The sword oscillated terrifyingly, like it was being handled by an expert swordsman, prone to showing off, as it kept on towards President Pickle. Sophie watched, agog, as it sliced through the poster of Ron and Nancy Spencer, still maintaining its trajectory. The whole room fell quiet, save for the faint whistling sound of the oncoming samurai sword.
President Pickle closed his eyes.
9
4 P.M.
‘Arooga, arooga … I mean duck!’
Eric Diva screamed as he hurtled through the air. President Pickle opened his eyes and looked at the duck that was still standing oddly proud atop the pile of junk that Cynthia was holding, and wondered how on earth a peeling, decrepit old magic prop was going to save him from certain death.
And then Eric Diva cannoned into him, knocking him to the floor and all the breath out of his body, just as the sword flashed through the space where he had been standing.
The sword struck the podium point-first and embedded itself in the wood, where it trembled, quivered and slowed down before finally dropping to the floor with a clunk, as though it were taking a bow after its spectacular little show and then standing aside when it saw that the audience really weren’t cheering.
‘Edmund!’ Cynthia screamed. She threw the pile of non-auctioned tat into the air like a bride might throw her bouquet and ran towards him, just as the additional clobber hit the crowd. She knelt in front of her husband, her dangly glasses swinging so hard that they almost took one of his eyes out, and hugged him hard to her bosom, so that he thought that even though he had magically escaped death by impalement then surely his time had come by means of bosom suffocation.
‘Was that … for real?’ Alex asked. Jonny stood on tiptoes, which gave him a clear advantage over the milling crowd, like a giraffe standing on its hind legs amid a herd of goats.
‘If it was, it was …’ His voice trailed off in wonder as, with his eyes, he traced the trail of destruction and carnage in wiggly lines round the hall, back to where it had all started with Le Slie’s Magic stand. If it had been set up, then it had been planned down to the last split second. There would have to have been hidden springs, pulleys, levers in a complicated line all around the hall to make everything tip or fall at exactly the right moment. In his head, Jonny was already planning how he might have done it. Setting off a train of events like that – making it all happen in exactly the right way at exactly the right time – would be crazy but undoubtedly amazing.
In fact, a lot of the audience were looking around, trying to work out what had just happened. This was a magicians’ convention after all, and everyone knew that things were very rarely exactly as they seemed. There was always the chance of some massive set-up going on – that this was just a piece of staging for some even more spectacular payoff.
‘No,’ Sophie said quietly, correctly reading Jonny’s mind before turning to watch President Pickle peel himself free of Cynthia. ‘Neither of them is that good an actor. This was for real.’
There was certainly no sign that President Pickle was in on anything. One look at the man’s staring eyes and heaving chest and clammy face told you that this had come as much as a surprise to him as to everyone else.
Eric Diva picked himself up, dusting himself down like a film star who had performed the perfect stunt.
He held out a hand to help President Pickle totter to his feet.
‘It could have been someone trying to intimidate him,’ Jonny stated, remembering the threats they knew President Pickle was getting. Even if they were weird threats that didn’t apparently make any sense. Maybe this was what they were building towards?
‘Or someone might have been trying to dispose of him altogether,’ Zack said grimly. Sophie winced.
‘That’s one heck of a leap from sending him weird notes, Zack,’ Sophie said.
‘I know, I know. But that sword was so close. If that was just intimidation, they were cutting it pretty fine,’ he added with a grin.
Cynthia slowly stood, no doubt still fazed by what had just happened, but conscious that she still had a job to do. She clapped her hands together.
‘Well, that could all have been a lot nastier!’ she said, with a vaguely passable attempt at breeziness (eight out of ten for effort, three out of ten for conviction, Cynthia). ‘Now then, grown-ups, the next workshop is about to begin,fn1 so if you could all make your way to the …’ She scanned the crowd of faces, then gave a sort of oh, whatever, just sort yourselves out! flap of the hand. ‘Junior members, however, please return to your rooms until Council has deemed this whole area safe again.’
