The Young Magicians and the 24-Hour Telepathy Plot

by Nick Mohammed

  ‘But how did you know to come to Ferdinand’s Fantastic Festival of Fun?’ asked Alex.

  ‘Well … I was on course for the hotel, but I couldn’t just pass by without dropping in to pay my respects. You don’t get places like this any more. Plus, something told me that if there were ever a place you lot might wander off to, given your penchant for little errands and theatrical detours, then this one would surely tick a lot of boxes. Then I heard the two of you shouting at each other in the Hall of Mirrors. So why were you chasing Mr Diva, and what’s wrong with this lady?’

  ‘Right, well, it’s a long story,’ Zack grinned.

  ‘It’s preposterous,’ Belinda snapped. ‘I don’t know who you are, but I can tell instantly that you’re a reasonable guy – it’s a gift I have. These four children have concocted the most ridiculous tale –’

  ‘And I don’t know who you are either, ma’am,’ Alf interrupted politely, ‘but you ought to know that if I have to choose between believing these four, or a complete stranger who’s tied up in mummy bandages, I will always go for the former four.’

  ‘It’s not worth it, Belinda,’ Eric Diva muttered. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘Anyhow, we can easily sort this out,’ Jonny said. ‘Let’s take the van back to the hotel, and then President Pickle can vouch for everything.’

  ‘There you are then,’ Alf agreed. ‘Not something I’m prone to say, but let’s leave it up to the wisdom of President Pickle as to what to do with you!’

  And with that he started to march Eric Diva towards the van.

  9 A.M.

  President Pickle was back at the podium and trying to restore some kind of order. This was still an AGM after all. And, as far as he was concerned, an agenda was an agenda, especially at an AGM, and, apart from the small technicality of at least a couple of serious crimes being attempted and thwarted, he, personally, still had a lot to get through. In fact, if it weren’t for the agenda he was now clutching – neatly typed, double-spaced, twelve-point Palatino (he detested Times New Roman) – the whole AGM so far might have gone seriously to pot with all its disruptions. His thoughts were still so muddled that the thin sheet of A4 paper was his only link to what ought to be happening.

  Every time they finished off an item, he drew a neat line through it with a sense of destiny and satisfaction. He had just crossed off ‘Approve the Minutes of the Last AGM’. Ahead lay the glorious sunlit uplands of:

  – ‘Matters Arising from the Minutes of the Last AGM’

  – ‘Matters Arising from Matters Arising from the Minutes of the Last AGM’

  – ‘Election of Officials of the Magic Circle’

  – ‘Matters Arising from Election of Officials of the Magic Circle’

  – ‘Matters Arising from Non-election of Unsuccessful Non-candidates Previously Hoping for Election as Non-officials of the Magic Circle’

  And so on.

  Those times when President Pickle was chairing the AGM, and when his lips weren’t glued together and a cunning ventriloquist wasn’t sabotaging his career, were the times when Edmund Pickle was actually, clearly, positively happy. He had a purpose. He had a plan. He was achieving something. To some people, an AGM is a tedious task. To Mr President Edmund Pickle, it was a holy duty. AND NOW HE COULD EAT AGAIN! It was like he’d been handed a new life. The prospect of diving head first into the buffet as soon as this AGM came to a close was almost starting to make him physically vibrate.

  He rapped his gavel on the podium and called for order. Then a flicker of movement made him look up. He froze, and the sound in the ballroom slowly died away as the members followed his gaze.

  The double doors at the back of the room swung open of their own accord, framing Belinda Vine and Eric Diva in the entrance.

  Standing behind them on one side, and head and shoulders above, Jonathan Haigh. Standing on the other, Zack Harrison. And then popping out from behind the doors – because of course they hadn’t opened of their own accord, that was just for effect – Sophie Yang and Alex Finley.

  ‘We got them, Mr President!’ Zack said cheerfully, and the four friends started to usher their two captives down the aisle, prodding them in the back like they were herding cattle.

  Alex suddenly noticed something. He glanced quickly around.

  ‘Hey, where did Al–?’

  Alf had come with them as far as the doors to the ballroom – but had quietly vanished, just as real-life ghosts ought to do, when no one was looking.

  ‘Shh,’ Jonny advised in a whisper, and Alex remembered that, as far as most of the Magic Circle knew, Alf didn’t actually exist. And dear Alf certainly wasn’t going to do anything to spoil that illusion either.

  ‘Where did the other guy go?’ Belinda demanded.

  ‘What guy, Ms Vine?’ Sophie asked breezily, and met Belinda’s scowl with such a blank look, you’d have sworn that not in a million years could there ever have been a time when Sophie looked up to this woman.

  They escorted their captives down the hall towards the stage. Nearby, Deanna was sending enough gigawatts of hero worship at Sophie to power a small city, with Hugo generating enough frosty cool to freeze one.

