The Chocolate Meltdown (4 page)

The door swung behind B’s dad as he reentered the Fabulous Fruits room. B knew she only had a few minutes to transport to the M.R.S., notify Madame Mel, Grande Mistress of the Magical Rhyming Society, and get back again before her dad started getting nervous that George and Trina would notice she was missing.

Okay. Transportation spell. She had done it before, during magic tutoring sessions with Mr. Bishop, but there’d been a few mishaps. Focus. That was the key. You had to really focus on where you were going.

She tried to clear her mind and imagine herself in the M.R.S. She pictured the towering bookshelves in the main library, filled with sparkling volumes of magical books, guarded by floating
librarian apparitions. She pictured the tall towers where once her traveling spell had landed her — whoops! Better not think about that…. B refocused her thoughts on the inside, where Madame Mel could always be found, striding around the corridors, her powder blue hair in a bun, her purple spectacles perched on the tip of her long nose, and her multicolored robe tinkling with thousands of silver magical charms.

“T-R-A-V-E-L,” she said, then looked both ways to make sure no one in the corridor felt the rushing cyclonic wind that signaled a traveling spell. It whipped B’s hair into her eyes and made the fabric of her shirt flap. But sure enough, it deposited her at the M.R.S. — unfortunately, on a pile of parchment that Madame Mel herself was trying to write on, atop a table in the library.

“Good afternoon, Beatrix,” Madame Mellifluous said, without even looking up.

“How did you know it was me?” B asked, fearing and expecting to hear the Grande Mistress comment on B’s notorious magical near misses.

“I recognized your sneakers. What can I do for you?”

B jumped down from the table and explained everything to Madame Mel about Fabulous Fruits and the epidemic of magical mumps, or whatever they were, spreading to every witch who tried the chocolate.

Madame Mel polished her spectacles on her sleeve, frowning. “I overheard something about a magical malady this morning, in the elevator,” she said. “We’ll need to look into it immediately.” She snapped her fingers, and her magical robes transformed instantly into an official-looking lab coat and trousers. Her blue hair became gray, and the scroll of parchment she’d been holding became a clipboard. Only her purple glasses gave a hint of Madame Mel’s usual fashion style.

The Grande Mistress of the M.R.S. took B’s hand and said,

“To Enchanted Chocolates, in a magical flurry.

And tell my emergency team to hurry!”

Another traveling wind whipped up, but Madame Mel’s spell was so skilled, it didn’t even stir the papers on the library table. In seconds they stood in the hallway outside the Fabulous Fruits room, right where B had started.

“The dipping machines are in here,” B began.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

More witches swept into the corridor on travel tornados of their own, each of them dressed in lab coats like Madame Mel’s. Six got into place behind Madame Mel and together they marched into the dipping room, their clipboards at the ready. B ran to follow.

Her dad was giving George and Trina a demonstration of how the white chocolate mixer worked. His eyebrows rose at the sight of Madame Mel and her posse of witches in lab coats.

“Health inspectors,” Madame Mel said abruptly. “Here to examine the sanitation of your facility.”

“Er … of course,” Mr. Cicely said. He gave B a secret wink. She knew it meant, “Thanks.”

The magical “health inspectors” spread around the room, peering through magnifying glasses and using syringes and tongs to place samples of fruit and chocolate in test tubes. One inspector turned on a dipping machine, but the stirring paddles weren’t properly lowered, and his white lab jacket was spattered with chocolate.

Madame Mel approached the largest dipping
machine and examined the vats of chocolate — milk, white, and dark. She whipped a set of spoons out of the pocket of her lab coat and began to taste a sample of chocolate from each vat. When she reached the milk chocolate, she pursed her lips. “This chocolate doesn’t taste right,” she said.

“I know!” George cried. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

Madame Mel seemed to notice George for the first time. B knew the Grande Mistress could tell at a glance that George was not a witch.

The other witch inspectors gathered around Madame Mel. They spoke in whispers, pointing to the vat of milk chocolate.

“We need to close down this wing of the factory temporarily to continue our health inspection,” Madame Mel announced. “We have a more detailed analysis to perform. Everyone must leave.”

“B, why don’t you and George and Trina wait for me in the lobby,” Mr. Cicely said. “I’ll stay and help the, er, health inspectors.”

B and her friends left the dipping room, but they didn’t go far. As soon as they were past the glass doors, they gathered in a huddle.

“I think Madame Mel suspects foul play,” B whispered. “She thinks something’s wrong with the milk chocolate!”

“Well, that’s what I’ve been saying all along,” George said. “I don’t see why your dad needed Madame Mel to tell him that.”

