by Alesha Dixon
“I had a meeting with Nanny Beam,” I explained. “And the Queen.”
“The Queen?” Alexis blinked. “Are you serious?”
Mum and Dad came to sit down at the table with us, Mum giving me a knowing look as she pulled in her chair.
“Yeah,” I said, taking a sip of water, reminding myself to be careful with how much I gave away. “She wanted to talk about Mr Mercury taking off with the crown after our ceremony. She thought I might be able to help track him down.”
“Are you going to help MI5?” Clara asked.
Dad sighed. Last term, when we didn’t know who the evil mastermind behind everything was, I had been determined to track down Mr Mercury’s whereabouts, knowing that he was the best link to finding out who he was working for. My enthusiasm for the mission got me into a lot of trouble.
I got ever-so-slightly arrested.
So, I can’t imagine my parents were going to be happy with me going after a dangerous criminal once again.
“Actually, we’ve been discussing things,” Mum began, looking at Dad, who gave her an encouraging nod. “We want to be honest with you three.”
She took a deep breath.
“We wanted to let you know that after the events of last term, we’re not going to hold you back from aiding Nanny Beam and MI5 to track down Mr Mercury. Aurora” – she reached for my hand across the table – “if it wasn’t for you and the Bright Sparks, something might have happened to Alexis without us even knowing. You deserved that medal the Queen gave you, and we don’t want to stop you from doing what you do best.” She grinned. “Saving the world.”
I put my fork down and stared at her. “So … you’re saying that you give me permission to do everything I can to track down Mr Mercury?”
“Yes.” Dad nodded. “But this time, you keep us informed. We know you’re not going to stop until you find Mr Mercury, whether you have our permission or not. This way, at least you can keep us in the loop. We won’t be cross. We won’t try to stop you. We want to know where you are and be able to help you wherever possible.”
“This time round, we’re going to work together,” Mum added. “Deal?”
“Sounds good to me! Deal.”
Dad beamed at me and Mum gave me a small smile when he wasn’t looking. Mum knew about the precious stone set into the Queen’s crown and how extra important it was to find Mr Mercury this time; she wasn’t going to try to stop me from helping.
“Right, how about we go set up a movie?” Dad said, clapping his hands together. “I think Aurora should choose after her amazing performance in the fashion show today.”
“Seriously?” Alexis groaned. “But she has the worst taste in films.”
“Alexis,” Dad said in a warning tone, “please help Aurora set it up while we clear the table.”
Following Alexis into the sitting room, I was pleased to have a moment to speak to him alone. He picked up the remote and slumped on to the sofa. I sat down next to him, Kimmy hopping up next to me and resting her head in my lap.
“Alexis, can you do me a favour?” I asked.
“What’s up?” Alexis yawned.
“Can you still get into the Vermore system?”
He looked at me in surprise. “I don’t know. Why?”
“I had an idea on the way back from my meeting with the Queen,” I explained. “Mr Mercury might not be the only employee loyal to Darek. What if someone else at Vermore Enterprises is still helping Mr Mercury, even though Darek is in prison? They might be in on whatever plan Darek had for the crown, too.”
“It’s a possibility,” Alexis said thoughtfully. “When I interned there, everyone seemed very nice and not exactly the kind of people who would be involved in a royal heist, but I guess I thought Darek was really nice, too.”
“I just wondered, if you could get into the Vermore computer system, you might come across something suspicious. Mr Mercury may have contacted someone there or be using their technology somehow.”
“Let me see what I can do,” he said determinedly. “Their system will be hard to crack but I’ll find a way.”
“Thanks, Alexis. You’re the best.”
“Anything I can do to make up for the mistakes I made last year,” he said, returning to the TV. “Now, what does a superhero like watching on a Friday night?”
I was just about to read out some options when the doorbell rang. Dad came bustling through from the kitchen.
“Aurora, did you invite the Bright Sparks over?”
“No,” I called from the sitting room. “Maybe Nanny Beam forgot to tell me something earlier and she’s come back.”
