“Why was it a giant goji-berry-and-bran muffin?” Roxy asked now. “What I turned Bellissima into, I mean. Why not … I don’t know … a buttered crumpet? Or a barbecue chicken wing? Or a pot of apricot yogurt?”
“Must have been the last thing you ate,” said Gretel briskly. “I only have a rudimentary knowledge of spells, I should point out, but there are some very basic ones that reproduce your last meal. From the days when food was scarce, I imagine, and you might have wanted to turn your empty lunch plate into a full supper plate, or feed a family of ten on one person’s mashed parsnip.” She got to her feet and marched smartly to the window to straighten the blinds. “Well, I suppose I have to believe your story, Roxy, though I still don’t know what possessed you to bring an unlicensed fairy right into the heart of the Ministry!”
The fact that Gretel was talking, quite openly, about unlicensed fairies; the fact she hadn’t changed back into her undercover loo-cleaner garb but was instead still sleek and glossy in her high heels and her red coat … Roxy’s sister clearly wasn’t bothering to pretend any more. The game had been up, in fact, since the first crazy moments after the explosion, when Roxy had been a little bit alert (among a whole lot of totally-out-of-it). Gretel – impressively only a few minutes late on Bellissima’s trail – had been the first one into Bijou’s room, barking orders at dozens of SMOGs behind her and using some amazing-looking zappy thing on the giant goji-berry-and-bran muffin – aka Queen Bellissima – to get it under a laser web. And Gretel had been the one who’d run to Roxy’s side, taken her hand and said, firmly, into her ear, “You’re all right now, Rox. I’ve got it all under control. You’re safe. You’re safe with me.”
The loo-cleaner alias was over.
The question was: exactly how open and honest was Gretel prepared to be?
Alongside this, to be fair, was the question of how open and honest was Roxy prepared to be herself. She was fudging her story, however bad she felt about the half-truths and the careful omissions, because Gretel, quite evidently, did not know about Jones. Roxy had come up with the fib when she’d woken up in the hospital room only a couple of hours ago. It seemed the best explanation for it all: what she’d been doing in Bijou’s room; how she knew so much about magic… And all while protecting Jones.
Jones, Roxy was as certain as she could possibly be, had somehow managed to slip away in the mayhem that had followed the explosion. As far as Gretel was concerned, therefore, Jones did not exist.
“Anyhow, we’ll talk more when you’re all better. For now, I should let you rest.” Gretel came back to the bed to plump Roxy’s pillow. “Now, a little later today, a lady called Mrs Smith is coming to visit you. Don’t be alarmed, but she’s going to have to do something called a False Memory Enchantment on you. It won’t hurt in the slightest, I promise, but all this stuff you learned from Francesca the Flotsam Fairy is rather dangerous for you to know. All right?”
“Well, no, not really, but I suppose I don’t have any ch—”
“I’ll come back later for that, but right now I have a pile of work to be getting on with. You’ve no idea how much chaos your escapade has caused us all! I suppose I should be glad that Minister Splendid hasn’t fired me just for being related to you.”
“Or because you stole the Seventh Stone from the Dodgy Old Clock,” Roxy said.
Gretel froze. “What did you just say?”
This was the moment – perhaps the only moment, if Mrs Smith was coming to do that False Memory Enchantment later – for Roxy to try extracting the full truth from her sister.
“Look. You know I used the Stone to do that spell. And you haven’t asked me how I got hold of it. Because – let’s not pretend any more, Gretel – you already know exactly how. It was in the Proon Puffs packet. And the only way the Stone could have got into our Proon Puffs packet, in the first place, was if you stole it.” Roxy didn’t know if Gretel’s attempt to gloss over her possession of the Stone had jolted her brain into this realization, or if she’d kind of known it all along. “You had access to the Stone in Minister Splendid’s office. The Proon Puffs were yours. It’s not exactly rocket science, G!”
Gretel didn’t reply. It looked as if she might have forgotten how to breathe.
“The thing I can’t work out,” said Roxy, “is why. I mean, I know you didn’t take it for bad reasons – Diabolical reasons, that is. But it was such a massive risk for you to take it at all that I honestly can’t think of any reason that makes sense.”