“No, but do you see? It’s not the white chocolate, or the dark. It’s not a problem with the recipe. I think Madame Mel believes someone added something to the milk chocolate. And you know who that must be?”

Trina shrugged. “No, who?”

“Jason Jameson!” B said.

“No way! How could he have done it?” Trina asked.

“He was here. His dad owns the company that supplied the fruit. There was some accident where the lights went out, and Jason was near the machine, trying to snitch a chocolate.”

Trina sneezed. The overhead lights flickered. “But why would he try to eat a piece if he had put something bad in?”

“Oh, no,” B said. “Trina, you’re starting to get sick, too!”

“B, I really don’t think Jason could have pulled off something this big,” George said. “It’s a magical sickness. You said so yourself. How could Jason cause that?”

“Who knows how magical illnesses are caused?” B said. “It could be anything. Look, I’m positive Jason was behind it somehow. We’ve got to get back inside there to look for clues. The others don’t realize what a no-good ratfink Jason is. They won’t know what to look for like we do.”

“Well, we can’t just go in there,” George said. “Unless you two can make us invisible or something.”

Trina and B exchanged glances. Yes, they were both witches, but there were limits to what they could safely do. They weren’t that far along yet in their training.

“What if,” Trina said slowly, “we made ourselves as small as mice?”

“Hmmm.” B considered this. “Why not? Yeah, why not? That could work!”

“If you say so,” George said, shrugging. “I don’t see what’s the big difference. Invisible, miniature …”

“C’mon, let’s hurry,” B said. She grabbed George’s sleeve, and, concentrating hard, spelled “M-I-N-I-A-T-U-R-E.”

She watched in wonder as George began to shrink, then felt a tinge of dismay as his size grew larger again. But wait a minute … He wasn’t growing
larger
! It was B who was changing. She’d begun to shrink. Soon they were no taller than the electric outlet plugs along the walls. Trina was a giant!

Then they heard her world-famous singing voice booming in their tiny ears.

“Oh, I wanna be small, small, small,

Sneak into that room and hear it all!”

Trina was a singing witch. B always got a kick out of her pop-music-styled spells. But she wondered, with Trina starting to come down with this magical malady affecting all the other witches who’d eaten Fabulous Fruits, would her spells work?

Apparently this one did, for soon the lead singer of the Black Cats was the size of a cat’s favorite snack.

“Let’s go,” B said. “We can climb through the
little gap between the swinging doors, then find a place to hide.”

“How long will these spells last?” George asked. His voice sounded a little squeaky.

“Not sure,” B said. “So we’d better hide behind a machine or something, just in case we get big again.”

It was a scary business, dodging around the gigantic shoes and hurdling the fat electric cords that snaked along the floor. The witches’ voices, high up above, seemed both loud and distant. At last they found what seemed like a safe place. They peered around behind a rack of unused Fabulous Fruit containers at Madame Mel and her emergency committee, with B’s dad hovering close by. Globules of floating milk chocolate hovered above a strange magical device Madame Mel held up high. She whispered spell after spell, and at last a little puff of sparkly blue vapor rose from the chocolate samples. She snagged a sample of it in a test tube, added a vial of powder to it, and gave it a swirl. There was a small pop, and the blue mixture went up in smoky flames.

The witches all looked at each other.

“As I suspected,” Madame Mel said, putting her instruments away. “There can be no further doubt. There’s nothing wrong with the equipment or the recipe. This chocolate,” she said with a meaningful look around the whole room, “was poisoned.”

“But who?” B’s dad cried. “But how? Who could have done this? Who would want to?”

Madame Mel peered at him through her purple specs. “What about the factory workers? Everyone employed here has access to the chocolate, correct? Whoever did this slipped the poison right into the vat.”

B’s dad paced the floor. “Yes, but … they’ve all been here for years. They’re practically family.” He raked his scalp once more. His hair stood straight up. “I can’t believe it. If you’d said that some spy from Pluto Candies had smuggled in something, I could have believed that. They’d do anything to sabotage Enchanted Chocolates. But nobody here had any ties to Pluto Candies. I’m sure of it.”

Madame Mel snapped her fingers and her lab getup changed back into her regular magical robes. All her emergency committee did likewise. George’s jaw dropped at the sight of Madame Mel’s crazy blue hair and her long colorful robes covered head to toe in tinkling silver charms.

“It would have to be a witch, wouldn’t it?” B’s dad asked. “Since only witches are getting sick. Someone with magical knowledge must have done this, right?”

