Not stopping to think – this was not the time to think, even for a split second – Roxy reached up a hand and turned the ignition key. Then she slammed down on the INVISIBILITY SHIELD button.
“Of course, sir, I have the utmost respect for Mrs— Oh!” Gretel sounded surprised – as well she might do, seeing as the large white minibus that had been parked only a few metres away had suddenly disappeared. “No, nothing to worry about, sir. A minor hex incident. I ought to be used to them by now… No, of course I’m not suggesting your daughter should just get used to having a fruit for a face for the rest of her life, sir…”
Roxy glanced down at her hands, reassured that, however invisible she might be from the outside, she was at least still visible to herself. Peeping up to get a better view through the windscreen, she saw that Gretel had turned again and was heading back towards the palace’s entrance.
Then, heart hammering, she hit the button that said FLIGHT MODE.
It felt like her stomach had remained on the ground while the rest of her shot straight up into the air. She grabbed the back of the driver’s seat just to have something to hang on to, and then dragged herself into it so that she could take the steering wheel. She felt as if she were still shooting upwards, and this was confirmed by a dial on the dashboard, divided into four sections: HIGH; HIGHER; WOW, YOU’RE HIGH NOW and DESTINATION MARS??? The needle was shooting past HIGHER and just into WOW, YOU’RE HIGH NOW when she saw a CRUISE CONTROL button to the left of the FLIGHT MODE one. Desperately, she pressed it. The bus stopped shooting upwards and hovered, almost uncertainly, for a second, before Roxy decided to just go for it and press her foot down on the accelerator.
Pleasingly smoothly, the minibus glided forwards.
Roxy knew she had to steer, and not just because if she didn’t she would crash smack-wallop into one of the rose-covered palace turrets. This was a less smooth endeavour – the bus jerked frighteningly to the left as she over-steered, then lurched horrifyingly to the right as she over-corrected. But somehow she had managed to sail between two of the turrets without catastrophe.
“Result!” She grinned, feeling more like Jones, in this moment, than she had ever thought possible.
But she was only at the beginning of her rescue mission. Through the windscreen, she had a bird’s-eye view of the open-air atrium, and it was not hard to spot Mortadella and Jones: the white-clad figure beside the small one in the lilac hat standing – of course – beside what she recognized as the little snack stall.
Taking a deep breath, Roxy reached for the final button on the control panel, the one that said SMOOTH LANDING.
And smooth it really was. The invisible minibus didn’t plummet downwards anywhere near as fast as it had shot upwards, but instead sank back towards the ground in an almost stately fashion. It even gave Roxy time to steer it in precisely the direction of the snack stall.
Then two things happened at once. First, Roxy saw Gretel, in her snappy red coat, appear from the right side of the atrium, making a beeline towards Mortadella and Jones. Second, Roxy realized she did not in fact want to make a SMOOTH LANDING, or indeed a LANDING of any kind at all.
This was going to require some serious cool-under-pressure.
Thankfully, the doors of the minibus were still open, and juuuuuust close enough for Roxy to lean out without having to get entirely out of the driver’s seat.
“… so if you don’t mind, before you show me this amazing new spell of yours,” Jones was saying to Mortadella, “I’d quite like to try one of these goji-berry-and-bran muffins you mentioned earlier. I mean, I’m not much of a bran fan, to be honest with you, but I’m absolutely blooming starving, and…”
“Mortadella,” said Gretel as she reached them. “Good to see you again. Can we talk in—”
Simultaneously, Roxy reached one hand through the minibus doors and pressed the FLIGHT MODE button with the other.
She just had time, before the bus shot up into the air again, to see Gretel’s astonished face as a hand appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and hoicked the small, midnight-blue-haired girl up into … where? As far as Gretel was concerned, this girl had disappeared into thin air leaving behind nothing but the brown boot that had fallen off her foot.
“Mortadella,” Gretel began, “what the blithering heck is going on around here?”
“Ah, dear Ms Humperdinck!” Mortadella was giving a little yoga bow of greeting, hands together. “What a pleasant surprise!”
