“If we could please just
focus
!” said Melissande loudly. “Or I swear by all things metaphysical there
will
be a great deal of punching by proxy!”
“Something’s come through, hasn’t it?” said Bibbie, arms folded again. “That’s what this panic is all about.”
“I don’t know,” Monk muttered. He had the grace to look abashed. “Not for certain.”
Reg rattled her tail feathers. “In other words, yes.”
“What was it?” said Bibbie. “I mean, what dimension did the portal open onto, Monk? And what kind of things live in it? Are we talking microscopic creepy crawlies? Slimy tentacles? Alternate versions of ourselves? What?”
“Actually,” said Monk, brightening again, “it turns out that I’ve made an important discovery. In
fact
it looks like I’ve debunked another popular misconception.”
“Of course you have,” said Bibbie, rolling her eyes. “And which one have you debunked this time?”
Monk was all lit up now, his thaumaturgical enthusiasm burning like a fever. “I’ve discovered that when you open a portal between dimensions it’s not as simple as stepping from one to the other. It’s not like—like going from the dining room to the parlour, say.”
Bibbie frowned. “It’s not? Are you sure? Because Hepplewight’s Theorem
distinctly
postulates—”
“Oh, bollocks to old Hepplewight,” Monk said airily, waving an excited hand. “What would that old fossil know? He’s not had an original thought for twenty-seven years, not since he worked out how to splice a thaum and they made him a Grand Master on the strength of it. No, no, no, I’m telling you, Bibs, there’s a kind of empty space between the dimensions. A passageway. A conduit. I managed to get a reading, not much, just a few seconds’ worth. But it was enough to prove Hepplewight wrong.”
Irritation forgotten, Bibbie’s face lit up just like her mad brother’s. “You
didn’t
! Monk, that’s fantastic! That’s—that’s
phenomenal
!”
“I know!” he said, grinning like a loon. “I could hardly believe it! If I could sneak the results into the Department I’d be able to work out exactly what that means but I don’t dare risk it, I’ll have to—”
Melissande, having heard more than enough, turned her head till she was nose-to-beak with Reg. “Shall I take the first swing, Your Majesty, or would you care for the honour?”
“You take it, ducky,” said Reg, eyes gleaming. “I’ll follow it up with a one-two jab to their skinny arses!”
Monk and Bibbie stopped enthusing about his latest discovery and gave them another patented Markham peas-in-a-pod stare.
“Eh?” said Monk. “What? No—wait—”
“I don’t want to wait,” said Melissande, advancing on him with both sweaty hands clenched to fists. “I want to conduct myself in a thoroughly unladylike fashion and pummel you to a whimpering pulp, Monk Markham! I want seventeen generations of New Ottosland princesses to stand up in their graves and
cheer
as I abandon every last shred of royal tradition and knock you into the middle of next week! I want—”
“To calm down!” said Monk, retreating with both hands raised. “That’s what you want to do, Mel. Just—just—calm down so we can—”
“
Don’t call me Mel!
”
Monk’s shoulder blades collided with a Botchaki Silk Tree. “Okay. All right. I get it. You’re upset. I don’t blame you. I’m upset too.”
“Really? Because it looked to me like you were congratulating yourself. It looked to me like you were patting yourself on the back so hard it’s a wonder you haven’t dislocated your shoulder.”
“Well, all right, fair enough, I’m excited about my new invention,” he confessed, “but I
am
sorry it’s causing this slight difficulty. And I swear I had
no idea
that there was anything living in the spaces between dimensions. I mean, how could I? I had no idea there
were
spaces between dimensions. I had no idea—”
“So you admit you’re mucking about with things you don’t understand?” Melissande demanded. “Just—just—plotzing about tra-la, tra-la, not having the first wretched
clue
of what might—”
“Plotzing? Plotzing? I’m not
plotzing
!” said Monk, offended. “You seem to be forgetting that I’m a research thaumaturgist, Mel—issande. This is what I
do
. I reveal hidden metaphysical truths, I chart uncharted mysteries, I—”
“Need your bloody head examined!” she shouted at him. “
What’s come through that door you opened?
