The cupid hesitated. He wanted to say ‘no’. Or did he? ‘No’ seemed right. It fitted with his cupid’s natural desire to deny everything. But he wasn’t sure that the double negative would work in his favour.
‘We were going to harrow her soul,’ said the angel lightly. (So lightly that it was terrifying.) ‘Unrequited love, you remember? Fever? Rend the fabric of her being? There’s a Guardian there who needs to wish he had never existed! Tell me, sweetie – how are we to do that with Charlie B?’
‘Could still . . .’
‘Charlie B?’ sighed Love. ‘She’ll make him into a safe, reliable chemist in six months.’
The cupid launched a last, desperate defence. ‘Er . . . Harrows and fevers an’ stuff, Erry. Come ter fink of it. ‘Snot very angelic, is it? Maybe it’s just as well we don’t—’
Then he looked into his leader’s glittering stare and wished he hadn’t.
‘I am Love, my darling,’ she whispered. ‘Those rules do not apply to me.’
‘Sorry, Erry,’ said the cupid, who was trying to hide under his hat.
‘No, don’t be sorry. I think you’ve just been working too hard. You need a change . . .’
‘No, Erry!’ pleaded the cupid. ‘Please, no . . .’
‘. . . Report to my secretary. I believe he’s been looking for a replacement.’
‘Aiiiiieeeeeeeeee!!!!!’
Bells rang, a sudden chime. The angel picked a golden telephone from her bumping desk. ‘Yes?’ she snapped.
‘It’s the Appeals Board, Erry,’ said her soon-to-be-relieved secretary’s voice in her ear. ‘Yer summoned. They’ve got ter do an Inquiry into the Jones kid case.’
The angel’s eyes hardened. ‘Oh, have they?’ she said. ‘Oh dear. What shall we do about that, I wonder?’
‘And that great sucking sound you hear,’ said Doomsday, ‘is the Appeals Board all licking their lips together.’
‘They don’t have lips,’ said a very dejected Mishamh. ‘Or if they do, they can’t lick them.’
‘Metaphorically. Anyway, notice has been given of an Appeal. The case includes entry by an unauthorized person, theft of a restricted item and a number of other things for which there is no precedent. And, of course, the Department of Love is in the thick of it – again. The Board is opening preliminary hearings. They also want to see the candidate’s full examination papers . . .’
‘But that will take decades,’ groaned Mishamh. ‘She can hardly have started them!’
‘At a guess, she has just reached question two thousand and something.’
‘So we’ll have to postpone, after all,’ said Mishamh gloomily.
‘It was a good asteroid,’ said Doomsday kindly. ‘Very neat. Very efficient. Ask it to call back again in, er, in two thousand six hundred years. There’s every chance we’ll need it then.’
‘I just don’t understand! How can the Governors allow this? Shouldn’t Love just be reined in? What about the Curriculum?’
‘Mm, yes,’ said Doomsday. ‘I have a theory about that.’
The bus stop was empty. The pavement outside the school gates was empty. So was the school car park. The windows stared silently at Sally.
She settled down to wait.
‘Sir?’ said Mishamh. He felt he had nothing to lose now.
‘Mm, yes?’
‘You said you had a theory, sir.’
‘I did say that.’
Doomsday might have left it there. But as archangels go, he was merciful. At least to his staff.
‘. . . I think the Governors like things the way they are,’ he said.
‘But—’
‘Why, Mishamh? Is that what you were going to ask?’
Mishamh heard the warning note. He felt the weight of it settle upon his shoulders. He looked up into the eyes of ice.
‘Yes . . . yes, sir, it was.’
‘Why do the Governors, who are entrusted with Heaven, who wrote the Great Curriculum, who make the Laws by which all Creation runs, allow such confusion? Why, indeed, is Love a part of the Curriculum at all? I have a theory, but I cannot tell it to you. Can you tell me? Can you tell me why the Governors allow what they allow?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mishamh with a hollow, tingly feeling in his chest. He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I think I can – now.’
‘And that is?’
‘It’s so they can cheat when they want to.’
Down below them, small and blue and beautiful, turned the world they could never destroy.
About the Author
John Dickinson lives near Gloucester and writes all kinds of things amazingly well (says his guardian angel). Attack of the Cupids is the sequel to Muddle and Win.
Also by John Dickinson
Muddle and Win: The Battle for Sally Jones
The Cup of the World
The Widow and the King
The Fatal Child
The Lightstep
W.E.
ATTACK OF THE CUPIDS
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17199 6
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2013
Copyright © John Dickinson, 2013
Cover illustration © Lorenzo Etherington, 2013
First Published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, 2013
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