She saw the crestfallen looks – not just from the Young Magicians, but from Deanna (half de-nunned, but still struggling with her wimplefn2), Hugo and his minions and Max, who had rather impressively managed to break the ‘no food in the Dealers’ Hall’ rule with a bag of toffees, but was trying to surreptitiously hide them now that he noticed the president’s wife looking at him.
Even Eric Diva looked a little stumped.
‘And who’s going to do that?’ he asked, wondering wildly whether he’d factored this into his convention-planning procedures and protocols still-to-do list – but then who could have predicted this?
‘Council’s official Health and Safety officers – they’re all fully trained for this kind of … thing,’ which even Cynthia knew was stretching the truth by several thousand miles, the training itself consisting of merely a few email attachments which more than half the Health and Safety officers openly admitted they hadn’t even the technology to open.
Cynthia looked across the hall. The four friends, and a lot of other curious magicians, followed her gaze. Steve and Jane were in their robes, still chatting noisily and paying no attention to anything. Had they even seen what had just happened?
Cynthia stamped her foot to get their attention and repeated loudly, ‘Council’s Health and Safety officers. Please can you conduct a risk assessment!’
Wow, thought Jonny, both terrified and delighted in equal measure by the prospect of Steve and Jane being the ones in charge of everyone’s physical safety. I guess that was why they chose Steve to drive!
‘Absolutely, of course, ma’am. We’ll get right on it!’ replied Steve, not quite knowing what he’d just signed up to.
Jane – correctly interpreting Steve’s flamboyantly ambivalent face – poked a cautious hand up.
‘Sorry, what did you just ask us to do again?’
‘Cynthia’s got a point,’ said Sophie, scrunching up her face in frustration. ‘I don’t fancy hanging around anywhere there’s swords flying about accidentally.’
‘One hell of a point!’ Jonny grinned. (Never one to avoid a terrifically tragic pun.)
They turned to go, picking their way through the debris of magic props – wands, hats, Bill Dungworth’s ventriloquist’s doll, lying where it fell like some contorted body after Cynthia threw the pile of junk into the air, an escaped rabbit nibbling at the corner of a tablecloth, packs of identical cards, semi-identical cards or seemingly semi-identical cards that were definitely not marked – left over from the chain of collapsing stalls.
‘Ow!’ Deanna complained. ‘Can you believe anyone would make a costume like this?’
They were all in the boys’ room now – Jonny, Zack, Alex, Sophie … plus a somewhat disgruntled yet startlingly undeterred Deanna. It was either bring her with them, or let her wander blindly about in her semi-nun state around Tudor Towers, like a nightmare, and no one had the heart to do that – not to her and not to anyone else in the hotel that might be unfortunate enough to be party to such an encounter. In her struggle to get the wimple off (shout out to all those who now know what a wimple is – welcome, friends!), she had managed to jam it completely over her head.
Sophie and Alex were grappling with the top end, trying to help. Sophie because, well, she was a girl, and Alex because there wasn’t a lock he couldn’t pick, so you’d have thought the clips and pins on a comedy religious item of fancy dres
s would be peasy.
‘So this is a tough one,’ Zack said.
‘Uh-huh,’ mumbled Jonny, barely looking up from the designs he was scribbling on a pad of paper.
‘I mean, Cynthia said she wants us to help, but helping President Pickle is not exactly top of my to-do list.’
(Let’s be honest, it wasn’t even at the bottom of Zack’s to-do list. It was probably several million miles below Zack’s to-do list, which would actually place it somewhere in the Mariana Trench.)
‘Yup …’
‘Ow-w-w-w-w-w!’ screamed Deanna from the other side of the room, now practically bent in half and struggling to breathe as Sophie heaved with all her might with one foot on a shoulder (Deanna’s shoulder to be precise).
‘Why did you dress up as a nun anyway?’ Sophie demanded.