“Hey, don’t pretend that didn’t just happen!”
“What didn’t just happen?” Mortadella sounded as innocent as a newborn. “Now,” she went on, deftly and deliberately steering Gretel away from the scene of Jones’s mysterious disappearance, “can I interest you in a delicious soy-milk smoothie?”
But as the minibus was already ten, fifteen, twenty metres in the air again, Roxy couldn’t hear her sister’s reply.
Jones, sprawled on the minibus floor, stared in exactly the same kind of astonishment as Roxy pressed the CRUISE CONTROL button and began to steer the minibus, in an only-slightly-wobbly fashion, back out through the turrets and away from the palace.
“Are you serious?” she managed to say a moment later. “We’re stealing an enchanted minibus?”
“Not stealing,” said Roxy. “Borrowing.”
A grin spread across Jones’s face.
“Oh,” she said, hauling herself up and staggering over to Roxy. “I am so having a go on this thing myself.”
It was only now that Roxy realized how much she was shaking. She stood up and let Jones slide into the driver’s seat and take the wheel. Then she sat heavily down on the floor beside the gearstick, holding her hairdo for balance.
“Do you think she saw me?”
“Did who see you?” Jones was poking her tongue out in concentration as she lurched the minibus over the tops of the trees.
“That was my sister! The one in the red coat.”
“Who, Little Miss Glam-Pants?” Jones raised an eyebrow. “She’s not at all like I imagined her! And talking of people who are nothing like I thought, how awesome are you, Roxy Humperdinck? What came over you, suddenly deciding to take on a flying bus like this?”
“Mrs Smith is coming,” Roxy explained. “I heard Gretel on the phone. She said Mrs Smith was on her way to the retreat to question Mortadella about the prison breakout.” She swallowed, hard. “You know, I don’t think my sister really is just a loo-cleaner at the Ministry.”
“Ah. I see.”
This was something, Roxy had to admit, she was kind of loving about Jones. For whatever reason – maybe because she wanted to keep her own life as private as possible – she didn’t pry. She took stuff at face value. Which was something Roxy herself was going to have to start doing an awful lot less, she realized, if she wasn’t going to be totally lied to any more.
“So,” Jones went on, “I’m flying this thing back to Rexopolis, right?”
“What?”
“Well, you said you wanted to go home. So we should head back to Rexopolis. Isn’t that what you want?”
This, Roxy realized in a shimmering instant, was not what she wanted.
Maybe it was the adrenaline rush from flying a magical minibus. Maybe it was the shock of discovering that her sister was clearly one of MOOOOOH’s secret agents. Maybe it was discovering that her family history was way, way more steeped in all this Dark Magic madness than she could ever have imagined.
Or maybe it was that she was cut out for saving the world.
And she would never know unless she tried.
“No.” Roxy shook her head firmly. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m coming with you, Jones. We’re doing this.”
“Woo-hoo!” Jones punched the air with a fist. “All right, then. Let’s head north till we hit the McWitch family fortress! Well, not actually hit. You know how to land this thing, right?”
“You know,” said Roxy, getting to her feet and perching on the side of the driver’s seat beside Jones, “
I actually think I do.”
17
“You ring the doorbell.”
“No, you ring the doorbell.”
“No, you ring the doorbell.”
“No, you… Hang on a sec, QG. Is there actually a doorbell?”
“Oh. I hadn’t looked. I was distracted by the huge moat.”
“Yeah, it’s awesome, isn’t it?”
“Awesome? Jones, the water is actually black.”
“Well, that’s probably just some trick of the light.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Jones, but there hardly is any light. As in, it’s almost nightfall. And we’re standing outside a witch’s fortress. And if you’re not scared, why don’t you ring the doorbell?”
“Because I thought we established there isn’t one.”
“Well, knock on the door, then!”
“It’s not a door. It’s a portcullis.”
“Then knock on the portcullis!”
