Lexy suddenly felt very tired.
‘Come on, little lady,’ said JP. ‘I know how much you want to see me in my special outfit – don’t pretend otherwise by dawdling.’
JP was opening the door to the spare room. Lexy turned towards her own room. Maybe he’d forget that he wanted to show her something if she just slipped away. If only her door had a lock. Perhaps she could pretend to be sick. It wouldn’t really be pretending – she was pretty sure she was on the verge of being sick now anyway.
‘Right, in you come,’ said JP, taking Lexy’s arm.
And before she knew it Lexy was walking through the door to his room rather than her own.
It looked completely different to normal. Usually it was full of old bits of fabric and yarn and failed projects of Hazel’s, but it had recently been cleared out in JP’s honour. Marcel had even given the walls a coat of magnolia paint and everything had been polished. How, then, JP had already managed to make the room look like a long-standing den of diabolical magic was something of a mystery. Apart from the fact that it was unusually dark, and that JP seemed to have installed his own black velvet curtains, Lexy noticed a medium-sized cauldron, a pot of black ink with various feather quills lying near it, jars of unusual-looking herbs and potions, and something that looked worryingly like a voodoo doll. There was also a knife with a solid platinum blade set in a walnut handle studded with black obsidian stones that Lexy couldn’t take her eyes from.
‘I see you are admiring my objects,’ said JP, pronouncing the word the French way. Objays. ‘I have quite a collection. Look at this charming Viking locket, for example. It is over two thousand years old and features in several little-known Norse legends. It has a whole dried snake inside. An Orlov’s Viper, once the rarest snake in the world, now extinct. Dried snake, as you know, is a powerful ingredient for darker alchemists and higher grades of healer.’
Lexy’s fear almost gave way to interest. It was true that you could do a lot with a dried snake, if you were lucky enough to get one, now that most of them were extinct. The older the snake, the more powerful it became. If this one was from actual Viking times or before, then . . .
‘Would you like to touch it?’
Lexy did sort of want to. But she knew she had to get away. She hesitated.
‘No thanks,’ she said.
‘Ah yes, I forgot you were in a hurry . . . to see me naked.’
Jupiter Peacock winked. Then he took off his black jumper and threw it on the bed. He ran his hand through his hair, smoothing out his pompadour. He grinned a horrible grin and then pulled off his T-shirt. His chest was incredibly hairy. In amongst the hair several nefarious-looking things dangled from different necklaces. There was something that looked like a tiny cauldron, and another locket a bit like the one with the dried snake. There was the ceramic bottle that supposedly contained the spirit of Hieronymus Moon. But why was Lexy still here, staring at JP’s vast, horrible chest? It was the objects on the necklaces and in this room that interested her, but she had no idea why. She felt bizarrely compelled by all of it – except, obviously, by JP himself, who repelled her.
‘I’ll come back when you’re ready,’ she said.
And before JP could do or say anything else, she fled to her room.
15
Neptune had been walking through the city for what felt like hours. The venerable guinea pig had been right: there were no cats anywhere. It was most odd. Despite this, no one was very happy to see Neptune. He was shooed away from the back of the Esoteric Emporium, where he was trying to persuade a rat to speak to him rather than just run away as usual.
‘Please,’ Neptune had said. ‘I promise not to eat you. I just need to know where to find the cat called Malvasia.’
But the rat had not believed him and had refused to say anything. And then the man with the large broom had come. The same thing happened at the back of the Mountain Vegetable, a Japanese restaurant that specialised in mushrooms and seaweed. Neptune had finally found something he felt like eating. He didn’t much fancy meat after his encounter with the venerable guinea pig, but he had always liked seaweed – which so far he had only ever eaten when he had licked the remains of Coach Bruce’s lunchtime instant miso soup out of his Old Town Rugby Club supporters’ mug. Tonight the Mountain Vegetable had thoughtfully put a whole plateful of the stuff – covered in miso and garlic sauce – on the wall by the back door. Neptune had been slurping it greedily when a chef had come out and shouted, ‘Oi, that’s my dinner, you sodding fleabag!’
