≈

  When I arrived home, the Queen’s words were still ringing in my mind. My first instinct, the moment I walked inside, was to make my way to Max’s room and tell him everything I’d been up to. But tonight I was going to have to find a different sounding board, because Max’s bedroom door was firmly shut, and inside his room I could hear Emily talking loudly, and Max making meek murmurs of agreement.

  I did hear the words, ‘You’re not to speak to Wanda unless I’m present,’ but that couldn’t have been real, right? Because if it was, then why did I hear Max say, ‘Of course not, Emily,’ in response?

  I sank down onto my bed feeling more worried about him than ever. I knew that the Whisperer ought to be the biggest issue on my mind right now, but Max was definitely pipping him to the post.

  ‘Think Wanda, think,’ I muttered to myself, pulling off my shoes. Bess’s murder and the theft of the book were clearly linked, because killing someone over a book that can bring great evil to the world is probably more of a reason than killing them because they smoke a lot of cigars at work.

  The murderer must have forced her to let them in, and then killed her and taken off with the Whisperer’s Return. What was stumping me was how they got out of the gated section, when the keys remained in Bess’s pocket.

  Whoever that thief and killer happened to be, they weren’t going to be that person for much longer. Slowly but surely, the Whisperer would take them over. And when the last ritual was completed, and that timer stopped ticking, the Whisperer would completely own their body and mind.

  But … why had Bess let them in? She could have raised the alarm, couldn’t she? Unless … unless she already knew her killer. I tapped my finger against my chin, deep in thought. Bess was an unlikely candidate for that position. She’d been foisted upon Adeline by the members of the College Board – who, let’s face it, were a pretty dastardly bunch. I’d already had to throw two former members, Angela and Patrick Plimpton, into Witchfield. They’d been plotting to murder Will Berry when he refused to vote for their favourite Ministerial candidate.

  Seeing as I had no doubt that the rest of the board members could be just as deadly, it seemed like they might make some mighty fine suspects. What if one of them had forced Adeline to take Bess on purely to steal this book, and then, at the last minute, had double-crossed Bess and strangled her?

  ‘Ahem,’ said a squeaky little voice above my head.

  ‘Hi.’ I smiled up at my gorgeous bat. He was hanging upside down on the curtain rail. ‘I didn’t know you were here. You stayed in tonight?’

  ‘Well, first I was just going to stay in until Wolfie was settled with Melissa and Mack. But once he fell asleep on Melissa’s bed, I had a visitor. Well, you had a visitor, but I just happened to be here to greet him. And so I thought I’d keep him company and hang around until you got home.’ He let out a nasally laugh. ‘Hang around. Get it?’

  ‘I get it, Dizzy. But I don’t get who you’re talking about.’ I looked around my room, even heading into the small adjoining bathroom. ‘There’s no one else here.’

  He pointed to my bed. ‘Look underneath.’

  I got down on my hands and knees to take a peek. There was a glowing light under the bed, and also … the sound of slurping? As my eyes adjusted, I recognised the slurper.

  ‘Terrence. You’re all right!’ I was both relieved and nervous. I was so glad to see him, but the fact that he was here meant one thing – he wanted my help.

  The Bookworm put one of his hands to his eyes, squinting at me. The glow I’d seen had been Terrence himself. Their glowing ability, like their arms, evolved because of their love for reading. Who needs a reading lamp when you’ve got a Bookworm? ‘Wanda. You’re back. Are you alone?’

  ‘Except for Dizzy. Why? Are you all right?’

  Terrence shook his round head and held up his arm. I could see that the sleeve of his jacket was torn. And that wasn’t the only damage. There was a crack across the right lens of his glasses. He put down his little tin cup of hot chocolate (the source of the slurping, no doubt) and said, ‘I thought I’d never get out of there. Are you sure you’re alone except for the bat?’

  ‘Positive.’ I reached out an arm. ‘Come on, Terrence. You know you can trust me.’

  He nodded decisively, and began to squirm towards me. When he drew close enough, I scooped him up in my arms. Another interesting fact about Bookworms – they feel warm and fuzzy to the touch. Despite the fact that I could have cuddled him forever, I placed him on my bed and picked up his little tin mug. ‘Would you like another? I’ve got hot chocolate in the kitchen.’

