The Triple Goddess (172 page)

‘May I ask a question, Dame Hecate?’

‘Fire away.’ The flame flickered again from the torch, but returned as soon as it realized it had not been summoned. ‘And please, call me Hec. There’s no need for you to stand on ceremony with me, especially after I’ve had a stiffener or two of Jack.’

‘Do the witches I let in the front door live near the castle, or on the estate? Is it possible that I already know some of them, and have visited them at home?’

‘Negative. Many of them did once, but all have moved away. Even if they hadn’t, you wouldn’t come across them. Worlds cannot be allowed to mix. Anyway, they’re not the sort of people someone like you drops in on for tea, unless you want to end up in the oven on a baking tray.’

‘The ones coming in to the terrace, B.J. said they’re the rich ones. How far will they have travelled?’

‘Thousands of miles, some of ’em. Though when it comes to showing off her air conveyance, a consultant witch whose familiar wears a diamond collar, and a fur coat over its fur, would drive from around the corner. The ones who came up the stairs, being poorer or less in debt than the others, want to get to the freebie food and drink first. There’s no point in joining the holding pattern out there, only to be seen arriving in their old crocs and rented dresses.’

‘And why is it that one moment I’m tripping over familiars at the door to an attic, and being trampled by witches, and the next dressed to the nines, the centre of attention, in a ballroom that only a few minutes ago was your living room? An area in such a shambles, if you’ll pardon my saying so, that it takes a spell to prevent nature from bringing order to chaos. The only things I’ve noticed common to both places are the three windows; though they’re a deal more impressive tonight.’

‘In my position a certain amount of entertainment is necessary, in order to keep business coming in. It’s the only time I allow myself a bit of prestidigitational latitude. Of course it’s an expense...’

‘...for which you don’t get reimbursed. But, as I said, tonight there’s also the cost of this magnificent dress, and the earrings and necklace...they’re so beautiful. You’ll take them back, of course.’

‘Not the pearls. Those you can wear for ever.’

‘You’re not serious!’

‘I’m afraid I am.’

‘You haven’t answered my question, about why I’m here.’

‘There are many questions, and only so many that can be answered.’

Jenny could tell from Hecate’s closed expression that she was not to be drawn further on the subject. ‘Where’s B.J., by the way? I haven’t seen him. He is allowed to come, isn’t he?, as the Ingredients’ manager.’

‘I sent Beej on an errand.’

Jenny, her puzzlement compounded, surveyed the guests on the terrace. ‘Who’s that very tall and large woman in the centre of the terrace, the one with the huge ruby on her bosom, and the dress made by Allied Carpets? She’s glaring at me, or us, in the oddest way. She reminds me of a Wagnerian soprano.’

Hecate did not bother to look. ‘An accurate description, because she was Brünnhilde in last year’s Guild production of Wagner’s
Siegfried
. That’s the late Jesse Saunders, and now the great Wanda Empiria, Chief Executive of the International Guild of Witches, and my boss. Wanda lives in fear that I might be plotting against her; so to see me lurking in a dark corner at my own party talking to a stranger is giving her a conniption. She suspects you of being my protégée. Watch this...’

Turning, Hecate fixed Wanda Empiria with a glare that would curdle milk, and held her gaze until the Chief Witch flushed deeper than the jewel on her chest, and moved behind a fluted white classical column, minus its broken-off capital, where she remained visible on either side.

‘Your protégée? What could you possibly be grooming me for?’

‘To succeed me. She thinks I might be teaching you witchcraft, and imparting skills to you that none of the other witches possesses, including her. Abilities that she would give that ruby and all her other jewels, even her job, to have.’

‘As fun as learning to be a witch might be, I don’t think...’

‘There’s nothing fun about witchery, it’s a profession like any other. We don’t just go around turning people into things, and doing frivolous stuff like serving dinner for twenty without getting off the ottoman. Magic is a lot more than that. Where would the world be without magic?’

‘I don’t know. All I did was find my way into the attic by chance.’

‘My attic. And how do you know your coming was fortuitous? What if I arranged it?’

‘Hardly, you were as surprised as I was, and treated me as if I were a burglar.’