Fleabag! Did he not know who Neptune was?
Neptune had been in photo-shoots. He was the uncontested star of the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange. And – not that it was anyone’s business – he was de-fleaed on the first Tuesday of each month by the school nurse. The absolute cheek of it.
On he went, searching, searching, until, tired and lost, he fell asleep by a still-warm stove under one of the stalls at the Winter Fair Market.
When he woke up, it was almost midnight. He was cold on one side, and warm on the other. It was a strange sensation. He had also changed colour; or, at least, half of him had. What had happened to him? Then he realised. There was another cat curled up with him. A large, fluffy, glamorous Persian cat. Could it be . . .?
‘I am Malvasia,’ she said, without opening her eyes. ‘I hear you’ve been searching for me. And you know my sister, Mirabelle.’
‘Yes,’ said Neptune, eagerly.
‘Excellent,’ said Malvasia. ‘I hear you’re intelligent, and controlled. I, and all the cats in this city, need your help. You must come with me now. It isn’t far.’
‘What isn’t far?’
‘The cats’ home, of course. Where everyone is.’
Lexy sat in her room, wondering what to do. She could pretend to be asleep. She could—
‘I’m ready!’ came JP’s voice.
Why wouldn’t he leave her alone? Maybe this time he was just trying to be nice. She sighed and put her pillow over her head. Maybe if she closed her eyes really tight and—
‘If you don’t come to me, I’m coming to you!’ came the voice.
Lexy heaved herself off her bed and walked slowly to the spare room. Why did she feel about twice as heavy as usual? It was as if her feet had massive lead weights attached to them: she could barely lift them from the floor. Since when had just walking become so hard?
Before she reached the spare room, the door was flung open and there was JP, wearing a three-piece black dinner suit with a fob-watch and a yellow silk bow tie with spots in a very unusual colour. He didn’t look bad. Or at least he didn’t look bad if the style he was going for was ‘Evil Arch-Villain Delivers Bracing Philosophical Ideas and Then Kills Everyone’. It was niche, but he’d nailed it.
‘So, little lady, do you want me to twirl?’
‘It looks nice,’ said Lexy. ‘I definitely think you should wear that.’ She mock-yawned. ‘But actually I’m really tired, so I think I’ll just—’
‘Not so fast,’ said JP. ‘I’ve got something else to show you. In fact I’m surprised you didn’t notice it before.’
‘But I really—’
‘Suit yourself,’ said JP. He shrugged and walked back into the spare room.
Lexy’s eyes followed him. He took off the dinner jacket and put it carefully on the bed, near the end, where Hazel had thoughtfully put a home-made throw that looked like the sort of thing other people would have in their guest rooms. In the middle of the bed was a bag that Lexy recognised. It was her gemstones from the other night! Lexy had wondered where they’d got to. He’d taken them!
‘My gemstones,’ said Lexy, following him into the room. ‘You must have found them somewhere. Thank you. I—’
JP moved between Lexy and the bed.
‘Oh, you want them back, do you?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Lexy.
‘Well, then you’ll have to do what I say.’
‘But—’
‘I�
�ve got big plans for you, little lady. We’re going to do some more arm wrestling, maybe some other challenges that I’m going to invent, and maybe I’m going to have to kiss you better again, and—’
‘No,’ said Lexy. ‘Actually, you can keep the herbs and the gemstones. I don’t need them anyway.’
‘Not even to help your little friends?’
‘What?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be making some tonics and remedies to help your friends in their fight against the evil Diberi?’
‘What I do is none of your business,’ said Lexy. ‘You can keep my stuff. I don’t care. I’ve had enough of this.’
‘Such a shame, then, that I’ll leave a really terrible review about your mother’s hospitality,’ said JP.
‘Well—’
‘And, of course, kill your friend.’
‘What?’
‘The one with the long hair. The pretty, feisty one. What’s her name? Oh yes. Euphemia Truelove.’
‘No!’ said Lexy. ‘Stop it! Stop saying these things. And stop threatening my friends.’
