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I gave her a considering look. Maybe my imagination wasn’t on overdrive. A big dog might account for the dark shape I thought I’d seen. ‘I didn’t get a clear look, Katie. Sorry.’
She gave an almost imperceptible shudder. ‘Do you think the animal was something to do with the Carnival? They’ve got some odd exhibits. Maybe one of them escaped? The man could’ve been looking for it?’
I hadn’t thought of that, but then my paranoia was stuck on vampire. Whereas Katie’s was stuck on finding an explanation that wasn’t scary. ‘Could be,’ I said, and dug out my phone and called Carnival security, more to reassure Katie than anything.
The duty manager hadn’t had any escapees reported, so he took my rather sparse details, asked if I was sure they were animals and not some sort of fae, then thanked me and said he’d check it out. He also suggested I phone the zoo. I did. And got almost the same response, albeit with the guarantee that they took security very seriously, and would have known if any animal had escaped. They would, of course, look into it.
‘Nothing, but they’ll let me know,’ I told Katie as I came off the phone. ‘I think we should tell the police about the flasher.’ Which the naked male was, whatever else he might be, and as such needed to be reported. ‘Can you describe him?’
She twisted the strap of her helmet, chewed her lip, frowning at the bushes. ‘Dark, wavy hair. Pale-ski
‘And definitely naked,’ I prompted.
‘Yes, but I didn’t see anything, y’know, important, just enough that I could tell he didn’t have clothes on.’
I gave her a comforting hug, and phoned the police.
An hour later, we waved them goodbye. They’d taken our statements and I’d managed to let them know, without Katie hearing, my suspicion the flasher might be a vamp. They’d said it wasn’t unusual to get flasher reports from the park and they’d do a more thorough check during daylight. Then they wrapped the bushes up in enough blue and white tape that it looked like the vegetation had been a victim of an over-excited troupe of maypole dancers. The coppers’ parting shot had been to ask if we wanted a police liaison officer to contact us to arrange some counselling.
‘Counselling,’ Katie muttered miserably once we were on our own again. ‘We don’t have to, do we? It wasn’t like I even saw anything.’
I hugged her again. ‘It’s only if you think you need it, hon.’
‘Yeah, well I don’t. I had enough counselling last year.’
When the vamp kidnapped her. She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to. That counselling hadn’t been fun, but it had helped, which was what mattered. ‘Hey.’ I gave her shoulders another consoling squeeze. ‘Wa
She eyed me dubiously from under her lashes. ‘You don’t do coffee and I don’t do fry-ups.’
I gri
She huffed and handed me her spare helmet. ‘You go
‘Do you want me to?’
She heaved a sigh. ‘No. I’ll tell her. She’s go
Yep, Paula would. But in a good way, Then again, what mother wouldn’t? She was as protective as I was about Katie, apart from when it came to Katie’s new boyfriend, Marc. But before I could say anything, a bird-like warbling sounded. Katie started, grabbed for her phone. She frowned then shot me a bemused look. ‘You’re never go
‘A what?’
‘A “Harry Potter”. At least that’s what they’re calling it on Twitter. Tavish’s bots picked it up. Look!’ She held her phone out.
The display showed a video clip of the Empire’s façade. The huge poster over the cinema’s entrance advertised Conan the Barbarian. On the poster, a half-naked, muscled-up Conan was looming high above the battling hordes, actually swinging his sword at his legion of attackers. As the video clip played, Conan’s adversaries stopped attacking and traipsed off into the wings as if taking a tea break. Conan looked around in satisfaction, hoisted his sword over his shoulder and followed, leaving the poster advertising nothing more than an out-of-focus vista of an empty, rocky plain.
I looked at Katie. ‘That is a poster, isn’t it? Not some new vid-screen the cinema’s using?’
‘Definitely a poster.’ She tapped her screen. ‘And it’s definitely a prank of some kind; there’re already apologies and reassurances on twitter that it’ll be fixed soon.’ She gave me an expectant glance.
‘You’re right,’ I said, answering her unspoken question. ‘It sounds like an ideal job for Spellcrackers, if we can—’
Katie’s phone gave another bird-like warble at the same time my phone beeped with a text – from Leandra, the witch who monitored our night phones.
Big problems in Leicester Square! Six jobs already and more coming in. You available?
Leandra had sent the text to every witch on Spellcrackers’ books. I raised my brows at Katie. ‘Jobs, plural?’
‘Yep. The rest of the posters are the same. Well, according to Twitter, anyway. Going by the ton of tweets, it looks like it might even be trending soon.’
‘Going by the tweets,’ I corrected, ‘it looks like we’re in for a busy night.’
Chapter Six
Conan the Barbarian twirled his sword like a cheerleader’s baton, pointed it out at the cheering crowds forty feet below in Leicester Square, then did a slow bump and grind as he shot me a salacious wink.
‘Bet you don’t do that in the film,’ I muttered, ignoring the whoops, whistles and calls for ‘more’.
I used the controls on the hydraulic lift basket I was standing in to nudge myself closer to the top of the film poster, then focusedon the splatter of muddy-coloured oil paint that was the ‘Harry Potter’ spell. How the hell the magical vandal had got it this high was a mystery – one the police were responsible for unravelling – all I had to unravel was the spell.
Which was proving easier said than done.
‘Okay, let’s try this again,’ I murmured, crunching three liquorice torpedoes to boost my magic, and touching the cleaned mascara brush I held to the paint. Carefully, I teased out a fat orange stripe from the muddy mess, then another of indigo, followed by pink, green, and five shades of yellow, until I had all the stripes separated out into a seemingly random colour wheel. Mentally crossing my fingers, I checked the poster. Conan scowled, hefted his sword like he meant business and froze. I compared it to the A4 copy the cinema manager had given me, and blew out a relieved sigh. They matched. Finally, I’d hit on the right combination. After two long hours.
The time was within the budget, but I’d hoped to nail it in less. Of course, crackingthe ‘Harry Potter’ spell would’ve taken a couple of seconds, but crackinga spell also cracks whatever it’s attached to, and shredded posters and damaged buildings were a definite no.
I’d tried absorbingthe spell, but all that had done was turn the poster white. Luckily I’d managed to spit the spell back out unchanged before the magic had mutated, though I was still suffering the nasty side-effects: mouth dry with the bitter taste of juniper berries, and six, so far, desperate trips to the cinema’s facilities. Even that hadn’t killed my constant urge to pee. The idea of setting a Privacy spell and making use of the spell-dumping bucket as a handy potty was my newest fantasy. Absorbingmagic can sometimes bring out its ‘mischievous’ side.
Mischievous magic aside, now I’d managed to reverse-tweak the spell to get the poster back to normal, all I needed to do was suck it up and dump it in the potty – sorry, bucket – with our new Spellcrackers spell remover, a.k.a. the common turkey baster: the kitchen implement with a hundred and one uses, according to Leandra when she’d suggested it. (U