  He shook his head. ‘Thank you but no. I … I probably shouldn’t have had as much chocolate as I’ve had, not after the scare she gave me.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Unless it was a man with an incredibly high-pitched voice, which I suppose is always possible.’ He held up the book he’d been reading. ‘In the Curious Case of the Cat Burglar, the thief sounded like a woman but was really a man.’

  I knelt down in front of him and placed the book to the side. ‘Who, Terrence? Who are you talking about?’ I reached out to touch his torn jacket. ‘The person who did this?’

  He shook his head. ‘That was all me. My favourite reading jacket, too. It happened while I was trying to escape, you see.’

  ‘From the woman – or the man with the high-pitched voice? Did they kidnap you from the library after … well … you know?’

  ‘After they murdered Bess?’ He sniffled and shook his head. ‘No. No, I was nowhere near Bess when she … when she …’ He trailed off and pointed to the floor. ‘I brought a bag of books with me. Could you lift it up here?’

  I went down onto my knees again, and found the bag beneath the bed. Instantly, he began to search through them, pulling out one called Getting Over Grief. My heart ached for him, and he leafed through the pages, saying, ‘Excuse me a minute, Wanda, but I’m just looking for a chapter that might teach me how to stop crying all the time.’

  I gently closed the book. ‘There is no such chapter, Terrence. If there is, it’s pointless, because it just won’t work. If you need to cry, cry.’

  He sniffled again. ‘No. No, I mustn’t. I must soldier on. There’ll be a book to help me. There’s a book to help with everything.’ He threw off his broken glasses and rubbed his enormous eyes. ‘Although maybe if I’d been with Bess instead of at home reading, I could have helped her. I could have been there, and seen who killed her.’ He sniffled again. ‘I should have been there.’

  I took him onto my lap. ‘It’s okay, Terrence. Look, why don’t you just rest now, okay? We can talk about this when you’re feeling a bit better.’

  He looked up at me, blinking. ‘In that case, we’ll never talk about it, Wanda.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Okay. I was … I was at home this morning. Bess had left me in bed, you see, and headed off to work without me. I was reading a book and I just couldn’t put it down, so I said I’d follow her along to the library when I was finished. I was so involved in the book that I didn’t notice that someone had entered the room. Not until she picked me up and took me away.’ He rubbed his eyes again. ‘I really do think it was a she, now that I think about it. She was using an invisibility spell, so I couldn’t see her, but I could smell her perfume. It was light and floral. She was really quite nice to me. Told me not to struggle. Said she was only doing what she had to.’

  ‘And then what happened?’ I asked. ‘Where did she take you and … how did you get out?’

  ‘Well, she took me to a nice room, and had books aplenty for me. Lovely food and a nice crackling fire. A comfy beige couch, too. Very tasteful. I would have been happy as a pig in muck if I was there willingly. But I had no choice in the matter at all. And I knew … if she was keeping me a prisoner, there had to be a pretty dicey reason. In books people are kidnapped for ransom money. But Bess hasn’t got two sickles to scratch together, so I had no idea why I’d been taken. There were spells on the windows, so that no matter what I threw at them, they didn’t break. The door was just the same. There was no phone. Nothing. And then … then I felt it. About an hour after I’d been taken, I felt Bess die.’ Tears spilled from his big eyes and down onto my lap. ‘I banged at the door. I banged and banged, but nobody came.’

  ‘So how did you get out then?’ Dizzy wondered. ‘Because clearly you did.’

  Terrence nodded, wiping his eyes. ‘I was there for what felt like hours, and I got out by doing something truly awful. I … I burned the books. I used the flames from the nice crackling fire, and I threw in piles and piles of books, and I used their flaming pages to set the room alight. It took a while to get it going the way I wanted it to, but eventually an alarm went off, and someone came rushing in. She wasn’t invisible anymore, but the smoke was so bad that I couldn’t see her properly. I slipped out past her, but my glasses and eyes were stinging. I didn’t know where I was going, just that I had to run. Well … to wriggle very fast anyway.’

