Undercover (8 page)

‘This is how fairies wear their hair at parties,' Elly explained. Then she pinned on the wing protectors and stepped back to look at Jess. Elly couldn't help laughing. ‘You look exactly like a fairy!' she said. ‘Just a very grumpy one.'

‘I feel stupid,' said Jess.

Elly shrugged. ‘Sometimes you have to do stuff like this when you're a detective,' she said.

The Hover-Lamp tried to follow them as they left. Elly put it firmly back on the bedside table. ‘Sorry,' she said, ‘but I think a flying, flashing lamp might just blow our cover.'

The lamp blinked its lights and made a whiny noise. But Elly insisted. ‘Stay!' said Elly, closing the door carefully behind them.

Caitlin lived a couple of streets away so the girls rode there on Elly's skateboard. Jess held on tight to Elly's backpack.

‘I hope no-one sees us,' said Jess nervously.

‘Don't worry,' said Elly. ‘We'll be at the party soon and everyone will look just like we do.'

But the girls were in for a surprise. When they arrived at Caitlin's house the first person they saw was Clarabelle. She was wearing jeans. She looked at Elly and Jess in surprise but before she could say anything Caitlin appeared. She was wearing jeans too and even more surprisingly, her t-shirt looked like it had an oil stain on it.

Elly and Jess looked around. They were the only guests dressed as fairies.

‘Hi, guys,' said Caitlin. ‘Cool outfits!'

Elly frowned. ‘Isn't this a fairy party?' she said. ‘I thought we had to dress up.'

Caitlin smiled. ‘No,' she said. ‘We just wear normal stuff. Those fairy outfits are too uncomfortable. And besides, they'd get dirty when we work on our inventions.'

‘Inventions?' Jess repeated.

Caitlin nodded. ‘That's the whole point of Fairy Club,' she explained. ‘At the moment we're working on how to make things fly.'

Jess and Elly looked at each other. This was not how they had imagined Fairy Club at all.

Caitlin saw their surprised expressions. ‘What did you think Fairy Club was about? Running around with wings waving wands?' she said, laughing.

Elly and Jess didn't say anything because that was
exactly
what they had thought.

‘We're about to start work,' said Caitlin. ‘Get something to eat from the table if you're hungry.' She pointed to a trestle table piled high with food. ‘It's all
fairy
-type food,' she said apologetically. ‘My mum thinks that's what we should be eating at Fairy Club. She thinks we're still little kids.'

Elly and Jess went over to the table. ‘What is all this stuff?' Elly asked Jess.

She had never seen so much pink food in her life.

Jess pointed to the different plates. ‘Those are fairy cakes. That's fairy bread. And that stuff is fairy floss,' she said.

Elly peered closely at this last plate. ‘Fairy floss?' she said. ‘That's what we use to clean our teeth!'

Caitlin's mum had obviously spent a lot of time on the food. The fairy bread was cut into tiny stars, and the fairy cakes were decorated with hundreds of miniature sugar flowers. Elly and Jess chose a cake each and the sugar flowers dissolved on their tongues.

‘Come on,' said Jess. ‘Let's go and join the others. I can't wait to see what their flying inventions are like.'

The Fairy Club girls were standing in a group in the corner of the garden. They had a strange-looking object on the ground in front of them — a teapot, with a pair of feathery wings stuck on each side, and a propeller sticking out through the spout.

‘This is my latest invention,' explained Caitlin. ‘I've been working on it for weeks.'

Elly and Jess looked at the teapot, which was feebly hopping across the lawn. Jess gently picked the teapot up and lifted off the lid. Inside was a small engine, whirring away.

‘What kind of crankshaft are you using?' she asked Caitlin.

‘Just a standard one,' replied Caitlin. ‘But I think the problem is the piston rig.'

Jess nodded. ‘I think you're right. And what might help is —' but before she could finish explaining, something zoomed past her at a very rapid pace.

Unfortunately Elly's Worry-Watch had seen it too. ‘WATCH OUT!' it shrieked, as the whirring noise got louder.

Elly looked around.
What was that?

