Magicalamity (8 page)

Dahlia stiffened. “I’ve had a lot of tragedy in my life. Every time I get married, some hideous accident comes along and kills my poor husband. Before Mr. Grisling there was Mr. Fortescue—I begged him not to use that lawn mower! That’s him, on the little table beside you.”

Lorna peered at the small photograph of what looked like an egg with glasses. “I can see why you only keep a tiny picture of this one.”

“Looks aren’t everything,” Dahlia said coldly. “Mr. Trent—who came before Mr. Fortescue—wasn’t what you’d call classically handsome, but he had a beautiful nature. We had three wonderful weeks together before the hang-gliding disaster. I didn’t stop crying all the time I was selling his factories.”

Tom was starting to be uncomfortable, and he could see that Lorna and Iris felt the same way. Lorna was scowling, and Iris’s lipless dinosaur mouth was as jagged as barbed wire. It was impossible not to think that there
was something rather suspicious about the way Dahlia kept losing her husbands and gaining their money. What had she done to them?

There was a knock at the door and a gray-haired man in a white jacket wheeled in a trolley laden with food. Very quickly and quietly he set out supper on the coffee table—two elegant plates of Pheasant Bordelaise à la Gaston for Dahlia and Iris, and two magnificent plates of burger and fries for Lorna and Tom.

Tom was a little disturbed to notice the strange blankness in the servant’s eyes. It reminded him of the way Iris’s girls had looked at Crackdown Park.

The man bowed and silently left the room. Tom started to eat the burger, which was fantastic, as Lorna fell on her fries with a groan of happiness. Her jumpsuit was soon decorated with blobs of ketchup.

“Very tasty,” said Iris. “I must say, I can’t fault the food.”

Dahlia still smiled, but there was a dangerous glint in her eye. “I’m sure you can fault something, Iris—it’s coming back to me now. You always did love to criticize.”

“I speak as I find,” Iris said. “And if you’ve given up magic, I’ll eat my wings.”

“Of course I dabble a bit.” Dahlia shrugged crossly. “Don’t we all?”

“I don’t use magic to marry people and then MURDER them, thank you very much!”

Tom put down his burger. The word had been said, and he couldn’t look at Dahlia.

She was as cool as a cucumber. “Murder? Oh, darling—don’t be silly.”

“What REALLY happened to your husbands? And don’t give me any rubbish about exploding coffee machines,” said Iris.

“If you murdered them,” Lorna said, “that’s a major violation of the fairy code.”

“Oh, pooh!” snapped Dahlia. “For the last time, I haven’t murdered anyone! Darling, I couldn’t murder a fly!”

Tom glanced at the portrait of Mr. Grisling above the fireplace. “Hey!” He’d shouted it out before he knew what he was doing. All three godmothers turned to look at him. He pointed at the portrait. “That’s the same guy who brought the food!”

“Good grief, he’s right!” cried Lorna. “The late Mr. Grisling isn’t late at all! She’s found a way of turning him into a slave and nicking all his money!”

Dahlia looked sulky. “You make it sound so vulgar.” She caught Tom’s eye. “It’s really not as bad as that, darling—I don’t want you to think I’m the wrong sort of fairy.”

Lorna chuckled with her mouth full. “How many slaves have you got, then?”

“Eleven,” Dahlia said.

“I thought you’d had twelve husbands,” Iris said. “Where’s the other one?”

“He wasn’t a mortal. Don’t you remember? My first husband was a Cornish piskie—Sir George Trebonkers. Looking at a picture of him would be too painful. After our divorce he went back to his ghastly castle in the Realm. The last I heard he was shacked up with some goblin or other. So much for love!” Dahlia sighed.

“Ha! I could imagine so when its interchangeable with slave labor,” said Iris.

Lorna chuckled unkindly. “That’s a bit rich coming from you!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You cast spells on children and make them steal for you.”

“Does she indeed?” snapped Dahlia. “She goes all goody-goody about my husbands, and she’s Fagin in a cardigan! Don’t you preach at me, Iris Thingy!”

Iris’s face flushed a dull red. “It’s MOTH, thank you very much! I use the money I get for the benefit of the school! It pays for scholarships for poor girls! I don’t use my magic to turn a lot of decent men into slaves!”

“No—because it takes a bit more than magic—and you never had the right equipment!”

“Pooh!” shouted Iris. “At least I’m not a wrinkled old tart full of Botox!”