  ‘Hmm. So it couldn’t have been too far away then,’ I mused. ‘I mean, if you were in the house for as long as you think …’

  ‘It’s true,’ he agreed. ‘It couldn’t have been far away. It was dark when I escaped. By the time my eyes cleared from the smoke, I was in Luna Park, and it hadn’t taken me long to get there. I’d wandered into a patch of bramble by the time I could see – I think that was when I tore my jacket.’ He tapped his broken glasses. ‘It was certainly when I broke these, anyway. The lights were on in the park, and some witches were sitting on a bench, watching Wyrd News on their phones.’ More tears spilled down onto my lap. ‘That’s when I saw the proof. What I felt was true. Bess was gone, and I hadn’t passed on with her. There was only one place I could go.’ He sniffled again and looked me in the eye. ‘To the Wayfarer’s house. I know you don’t want that role any more, Wanda. I’ve heard you talking to Adeline about how much you want to be a student now. So I know you’re going to tell me to go to the other Wayfarers so you can get on with your college education. And I understand that. Learning is what I live for. I have twenty-eight degrees. But Wanda … as a friend, I’m asking you – will you please help me solve my witch’s murder?’

  I wiped away some tears of my own. ‘Of course I’m going to help you, Terrence. And everything you’ve told me is going to help me find the killer.’ I patted his head. ‘But for now, you need to get some rest, and I need to tell Finn Plimpton what you’ve just told me. Are you sure I can’t get you some more hot chocolate in the meantime?’

  He shook his head. ‘I think I’ll just curl up in your bed and read, if that’s all right.’

  ≈

  I kept an eye on the little guy while I spoke to Finn, and then I got ready for bed. The whole time, he continued to search through his books, desperately hoping that in amongst them all, there would be one that would help him feel better.

  What he’d told me really had been useful. It had brought a whole new angle to this case. If the kidnapper was the killer, then they knew all about my gift, that much was clear. Why else would they kidnap Terrence, if not to stop him coming to help me?

  It also made me wonder about my theory. If this had been one of the board members, then they had kidnapped Terrence before the murder took place, because he said he was in that locked room when he felt her die. So killing Bess had been premeditated. But the kind of person who could carry out a premeditated murder wasn’t usually a warm-hearted sort, so why had they chosen to kidnap Terrence, instead of simply killing him along with his witch?

  9. Wreck-Tech

  The next morning, I woke up to the sound of … singing?

  I wiped my eyes and sat up. Dizzy was flying away from the curtain rail, screeching, ‘Please make it stop, Wanda. For the love of mangoes, please make it stop!’

  Terrence, somehow, was sleeping through the racket. Judging by the fact that he was now face down, snoring into the pages of a book, it was safe to say he’d fallen asleep reading. I climbed quietly out of bed and went to the window.

  From the looks of things, Max was standing in our driveway and gazing up at my bedroom window while he sang:

  ‘Wanda Wayfair, you’re so fine

  Wanda please will you be mine …’

  There were some clues, though, that this was not Max. There was no Emily behind him, for one thing. His hair was free of gel, and his teeth were average-sized, instead of the lovely caveman-like teeth in Max’s mouth.

  It was Sixteen, without a doubt. Paul suddenly ran into the driveway, skidding to a halt next to his creation and waving up at my open window. ‘Sorry, Wanda. He slipped out while I was in the shower. As you can see, I’ve not yet managed to disable his crush on you.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I called down. ‘I was quite enjoying being serenaded. You’ve got a lovely voice, Sixteen.’

  ‘Thank you, love of my life,’ he replied with a beaming smile. When he turned back to Paul, however, the smile slipped from his handsome features. ‘I must tell you once more, Paul, that this is no mere crush,’ he said, with a surprising amount of fervour in his voice. ‘It is love, of the truest and deepest kind. Love that knows no bounds. Love that will climb the highest walls. Love that will wade through the swamps and run through the rain and … oh, good morning, Emily Caulfield. How are you today?’

  Cat in a hat! Dizzy’s eyes widened, and I ran down the stairs with him flying behind me. Emily did not like Sixteen. Not one little bit. And seeing as she was being even more moody than usual, I didn’t see this going well.