‘Not that any of these things will matter if the world ends,’ mused JP. ‘You all think that Madame Valentin’s prophecy is wrong. But you are in for a nasty surprise. Sometimes the most foolish people speak the wisest truths. I know Hieronymus Moon would agree with that.’
JP reached for his necklace and tapped the pale ceramic bottle in which Moon’s sprit was supposed to be. He continued. ‘I can, in fact, guarantee your friend Euphemia’s safety. And the safety of the world. And the continued existence of your adorable kitten – who might otherwise come in handy in a spell calling for a hundred live cats. But only if you do exactly what I say from now on. Do you agree?’
Wolf and Lucy looked at one another. They had no idea what was going to happen next. Everyone else in the stark white room had been ‘eliminated’. Had they been killed, or just removed to some other place? Wolf was surprised to find that he wasn’t at all frightened. He was just angry. He’d come here looking for Natasha and instead he’d been bombarded with all sorts of ridiculous questions.
Lucy’s eyes were wide. Wolf could tell she actually was frightened. Which was probably a more rational response than his own. But Wolf knew that fear can lead to bad decisions, so he didn’t let himself feel it: not yet. And he tried to feel less angry too, because it is also well-known that angry people do irrational things. He took some deep breaths and tried to clear his mind. He told himself he could feel whatever he liked later, but, for now, feelings were not going to help him very much.
The screen flickered into life once again. On it was a list. Wolf remembered some book he’d seen when he was a very small child – there were never books in any house he’d lived in, so it must have been at a school, or in a library – where you had to say what connected four or five different things, or which was the odd one out. Here, on the screen, you could say that what everything had in common was that it was alive.
And in peril.
The voiceover explained that these beings were all in a basket attached to a hot-air balloon that was running out of fuel. Several of them would have to be thrown out if the others were to survive. In what order, the voiceover asked, will you throw them out? Note: the last two participants are required to work together to come up with a solution.
Wolf took in the list on the screen. A two-month-old kitten. A child with inoperable cancer. A fashion model. An elderly man. A maths teacher. A priest. A young scientist destined to work out a cure for cancer. A murderer. A guide dog. A blind woman. The last surviving member of a rare species of elephant . . .
‘Right,’ said Lucy, taking her pen and looking focused and business-like. ‘We should really get rid of the kitten first, although it’s light, so it won’t actually make that much difference. Why didn’t they give us the weights of everything in the balloon? That would have been much more useful than what we do know. OK. We have to look for traps and potential flaws in logic. For example, if there really is going to be a cure for cancer, then maybe the boy could be saved, although it says “inoperable”, so actually it’s probably too late for him. If the elephant really is the last in its species then it won’t get the chance to mate. It may as well be extinct anyway, and it’s heavy . . .’
Lucy started making a list in the notebook in front of her, sighing and crossing things out.
‘Well?’ she said to Wolf. ‘What do you think? Elephant, murderer, elderly man, kitten—’
‘I’m not doing this,’ said Wolf.
‘What do you mean?’ said Lucy.
Wolf shrugged. ‘I’m not taking part in their psychotic, unrealistic role-play.’
‘But you have to.’
‘Who says? A bunch of freaks in metallic outfits? What are they going to do?’
‘Eliminate you.’
‘Well, I haven’t been eliminated yet, and I’m following the same reasoning I’ve used up until now.’
‘But—’
‘Come on. Surely you don’t believe in this ridiculous scenario? All these people in a basket with a kitten, a dog and an elephant being flown in a hot air balloon? Please. If I had to make a decision about saving lives I’d rather it was based on something realistic that could actually happen. Why doesn’t the balloon just land?’
‘What if it can’t, because it’s too heavy?’
‘How did it take off, then? And who put me in charge? Am I like the pilot of this balloon? If so, I should be trying to find ways to keep everyone safe, not looking for ways to murder them.’
