and small. One tiny squirt in the keyhole will get you into Permelia's office, and anywhere else you need."

"A confounder," she repeated. "I see. Ah-something tells me this is a gift horse I shouldn't look in the mouth."

Bibbie grinned. "And something tells me you're right. Illegal doesn't begin to cover it."

"So is it one of Monk's little-"

"Monk?" said Bibbie. She sounded annoyed. "Why do you a.s.sume Monk had something to do with it? Honestly, Mel, if you let being sweet on my brother turn your brains to slush I'm going to be very disappointed in you."

"Sorry, sorry," she said hastily. "I wasn't thinking. So-you made it?"

Mollified, Bibbie tapped a finger to her nose. "Gift horse, remember? No peeking allowed. And whatever you do, don't let anyone catch you with it. Since it's a liquid hex, at a pinch you really can pretend it's perfume but I don't recommend more than a single short spritz. Now shoo. So many hexes to distribute, not very much time."

Melissande looked at Bibbie's inventive and illegal gift then closed her fingers around it. Saint Snodgra.s.s give me strength. "Fine. I'm shooing. But are you sure you'll be all right here on your own again? Maybe Reg should stay in the office today."

"No, maybe Reg shouldn't," said Bibbie, sharply. "Do you mind? It's bad enough when Gerald and Monk get all patriarchal on me. Don't you start or I'll have an apoplexy. Besides, that chap in Births, Deaths and Marriages I sweet-talked is letting me have a peek at some personal information about Permelia Wycliffe's gels today, remember?"

Oh. "Well, yes, but-"

"So probably, Mel, you should just wobble on your way, yes?" said Bibbie, with a dangerous smile.

"Yes," said Reg. "She should. And so should I. There's a tree in that employee garden with my name on it, unfortunately. But I'm telling both of you, duckies, I'm giving you fair warning: if that constipated male pigeon living in the roof of the R&D building tries one more time to look up my feathers those gels really will have a dead bird to scream about."

Uncomfortably aware that time wasn't on their side, Melissande took a cab almost the whole way to the old Wycliffe estate on the outskirts of West Ott, where the family company did its business. After paying the driver, hiding her wince behind a polite smile, she half-walked, half-jogged along the quiet road, through the open gates with their enormous "W"s and decorative ironwork airships, under the not-quite-life-sized tethered model airship and up the long tree-lined driveway towards the administration office.

According to her watch it was a few minutes after half-past six. The early autumn air had a nip to it, and the birds were yet to finish their rousing dawn chorus. Somewhere over to the left, behind a carefully cultivated swathe of greenery, Permelia was hopefully still abed in the family mansion. Ambrose, too. Unlike Monk, he'd been able to persuade his unwed sister to run his household for him.

Holding her breath, praying this wasn't the one morning that Permelia or Ambrose decided to greet the dawn in person, or that one of Ambrose's wizards hadn't succ.u.mbed to a fit of dedication-or worse, that officious Miss Petterly wasn't doing some investigating of her own-she crept to the administration office's front door, fished Bibbie's highly suspect confounder out of the carpetbag and squirted some hex over the front door's lock. There was a subdued hum, a discreet flash of green light, and the handle turned without resistance.

"Oh, Bibbie," she whispered. "Promise you'll only ever use your powers for good!"

Biting her lip with nerves, she let herself in to the ground-floor reception area. It was hushed and empty, thank Saint Snodgra.s.s. Miss Fisher, the receptionist, never arrived before eight. Climbing the stairs up to the office as quickly and quietly as she could, uncomfortably aware of her heart thudding against her ribs, she clutched the carpetbag in one hand, the confounder in the other and begged the muse of good luck not to desert her.

The door into the administration office was also locked. Melissande pressed her ear against it but couldn't hear a sound. Bibbie's confounder took care of that minor impediment and she found herself alone in the grey, cubicle-crammed dimness.

Oh, lord. Where to start, where to start...

Permelia's office seemed the logical place. Closing the door behind her, she put down the carpetbag then made her way through the gloom to the curtained window behind Permelia's desk. After letting in the morning light, she unlocked Permelia's private supply cupboard, put on the gloves she'd stuffed into the carpetbag and quickly hexed everything she could think of that the office thief might decide to pinch.

That done, she took a moment to inspect the crowded wall of framed photographs. Permelia starred in each one, the collection seeming to span at least three decades. There was Permelia at around Bibbie's age, standing beside a younger and slightly less flinty Orville Wycliffe than the one in the portrait. Behind them hovered an enormous tethered airship-the Ambrose. There didn't seem to be a corresponding photo of an airship called the Permelia. Sad, but perhaps not entirely unexpected. After all, Permelia was only a gel.

Other Permelias, gradually aging, proudly posed with various cakes and pies, each one adorned with either a ribbon or a cup or, in sixteen repet.i.tive cases, a Golden Whisk. The award's design hadn't changed a whit over the years. Many of the photographs showed Permelia with an a.s.sortment of apparently important and exotically-attired women from around the world: given the cake-themed badges pinned to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s it seemed reasonable to a.s.sume they were international sister-Guild members.

And lastly there was a very recent photo indeed: Permelia clutching her most controversial and hard-won seventeenth Golden Whisk.

"Blimey," she muttered. "That didn't take you long, Permelia."

Although really, could she blame the woman for surrounding herself with the trappings of her success? At least in the Baking and Pastry Guild Permelia was someone of influence and importance. In the Guild she wasn't treated like a housekeeper. In the Guild she wasn't a gel. Or if she was, at least she was the head gel.

I suppose it makes up for not having an airship named after you. Or being banned from setting foot in your own research laboratory.

Again, she was aware of that inconvenient tug of sympathy-but she thrust it aside, quickly, because time was marching on and she still had an entire office to hex.