‘Coulda been a memory lapse. I’d just blown in from Bermuda, remember, and there’d been that confusion with Fanny Fiddle.’

Hecate began to reach again into the urn but withdrew her hand. ‘Time to lay off. I need a clear head.’ Leaning over the balcony, she put two fingers of each hand in her mouth and whistled into the night, producing a blast that made Jenny feel as though a knitting needle had been run through her head. She covered her ears in case Hec should blow another; but she didn’t.

‘Thanks for the warning. You might have cracked the windows.’

‘That was nothing, you should have heard Empiria’s top notes in
Die Walküre
when she was younger, before she started hiring professionals to stand in the wings while she lip-synched. Damage was done.’

This time it was the witches outside as well as inside who went quiet, as they turned to regard Hecate on the terrace, and through the open glass doors. The hush in Jenny’s head was even more painful than the whistle. The lights of the air conveyances turned from coloured to white, and the music from the ballroom—the band was in the middle of
Chattanooga Choo Choo
—ended on a long dominant seventh.

‘Such professionals they are,’ said Hecate. ‘I used to torture Orpheus by playing the same notes on the piano, and then walking out of the room. He couldn’t stand an unresolved chord, and had to rush over and move it to the tonic. He had talent, that boy, it’s a shame he died so young.’

Jenny heard a faint sibilance coming, not from her eardrums, but somewhere in the distance. As she peered out into the night the noise grew louder, like a kettle coming to a boil on the stove. Hecate, who was drumming her fingers on the stone coping, squinted at the moon.

Following her look, Jenny saw a black dot, a pupil in that night’s gigantic eye of earth’s satellite, which, as the pupil dilated, went from round to irregular in shape. After turning from black to brown, it began throwing off sparkles of red and green and yellow, surrounded by an aura of brilliant white that made the moon look tired by comparison, as if the object were a pearl resting in the mottled flesh of an oyster. As it became bigger and sharper in definition, the traffic-light reds and greens glowed and deepened in intensity to ruby and emerald, and assumed points like a holly leaf or the roof of a pagoda.

‘Whatever it is, it’s headed straight for us,’ said Jenny.

‘That’s the plan,’ said Hecate, ‘but B.J.’s never driven a chariot before, let alone one pulled by a dragon. The man’s no Benjamin Hur.’

”

Chapter Thirty-Six

“

The dragon’s approach was preceded by billows of steam, which rolled towards the terrace like fog off the moors, or fret from the sea; and Jenny could now make out, as stately as that of a galleon, the prow of a bony head and flared nostrils. Its entire body from nose to tail, instead of being leathern and armour-plated like that of a normal dragon, was encrusted with jewels the size of small rocks.

The undersides of the outstretched wings were barrel- rather than arch-vaulted, and smooth, not knobbed and ridged as one might expect; and the beast was flying soundlessly, not with the creaking motion that one might associate with dragon flight, as if the joints were dry or in need of oiling.

The wingbeats were so slow that it seemed impossible it could keep itself aloft.

Having spotted Hecate on the terrace, the dragon speeded up and headed for her with a look of enthusiastic recognition.

‘Whoa!’ came B.J.’s voice from the aether. ‘Did we not rehearse this?’ ‘Stop!’

But the dragon paid no attention to its driver, and, as the pair drew closer, Jenny observed B.J., his figure dwarfed by that of his conveyance, in the well at the nape of its neck. The charioteer, who was wearing a full-length horseman’s duster coat, mail-ordered from the J. Peterman Company Owner’s Manual, and an expression of flustered pride, was hauling so hard on the reins—to no discernible effect—that he was practically lying on his back.

Just as it seemed that the dragon was going to destroy the balcony with the impact of its arrival, and B.J.’s eyes were wide with apprehension, Hecate held up a finger and it decelerated, glided to a perfect halt alongside the parapet, and delicately accepted between scaly lips what Jenny took to be a blood-red orange, which Hecate removed from a distended pocket. Instead of eating it, however, the beast placed it into a small space between the other jewels on its wing, where it stuck; and Jenny realized that it wasn’t an orange but a ruby, one many times the size of that moored to Wanda Empiria’s frontage.

‘Hello, Hotscale,’ said Hecate.