‘I said, WATCH OUT!' screamed the watch again. This time, impatient that Elly wasn't moving, it fired up a tiny jet engine in its base and yanked Elly out of the way. Jess grabbed onto Elly's leg as she was pulled sideways. But the watch's engine was powerful enough to pull both of them up into the air before depositing them right on top of the food table.

All was silent as the Fairy Club girls gaped at the scene before them. It was the sort of silence that you can't ever imagine being

broken. But then the whirring noise started up again, and a moment later the Hover-Lamp landed in Jess's lap, blinking its lights happily.

Chapter Ten

E
lly could see stars before her eyes, and she wondered if she had hit her head. Then she realised that the stars she could see were fairy-bread stars stuck all over her body. She looked across at Jess. Normally she would've burst out laughing at the blob of fairy floss on her friend's head — it looked like a sticky pink wig.

But she didn't feel like laughing right now. They had managed to wreck all the food. They'd probably never get invited to a Fairy Club party again, and they would never get to finish their detective work. Elly got up and peeled off the fairy bread sticking to her arms. This was no time to sit around covered in party food. She hoisted Jess to her feet. Jess tucked the Hover-Lamp under her arm.

‘Don't worry,' Elly announced. ‘Jess and I will fix everything. Just give us half an hour.'

Then she and Jess dashed out of the garden and leapt onto Elly's waiting skateboard.

They stopped at a park around the corner.

‘What should we do?' said Jess. ‘We've got to go back and fix up that mess.'

Elly looked at her curiously. ‘I thought you said Fairy Club was dumb,' she said.

Jess blushed. ‘It's different now I know what they really do,' she said. ‘Anyway, we haven't found out who the fairy is yet.'

Elly thought for a moment. ‘There's only one thing we can do,' she said. ‘We have to make a whole lot of food.'

Jess stared at Elly. ‘What are you talking about?' she said. ‘There's no way we can remake all that stuff.'

Elly smiled. ‘You've forgotten about our secret weapon,' she said. ‘The Wunch-Box!' And she pulled it out of her backpack.

Jess wasn't sure about this idea. But Elly was busy searching through her backpack and a moment later triumphantly held something in the air.

‘The Wunch-Box comes with different dials,' explained Elly. ‘You can swap them over for different situations. This is the partyfood dial.'

She handed it over to Jess. Sure enough, instead of sandwiches and fruit, this dial had such options as party pies and chocolate brownies.

‘I'll make party pies first,' said Elly, attaching the new dial.

A few minutes later she opened up the box and it was filled with steaming little pies. They even had a little heart-shaped dollop of sauce on the top. The girls loaded them on to a plate that Elly found in her backpack. Jess was starting to understand why Elly always took her backpack with her. She had lots of very useful things stashed away in its little pockets and compartments.

‘And now I'll make jelly,' Elly said, changing the setting on the dial.

The jelly was much quicker to make, and less than a minute later Jess carefully tipped it into a large bowl that appeared from a small side pocket of the backpack. The jelly was green with chocolate frogs set into it. There were chocolate tadpoles too, which Jess had never seen before.

Jess started to feel better. Maybe Elly's plan was going to work after all.

Elly changed the dial again. ‘Now I'll do brownies,' she said. She patted the side of the box. ‘I hope the Wunch-Box can manage all this work.'

A moment later, steam began to emerge from the box, along with a delicious chocolatey aroma.

‘They smell OK, at any rate,' said Jess.

But seconds later the Wunch-Box started making huffing noises. It sounded like someone running up a hill. Even worse, the brownies started to smell very strange.

‘We'd better check what's going on,' said Jess, in alarm.

The noise of the box was getting louder and more agitated. The Hover-Lamp was now hiding beneath the layers of Jess's skirt, rattling in fear. Elly opened the box. Inside were several rows of perfect-looking brownies, each with a tiny pair of chocolate wings placed on top.

Elly was relieved. ‘See?' she said confidently. ‘Nothing to worry about.' She picked up a brownie and took a bite. But almost immediately she spat it out and pulled a face. ‘Gross!' she said.

Nervously, Jess picked one up and took a bite. It definitely didn't taste like a brownie. Yet the flavour was very familiar.