“Jeez-Louise, Roxy Humperdinck! I thought you were getting to be less of a cowardly custard, but apparently I was—”
And then a trapdoor opened up beneath them and Jones and Roxy both dropped sharply down into the dungeon below.
18
“OK,” admitted Jones, “you might have been right about the danger thing.”
It had been six terrifying minutes since the two girls had fallen through the secret trapdoor into the pitch-black dungeon.
It had taken Jones and Roxy those entire six minutes to stop yelling and clinging to each other.
“But let’s not panic,” Jones went on. “Panic will get us nowhere. Panic is for losers.”
“Then what do you s-s-s-suggest,” asked Roxy, her teeth chattering from a terrible cocktail of cold and fear, “we actually d-d-d-d-do? That trapdoor is too high above us, and d-d-d-didn’t you hear the lock click shut as we landed?”
“Hey, I could climb up your hair, maybe, and see if I can reach high enough to pick the lock… I only wish I hadn’t left my kitbag on the minibus,” Jones added sorrowfully. “Everything’s in there. My lock-picking tools, my torch…”
“T-t-torch! My phone!” Roxy suddenly remembered her phone, and scrabbled in her coat pocket. “And not just a torch! We can use it to c-c-c-call for help.”
It was dead. All that navigation to the Fabulous Forest had finished off the battery.
“Pity,” said Jones, sounding defeated for a moment. “Nothing else in your pockets? Something that might help me pick a lock? A paperclip? A hairgrip?”
“I’ve got the minibus keys. Oh, and this stupid giveaway from the Proon Puffs packet…”
Jones felt both the items in the darkness. “Nope, no good. Keys are far too big for a fiddly job like lock-picking. And that triangle rock thing is totally the wrong shape. Do you maybe have a knitting needle? A crochet hook?”
“For heaven’s sake, Jones, why would I carry a whole bunch of random haberdashery equipment in my pockets?”
“OK, OK … then we’ll just have to find another exit.” The confidence had returned to Jones’s voice. “Trust me, QG, my stepmother used to lock me in a cupboard, sometimes, and…” She stopped. “My point is, nobody ever locks you in somewhere that doesn’t have an actual door. You think Witchalina McWitch comes in through that trapdoor?”
“Why would she c-c-come in at all?”
“To give us food, water… It’ll depend on exactly how long she’s planning on keeping us down here. Days or weeks. Or months. Hopefully not years…”
“OK, let’s look for an exit,” said Roxy, feeling a sudden overwhelming need to stop Jones talking. “You’re right, there has to be a d-d-d-door…”
Fifteen minutes of shuffling-around-in-the-pitch-darkness later, they both had to admit: there was no door.
They sank down, back-to-back, in total silence.
“So,” Roxy said in a very, very small voice, “we’re not getting home tonight after all, are we?”
“We’re not,” said Jones. “No.”
They fell silent again.
“But seriously, kid,” Jones went on, “you can’t be worried about getting in trouble with your sister any more! You could stay out all night, every night for months, and she’d have literally zero right to get even a bit tetchy.”
“It’s true.” Roxy swallowed. “I can’t believe she lied about being a loo-cleaner. I can’t believe I believed it.”
“Yeah. She’s clearly a massively elite MOOOOOH agent.”
“Massively elite,” sighed Roxy.
“With a humble loo-cleaner alias.”
“It’s a pretty good alias,” Roxy admitted.
“So, your brother’s a world-famous rock star, your sister’s this total super-spy…”
“I don’t need to hear again about how ordinary and boring I am, Jones, thank you.”
“Hey! I wasn’t going to say that.” Jones actually sounded rather hurt. “Neither of them has ever tried to save the universe, have they?”
“Country, Jones.”
“Planet,” Jones compromised. “Anyway, are you hungry? I stuffed a couple of Mortadella’s vegan muffins in my pocket, right before you pulled me up into the sky. They’ll probably be gross but they’ll be better than nothing.”
“Thanks, Jones. I’m starving.” Roxy reached out a hand in the darkness and waved it around until she connected with Jones’s. “I could eat a … wow, you really could do with some hand lotion.”