‘Excuse me, Hecate,’ said Jenny; ‘in the turret B.J. introduced me to a dragon called Hotscale, or Hotty, but he was tiny. Are the two related?’

‘They’re one and the same.’

‘How can that be?’

‘Hotty, formerly a
Parvus esmeralda
, has been given a big promotion. Now he’s the king of them all. Don’t worry, he’s just as docile as before, but you can’t call him Hotty any more, he’s far too important.’

‘Hotscale a
Humungus
? One of the biggest and fiercest dragons who sell their teeth and are hunted by St Georges? We’re standing awfully close to him.’

‘He’s not a
Humungus
. Owing to a vacancy, Hotscale is now not just a dragon, but the Phoenix. He’s matchless, peerless, unique, and one of a kind. There’s to be an inauguration, and a big celebration afterwards that will make this little affair tonight look like a Quaker meeting. Hotscale, dear, that was very good, very good indeed. Watch your tail, though, there’s a dear...Hotscale, the tail! Oh lor’.’

Jenny, who’d been admiring the dragon’s head, above the left shoulder that was grating against the stone, and rough sanding it with a diamond-studded epaulette, shifted her gaze down his long body. She was just in time to see the tapered mass of the tail sweep the classical column, which had been concealing as much as it could of Wanda Empiria, into the air. As the column shattered, and chunks of plaster were about to come crashing down on everyone’s upturned heads, it reformed and settled back into place.

Luckily for her, the Chief Witch, to further distance herself from Hecate, had already dissociated herself from the pillar and moved to the far side of the terrace, where she was now trying to light a Honeyrose Special herbal cigarette; without success, because she was shaking so much at the thought that mere seconds had separated her from a terrible accident…or maybe it was no accident.

Hotscale snorted several steamy ropes of pleasure at being reunited with Hecate, and nuzzled the pocket that had contained the ruby. As the tail swept once again, the pillar rose ten feet in the air so that it passed harmlessly beneath, and lowered itself back into place. The gust of the follow-through blew out Wanda Empiria’s fourth match, so that she had to bend down and pick another one off the ground, where she had spilled the box, and try again, this time to light a real cigarette that she bummed from a minion.

‘That’s enough, Hotscale,’ said Hecate; ‘calm down. Beej, where are you?’

Doctor Wegner had been knocked over by the contortion of Hotscale’s body, and disappeared into the hollow of his station. Now he got up, and, anxious to complete the manoeuvre before anything more drastic happened, scrambled onto the dragon’s wing, swung his legs over the balustrade and joined Hecate and Jenny. He was breathing hard and looked very hot.

The number of spectators on the terrace had swelled rapidly to capacity, as the witches there were joined by as many of those inside the ballroom who, having observed through the glass that something dramatic was happening, were able to exit the doors. The attention of everyone near enough the balcony to see him was riveted to the now motionless dragon floating on a cloud of his own breath; and Hotscale, revelling in the attention he was getting, preened himself by nudging a few jewels back into place.

‘Nice job, B.J.,’ said Hecate; ‘that was as good as one could have hoped for on a maiden voyage. No real damage done except to the nerves of Her Rotundity over there. The column I can fix, but not her.’

Hecate glanced over to where Wanda Empiria was now standing on a stone seat with a witch supporting her on either side from below, glowering at Hecate, and clenching her underlings’ shoulders hard enough to make them wince.

‘How dare you!,’ screamed Empiria across the terrace, her jowls a-quiver. Silence fell. ‘How dare you invite a dragon to a public function attended by myself without requesting permission!’

‘Ah,’ said Hecate mildly; ‘fuelled by half a dozen glasses of my champagne, the other dragon, upstaged, has found her voice.’

Speaking with a clarity that was picked up by every ear, she continued, ‘How dare I, Jesse Saunders? I dare because I am the hostess of this occasion, and can arrange it how I like within the bounds of hospitality and good taste. You are here, Jesse, as always, at my invitation. Although it matters not to me whether you come or not, you always do, so I order the food and drink accordingly. I hope the champagne isn’t too dry for your taste, and that you’ve had enough to eat. There’s plenty more inside, so don’t stint yourself, nobody need leave hungry.’