We heard him open the door and a familiar voice came floating through the house.
“My, Henry, you look tired,” we heard Aunt Lucinda say. “Remind me to lend you my new moisturiser! The most expensive in the world, but so worth it, darling; it will get rid of those bags under your eyes. Honestly, you look twice your age!”
“Kiyana,” Dad called to Mum in a VERY strained voice, “your sister and her pet ostrich are here. With a LOT of suitcases.”
“Oh yes, didn’t I mention that already? Alfred and I are here to stay with you for a few weeks! Won’t this be FUN?”
4
“I’ve never heard an ostrich snore before,” Fred said with a grimace.
The Bright Sparks had come over for a movie on Sunday afternoon, but we were having trouble hearing the film over Alfred’s foghorn snores. We had excitedly walked into the sitting room, laden with popcorn and snacks, to find Alfred, in a white dressing gown, matching slippers and a towel wrapped in a turban around his head, sprawled across the entire sofa, fast asleep.
Aunt Lucinda, who came through from the kitchen dressed in the same outfit and sipping a mocktail, explained that they had “just come from a luxury London spa. That’s why Alfred’s feathers are particularly fluffy today.” She had then swanned past my friends to lie across the other sofa, before placing cucumber slices over her eyes and telling us to “carry on as usual”, promising they wouldn’t get in our way.
The only problem was we couldn’t exactly carry on as normal as, thanks to them, there was nowhere to sit but the floor. And a few minutes into the film, Fred made the decision to turn it off since we couldn’t hear any of it anyway.
“I didn’t even realize ostriches could snore,” Georgie said, watching Alfred with interest.
“Oh, he’s a marvellous snorer,” Aunt Lucinda commented without removing the cucumber slices from her eyes. “He won the International Snoring Championships two years in a row. I find his snores rather soothing. Don’t you?”
The Bright Sparks didn’t look convinced.
Aunt Lucinda had only been living here two days and already there had been plenty of chaos. Even though they were twins, Aunt Lucinda and my mum are very different. While Mum has dedicated her life to saving the world with her superpowers, Aunt Lucinda decided to spend her life using her superpowers to get whatever she wants. Aunt Lucinda is a lot of fun – she always wears bright colours and over-the-top statement outfits. And she doesn’t go anywhere without her sidekick, Alfred, a grumpy ostrich who shares Aunt Lucinda’s fondness for stealing expensive jewellery, conning their way into exclusive events and spending almost the whole year on luxury holidays.
In the first few hours, we discovered they weren’t exactly ideal housemates. Ostriches are big creatures and Alfred was continually knocking everything over as he walked past. One of his favourite pastimes also happened to be destroying things. The moment he arrived, I hid my clothes under my bed, aware that he loved to “borrow” items of clothing and then rip them apart once he was done wearing them. He kept stealing the TV remote and insisting on watching soaps – “he just ADORES the dramatic storylines,” Aunt Lucinda kept saying fondly – and then when Alexis couldn’t take it any more and attempted to remove the remote from him, Alfred swallowed it in protest.
Alexis almost passed out on the spot when he saw that Alfred had been into his r
oom and stamped on his computer keyboard in frustration when he couldn’t remember his email password, before pecking at the screen until it cracked.
Clara had found that quite funny until she realized that her room hadn’t been left untouched either. Alfred had invented a game of tearing all the pages out of her science books and throwing them up in the air like confetti, so they would rain round him as he danced about the room happily. He’d then used permanent marker pen to draw some kind of weird blob with a beak in the middle of the whiteboard that she used to solve mathematical equations.
“Alfred did a self-portrait!” Aunt Lucinda said, her eyes welling up as she admired the board. “He is so talented.”
Clara was so horrified, she couldn’t speak for about half an hour.
And Aunt Lucinda had taken over the house with all her stuff. She had so many clothes that she insisted on hanging up everywhere because the wardrobe in the spare room was “simply not big enough”. Every door frame and curtain rail in the house was being used to hang up her clothes, so to get into a room you had to hack your way through a wall of ballgowns and poufy skirts.