Gretel sat back down on the chair next to Roxy’s bed. She hid her face behind shaking hands.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispered from behind her closed fingers. “I didn’t know how else to keep you safe.”
“Me? Safe? From who?”
“When I first heard there’d been a breakout…” Gretel put her hands down on her lap. They were still shaking. “I’m only afraid of one person, Roxy. I’ve only ever been afraid of one person, my entire life. And when Minister Splendid called me to his office to tell me, the other night, that there’d been a prison break, my first thought was: she’ll come to get us.”
“Queen Bellissima?”
Gretel shook her head. “Worse. Far worse. You see, Roxy, this … thing happened, to me and Han, when we were kids…”
“You were Hansel and Gretel. From the fairytale. Sorry, from the ‘fairytale’.” Roxy put the fingers of both hands in the air and made quotation marks. “You don’t have to tell me, G. I know.”
“YOU KNOW?” Gretel’s eyebrows were higher up her forehead than any eyebrows had the right to be. “Did Frankie the Fairy tell you that, too?”
“No. I worked it out.” This was sort of true. “Your names. Your freaky sugar phobia. Han writing entire albums about being locked in a cage by a witch… I mean, it’s sort of impossible not to work it out, Gretel, once you know fairytales really happened.”
“Wow.” Gretel looked – for the first time in her life – a tiny bit in awe of her little sister. “You really need that False Memory Enchantment, and super-fast. I don’t want you knowing all this stuff for the rest of your life. It’s way too much to live with.”
“So you wanted to keep me safe from the witch that kidnapped you and Han when you were kids?”
Gretel nodded. “The Gingerbread Witch,” she whispered.
“And she escaped from the mountain prison too?”
Gretel shook her head. “She was never captured in the first place. They never found her when they were rounding up the Diabolicals.” Her words came fast, as if it was a relief to tell all this to someone who in a few hours’ time wouldn’t remember it any more. “We think she’s deep, deep inside the Border Woods where her cottage once stood, but those woods are still way too dangerous to enter and go after her. They’re the only part of the kingdom the Great Clean-Up couldn’t touch. Oh, that was the programme Minister Splendid implemented, by the way, to clear Dark Magic out of the kingdom. Don’t tell me Frankie the oh-so-convenient fairy told you about the Great Clean-Up, too,” she added, exasperated, as Roxy failed to look surprised enough.
“A bit,” admitted Roxy, “yeah.”
“Terrific.” Gretel rolled her eyes before continuing. “Well, the prison break multiplied the danger from Dark Magic a hundredfold. Trust me, I know too much about how these Diabolicals work to have the slightest doubt. Queen Bellissima intended to get her body and her powers back and then start spreading her Dark Magic tentacles over the country faster than you can say Mirror, Mirror. It would have given new strength to the evil in the Border Woods. Brought every Diabolical crawling back out from whatever rocks they’ve been hiding under for the last twenty years. The Gingerbread Witch among them. Now, I never panic, Roxy. Everyone who knows me knows that I. Never. Panic. But this time…”
“You panicked.”
“I panicked. When the office emptied out, I opened up the clock and took the Seventh Stone. Then, the night you came back from the Decontamination Zone, I used it to cast a
protective charm over you. I’ve hardly picked up any magic in my job, as it happens, but I’ve always made darn sure I have one particular charm handy: a simple but powerful spell that wards off child-eating witches. I put the Stone into the Proon Puffs box for the night, because I knew it was a place nobody would ever think to look for it. That’s the same reason, by the way, that I made sure the Dodgy Old Clock was put in Minister Splendid’s office the very first day I took my job with him. Always remember, Roxy,” Gretel said earnestly, “that the safest place to hide something is in plain sight. All the better, of course, if it’s in plain sight in an office surrounded by armed guards, in a building filled with armed guards. But the Proon Puffs box felt as safe a temporary hiding place as any. Anyway, when I woke up I had to hurry to an emergency meeting, and I didn’t have time to take the Stone back to the clock, and when I came back and it was gone…”
“You were worried you’d put it at more risk from Bellissima.”
