Pure Dead Wicked (20 page)

After Midnight

“N
ot ‘Oh,' ‘Ahhh,' ‘Eek,' ” sighed Tarantella, tapping her newly woven web with one of her legs. “Pay attention. Now, after me, ‘O is for Orange. . . .' ”

“Don't
like
oranges,” muttered Multitudina.

“A is for?”

“Anything I can eat, except oranges.”

“E is for?” Tarantella glared at her pupil.

“
Enything
I can eat. I've already
told
you.”

Tarantella groaned. Teaching Multitudina the Illiterat to read was proving to be an uphill struggle. For the past hour, the tarantula had been weaving an alpha-web in a corner of the china cupboard. Written in spider silk were the five vowels, dotted here and there with flies that had blundered fatally into the web during Tarantella's efforts to instill the rudiments of language into her reluctant pupil. The tarantula decided to make one more attempt and then call it a day.

“I is for?”

“I hate oranges,”
replied Multitudina, ignoring Tarantella's moan of despair and launching herself out of the china cupboard onto the laden kitchen table. “Can't we do B instead?” she pleaded. “Look, they've left stacks of Brownies, Black Bun, Banana loaf, and . . .” She paused to deliver her final thrust: “They Bribed me to Baby-sit. . . .”

 

Assembled on the chilly loch shore, the family waited for the hands on Mrs. McLachlan's watch to reach midnight, signaling in the new year. Behind them, the meadow was a dark mass, out of which soared the moonlit silhouette of StregaSchloss, its turrets and tiles restored, the copper star on the observatory roof mimicking the thousand pinpoints of distant constellations that peppered the night sky. Lit by flaming torches, the family raised their glasses to the future, whatever it might bring.

“I could, of course, buy an ice-cream factory . . . ,” mused Titus.

“Oh, do shut up,” groaned Pandora.

“Or a private jet. . . .”

“Mum . . . he's gloating again,” said Pandora.

“One minute to go,” said Mrs. McLachlan, peering at her watch. Latch stepped forward and applied a smoldering taper to the fuse of the first firework.

“Then again, if you were nice to me, I
might
buy you a proper bicycle. . . .”

“
Now
you're talking,” said Pandora, linking arms with Titus. “I've always wanted a mountain bike, actually . . . with an optional five hundred cc engine for those tedious uphill bits.”

“Twenty seconds . . . ,” said Mrs. McLachlan.

Signor and Signora Strega-Borgia hugged Damp between them, pulling her little woolly hat over her ears to muffle the impending din from the fireworks. The beasts and Tock, their eyes pools of light reflected from the torches, huddled closer to their beloved owners and bickered quietly.

“Why aren't you back at the house with your egg?” nagged Sab, digging Ffup in the ribs with a curved talon.

“Don't be
silly,
” said the dragon. “I hired Multitudina to baby-sit. I'm a teenage dragon, remember? A party animal!”

“Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”

All eyes were drawn to the hissing red line of lit fuse as it inched ever upward, closer and closer to the crate containing the first firework.

“FOUR . . . THREE . . . TWO . . . ,” they chanted in unison.

On the stroke of midnight, accompanied by a vast boom from the loch shore, the jelly pan over the range quivered ominously. As Multitudina sat on her haunches on the laden kitchen table, her whiskers twitched. The slab of Black Bun that she'd been about to sink her fangs into fell untasted to the floor as she swiveled round to face the fireplace.

“Oh, my whiskery heavens!” she gasped in awe. “This was definitely
not
in the baby-sitting contract. Oh, my word! OH! AHHH! EEK!”

An exasperated “
Tchhhhh
” came from the china cupboard but went unnoticed as the jelly pan clattered against the mantelpiece and shards of discarded eggshell began to fall like brittle snow onto the kitchen floor.

“Gosh, um . . . yes . . . ah . . . help yourself,” Multitudina whis-pered, indicating the tableful of delights awaiting the post-firework revelers, and, leaping to the floor, she headed for the safety of the dungeons, calling behind herself, “Be my guest . . . whatever you are. . . .”

The hatchling qualified as the most unusual newborn ever to appear at StregaSchloss. It scrabbled down the side of the jelly pan, flapped onto the floor, and crawled up a table leg in search of nourishment. On the tabletop it found a veritable feast laid out in welcome. By way of thanks to its absent hosts, the creature emitted a strangled sound halfway between a howl and an operatic high C. Glass preserve jars exploded, china mixing bowls cracked, and a pane of glass shattered in the window over the sink. With an ease that Damp would have envied, the creature slitted its eyes, drew a deep breath, and tried again. This time the priceless chandelier in the great hall shattered in an explosion of crystal, proving, as it did so, that all stories about the legendary Borgia Diamond were fact, not fiction. On the floor of the great hall, a gem the size of a quail's egg rolled out from the wreckage of the chandelier and came to rest in the untouched dust beneath the shrouded grandfather clock.

The creature paused, abashed at having vandalized its newfound nest, then with a shrug, it dipped its head and crammed a handful of sticky chocolate brownies into its mouth. Their intense sweetness coupled with the creature's complete lack of teeth caused its next howl to come out as a muffled shriek, accompanied by a shower of brownie crumbs. It gulped rapidly and cleared its palate by the simple expedient of draining an adjacent punch bowl. Clearing its throat, it threw back its head and howled loudly—so loudly that a rackful of bottles in the wine cellar exploded, showering Strega-Nonna's freezer in vintage champagne.

There,
that
was more like it. Volume, that's the thing.

From the distant hills surrounding Lochnagargoyle came an answering howl: the plaintive greeting of a legendary Scottish monster that had lived on its own for too many centuries, a mournful refrain that echoed across the meadow and bounced off the east wing of StregaSchloss. Again it came, masked by the sound of fireworks from the shore, but clearer now and more confident—a howl that sounded like a question: “Are you there? Hello? Hello?”

In the kitchen, in between mouthfuls of Black Bun, Ffup's hatchling answered: “Yes, here I am. Hello? Hello?” And, a little later, “Dad???”

They all agreed that the last firework had been absolutely the best one ever. Even Damp had emerged from the cocoon of her parents' arms to squeal as it exploded in a bouquet of vast dandelion heads made of white shooting stars that breached the night sky, their luminous tails streaking for an eternity across the loch. Deafened and dazzled, the party made its way sleepily back to StregaSchloss, unaware that the first of the new year's surprises was already there, waiting, in the kitchen.

Also by Debi Gliori

 

PURE DEAD Magic

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Text and illustrations copyright © 2002 by Debi Gliori

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Transworld Publishers Ltd. in 2002.

KNOPF, BORZOI BOOKS,
and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.randomhouse.com/kids

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gliori, Debi.

Pure dead wicked / Debi Gliori.— 1st American ed.

p. cm.

Sequel to: Pure dead magic.

SUMMARY
: The Strega-Borgia children accidentally create 500 clones of themselves at the same time that the roof on their Scottish castle falls in, attracting evil contractors who want their home.

[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Witches—Fiction. 3. Castles—Fiction. 4. Family life—Scotland—Fiction. 5. Scotland—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.G4889 Pv 2002

[Fic]—dc21 2002066105

eISBN: 978-0-375-89026-0

v3.0