“Mum, WHEN are they leaving?” Alexis asked almost every hour, but the answer was always the same.
They were here until Nanny Beam said so. She’d asked Aunt Lucinda and Alfred to stay at our house for a bit until Mr Mercury had been found and put in prison.
“But we already have two superheroes in the house,” Mum said to Nanny Beam in a VERY strained voice. “It’s not like Lucinda and Alfred would be any help if Mr Mercury did decide to pay us a visit!”
Nanny Beam disagreed, calmly reminding Mum of the times that Aunt Lucinda and Alfred had helped us out of scrapes in the past. She had a point. It had been my aunt and her ostrich who had rescued me when I was put under room arrest at the Superhero Conference, after being falsely accused of stealing the Light of the World. They had also come with the Bright Sparks to help Alexis and me stop Darek Vermore’s scheme on the Vermore Enterprises rooftop before Christmas.
It was common knowledge that Alfred was now Mr Mercury’s great nemesis and vice versa. Without Alfred, things would have been much worse than they are now.
We just had to keep reminding ourselves of that.
“The film looked bad anyway. It’s much nicer to be able to sit around and chat,” Kizzy said cheerily, taking a handful of popcorn and pretending her hair wasn’t flying around, getting more and more tangled every time Alfred exhaled.
I smiled at her. She really was the most optimistic and kindest person I’ve ever met.
I was just about to tell her so when my phone sitting on the coffee table started ringing. Suzie glanced at the screen as she reached for it to pass it to me and her face lit up when she saw who it was.
“It’s a video call with JJ and Cherry!”
The others all quickly huddled around me as I picked up. The screen split into two as both Cherry and JJ’s faces popped into view.
“Hi, everyone!” Cherry exclaimed, waving at her camera. “That was good timing. I thought JJ might be about and it looks like we caught all the Bright Sparks together!”
“Well, you two are honorary members,” Suzie told her proudly.
JJ laughed. “If only we lived in the same country!”
I met JJ and Cherry at the Superhero Conference last summer. They both had superpowers, too – JJ was incredibly strong and fast; Cherry had supersonic hearing and had premonitions when something bad was going to happen. It was nice to meet others my age with superpowers, so I didn’t feel like such a freak. And then, when everyone thought I had stolen the Light of the World, Cherry and JJ helped me escape.
They all got on so well with the Bright Sparks, we’d ended up spending a week in Cornwall at Nanny Beam’s together for some downtime after that particular adventure.
The only problem was that Cherry lived in Malaysia and JJ was from Nigeria. We could video call every now and then, but I still missed them a lot.
“How was the fashion show, Georgie?” Cherry asked, stifling a yawn. It may have been our afternoon, but it was late in the evening in Malaysia.
“It was good, thank you,” Georgie said, blushing.
“That’s an understatement,” Suzie said, nudging Georgie. “It went viral! Everyone was talking about it and she got work experience offers from big fashion houses.”
“That’s amazing! Not that I’m surprised,” Cherry said, causing Georgie to turn bright red.
“I saw it on YouTube,” JJ said. “Nice going with the light beams, Aurora. Your jacket was amazing. Any chance you can design one for me, Georgie? Can it be leather with ‘JJ’ on the back? And maybe ‘I am super strong’ down the sleeve?”
“Very creative,” Cherry said, rolling her eyes. “Maybe we should leave the design to the designer. Anyway, I wondered if there was any news on the crown and Mr Mercury. Has Nanny Beam got any new clues?”
“None so far.”
“Don’t worry, something will come up. And then you can… Hang on” – JJ paused, squinting into the screen – “is that a bunch of feathers behind you? And what’s that loud noise every few seconds? It sounds like…”
“A bird with a sinus problem,” Fred muttered, finishing his sentence.
“Please do not refer to Alfred as ‘a bird’,” Aunt Lucinda said, lifting a cucumber slice to peer at Fred. “He gets very upset at being labelled as such.”