‘A nun? What’s a nun?’ Deanna exclaimed as Alex gave the wimple an extra-big tug, which didn’t so much answer the question as just give rise to a load more extra questions such as a) how has she never come across the concept of a nun before? and b) given a), why did she then choose to dress as one?
‘But whatever we think of President Pickle,’ Jonny said, finally looking up to face Zack, ‘we know Cynthia wants us to help, and she’s done so much for us. Don’t we owe it to her?’
‘Yeah,’ Zack admitted unhappily. ‘We probably do.’
With a final scream from Deanna, she, Sophie, Alex and – crucially – the wimple all shot off in different directions.
‘Free!’ Deanna exulted, like she’d been held prisoner in a pyramid for several centuries. Her mouth dropped open as she caught sight of herself in the mirror. ‘Where’s my hairbrush?’ she said in a small voice that a ventriloquist might use to insinuate their dummy is trapped in a box.
‘Oh, I think it’s in our r–’ Sophie started to say, before being cut off by the sound of the door slamming shut in an instant and Deanna’s footsteps racing down the corridor. Then racing some of the way back again, on remembering that she and Sophie were only in the room next door.
‘–oom,’ Sophie finished.
She and Alex picked themselves up and wandered over to Jonny and Zack.
‘What have we missed?’
‘We were just saying that Cynthia obviously wants us to help, so we should,’ said Jonny.
‘Even if President Pickle is utterly against the idea,’ Zack added, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Which, you have to admit, is kind of a plus.’
‘So where do we start?’ Alex asked. The four friends looked at each other blankly.
Alex had hit it on the head. Their only clues to use as a starting point were an overheard conversation, a weird sort of riddle that President Pickle had torn up, and a near-accident involving a flying sword, which might or might not have anything to do with the rest of it. Where do you go from there?
Where indeed?
10
5 P.M.
‘So is it … safe?’ Sophie asked Cynthia.
The four friends were at the entrance to the Montpellier Room, which was set up a bit like a wedding reception, but one where they’d not properly budgeted and had run out of money halfway through making some big decisions. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any of this ‘young magicians have their own eating area’ nonsense for the Grand Convention Banquet.
‘Our Health and Safety officers have given the area the thumbs up!’ Cynthia said proudly, though Sophie could make out just the tiniest twinge of uncertainty, presumably owing to the fact that Cynthia knew it was Steve who had conducted the inspection and that anything which received a thumbs up from him was to be taken lightly, or at least with huge quote marks. ‘Not a dangerous cutting implement in sight!’
Jonny leaned over the crowd of young magicians now gathered and listening to Cynthia attentively.
‘Just a couple of hundred table knives to worry about,’ he said with a grin, ‘or did Steve and Jane miss those?’
Cynthia’s smile wobbled.
‘I’m sure those are all perfectly safe. Now then, here’s what I’d like you to do. I want all young magicians to split up – you’re chiefly here to learn from our esteemed senior members, remember – so maybe see if they can show you some tricks in between courses. And there are a lot of courses …’
I bet there are, thought Zack cheekily, who occasionally wondered whether magicians were in fact a special breed of hyena. Snarly, smiley and always ready to eat at any given opportunity.
‘And please sit at a different table, each of you,’ Cynthia finished. ‘We don’t want some tables bombarded with youth; there’ll be complaints!’
‘She wants us to split up?’ Alex said as they moved on into the Montpellier Room, a touch of his term-time nerves returning. He had learned a long time ago that there was safety in numbers. If in doubt – and he usually was, in a crowd – then hang together.
‘No, it’s a good idea,’ reassured Sophie. ‘We’re here to learn after all, and if we all share what we’ve learned afterwards then we’ll each learn four times as much!’
Alex nodded reluctantly. Sophie, as always, made a good point.