‘But to save people, you might have to—’
‘Did you not notice that one of the people in the basket is simply “a murderer”? That’s you, or me, if we choose to throw people out. It’s a – what do you call it?’ Wolf recalled the one time Mrs Beathag Hide had stood in for the maths teacher. The children had been given a very bizarre lesson on the philosophy of unsolvable problems which had involved the question of when a group of objects becomes a heap, and a lot about pathological liars. ‘A paradox,’ said Wolf, remembering the word. ‘All of these problems are unsolvable paradoxes. In choosing to throw out the murderer, you actually choose to throw yourself out, but then you can’t do any more choosing. And anyway, if you think murderers are bad, then why are you so quick to actually become one?’
‘I have no idea what you’re going on about,’ said Lucy coldly. ‘But if you mess this up you may as well be throwing out me, you, my mother and your sister. So who’s the murderer now?’
‘But don’t you see?’ Wolf said. ‘These are trick questions. For example, it should be impossible to throw out the scientist who is destined to come up with a cure for cancer.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, if he – or it could be a she, or a they, they don’t tell you – is going to come up with a cure for cancer, they’re not going to be thrown out of a balloon, are they?’
‘You’re just over-complicating it,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m going to put in my list for both of us, then. I think I’m actually going to go for all the animals first, regardless of weight. Elephant, guide dog, kitten . . .’
‘I’m not doing this,’ said Wolf, shaking his head, and sitting back in his chair.
The participants must work together, came the voiceover.
‘I’m not doing it,’ said Wolf to the speaker the voice was coming from. ‘If you don’t like it, you can eliminate me.’
When Neptune and Malvasia reached the cats’ home it was almost two o’clock in the morning. This is a time when cats are usually at their most active, prowling around gardens, fighting one another, disembowelling small mammals and leaving their innards inside their human companions’ shoes, or simply depositing live mice at strategic locations – the kitchen table; an unoccupied pillow – chosen to most impress the human, who can always be relied upon to scream in delight when such discoveries are made.
But the cats’ home was in darkness, and there were no signs of any cats at all in the grou
nds. Did this place – gulp – not have a cat-flap? But then where did the cats . . . how did they . . .
Malvasia was looking for some way in. She padded around the building and Neptune followed her. She tried a couple of doors with no luck, then leapt up onto a window-ledge to see if there was a gap they could squeeze through.
‘You still haven’t told me what’s actually going on,’ said Neptune.
‘We haven’t got time for this,’ said Malvasia, huskily. ‘You have to help me.’
‘But I still don’t know what we’re actually doing here.’
‘You wanted to find the missing cats, right?’
‘Right. And also . . .’ Neptune didn’t know how to explain the guinea pig. ‘Also, I feel for some reason that it’s my destiny to be here now, with you. But I still have no idea what’s going on.’
Malvasia had managed to get a piece of wood loose with her paw.
‘Help me,’ she said to Neptune. ‘We can talk later.’
Neptune helped Malvasia to remove the panel from underneath the main sash of the window. There was a gap . . . Neptune tested it with his whiskers. Yes, he could just squeeze through. And Malvasia was following him and . . .
‘Don’t eat or drink anything once we get inside,’ she said.
‘But—’
‘Hush,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’
The window had led them into a small larder. Malvasia found her way to a sort of little cupboard with a door and pressed a button that opened it. It looked as if she had done this before. She stepped inside, and Neptune followed her. It was like a small lift. It went up for several seconds. Then a bell tinkled, and the door opened.
There in front of them was an immense room with gold and pink wallpaper that contained around fifty different thrones. Each one was upholstered in purple velvet or deep burgundy silk. On several of these were beautifully groomed cats. Some looked as if they were used to this kind of treatment – the Persians, the Siamese, the Burmese – but others seemed more like your average local moggie who has just won the lottery. The cats were wearing crowns or tiaras or, in a few cases, top hats. Some of the cats were dressed in human-style outfits. The ones with top hats also wore human tails (in other words, dinner jackets). One cat was dressed up as Napoleon. Another looked rather like Marie Antoinette. It was like a very bad-taste fancy-dress party. But for cats.
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