Madame Mel tucked her instruments into pockets on her shimmery robes. “Not necessarily,” she said. “There have been cases where nonwitches have accidentally formed very potent brews and poisons. It’s too soon to rule anything or anyone out yet.”

Mr. Cicely raked his fingers through his hair for the umpteenth time.

“If you’re sure it couldn’t be any of your employees,” Madame Mel said, “then what about the guests who were here at the dipping debut?”

B’s dad pulled a photo from his briefcase. “This was taken yesterday.”

Madame Mel frowned at the picture. “Odd,” she said. “The only person there I can see with a history of incidents such as these is Doug Bishop.”

B gasped. It was only a mouse-size gasp, but it was enough to make Madame Mel turn. George and Trina dragged B behind the shelves and out of sight.

Mr. Bishop! Her English teacher and magical tutor? He’d never do something like this.

Would he?

“I can’t believe Madame Mel suspects Mr. Bishop,” Trina whispered.

“Maybe it was the song he sang?” George suggested. “You know how songs are spells for Trina. Maybe Mr. Bishop is that way, too?”

“This investigation is far from complete,” Madame Mel said. “In the meantime, production and distribution of Fabulous Fruits must be halted completely. We don’t want any other witches getting sick. And, though I’m sure this goes without saying, I must ask everyone here to do all they can to keep this mysterious illness, and the investigation into it, top secret.”

B’s dad nodded. “I’ll put a security lockdown on this entire wing as soon as we walk out,” he said. “That will seal off the area. Not even a fly could get in or out after that.”

“Perfect,” Madame Mel said. She nodded to the rest of her team. “Time to get back.”

They spoke their traveling spells and vanished. B’s dad went around the room shutting things off and putting things away.

“Did you two hear that?” B whispered. “Dad’s putting a lockdown on this wing. That means if we don’t get out right now, we’ll be stuck in here!”

“But if we return to our normal sizes, he’ll see us,” Trina said.

“And he’ll know that I overheard everything,” George added.

B gulped. “Then our only chance,” she said, “is to hitch a ride. Come on!”

Mr. Cicely’s shoes were nearly at the door by the time the mouse-size friends caught up with him. George was about to take a chance on the cuffs of his pants when B noticed her father’s briefcase parked beside the door. “In here!” she whispered as loudly as she dared. One by one they vaulted into the compartment on the side of the bag intended for water bottles.

And not a moment too soon. The briefcase rose into the air and began swinging back and forth. No
amusement park ride was ever so turbulent. Trina, whose sneezes inside the bag transformed a pen into a miniature bass guitar, lay curled up in the bottom of the compartment, groaning with nausea. B climbed over George and scrambled to the top of the compartment as a lookout. At the end of the corridor she could just make out the door to the lobby. Then she realized the new danger they faced. If her dad reached the lobby and found they weren’t there, he might get suspicious. On the other hand, if they jumped out now, it was a long way to fall.

Fortune intervened, and B’s dad set down his bag before opening the door. B and George jumped out, dragging Trina with them. Her sneezes had changed the color of her jacket from black to lemon yellow.

“R-E-T-U-R-N,” she spelled, thinking hard about herself and George at their normal sizes. The ceiling rushed to meet them, but fortunately their bodies stopped expanding at just the right time.

Trina was not so lucky. She’d had just enough magic left to shrink herself. But now her face was covered with purple spots, and her song attempts wobbled off-key and didn’t even come close to rhyming.

“What’s happening to me, B?” she squeaked in a thin, tinny mouse voice. “What if I’m stuck like this forever?”

On the other side of the lobby wall B could hear her father asking Janika, “Any sign of the kids?”

B got down on one knee. “Don’t worry, Trina,” she said. “We’ll figure it out. For now, come with me.” She held out a hand, and Trina climbed into B’s palm. B slipped her friend into the pocket of her sweatshirt and hurried with George back into the lobby.

“Here we are!” she said. “Just showing George around a bit.”

“Where’s Trina?” B’s dad said.

“Oh. She had to leave,” said B.

Apparently her dad was too preoccupied to think hard about this. “We need to leave, too. Come on, you guys, I’ll drive you home.”

In the car, B buckled her seat belt carefully, so as not to squash Trina. From within the folds of her sweatshirt she heard a teensy mouse-size sneeze. The squirters on the windshield began to spray.

“That’s odd,” Mr. Cicely said, wiggling the lever to turn the squirters off.

“Well, this car needs a good wash,” B said, her heart pounding.

“Ah-choo!”

The radio turned on, and a Black Cats song began to play. B’s father gave her a funny look through the rearview mirror. B realized that he suspected she was using magic recklessly, right in front of George. Uh-oh.