  ‘Seize them!’ President Pickle ordered grandly from the podium. The nearest Magic Circle officials, who were Jane and Steve naturally, closed in on the small group, then looked back towards the stage for verification.

  ‘Um – you did mean these two, Mr President?’ Steve asked. ‘Not the Young Mag–’

  ‘Of course I mean those two, silly man!’ President Pickle spluttered.

  Steve and Jane took charge of Belinda and Eric, and wheeled them off into a side room, there to await the pleasure of Pickle’s judgement, and leaving the Young Magicians and President Pickle gazing at each other.

  Which was when something amazing happened.

  The scowl that President Pickle generally displayed whenever he was looking at the four friends relaxed. Just a bit. Slightly less than a glacier moves in the course of a single heartbeat, of course, but still. A bit.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been … quite helpful.’ And then, before anyone could faint with surprise, President Pickle proclaimed pointedly, ‘And now, if you’ve quite had your fun, I have an AGM to run, so kindly take your seats.’ He waved his piece of paper at the four friends. ‘As you can see, we have an agenda to follow! Where there is an agenda, there is order! And the agenda says you must now sit down so that I can carry on.’

  The Young Magicians looked at each other – shrugging and smiling – and sidled towards the nearest free chairs.

  President Pickle opened his mouth to continue, but was interrupted by yet another figure standing in the doorway. A wave of gasps flooded through the hall, making the four look up. Their jaws dropped in unison at the sight of the figure shambling towards the stage.

  Skinnier even than Jonny, and approximately a million times older, he looked like he had died and been buried in his best suit and had dug his way out of the grave – still wearing the suit – and had come now to wreak revenge on those who had betrayed him in this mortal life.

  But, to be fair, that was how Bill Dungworth usually looked.

  President Pickle gaped at the apparition, clinging on to the sides of the podium for support.

  ‘Bill? But – you … died!’

  However, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that this was Bill Dungworth, the lately late treasurer of the Magic Circle, though now not so much late … just a little delayed.

  ‘I. Was. ASLEEP!’ Bill gasped. He lumbered the last few steps on stiff legs and extended a trembling finger like a long, knobbly twig at President Pickle. ‘I was just having my usual lunchtime nap and they buried me!’

  ‘I mean, the funeral director went through several formalities first, B–’ President Pickle tried to say, before being interrupted again.

  ‘I asked who called the medics and they said … it was you!’

  ‘Well, of course it was me!’ President Pickle protested. �
��It was me who found you, after you’d been lying there for a week.’

  ‘It was just a nap! You didn’t think of checking me for life signs?’

  ‘Of course I did! And I watched the medics run all the usual tests, Bill,’ President Pickle blustered. ‘You know … reflexes, temperature, heartbeat!’

  ‘I am going to sue! Do you hear me?! I am going to start at the very top of this society and sue my way down, and the top, Mr President, is you!’

  At this point, following a sentence that had taken nearly ten whole seconds to say without once drawing a breath, Bill gasped and staggered over to lean on someone’s chair for support.

  ‘Sue,’ he wheezed.

  ‘OK …’ President Pickle took a few deep breaths. ‘If someone could help our good and happily undeparted friend Bill to his seat, we can deal with this under Any Other Business.’

  He looked down at the full length of the agenda as his tummy began to rumble like a thunderstorm.

  ‘Although … maybe it might be better for all if we just … I declare this AGM closed – for now!’ he announced with a half-hearted tap of his gavel and a strange beaming smile that could only mean he was thinking of food.

  ‘Perhaps our respect for keeping to the rules is brushing off on him,’ joked Jonny as the room began to surge to its collective feet.

  An anxious-looking Cynthia intercepted the Young Magicians as they exited the room.

  ‘Sorry. Jonny dear, may I have a word?’ She threw a look at the others. ‘In fact, I know how close you are, so maybe you should all hear this?’

  The Young Magicians looked at each other as she led them into one of the function rooms – in fact, it was the very one where they thought they’d heard President Pickle laying out his cunning plans before he’d vanished. How different that room looked now they’d got to the bottom of everything! But Cynthia was looking so serious. What was up?

  Cynthia closed the door, and turned to face Jonny. She gently reached up – quite some distance, it must be said – to clasp his shoulders and gaze up into his face. Jonny stared down at her in bafflement.

  ‘Jonny dear, I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you. It’s just that … oh dear. This is rather hard.’ She dabbed at her eyes with a folded hanky. ‘He was such a good friend and asset to the Magic Circle over the years, though I know he and you parted on quite sour terms … Look, there’s no easy or kind way to say this. Jonny, your grandfather was moved to the prison hospital and, um, at three p.m. yesterday afternoon, his nurse found him … Well, he’s passed away. I am so sorry, dear.’

