With her head held high, or at least as high as is appropriate when you are carrying your own damaged broomstick over your shoulder, Tiffany walked into the city. The pointy hat got one or two glances, and perhaps a couple of frowns, but mostly people didn’t look at her at all; in the country, everyone you meet is someone you know or a stranger worth investigating, but here it seemed there were so many people that it was a waste of time even to look at them at all, and possibly dangerous in any case.
Tiffany bent down. ‘Rob, you know Roland, the Baron’s son?’
‘Ach, the wee streak o’ nothing,’ said Rob Anybody.
‘Well, nevertheless,’ said Tiffany, ‘I know you can find people and I would like you to go and find him for me now please.’
‘Would you no’ mind if we had just the one wee drink while we are looking?’ said Rob Anybody. ‘A man could drown o’ thirst around here. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t bogging for a wee dram or ten.’
Tiffany knew that it would be foolish to say either yes or no and settled for, ‘Just the one then. When you’ve found him.’
There was the faintest of whooshing noises behind her, and no more Feegles. Still, they would be easy to find; you just had to listen for breaking glass. Oh yes, breaking glass that repaired itself. Another mystery: she had looked at the mirror ball very carefully as they put it back in its box, and there hadn’t been even a scratch on it.
She glanced up at the towers of Unseen University, crammed with wise men in pointy hats, or at least men in pointy hats, but there was another address, well known to witches, which was in its own way just as magical: Boffo’s Joke Emporium, number four, Tenth Egg Street. She had never been there, but she did get a catalogue occasionally.
People started to notice her more when she got off the main streets and made her way through the neighbourhoods, and she could feel eyeballs on her as she walked over the cobbles. People weren’t angry or unfriendly as such. They were just … watching, as if wondering what to make of her, and she had to hope that it was not, for example, stew.
There wasn’t a bell on the door of Boffo’s Joke Emporium. There was a whoopee cushion, and for most of the people who came to buy things in the emporium, a whoopee cushion, perhaps in conjunction with a generous dollop of fake sick, was the last word in entertainment, which indeed it is, unfortunately.
But real witches often needed boffo too. There were times when you had to
Tiffany stepped inside and admired the deep-throated farting of the whoopee cushion, pushed her way round and more or less through a ludicrous fake skeleton with glowing red eyes, and reached the counter, at which point somebody blew a squeaker at her. It disappeared, to be replaced by the face of a small, worried-looking man, who said, ‘Did you by any chance find that even remotely amusing?’
His voice suggested that he expected the answer to be ‘no’ and Tiffany saw no reason to disappoint him. ‘Absolutely not,’ she said.
The man sighed and pushed the unfunny squeaker down the counter. ‘Alas, no one ever does,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I’m doing something wrong somewhere. Oh well, what can I do for you, miss— Oh — you are a
‘Look,’ said Tiffany, ‘I’ve never ordered anything from you, but I used to work with Miss Treason, who …’
But the man wasn’t listening to her. Instead he was shouting at a hole in the floor. ‘Mother? We’ve got a real one!’
A few seconds later, a voice by Tiffany’s ear said, ‘Derek is sometimes mistaken and you might have found the broomstick. You are a witch, aren’t you? Show me!’
Tiffany vanished. She did it without thinking — or, rather, thinking so fast that her thoughts had no time to wave to her as they flashed by. Only when the man, who was apparently Derek, was staring open-mouthed at nothing at all did she realize that she had faded into the foreground so quickly because disobeying
‘
‘I’m going to turn round, you know,’ Tiffany warned.
‘I don’t recall saying that you couldn’t, my dear.’
