Eternity was poured into the briefest moment. Pete could sense the gentlest discharge, the smallest flux of magical energy pass from flesh to wax.
Sticks opened his eyes and blinked. Pete turned his head. The thauma-thing, the whatsit, still lay on the floor next to the counter.
And then the moment was over. The Snowman emerged from a cardboard box, spitting and cursing under his breath. When he saw Maggie, he cursed again, grabbed the whatsit and disappeared behind the counter.
Pete thought he could hear the faint whirring of the whatsit’s propeller.
Sticks sat up and extracted himself from under the shelf. He frowned at Maggie. “I thought I told you not to come into my shop. Now see what you have done!” he said in the Snowman’s voice.
Maggie’s face went white. She started to say something, but instead burst into tears and fled from the shop.
“Women!” exclaimed the Snowman as he removed the whatsit from his head.
Sticks froze again, but a faint flicker of life lingered in his glass eyes.
3
Sticks Goes Clubbing
Pete and Squeak fled from the shop for fear of the shadows returning. They found Freddy in his office, which was little more than a platform made of steel grating in the pipe shaft of the building where he lived with his family.
Pete was worried. “I really need my skateboard now. If monsters like that are around, I have to be able to move fast.”
Freddy aimed the lamp at his notebook. “This is what I have on Rose so far: her daily routine after work.” He poked at the first line of scribble on the dirty page.
16:00 Leaves her room at the school.
16:19 Boards a bus at the bus stop near the grocery.
“We could highjack the bus,” said Squeak from his perch on top of the ancient computer monitor.
Freddy ignored him.
16:39 Gets off at the 2nd Street stop.
16:46 Draws money at the ATM at the corner of Main and 2nd.
17:00 Happy hour at the Gravedigger’s Inn.
“The Gravedigger’s Inn! What sort of a place is that?” asked Pete.
“Some theme bar. Terrible décor. And don’t sit on those computer books, you’re ruining them.”
18:00 Wanders down 4th, killing time. Smokes a few cigarettes.
19:10 …
Squeak eyed Freddy’s schedule suspiciously. “She does nothing for more than an hour?”
“Happy hour at the Putrid Poulet only starts at 19:30,” explained Freddy. “That’s French for ‘chicken’.”
“I knew that,” said Pete.
19:10 Starts walking to the Putrid Poulet.
“And she stays there until?” asked Pete.
Freddy tapped his finger on his notebook. “Not so fast!”
19:19 Enters the bus station on 7th.
Squeak sighed. “I thought you said she went to get some chicken feed.”
“Has to answer the call of nature,” said Freddy. “The Digger’s brew. It’s our only opportunity to get the key off her neck.”
“The ladies’ toilet at the bus station? No way!” Pete shook his head. “And remember, we have to get the key back on her neck. All that in a toilet?”
“Well, after that it’s the Putrid Poulet until past midnight.” Freddy drew his finger a line down:
19:30 Enters the Putrid Poulet.
“Loud music, headbanging and vodka. No kids allowed.”
“And after that?” asked Pete.
Freddy’s finger slipped down another line:
01:00 Closing time. Staggers back to the school.
Pete looked at Squeak. “If kids can’t get in …”
Squeak stepped back. “Don’t even think it!”
“He’ll get trampled,” said Freddy. “It’s a pretty wild place.”
Pete and Squeak stared at Freddy.
“So I’m told, okay?”
“Okay,” said Pete. “No sweat. All we need is an adult accomplice.”
Squeak thought for a moment. “Vusi may help.”
“Cousin’s getting married,” said Pete.
“Morris?”
“He’s the cousin who’s getting married.”
Freddy had a sudden inspiration. “We could hypnotise some unsuspecting adult, like I did with Pete the …” He cut his sentence short when he saw Pete’s green eyes flashing. “He could act as a kind of remote agent,” he added lamely.
Pete looked at Squeak.
Squeak looked at Pete.
“Sticks!” said Pete.
“The Snowman will eat me alive.” The little mouse’s whiskers trembled.
“We’ll be back in less than an hour. He won’t even notice,” said Pete. “And tomorrow’s Saturday, the shop’ll be closed.”
When Pete and Squeak returned to Paradise Mansions later that night, the light was on in the bicycle shop. They entered, and the doorbell played a silly tune.
“Good thing you came, guys,” the Snowman said from the countertop. “Percy wants to see you.”
Sir Percival Potts (Esq) was a VID (Very Important Dwarf), Knight of the Order of the Blind Cow in the service of Her Royal Highness, the Queen. The dwarf was on all fours, hunting for clues. When he heard Pete entering, he wiggled from under a fallen shelf and stood up. His grey beard was covered with dust and ash, and there was an oil stain on his round belly. He put his magnifying glass in his pocket. “We have something of a situation on our hands. Take a look at this, young man.” He took a weird-looking brass device from his trench coat, placed it on a chair and turned a little crank on the side. It made a jarring sound for a few seconds, then it pinged, and a small dial popped up from the top.
The dwarf examined it. “Have you ever seen a reading this high?” he asked Pete.
Pete had never seen anything like it in his life. “What is it?”
“It measures rancorous residues,” said the Snowman, obviously proud of his superior knowledge.
“Oh!” said Pete, and Squeak did an exaggerated impersonation of the cat.
Percy nodded. “It measures the tracks left by malignant magical creatures. Oogieboogies, warfs, woggles and the like. Of course, woggles are far worse than anything else.”
An icy chill shot through Pete’s bones. He had had a close encounter with a woggle before. An encounter he almost did not survive. “It was a woggle?”
“If it were a woggle, you’d jolly well be dead now, old chap. No, these were shadows, according to what Mr Snowman and this little dial here tell me.”
“But you said the reading was so high …” said Squeak. He crawled into Pete’s top pocket just to be safe.
The dwarf pushed the dial back into the contraption and stuffed it somewhere in his coat. “It’s high because there were many of them.”
Pete looked over his shoulder. Suddenly the deep shadows in the shop harboured all sorts of