”
Monk shoved a finger between his shirt collar and his throat and wiggled it, hard. “Um… well… I’m not sure, exactly. I haven’t seen it. As far as I can tell it’s most likely invisible, due to the incompatibility of the comparative dimensional vibrations.”
Melissande exchanged another look with Reg. “How delightful.” Only her intimate acquaintance with homicidal maniacs and rampaging dragons kept her voice steady. “And where do you think our invisible friend might be right now?”
Monk swallowed convulsively. “Ah. Yes. Well, I’m not
entirely
sure… but I think you’ve got it.”
O
nce the shouting and squawking had died down, and Monk had picked himself up and brushed the leaf mould off his sober blue suit and rubbed the bits that Reg had poked with her beak, Melissande clapped her hands for order.
“All right,” she said sharply. “If everyone can just calm down? Good. Now, Monk. Do you have
any
idea what it is you think we’ve got?”
“Well,” said Monk, frowning, “after a lot of careful consideration and by a comprehensive process of elimination I’m pretty sure it’s a concatetanic conglomeration of uber-parallel-dimensional antietheretic particles supercharged with extraneous thaumaturgical emissions on a scale of seventeen to the eleventh power, cubed.”
Melissande blinked at him. “I see,” she said, after a pause. “Ah—let me put that another way. Would you have any idea what it was if you weren’t a thaumaturgical genius working in a secret government Research and Development facility?”
“Of course,” said Monk, as though surprised she’d even ask. “It’s a sprite.”
“A
sprite
?” Bibbie’s eyes lit up yet again. The wretched girl really was as bad as her equally wretched brother. “Really, Monk? You’re positive? Because according to Herbert and Lowe—”
“Sprites are just another postulation of theoretical thaumaturgical metaphysics,” said Monk eagerly. “I know, I
know
. But now I’m not so sure!”
Melissande groaned. “Well,
I’m
sure. I’m sure I don’t understand a word the two of you are saying. Now start talking Ottish or I swear I’ll walk away and let Reg do her worst!”
“Sorry,” Monk said, sheepish. “Basically, what it means is I seem to have proven the actual existence of a theoretical construct, which when you think about it is pretty bloody exciting, really, even if it’s proving a trifle inconvenient, because—”
Melissande grabbed him by both ears and pulled his face towards hers until their noses were touching. “Dearest Monk, I don’t care if it’s the most exciting thing since the invention of expanding corsets. As far as
I’m
concerned this sprite of yours is nothing more than a pain in the bu—” She glanced at Reg, who’d perched herself on a handy low-slung palm branch, and smoothly changed tracks. “Nothing more than a huge inconvenience. Incidentally, is it alive?”
With enormous care, Monk disengaged her fingers from his ears then inched himself away from the Botchaki Silk Tree. “I suppose that depends on how you define ‘alive’.”
“Does it have thoughts? Feelings? Can it communicate?”
“Mel, I don’t know,” he said. “Honestly. It exists, I know that much. But until I can study it that’s all I’m prepared to say.”
“And how is it you’re so sure
we’ve
got it?”
“
Oh
!” said Bibbie suddenly, and danced a little on the spot. “Of
course
! Great-uncle Throgmorton’s ghost! The sprite’s incompatible with our dimension’s etheretic vibrations so it’s causing physical manifestations on our plane. The housemaids being tossed out of bed and the exploding strawberry syllabub and—”
Monk nodded vigorously. “Exactly!”
“And the
ink
, Mel,” Bibbie added, still dancing. “This explains your debacle with the tamper-proof ink!”
“What debacle with the tamper-proof ink?” said Monk.
Melissande sighed. “I tried to brew up some tamper-proof ink this morning,” she muttered, cheeks heating. “And it went kablooey. Three times.”
“But now we know it wasn’t your fault!” said Bibbie.