“Boy, that remote control of yours sure works great,” B said loudly to George.

“That
what
of mine?”

“You know,” B said, elbowing him. “That remote control you ordered online that can turn anything on? Like the radio of our car, just now?”

“Oh. Right,” George said, catching on. “Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.”

“You’ll have to show it to me sometime, George,” B’s dad said. “Oh, there’s my phone.”

B’s dad’s Crystal Ballphone began to ring. The ringtone was the jingle to Fabulous Fruits.

“Hello?”

B recognized her mother’s voice, but she couldn’t quite make out what she was saying.

“Oh, Stella, honey, I’m so sorry to hear that
you’ve
caught Dawn’s cold,”
Mr. Cicely said loudly. “As soon as B and George and I get home, I’ll come fix you some … turkey soup.”

You mean chicken soup
, B thought.
Nice try, Dad, trying to sound normal. Any sick witch would prefer eel soup.

“Ah-ah-choo!”

The overhead lights snapped on, but B’s dad didn’t even notice. The car pulled into B’s driveway.

“Hate to say this, George, but you’d better not come over today,” B’s dad said. “Sounds like we’ve got a bad sickness going through the family. Wouldn’t want you catching it.”

“No problem,” George said, grinning. “Hope everybody feels better soon.”

“Me, too,” B’s dad said. “Me, too.”

B walked George across the lawn to his own house. Once they reached George’s yard they hid behind some bushes and pulled Trina out of B’s pocket. Poor Trina! She looked awful. Her face was covered with tiny pinprick-size purple spots. It only took one look to know her magic was completely gone. It was up to B to restore her to her proper size.

“R-E-T-U-R-N,” she said. But the spell didn’t work this time.

“N-O-R-M-A-L.”

Nope.

“G-R-O-W.”

“E-X-P-A-N-D.”

“Careful, B,” Trina piped up. “I don’t want to end up any bigger than I’m supposed to be.”

“Apparently there’s no danger of that,” B said. She was beginning to feel anxious. Was there some rule about witches not being able to reverse other witches’ spells? If so, she’d never heard it before.

She thought hard about Trina. She pictured her carrying her plaid backpack down the hall, whipping a pillow at B during a sleepover, doing her dance moves in the flashing lights of a Black Cats concert.

“K-A-T-R-I-N-A,” she spelled. B could swear she heard a little riff of bass guitar, then, poof! Trina appeared before them both, just the right size.

“That was weird,” Trina said.
“Ah-choo!”
She pulled the hood of her jacket up over her face and took out her Ballphone to call her chauffeur.

“Get some rest,” B advised. “And, I know it
sounds nasty, but you could always try chewing pages of a rhyming dictionary to get rid of the spots.”

“Tell me you’re joking.” Trina groaned. “Will I ever get my magic back?”

“I’m sure you will,” B said. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this. I promise.”

B said good-bye to her friends and ran home. The kitchen was in an uproar. Her mom sat wrapped in a blanket in a rocking chair at one end. Every time she sneezed, the blender started blending onions with strawberries or the frying pan started scrambling eggs with butterscotch chips.

“My ingredients!” B’s mom wailed. “My deluxe cookware! Don’t let the eggs burn onto the pan, B.”

B tried not to smile. She turned the heat off on the stove and moved the hot pan to the sink. For now, at least, her mom was more concerned about her kitchen than her magic.

Dawn dragged herself into the room and sank into a kitchen chair. She wore a long fuzzy bathrobe and still kept most of her head and face covered by a scarf. But it didn’t hide the huge purple blisters on her nose.

“Oh, Dawn!” B cried. “Your skin!”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Have you tried dictionary pages?”

Dawn stuck out her tongue. B found the old dictionary on the counter and ripped out a few pages from the “S” section, for “sister.”

B’s dad kicked off his shoes and sat next to his wife, holding her hand. “Madame Mel is on the case, working on a solution to the mystery,” he said. “I’m sure the M.R.S. will announce a remedy soon.”

“They’d better,” B’s mom said. “Otherwise we’ll starve.”

B’s heart broke, seeing her family feeling so rotten, with all their magic gone. For a witch, losing your magic was like losing your right hand. B couldn’t help being grateful that she, alone, knew that fruit and chocolate didn’t belong together. At least now she still had magic to help take care of her family, not to mention solve this mystery. And solve it she would. Madame Mel suspected Mr. Bishop — B could scarcely credit that idea, but to be fair she’d have to test every theory. Meanwhile, she was still convinced that Jason Jameson was responsible for all the trouble. She was determined to find out how.