‘Plus,’ said Zack mischievously, ‘that way there’s only a one-in-four chance of any of us getting lumped with Deanna.’ Which everyone had to agree were the best possible odds, short of not seeing her at all that afternoon, but which was verging on impossible given the sparkly dress she had changed into, a kind of polar opposite to the nun’s habit she had found herself in earlier, and which contained seven different linings and had cost the lives of several now presumably extinct small animals to make.
‘Well, here we go,’ said Zack, disappearing into the room now filling up with packs of magicians all drooling at the prospect of more food and – oh no, what’s this boy doing here? – entertainment.
Over soup (which is genuinely one of my favourite ways to start a new paragraph), Alex sat next to a friendly lady who showed him how to do a coin roll. He could already do the basic move, where the magician makes a coin roll back and forth across the hand, but this lady had the effect down to a T. It was almost as if the coin had come to life!
Sophie was hoping to sit on the same table as Belinda Vine, but sadly there wasn’t a space. However, a rather creepy gentleman who smelled a bit like hot dogs taught her what he believed was one of the greatest effects of all time: write down a number (as long as it’s sixty-five) and get your audience to pick five numbers between one and twenty-five at random – and the five numbers will always add up to the number you wrote down (as long as it’s sixty-five). (And providing no one has seen the trick before. And providing the numbers chosen between one and twenty-five aren’t in fact random but pre-selected.)
Over dessert, Zack learned how to bend a spoon in a way that looked like he was really bending a spoon when in fact he was just making it look like he was bending a spoon. Having said that, it didn’t stop the doddery magician teaching him the effect actually bending all the spoons on the table in order to explain to Zack exactly what bending a spoon would look like if you really did bend one.
And, while Jonny didn’t get to play with knives or samurai swords, he did enjoy being shown how to cut a volunteer’s necktie in half with a pair of scissors – and restore it to full health (and – importantly – length) over the cheese course.
Eventually the meal came to an end and the Young Magicians began to drift back together. On her way across the dining room, Sophie heard a familiar fruity voice from a nearby table.
‘So, Salisbury – this one? No, quite right. How about … this?’
The Toffee Apples were all gathered at a table of their own, plus Max, who was tucking into a bag of something big and ignoring everything else. Charlie and Salisbury listened raptly; Jackson and Mayhew had their attention split between Max’s bag and Hugo, who was evidently mid-routine, having laid out several rows of cards, face down, and was idly twirling a pen in his hand. He stopped and scowled up at Sophie as she passed, in case she eavesdropped on his hard-won exp
ertise, but she just smiled and moved on.
‘That’s old …’ she murmured to herself.
Alex had shown her that one. And, despite its age, you couldn’t deny the clever sideways thinking of it.
The volunteer chooses a card while the magician looks the other way. Then the magician’s assistant indicates the cards one by one to the magician, but using a code that only they know. The code can be anything. It could be the card next to the third card that the assistant points at is the card chosen by the volunteer. It could be the only card that the assistant taps in one corner.
When Alex had shown Sophie, also using a pointer like Hugo (his pen), he had casually moved the pointer a bit further down the edge of each card every time he chose a new one. When he had finally reached the bottom corner of the edge, that was the one …
Sophie paused and frowned.
‘Oh, my giddy aunt!’ she gasped, and broke into a run, pushing her way through the tables towards the others. They saw her coming and looked up in alarm.
‘The note!’ she said to Zack. ‘The torn-up note! Have you still got it?’
‘Uh – yes, I think so.’ Zack pulled the crumpled scraps out of his pocket and spread them on the table. ‘Why?’
‘Put it back together …’
Zack’s hands moved quickly as he pieced the riddle back together, still as baffling as ever. Sophie ran her eyes down it, quickly, once, and her face went pale.
‘It really is a threat!’ She knew she hadn’t been wrong when she sensed the underlying malice. Sophie craned her neck towards the top table. ‘We have to tell him … And right now!’
The Young Magicians and the 24-Hour Telepathy Plot Page 11