“I was worried Bellissima already had it! I can’t believe how stupid I was to take it away from its secure hiding place! I was desperate, I suppose. The things the evil queen could do with that Stone, Rox. The things any Diabolical could do…” Gretel shuddered. “It’s why only the tiniest circle of people know the Seventh Stone’s location. A circle of people who can all trust each other.” Her brow furrowed fleetingly. “One hundred per cent.”
“But Minister Splendid isn’t in that circle?” Roxy asked.
“Oh, Splendid’s not a bad old stick, really. He’d never do anything truly harmful with the Stone. But he is…” Gretel pondered for a moment, and then sighed. “OK, I’m only telling you all this, Roxy, because you’ll have it all put out of your head later today. The Minister is a teeny bit of a pompous twerp at times. I – we, in our tiny circle – worry that he might go around boasting about the Seventh Stone to the wrong person, a person who does intend harm. So no, he absolutely doesn’t know the Dodgy Old Clock in his office is the Stone’s hiding place. That it’s been the Stone’s hiding place for many, many years. He just thinks, thanks to me, that the clock is an ugly old antique that he has to keep on display because it was given to the Ministry by Queen Ariadne. And thank goodness, I’ve put the Stone safely back in there now. Just in time, too, because our group was already arranging to use it to cast a seriously powerful protective enchantment over the Kingdom, until Bellissima was caught. They wouldn’t have been at all happy with me if I ended up having to admit I’d lost it.”
This group – circle, Gretel had already called it – sounded the sort of thing that would have made Jones’s head explode with excitement, Roxy thought, if she were here. She herself was bursting to know more.
“If there are still evil elements lurking in those woods,” she asked, “why doesn’t someone in your – uh – circle just use the Stone anyway? To cast that protective spell, or to seek the missing Diabolicals out?”
“Because it would have to be a real emergency to take that step,” Gretel replied sharply. “These aren’t insignificant spells we’re talking about, Roxy. They’re big spells. Huge, ancient spells. And the magic of the Seventh Stone isn’t very stable. Spells cast with it can easily take on a life of their own. It’s a colossal risk. None of us – almost none of us – want to do that unless there’s no other choice.”
There she was with the furrowed brow again, Roxy couldn’t help but notice.
“So you’ve put the Stone safely back into the Clock now?” she asked.
“Yep. All safe.” Gretel smiled with relief as she straightened Roxy’s sheets. “You know, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wish they didn’t have to put the False Memory Enchantment back over you, Rox. It’s kind of nice talking about some of this stuff.”
“Will the Enchantment make me forget everything?” Roxy asked, watching her sister’s face closely.
Gretel nodded.
“Pity.” Roxy grinned up at her. “I wish there was the tiniest glitch in it so I could still remember my sister’s secretly this totally awesome super-spy.”
Now Gretel’s smile broadened.
“You’re pretty awesome yourself,” she said.
Then her phone pinged.
“It’s from Han,” she said, glancing down at her phone with the particular smile she always used whenever her brother contacted her. “For you.”
She swivelled the phone round to show it to Roxy. Just a brief text message: Heard you turned a witch into a giant vegan muffin, Roxy read. Awesome work. Will deffo put that in my next song. H x
Roxy had only just finished reading it when there was a second ping, and an ALL-CAPITALS, angry-looking message from Minister Splendid popped up on the screen.
WHERE ARE YOU???? EMERGENCY MEETING (MY OFFICE) STARTED FIVE MINUTES AGO!!!!!!!!
“I have to go.” Gretel bent down to dust the top of Roxy’s head with her lips before stalking towards the hospital-room door. In her heels and the scarlet coat, she looked magnificent. She stopped halfway out of the door. “I’ll miss this,” she said. “It’s better than all the secrets.”
“Way better,” said Roxy, “than all the secrets.”
And then Gretel was gone, closing the door behind her.
Which gave Roxy the opportunity, for the first time since she’d woken up, to slump back on her pillow and worry a bit.
About Jones, first and foremost.
All Roxy really knew was that Jones had got away.
The rest was there for her to imagine, and fret over. Had Jones come back to herself moments after Queen Bellissima’s power had been broken, then slipped out of the Ministry as fast as she could? Was she now safely back in her attic above the doughnut shop?