Dahlia hissed, “You still haven’t forgiven me, have you? I had Jonas and you didn’t—and you can’t get over it!”

Iris’s blush deepened until her face was nearly magenta. “He wasn’t in love with you!”

“Maybe not,” Dahlia said. “But he wasn’t in love with Milly, either! And you know it, Iris Wasp!”

“MOTH!” shrieked Iris.

“Hey!” Lorna cried out sharply, her mouth full of burger. “The boy!” She glanced at Tom. “How d’you think he likes hearing about his dad’s love life?”

For a split second Dahlia was confused. If her forehead hadn’t been so tight she would have scowled. “All right, we won’t rake up the past.”

“It’s just silly,” Lorna said, “now that we’re all old.”

“Speak for yourself!” snapped Dahlia. “You look NINETY and your bum’s so big it has its own POSTCODE!”

Lorna’s face became thunderous—Tom had never seen her so angry. She sprang to her feet. “I like having a big bum! You should try it sometime!”

She gabbled a few words, and Dahlia let out a bloodcurdling scream—“ARRGHH!” There was a ripping sound. Her bum had grown so huge that it had burst right out of her tight black skirt. Lorna and Iris both broke into howls of laughter.

“Oh, very funny!” Dahlia magicked back her slender figure and quickly checked her reflection in the big mirror. “If you want to behave like a cow, Lorna Mustard, you can BE a cow!” She raised her arm.

“NO!” shouted Tom. “Stop it! Stop fighting!” He was suddenly furious—his dad was being hunted and all they could do was squabble like little girls. “Dahlia—don’t you DARE turn Lorna into a cow! She’s been great to me when you and Iris didn’t want to know! And she’s a much nicer fairy—she doesn’t cast spells on humans to make money! You both say you loved my dad—but Lorna was the only one who kept her promise to him!”

There was silence, and the three fairies stared at their godson.

“Thanks, Tom,” Lorna said gruffly. “Sorry I lost my temper.”

“The demisprite is right to stand by his true friends.” Iris said.

“Tom, darling!” Dahlia swooped down to kiss his cheek. “You’re Jonas all over again—he always used to break up our little arguments. You’re right—we should be thinking about how to help him. You’d better stay here, I suppose—I’ll get one of the husbands to make up the beds.”

“Does this mean you’re going to help us?” Iris asked.

“My dear Iris, I don’t have any choice, and neither do you. We each signed that godmother parchment in
blood. If we ignore our duty, Tom has the right to take us to court. Goodness knows I’ve bent a few fairy laws, but I was always very careful not to break them.”

“I don’t like staying in this house while you’re keeping all those slaves,” Iris said, “but since you ARE keeping them, tell one of them to bring me a pot of strong tea. And I’d prefer a bedroom with a garden view.”

“I’ll sleep anywhere,” said Lorna, who had started eating again. “But it’s not right, Dahlia. You’ll have to set those poor chaps free.”

Tom was glad she had spoken up for the enslaved husbands; it made him very uneasy to be waited on by these millionaires and captains of industry. “There must be people who are sad because they think your husbands are dead,” he said impulsively. “It’s mean to let them go on being sad.”

For the very first time Dahlia looked seriously startled. She stared at Tom and her tight cheeks turned a little red. “You really are so like your father! And you make me wonder what he’d think of me if he were here—perhaps I have been a tad strict with my staff. Perhaps I should let them out into the garden sometimes.”

Tom and Lorna looked at each other. “You’re not getting the point,” Lorna said. “Jonas would say you were breaking the spirit of the law by being cruel to mortals. We’re not supposed to exploit them.”

“Oh, everyone does it!” Dahlia shrugged impatiently.
“And I’m not being cruel to them—they have luxurious quarters downstairs, and they don’t have all the worry of thinking for themselves. Come along, Tom—I’ll show you up to your bedroom.”

Tom had the feeling she was using him as an excuse not to talk about her enslaved husbands. He could tell that Dahlia was the leading fairy of the three godmothers. The other two respected her cleverness and were slightly afraid of her. Was he afraid of Dahlia? He tried to make up his mind as he walked up the stairs behind her. It was obvious, from the way she treated the husbands, that she didn’t give a toot about mortals. Unlike Iris, however, she didn’t seem to mind demisprites.