  There’s no right way to react when you hear of a loved one’s death. You can’t practise it like a trick. You just feel as if an enormous weight has swung down from the ceiling and given your body a massive, full-frontal thwack, so you’re aware you’ve been hit by something – and you know you should be feeling it – but the blow has knocked every single emotion out of you so you’re not sure what that feeling should be. All you can do is stand there, numb.

  Jonny was vaguely aware of his three friends gathering round slowly, not sure themselves what they should be doing, but knowing their tall friend needed them. One by one, Sophie, then Zack, then Alex pulled Jonny into a hug while he stood there, towering above them, face blank, trying to take in everything that Cynthia had just said.

  In the midst of his whirling, numb thoughts, Jonny realized Zack was saying something to Cynthia.

  ‘Um – you did say three p.m.? That’s three p.m. yesterday?’

  ‘Oh yes, dear.’ Cynthia gave her eyes a final dab. ‘I’m sorry it took so long for news to reach us up here. Well …’ She gave the four friends a brave smile. ‘I can see you’ve got each other, and I have to get on. Don’t hesitate to come to me if you need anything, Jonny.’

  Cynthia left the room, while the meaning of Zack’s question gradually sank in – to Alex, to Sophie, and even eventually to Jonny. They pulled slowly apart and stared at each other.

  ‘So, if Granddad died yesterday –’ Jonny began.

  ‘At three p.m. –’ Zack repeated.

  ‘Over twelve hours before we called the Magic Circle from the lookout post –’ Sophie added. Alex finished off the question.

  ‘Who was that helping Alf in the library?’

  Acknowledgements

  The hugest thanks to the children’s fiction department at Penguin Random House for their constant support, humour and understanding of why this book was delivered so late! Particular thanks to Ruth Knowles, Wendy Shakespeare, Ben Jeapes and Robert Kirby for making everything so fun – I owe an awful lot of this book to them! And to Noémie Gionet Landry for bringing so much of the chaos that was in my head into such clarity by way of a single drawing. It is a skill I can safely say I will never have!

  And to the magicians and non-magicians young and old who enjoyed the first book enough to give this second one a read … I hope Zack, Sophie, Jonny and Alex won’t fail to disappoint. They’re a little older than the first time we met them and Brexit hadn’t happened, but not much else has changed.

  And finally to B, b, F, A and PD who remain my absolute everything.

  THE BEGINNING

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  First published 2020

  Text copyright © Nick Mohammed, 2020

  Interior illustrations copyright © Noémie Gionet Landry, 2020

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  Cover illustration by Glenn Thomas

  This novel is a work of fiction. In some cases, real-life names, characters and places appear, but the actions, conversations and events described are entirely fictitious. All other characters, and all other names of places and descriptions of events, are the products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons or places is entirely coincidental.

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  ISBN: 978-0-241-33110-1

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  1: 8 A. M.

  1 Magician’s Choice, sometimes referred to as equivoque, is a verbal technique by which a magician gives an audience member (or, as in this instance, Mr Bulbous) an apparently free choice, but frames the next stage of the trick in such a way that each choice has the same end result – in this case, getting chocolate cake. Result!

  3: 10 A. M.

  1 Cynthia is most probably remembering – though would rather be forgetting – the events of the last book in which – as well as meeting for the first time – our heroes become embroiled in a thrilling tale of theft, betrayal, skulduggery, royalty, pigeons and zipwiring. Oh – and magic. Obviously.

  4: 11 A. M.

  1
This actually exists!

  2 Yes, sadly this exists too!

  5: 12 P. M.

  1 Memory palaces – also known as the Method of Loci. This is a way of enhancing your memory by visualizing information instead of just trying to remember stuff. Be warned: ‘loci’ is Latin for ‘places’ and nothing to do with Norse gods. Sadly.

  2 Stooges: the unsung heroes of so many magic tricks. To everyone else they may look like unsuspecting members of the public, having magic performed before them. But no, they are in on it up to their necks and know exactly what’s going on. They are part of the misdirection to fool you, the real unsuspecting member of the public. Apart from YOU, that is, dear reader … who is much too smart to be taken in by such buffoonish witchcraft.

  6: 1 P. M.

  1 A brilliant mentalist born at the end of the nineteenth century who would have massively approved of Sophie’s daring method!

  8: 3 P. M.

  1 A wooden duck with a hinged mechanism that allows the duck to lean forward and select a chosen card from a deck placed in front of it. Made famous by the late, great comedy magician Tommy Cooper.

  2 Abracadabra was a British weekly magic magazine whose publication life spanned sixty-three years. The first issue was published on 2 February 1946, the year in which Bill allegedly turned sixty.

  9: 4 P. M.

  1 Interactive workshop: ‘Ways to make your assistant disappear – whether they like it or not!’

  2 Do look it up. Sounds like it should be rude, but sadly it’s just a nun’s headdress.