Floods 9 (11 page)

‘No, my beloved, that wasn't what I meant,' said Aubergine. ‘I meant that Quicklime College will probably be looking for me. I have seventeen billion dollars or so that they want me to give back to the people I acquired it from.'

‘That's ridiculous,' said Chrysanthemum Gofaintly. ‘Did you break the law to get any of it?'

‘Not quite.'

‘Well then, it's yours to keep and I'm sure any court in the land would support you.'

‘But Quicklime College includes a lot of the most powerful witches and wizards on Earth,' said Aubergine. ‘They are more powerful than any court and as far as they are concerned, their rules and laws are above any human laws.'

‘Mmm, I see. Well, we'll have to work out a plan,' said Chrysanthemum, ‘a plan that does not include giving-it-back options. That is not going to happen.'

Aubergine Wealth knew he had found Miss
Right, Ms Right, Mrs Right and Miss Totally Perfect. There had been a nagging thought in the back of his brain that if all else failed, he could always save himself by doing as he had been ordered. It had made him feel better knowing that he had a potential solution if he really needed it, but the thought of losing it all had also given him an upset stomach and a bad headache.

Now his thoughts were all over the place.
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He knew what the Floods were capable of. He had heard of their kinder punishments, such as turning children into refrigerators or feeding them to the partly – but not completely – dead Queen Mother. He had also heard rumours of the punishments no one was supposed to know about, such as turning people into Belgian history teachers and, if that worked, turning them inside-out too. There was even the legendary punishment where they had turned a very evil slum-landlord into a frog in the kitchen of
a French restaurant – not just any frog, but one with ninety big, fat, succulent legs. The list of extremely creative punishments the Floods were rumoured to have meted out to bad people was endless and grew even longer than endless every day. He knew that all the really bad ones were only rumours, but imagination is a powerful weapon, especially when you are the potential victim.

On the other hand, he was now suddenly and totally in love so deeply that he thought he might be possibly, perhaps, maybe prepared to give every last cent of his fortune away if he had to. Giving back the rewards he had earned from the Summer School would be small change compared to the rewards of winning Chrysanthemum's heart.

Well, maybe not all of it, but so much that he would be left with no more than ten or twenty – well, say thirty billion dollars,
he thought.

I can't believe I have these thoughts inside my head,
he added,
and that I'm even considering them as possibilities.

But he needn't have worried. As these new
thoughts shocked his brain, Chrysanthemum's brain had also changed dramatically. Step aside, Miss Nice Girl, feeding sardines to little old ladies and helping kittens across the road – Ms Super-Computer-I-Love-Money-Oh-How-I-Love-Money is here. If the little old ladies want sardines, fine, but each one will cost ten dollars, and the kittens will never see the other side of the road. They will see the big fat steamrollers turning them into lovely designer mats to sell in the most exclusive over-priced boutiques.
Mmm, that gives me an idea
, she thought, looking around the room at all the lovely, happy, cuddly puppies.

Thankfully, there was still enough of the old hippy Chrysanthemum left to scratch the kitty carpets and puppy pillows idea.

Phew,
she thought.
Money does strange things to a person. A bit like seven very strong espressos, only stronger.

‘So the first thing we must do is find somewhere safe to hide out while we work out the best way to handle all this,' she said.

‘No,' said Aubergine Wealth. ‘That is the second
thing. The first thing we must do is get married.'

‘And we need to do something with all these puppies,' said Chrysanthemum. ‘I think travelling with a hundred and twenty-three very excited incontinent baby dogs might draw a bit of attention to us. Could you do a spell and turn them into skylarks? We could just open the window then and they could all fly away to Central Park. Can wizards do that sort of thing?'

‘There are different levels of magic,' said Aubergine. ‘To change something that's alive into another life form you need to have the top level – Very Advanced Magic. Unfortunately I've only got Middle Level Magic. I can only do magic on inanimate objects and stuff like that.'

‘How do you get Very Advanced Magic? Can you buy it?'

‘No. It's mainly hereditary. If your parents had it, then you have it when you're born. The Floods are all like that,' said Aubergine.
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‘The only other way is for a Grand Master Wizard to give you an upgrade and, as far as I know, there is only one Grand Master Wizard and no one actually knows where he lives. In fact, most people think he's simply a myth.'

‘Do you?'

‘Yes, but I also think he's real, a kind of living myth,' said Aubergine.
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‘If we could find him,' said Chrysanthemum, ‘could you bribe him or something like that?'

‘The puppies would probably have died of old age before we discovered his secret home and I think anyone who tried to bribe him would end up turned into a small omelette. No, we have to think of something else.'