“Perhaps if you could manage
not
to sound quite so surprised?” she said, teeth gritted again. “That would be nice.”
“Heh,” said Reg, flapping back to her shoulder. “Fat chance of that, ducky.”
Bibbie ignored both of them. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Assuming a sprite
is
an agitation of super-charged inverse etheretic particles with a cohesive substructure in direct reverse proportion to our dimension’s thaumaturgical vibrations. Monk?”
“That’s the idea, more or less,” he said, nodding.
Bibbie slitted her eyes. “Can you come up with a
better
definition?”
“Ah…” He shook his head. “No.”
“
Right
, then,” said Bibbie, and dusted her hands. “That means the sprite’s likely to have a
particularly
deleterious effect on any ambient thaumaturgic processes. In other words—the ink!”
“So I was right,” said Monk, vastly relieved. “I
knew
you had the rotten thing because it’s not in the house any more and it’s not at work, either, and when I called Mother nothing untoward was happening there so it didn’t go home with Dodsworth and the others.”
“But why would it have left with us?” said Melissande.
“Well, if my theory on the nature of interdimensional sprites is correct, they’re attracted to the corporeal essence of something substantial in their immediate vicinity.”
Reg snorted. “Are you quite sure you don’t want me to show you those buttock-reducing exercises, ducky?”
“
Amazing
, Monk,” said Bibbie, forestalling an imminent outbreak of hostilities. Her eyes were burning with a resurgence of thaumaturgical fervour. “And it’s all because you accidentally shifted the polarities of your portable portal prototype.”
“
Precisely
!”
Bibbie threw her arms around her brother and kissed him enthusiastically on both cheeks. “
Monk
, you’re a
genius
!”
He hugged her back, laughing. “Yeah, well, I dunno—”
“You are, you are! This’ll be your second article in
The Golden Staff
. Oh, I’m so
proud
of you!”
“
Proud
of him?” Reg snorted, and gave her tail feathers a peevish rattle. “He’s a menace to society, that’s what
he
is.” More rattling of tail feathers, and a pointed glare. “And only
you
could fall arse over teakettle for him, Princess Pushy. I’m starting to think you should’ve fallen for Gerald after all.”
Melissande heaved another sigh. There was no point holding a grudge against the horrible bird: Reg made a warthog look thin-skinned. Besides, she had a point. Not about falling for Gerald, but about Monk.
I care for him a great deal, I truly do, but…
“
It does sound as though you’re playing with fire, you know,” she told him. “You really ought to be more careful.”
Sometimes he reminded her of a helium-filled balloon: impossible to repress for longer than a few moments. “Mel, trust me, it’s
perfectly
safe,” he insisted. “We’re not in a skerrick of danger. Not from the sprite, and not from the portal opener. I
promise
.”
How could she doubt him? He was a thaumaturgical genius, after all. “Fine. If you say so.”
“I say so,” he said, that anarchic grin lighting up his face.
“Yes, well,” she muttered, trying in vain to smother her own answering smile. “Only the thing is, aren’t you talking theoretically? I mean, I don’t suppose you can actually
prove
any of it, can you? Because if you’re right and this sprite creature did leave your place with us last night, I’d like to know for sure.”
“And so would I,” Bibbie added. “Because I’ve got some hexes to put together and I don’t want them going kablooey.”
“As a matter of fact I
can
prove it,” said Monk. “Hold on.” He rummaged in the nearby lush tropical undergrowth and pulled out a large, shabby carpetbag. “I threw this together over breakfast. It’s a bit rough and ready but I’m pretty sure it’ll do the trick.”
Melissande frowned as he opened the bag and took out an eye-boggling contraption consisting of a metal rod wrapped in copper wire and attached to some kind of needle-and-gauge arrangement.
“What is it?” she said, suspicious.
His eyebrows shot up. “A portable etheretic sprite detector, of course.”
Which he’d invented while eating scrambled eggs and bacon.
Of course
. She shook her head. “How does it work?”
Monk opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. “Ah… do you really want me to explain or should I just show you?”