Would Roxy ever see her again?
And there was another worry, too, smaller than the one about Jones, and not yet completely clear in Roxy’s aching head. The outline of this worry was fuzzy, and blurred, but in a way this made it more concerning still. It felt as if it was lurking in the shadows.
Was it a worry about the at-large Gingerbread Witch, her brother and sister’s deadliest enemy? Or was it something – or someone – else?
There was a light tap at the door; lunch must be on its way.
“I’m not hungry!” Roxy called out politely, but the door opened anyway. “Thanks, but no thanks,” she said, a tiny bit less politely, as the trolley began to bump its way through, shoved inelegantly by a hospital orderly. “I’m a bit tired, and I’d rather just be alone.”
“Not hungry?” the orderly snorted from beneath the baseball cap that was covering almost her entire face. “Are you for real? You’ve been out of it for two whole days, without so much as a sausage, and now I’m actually bringing you a sausage. All right,” the orderly went on, whipping the lid off the plate on the trolley with a flourish, “I’ve seen better sausages. It’s a pretty sad-looking sausage, when all’s said and done. But still, it’s a sausage. So it’s definitely not to be sneezed at.”
“Jones!” Roxy cried out. “It’s you!”
“Yes, it’s me, and will you keep it down a bit?” Jones hissed, pulling off the baseball cap and hurrying over to Roxy’s bed. Her hair, now a shade of mushy-pea-green that only someone as beautiful as Jones could pull off, brushed against Roxy’s cheek as she leaned down to give her a fierce hug. “You’ve no idea how difficult it was for me breaking into this place, and if I get discovered…”
There was a pointed cough from beneath her badly fitting white uniform.
“Forgive me,” came Mirror’s voice, “but I must object! Your use of I and me is hurtful and inaccurate: it should be us and we!”
“You saved Mirror!” Roxy gasped.
“Yeah, and I’m regretting it already,” grumbled Jones. “Forty-eight hours of non-stop whining, it’s been.”
“You’d think she’d have been grateful,” came Mirror’s voice, “for the help I kindly gave. We wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t been so brave!”
“You kept lookout over my shoulder while I jemmi
ed a window!” said Jones. “Reflecting what’s behind me isn’t brave! It’s pretty much the only useful thing a mirror can do.”
“You jemmied a window to get in here?” Roxy asked.
“Oh, relax! Anyway, less about me, what about you! How about your totally epic braveness back there with the Stone? I mean, turning a massively powerful witch into a vegan muffin?” Jones gave Roxy a high-five. “Seriously, QG, I did not know you had that in you. I’ll never forget that sight, when I snapped out of whatever grim fog Bellissima had put me into. Good thing I was too busy working out how to get away, or I might have had a cheeky nibble! Actually, forget that. Those muffins were already seriously gross. How bad would they be with added chunks of evil queen?”
“Jones, look, don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad to see you, but this is a special Ministry hospital. I don’t think they want just anybody wandering around.”
“Jeez, Louise,” said Jones. “Didn’t I teach you anything? You’re far too trusting! This isn’t a hospital. You’re in the Decontamination Zone again!”
“What?”
“And it’s where you’ll stay for weeks, too, while they make absolutely certain you’re not infested with all the magic you’ve come into contact with … I’d also be a tiny bit worried, if I were you, that they’ll wipe your memory clean so you don’t remember anything that happened with Bellissima.”
“Put me under a False Memory Enchantment, you mean? Oh, they’re definitely planning on that. Mrs Smith’s coming to do it later.”
“OK, so here’s what you do: you insist she lets you see a lawyer, and claim it’s against your human rights…”
“It’s OK, Jones. I’m not worried. Well, not about that.”
“Not worried? You don’t mind forgetting all the awesome stuff I’ve taught you?” Jones’s eyes were saucers. “All the awesome stuff we’ve found out together? You’re OK if it all just turns into a soupy, swirly mush in that amazing brain of yours? Wow.” She shook her head, already turning towards the door. “Right, well, I just stopped by to say congrats, Question Girl, and that I hoped we might hook up for another treasure-hunting mission one day, but if you’re just going to let them zap you…”
Roxy & Jones Page 15