  The front door was wide open by the time I reached it, and Emily was standing outside in Max’s pyjamas, throwing a bucket of water over the robot.

  Paul stood in front of him, while I tried to get a freezing spell out in time. Both of us failed miserably in our bid to protect Sixteen, and the water hit him with full force. He stumbled about for a moment, falling to his knees, with sparks flying out through his eyes.

  As I ran towards him, I hoped to the goddess that he’d be okay. It was only water, after all. Paul would be able to fix him, and this time tomorrow morning he’d be serenading me once again. Preferably a little further away from Emily, though.

  ‘Is he okay?’ I asked, kneeling in front of Sixteen while Paul clutched him in his arms.

  Paul gazed at me, his eyes wide with horror and fright. ‘No. No, he’s not okay. He shouldn’t be sparking. Why is he sparking?’ He turned his gaze on Emily. ‘What did you do to him? He’s sealed. Waterproof.’

  Emily put her bucket down, then crossed her arms, a smirk on her face. ‘He might be waterproof, but I think I’ve just proved that he isn’t Wreck-Tech proof.’

  I gasped, and stared at Emily. She was turning into a monster – a short, cute, curly-haired monster, but a monster nonetheless.

  Wreck-Tech was a potion that hadn’t been used for years. It was something that witches had used widely in the nineties whenever they felt like going on a rampage and destroying wizard technology. ‘Please tell me you didn’t really use Wreck-Tech,’ I said, my voice hollow. ‘Where did you even get something like that?’

  Emily smirked. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out. And by the way, I’m glad I did it, and I would happily do it again.’ She glanced back at the front door, through which Max was ambling out with a mug of tea in his hands. ‘Thank you my love,’ she said, cupping her hands around the drink. ‘You don’t have a problem with me destroying that awful robot, do you? I mean, it’s hardly my fault that the stupid thing was taunting me.’

  Max’s eyes drifted, hollow and emotionless, towards Sixteen. The robot had stopped sparking, and was now completely still. ‘It’s not Emily’s fault if the robot was taunting her,’ he said in monotone. ‘I’m going back inside to make some porridge.’

  I swallowed. ‘You know what, Max? I don’t think that Sixteen is the only one Emily has wrecked recently. She’s done something to you, and I’m going to figure out what it is. But for now …’ I stood up alongside Paul, hoisting Sixteen between us. ‘I’m going to go and help Paul try to fix him.’

  ≈

  The sun hadn’t yet risen, and it was a chilly, frosty morning, but Paul’s work-shed was nice and warm. With the increase in wages that working for the Wayfarers had brought him, Paul had been able to kit it out almost as well as my father’s broom-making shed at home. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure that all of the gadgets in the world would help.

  ‘Sixteen is a learning machine,’ Paul said, sounding like all the air had been sucked out of him. ‘And my most successful yet. Everything he’s experienced has shaped him. Sure, I can set him back to zero but … he wouldn’t be him.’

  I handed Paul a tiny screwdriver and watched as he opened up a near-invisible panel at the back of Sixteen’s head. The sparking on the outside of his body might have stopped, but inside it was like Halloween, Guy Fawkes Night, and the Fourth of July combined. There was a smell of burning plastic and metal, and I covered my nose.

  Paul’s nostrils flared in anger. ‘Wanda, I know she’s Max’s girlfriend but … I’m going to have to do something about this. Not just because she’s destroyed my quote unquote property. Sixteen is more than that.’

  ‘I know he is,’ I said, wiping away a tear. The name Sixteen wasn’t random. He was Paul’s sixteenth robot, and after years of breaking apart and remaking his creations, Paul had finally been happy with his achievement. Sixteen had been around for months, his personality and abilities improving with each and every day. To me he was a person, and I could tell that Paul felt the same.

  ‘I mean, I can understand what she has against him,’ he went on. ‘And I do feel kind of bad about poor Emily. But that’s for her and Max to sort out.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I felt my nose scrunch up. ‘Why should you feel bad about Emily? If she doesn’t like the fact that your robot occasionally glitches and thinks he fancies me, then that’s no one’s fault but hers.’