“I don’t think he’ll have heard over his snores,” Kizzy pointed out.
“I’m surprised you can’t hear them from Malaysia, Cherry, with your supersonic hearing,” Suzie said, making her giggle. “Put on your specially made headphones and see if you can tune in on them.”
“So, Aunt Lucinda and Alfred are there?” Cherry asked, looking closer at the screen. “How come?”
“They’ve moved in for a bit,” I explained through gritted teeth. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Hello, darlings!” Aunt Lucinda trilled from her sofa. “I hope you’re causing as much trouble as possible in your various corners of the globe.”
“As always, Aunt Lucinda,” JJ said proudly. “I’m currently grounded for practising my karate chop on the kitchen table. Broke it clean in half.”
“Marvellous. I shall report that back to Nanny Beam. She’ll be thrilled to hear of your skills.”
“So, no updates at all on finding Mr Mercury?” Cherry said, bringing the conversation back on track.
I shook my head. “No leads as yet, but maybe something will come up soon.”
“Has Nanny Beam spoken to Darek?” she asked suddenly.
“Probably,” I said, glancing at Aunt Lucinda, who had decided to sit up and listen to the conversation. “He would have gone through lots of questioning before he was put in prison.”
“Did she get anything out of him?”
“No,” Aunt Lucinda replied for me. “He’s hardly saying a word and he’s told her nothing of interest.”
“Have you been to talk to him, Aurora?”
“No,” I said, confused. “Why? Do you think I should?”
“Maybe. I’m surprised you haven’t already. Surely he’s the best clue you can get?” Cherry reasoned. “Mr Mercury was working for him, right?”
“Maybe he still is,” JJ said enthusiastically.
“Of course, he’s the best clue, but we’ve tried everything to get information out of him and nothing has worked. Nanny Beam has brought in experts and trained professionals from around the country,” Aunt Lucinda said, picking a bit of fluff off her dressing gown. “He isn’t giving us anything on Mr Mercury.”
“And if MI5 agents can’t get anything out of him, then I doubt I’d have any success,” I pointed out.
Cherry shrugged. “It was just an idea. If anyone knows where Mr Mercury is, it’s Darek Vermore.”
There was silence for a few moments as we pondered Cherry’s suggestion.
“I’m not sure Aurora would be allowed to go along and speak to him in the hig
h security prison without being accompanied,” Aunt Lucinda noted. “She’s … well … too young and not trained in these things.”
“Maybe those are the very reasons it might just work,” JJ said thoughtfully.
“Maybe,” I said, the idea growing on me. “Or it could be completely hopeless.”
“How will you know,” Cherry said, leaning forward and smiling into the camera, “if you don’t try?”
5
“Let me get this straight,” Alexis said, sitting on the edge of my bed. “You’re going to visit Darek Vermore … in prison?”
I nodded. “Nanny Beam has approved the plan and Aunt Lucinda is going to drive me there in a minute.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea? Why would you want to see him again? And surely Nanny Beam has tried speaking to him. If she can’t get any information from him…”
“I have to try,” I said firmly.
I sat down next to him on the bed to tie the laces on my Lightning Girl trainers. I felt like I needed all the confidence I could get today and somehow Georgie’s designs always give me a little boost.
“You know what, Aurora, I realize I tease you a lot for being a loser and stuff,” Alexis said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “but you truly are one of the bravest people I know.”
I looked up from my shoes to see him beaming at me.
“You’re not being sarcastic right now?” I asked suspiciously.
“Nope.” He laughed. “I mean it.”
“Oh.” I smiled. “Thanks, Alexis. That’s really nice of you to say. And … likewise.”
“Just be careful,” he warned as I turned back to my laces. “Remember how manipulative and intelligent Darek Vermore is. He managed to fool an entire government security service. Make sure you’re on your guard.”
“I will be. Don’t worry.”
He nodded. “Before you go, I wanted to tell you about something weird I discovered when I was taking a look around Vermore Enterprises’s system.”
“You managed to get into it?” I asked excitedly.