Jones’s hand felt like paper. No: papyrus.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t want to be rude, but you should probably take a bit more care of your hands. Put lotion on sometimes? Trim your nails, occasionally?”
“I trim my nails!”
“You clearly don’t.”
“Well, let’s see how great your hand-care regime is, shall we?” Jones snapped. “Exactly! Just as I thought. Your nails feel appalling. So long they’re all curled over, and pointy at the ends … I mean, come on! Introduce yourself to a pair of scissors.”
“My nails are super-short! And at least my hands aren’t so dry they feel all wrinkled, and papery, and…”
Roxy stopped before saying the word ancient.
It was just dawning on her that she probably wasn’t touching Jones’s hand at all.
In the pitch black of the dungeon, the sharp-clawed hand she could feel could have belonged to absolutely anyone.
Someone like…
“Welcome home, dear niece,” rasped a creaky, witchy voice from beside them.
And then there was a sound like a match being struck.
A face loomed into the match-light.
It was a face with a hooked nose. It was a face with warts. It was a face that was unmistakably green.
“Oh,” said the witch in the same creaky rasp, only sounding a bit miffed this time. “Neither of you is my niece.”
“I-I…” stuttered Roxy.
“We-we…” stammered Jones.
“Buuuuuut,” the witch carried on, her creaky voice turning into a croon, “this is even better. I like meeting new people. Especially girls. With pretty hair.”
“Th-thanks,” Jones gulped. “I dyed it when I ran away. It was meant to be jet black but actually it went this kind of—”
“Not your hair!” snapped the witch. She took one of the loose tendrils that had started to tumble down from Roxy’s monstrous hair-do. “This hair. So pretty…”
Then she waved the other hand.
There was a bright green flash and a loud bang, like thunder and lightning striking at the exact same moment.
The next thing Roxy knew, she was sitting on a cold, hard floor in a different room.
And she was completely alone.
19
“JONES!” Roxy yelled at the top of her lungs. “JONES, CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
There was no answer.
“JONES!” she shrieked with gut-busting force. “JOOOOOOOOONES!”
There was still no answer.
&
nbsp; “Oh no oh no oh no oh no,” babbled Roxy, actually starting to crawl around in a circle on the floor.
Here she was, separated from her only friend, who was presumably still languishing in that horrible dank dungeon, only to end up herself in…
Oh.
“In a witch’s tower,” she said.
She stopped crawling and looked around, properly, at her new surroundings.
There could be no doubt – no doubt whatsoever – that this was a witch’s tower.
The walls were curved, making the room a perfect circle. They were made of crumbled dark-grey rock and were papered with peeling wallpaper featuring patterns of cobwebs and bats. There was a black-velvet sofa scattered with purple cushions embroidered with silvery broomsticks and coppery cauldrons, and beside it there was even an actual cauldron, though it was covered in a thick lattice of spider’s webs that suggested it hadn’t been used in a while. Across the room, a narrow, arched window showed a moonlit view down over the Blizzy Lizzies.
Yep, this was a witch’s tower.
This would have been a great discovery if only Jones had been there to discover it with her.
A sound from behind made Roxy jump.
“Pretty, pretty…” It was the bone-chilling croon again. “Such a pretty head of hair.”
The voice was coming from behind the only door.
“Hey!” Roxy leaped to her feet, strode to the door and banged on it. “Stop spying on me! And stop talking about my hair! And, more to the point, LET ME OUT!”
“Pretty, pretty,” was the witch’s sing-song reply. “Blonde and lovely.”
“I said, stop it!” Roxy thumped the door again. “And tell me where Jones is!”
“Perfect golden tresses,” went on the witch. “A waterfall of blondeness!”
Roxy stopped banging.
She had heard that expression before.
Just one more thing, you’ll need LONG hair – a waterfall of blondeness…
It was from the rhyming newspaper ad that had led her to the storage vault in the first place.
But the ad hadn’t been placed by Witchalina McWitch. It had been placed by a Trixie T McWitch.
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