First she took care of the contents of Miss Petterly's jealously guarded office supply cupboard. Then she hexed everything locked in the staff tea room's cupboard: packets of plain biscuits and sugar and all the teacups, just in case. After that she hexed the portable items on each cubicle's grim, impersonal desk: typewriter, abacus, pens and pencils, rulers.

Bibbie was right about going to Monk for help, drat her. Without his friend in the Births, Deaths and Marriages Bureau we'd never learn a thing about these girls. Honestly, would one little picture bring productivity screaming to a halt?

Last of all she hexed the windows and the door. Then, task finally accomplished, she bolted back downstairs and out to the employee garden.

"Well?" said Reg from her camouflaged position in the bushiest fig tree. "Any trouble?"

"Of course not," she said, shoving the carpetbag and her plain, work purse under a handy low-growing shrub. "Why would there be?"

Reg snorted. "Why does flypaper attract flies, ducky?"

Charming. "Everything's fine," she said. "Now all we have to do is wait."

"You can wait if you like," said Reg. "Me, I'm going back to sleep."

Yes, well, it was all right for Reg. "Fine," she said, feeling grumpy. "And I'm going for a walk."

As she left the garden she saw a posh silver car glide down the driveway towards the hallowed Research and Development complex, which was strategically distant from the administration building in case of unfortunate thaumaturgical accidents. As it pa.s.sed she caught a glimpse of the driver: none other than that handsome plonker Errol Haythwaite.

She looked at her watch, pinned tidily to her ghastly black blouse. Just gone half-past seven. Goodness, Errol started work early, didn't he? All the better to hide his treachery, perhaps? Curiosity piqued, she started down the long, hedge-trimmed driveway towards the sprawling R&D building.

Errol's flash car was the only vehicle in the staff car park adjacent to the main R&D laboratory. Squished against the hedge, peering through a straggly patch, Melissande watched him unfold himself from its sleek interior, retrieve an expensive-looking briefcase and even more expensive-looking staff from the pa.s.senger seat, secure the car and make his way to the laboratory. A touch of the staff to a bra.s.s plate beside the doors unlocked them, and he went in.

"Rats," she said, under her breath. "If only I could follow him inside. Saint Snodgra.s.s knows what he's getting up to in there."

On impulse she scuttled across the almost empty car park and over to the imposing laboratory complex. There were no windows along the front, but perhaps along the back? Hardly daring to breathe, she crept around the corner of the building and peered along its rear length. She was in luck. There was indeed a scattering of windows. None of them was open but not all were screened by curtains. And one of them, it turned out, belonged to Errol Haythwaite's office.

Nose pressed against the narrow width of uncurtained gla.s.s, quaking in fear that he'd look up and see her, Melissande held her breath again and spied on Gerald's nemesis and number one suspect.

Tall, lean and indisputably dazzling, Errol stood in front of a large drawing-desk, a series of blueprints spread out before him. Even though he was facing the window, he didn't notice he was being stared at, so intently was he focused upon his work. He'd taken off his expensive suit-coat and hung it on the back of his closed office door. His white shirt shone with a definite silkish shimmer, and his tiepin looked like solid gold. Definitely he wasn't short of dosh.

Melissande glared. Come on, you rich plonker, do something incriminating. You're owed such a smacking for the way you spoke to Gerald.

Errol, un.o.bliging, picked up a wax pen and began to scribble all over his blueprints. Every so often he paused and stood back to consider his handiwork. Sometimes he smiled, which made him even more handsome.

On the desk behind him, his crystal ball pulsed red. Irritated, Errol turned and glared at it. Almost ignored it... and then changed his mind. Tossing down the wax pen he answered his incoming call.

"Rats," said Melissande. She could see his lips move, but she couldn't hear a thing. "I wonder if Bibbie's invented an eavesdropping-hex too..."

Whatever was being said to Errol by his mystery caller, one thing was clear: he didn't like it. Not at all. Now he was pacing his small, tidy office, hands fisted on his hips, and as he strode in and out of view Melissande saw his face was contracted in a scowl. But even angry and upset he was still shockingly handsome.

Just like Lional. Don't let his looks fool you...

With Errol moving around so much it was far more likely he'd catch sight of her at his window. Time to go... especially since according to her watch it was nearly a quarter to eight and she still had to make her way back to the office.

She met up with Gerald on the way.

"Melissande!" he said, looking suitably Third Grade in a worn brown suit, a limp white shirt and slightly threadbare blue tie. His gaze narrowed suspiciously. "What have you been doing?"

Trust him to notice. "Doing, Gerald? I don't know what you mean."

With a quick look around to make sure no-one was coming, he took her elbow and tugged her against the hedge. "You know perfectly well what I mean. The only thing at the end of this driveway is the R&D lab. Melissande, please, stay out of my case. I know you're only trying to help, but you can't."

"No?" she said, tugging her elbow free.

"No."

"Does that mean you're not interested in what I just saw?"

A riot of emotions chased over his face. "Melissande..."

She patted his cheek. "I'll tell you if you'd like to know. I'll even waive my regular fee as a professional courtesy."

He closed his eyes. "Yes. I'd like to know."

"Say please."

"Please."

Two more wizards were walking down the driveway. As much as she enjoyed teasing Gerald, she'd have to make this fast. "Someone contacted Errol," she said quickly. "Through his crystal ball. Whoever it was made him very angry."

Gerald took her arm again, his eyes intent, his grip veering towards painful. "Who was it? What did they talk about?"

"I don't know," she said. "I couldn't hear, I could only see. Gerald-"

Abruptly aware of himself, he let go of her arm. "Sorry. I'm sorry. Of course you couldn't hear him, Errol's got his office thaumaturgically sound-proofed. But did you see anything else?"