And she had once been in love with his dad. So had Iris, and Milly Falconer. Tom didn’t like thinking about this; it was embarrassing and made him feel he didn’t know his own father. Did his mother (who sometimes giggled at Dad’s paunch, and said his gray hair was like an old nest) have any idea about his past life as a pinup and punk rocker?

“This will be your bedroom while you’re staying here.” Dahlia opened a door and led him into a room lined with posters of singers and bands Tom had never heard of. Three electric guitars hung above the fireplace, and there was a drum kit in the bay window. A notice board near the door was covered with old school
timetables and blurry photos of groups of boys making faces. It was one of the coolest bedrooms Tom had ever seen.

“It belonged to my son, Justinian,” Dahlia said. “When he was a teenager.”

“Your son?” It was hard to picture this elegant, rather wicked fairy as anyone’s mother.

She smiled. “He’s grown up now, of course. You won’t have heard of him, but in the Realm he’s a rock star—Jay Trebonkers.”

“A rock star!” Tom was impressed. “What kind of music does he play? What was his last big hit?”

“He’s got a number one at the moment, called ‘Old Fairies Suck.’ ” She pointed to the notice board. “That’s Justinian—the one with the pointed ears.”

It was fascinating to see photos of this boy who had large pointed ears—in real life, too, not in some sci-fi drama.

“The old piskie families all have those ears,” Dahlia said. “Anyway, if there’s anything you need, ring the bell on the mantelpiece and one of the husbands will come.” In the doorway, halfway out of the room, she halted and turned round sharply. “You know, we’re idiots.”

“Are we?”

“We’ve overlooked the most important question.”

“What do you mean?”

“You aunt, Dolores Falconer—it all comes back to her. She wants Jonas dead. Why?”

“Why?” Tom echoed. “We know why—because he broke Milly Falconer’s heart and had an illegal demisprite.”

“Oh, I know all the official reasons,” Dahlia said, “but I’m prepared to bet this isn’t about Milly Falconer, or the illegal breeding. Mark my words, Dolores is after something else!”

J
ustinian’s old room had a bathroom, and Tom took a hot shower. He couldn’t get Dahlia’s question out of his mind—why did his aunt Dolores want to kill her own brother? It was becoming less and less surprising that Dad hadn’t told him anything about the Realm. How ironic that he’d been worried about getting bored during the holidays; Charlie would never believe a word of this.

After the shower, feeling clean and very tired, Tom went back downstairs to find his godmothers. He heard loud voices, but not because they had started another fight. The three of them were in the drawing room,
drinking coffee and chatting about their old college days.

“Ah, there you are, darling,” Dahlia said. “We were just about to check the fairy headlines on the laptop.” Her laptop, encrusted with diamonds, was open on the low table in front of her.

Tom had never seen a laptop covered with jewels before. “Do fairies have a different cyberspace?”

“Totally different,” Iris Moth said. “The Realm Wide Web, or fairy Internet, exists in another dimension.”

Dahlia’s scarlet nails clicked busily on the keyboard. The light that streamed from the screen was whiter and brighter than the light that came from computers in the mortal world. The colors had that special stained-glass radiance Tom had seen in Abdul’s flying carpet.

“Oh, you’re on Abracadabra,” Iris said. “I use FOL.” Catching Tom’s eye, she added, “That’s Fairies Online—it’s a very good package.”

Dahlia clicked on “Headlines” and the screen filled with a picture of a sulky young man with long red hair and pointed ears. TREBONKERS’S TANTRUM DESTROYS STADIUM.

“It’s that son of yours,” Lorna said. “What’s he done now?”

“It says he had a fight with the drummer in his band,” said Tom, reading the screen over Dahlia’s shoulder.
“They started throwing grenades at each other, and the concert had to be canceled—the place was reduced to rubble—wow!” Mortal rock stars often destroyed hotel rooms and guitars; this was rock-star bad behavior on another scale.

“Naughty boy,” Dahlia said comfortably. “That’s the second stadium he’s destroyed this year! Last time it was because they brought him the wrong sandwich. I sometimes wonder if I spoiled him.”

The next news story flashed up, and Tom forgot all about rock stars.

The headline said: POLICE HUNT GENIE TERRORIST. The picture was of a stout man with a black beard, wearing a pale blue turban and sunglasses.

“Hussein!” gasped Lorna. “Look, Tom—it’s my useless ex-brother-in-law!”

It certainly was Abdul’s brother—Tom recognized his earrings. Impatiently he skimmed through the story.