‘OK. Here's my suggestion,' said Chrysanthemum. ‘Everyone loves puppies, but not everyone is prepared to give one a home. However, everyone also loves money and everyone loves chocolate. So if we get big bars of chocolate, wrap them in dollar bills and give them away to anyone who is prepared to take a puppy at the same time, we shouldn't have any problem re-homing them.'

Although the thought of giving anything away went against everything Aubergine Wealth believed in, he knew that sometimes you actually had to make small investments to get a bigger return. One hundred and twenty-three bars of chocolate he could produce. His magic was powerful enough for that. Then he scooped up one hundred and twenty-three
ten-dollar bills and they wrapped each bar of chocolate in one.

They stood outside the building with a big sign that said:

When humans see the word ‘free' the small sensible bit of their brain switches off. In less than fifteen minutes Aubergine and Chrysanthemum were completely puppy-free. They collected up the rest of the money that had been floating round the room and went down to City Hall to get a marriage licence.

‘You have to wait for at least twenty-four hours before you can get hitched,' said the clerk.
‘Unless there are special circumstances – then we could marry you straight away. Are there any special circumstances?'

Aubergine leant over, whispered in the clerk's ear and handed him an envelope.

‘I now pronounce you man and wife,' said the clerk with a big smile. ‘You may now kiss the bribe . . . oops, sorry. You may now kiss the bride.'

‘What did you say?' Chrysanthemum Wealth said as they took a taxi to the airport.

‘I asked him if a huge bribe qualified as special circumstances. He said probably. So I gave him the title deeds to the old Summer School puppy shelter apartment block in Manhattan,' said Aubergine.

VIt wasn't until they reached the airport that they realised they hadn't the faintest idea where they were going. They had been so busy with getting married, it had entirely slipped their minds. They sat down in the cafe and wrote out a list in three columns. The first column was places the school would look first, the second column was places the school would look last and the third column was all the other places the
school would look. The third column only had one word in it, but it was the biggest problem.

The word was:

Everywhere.

‘So what you're saying is, there's not much point in writing anything in the other two columns, because wherever we go, they will come looking,' said Chrysanthemum.

‘Pretty well,' said Aubergine. ‘Though I suppose if we could work out the last place they'd look and go there, there's a remote chance they might get bored and stop looking before they get there.'

‘Is that likely?'

‘Not really, but it's the best chance we've got,' said Aubergine.

‘Well, the last place I'd look for someone would be right under my nose behind me,' said Chrysanthemum, ‘or Belgium.'

‘I think I'd rather get caught than go to Belgium,' said Aubergine. ‘Did you know they've got a town called Silly?'

‘I did, actually,' said Chrysanthemum. ‘When
I was a teenager I spent a summer there working as a nanny to a family of Silly bottle makers. I think I agree with you about going back there.'

‘OK, well, that only leaves the option of going right under their noses.'

‘What will they do if they catch us?'

‘I'm not really sure,' said Aubergine, ‘but it won't be nice. You have to remember that the Floods are the most powerful wizards in creation.
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I mean, they don't just make armchairs of puppies float round the room. They could make the whole apartment block where the room is float around and not just around the street, but off around the moon and back, and when it got back the puppies on the armchair in that room on the fifth floor would have changed into sabre-tooth goldfish that breathe fire and speak Welsh.'

‘Really?'

‘Oh yes, they've done it before – and that was just because someone gave them fifty cents short in their change when they bought a cabbage. We're running away with billions.'

‘So, do you think they're out looking for you now?' said Chrysanthemum.

‘Probably not,' said Aubergine. ‘I reckon they won't realise I'm missing until school starts next week and I'm not there.'

‘How about lying?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Why not just go back to school as if nothing has happened and if they say anything, just say you gave everything to the lady who took over the Summer School building for the Manhattan Home For Lost & Lonely Puppies?'

‘That's you.'

‘Oh yes, so it is,' said Chrysanthemum with a big grin.

This was not a cheating grin that meant she was about to rob Aubergine. It was a conspiratorial, naughty grin that meant they were both about to
con the Floods, which if it worked would be the first time in history, apart from the time Mordonna's father, ex-King Quatorze, took over the whole of Transylvania Waters. Compared to that, keeping a few billion dollars didn't seem so bad.

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He also kept several gold coins up each nostril and wore origami underpants folded out of a one-million-dollar bank note.

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Because they were all inside his head, they were not so much all over the place as racing round, tripping over each other and making him dizzy.

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Apart from Betty, who has a strange version of Very Advanced Magic called Unfortunate Magic, where she can theoretically do very advanced magic, but it often comes out wrong.