Floods 9 (12 page)

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This was completely accurate.

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Apart from the Legendary Grand Master Wizard who is so legendary he may not actually exist, or may just be messing with our minds to make us think that he might not exist when he really does, or doesn't. Or both.

‘The Headmaster tells me that Aubergine Wealth has gone missing,' said Nerlin at dinner that night. ‘There's no one at his home in Switzerland, nor has he been anywhere near his secret hideaways that we're not supposed to know about. The Headmaster sent people to check. They say that the Belgian Fish Repair Shop where he has a secret apartment, the Leek Weaving Works in Wales where he has another hidey hole and the Potato Museum on Tristan da Cunha are all deserted. No one has been anywhere near them in months. It would appear that Mr Wealth and the seventeen-billion-plus dollars he made at the Summer School have done a runner.'

The Floods and the Hulberts were all gathered in the Friday Night Dining Room at Castle Twilight to celebrate the fact that it was Friday night and dinner time.

‘I suspect that Mr Wealth thinks we don't know what he's done,' Nerlin continued. ‘He probably thinks he's safe until school starts next week and we'll all assume he's gone on holiday.'

‘Maybe he has,' said Ffiona.

‘Mr Wealth does not do holidays,' said Nerlin. ‘He thinks they are a waste of money.'

‘Don't worry,' said Mordonna, putting her arm round Winchflat's shoulders. ‘Once again our resident genius is in control of the situation.'

When Aubergine Wealth had passed out behind the curtain back in Manhattan, he thought no one had realised he was there. When he had come to and everyone else had gone back to Transylvania Waters, he was sure that no one had known he hadn't gone with them. There had been a lot of things going on, what with
transferring all the wealth back to its original owners and removing every single trace of the Summer School. So it had been a fair assumption. After all, who would miss one person, especially one person who didn't actually have any friends to look out for him?
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But Winchflat had noticed because Winchflat noticed absolutely everything, even the numbers of feathers on the left wing of a sparrow that had been sitting on the windowsill outside the room where they were having their last Summer School meeting.
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He hadn't been able to count the feathers on the sparrow's right wing as it was sitting sideways. Although he assumed it was the same, he wasn't happy with guessing and decided at some point in the future he would have to make a machine to let him see through sparrows so he could count all the feathers with complete accuracy. With such an eye for detail, it would have been surprising if he hadn't seen Aubergine. He had even noted exactly how much blood the economics teacher had lost as it trickled down the crack in the floorboards.
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Mmm, clever,
he thought when he discovered the anti-spell lead shield buried under Aubergine's scalp, but it only took a couple of seconds to lift a tiny bit of the lead and slip a bugging device into his brain. If Aubergine discovered it, he would assume that the lead was blocking the device's signals, which of course it wasn't. It took more than some heavy metal to outsmart Winchflat.

‘So where is he now?' said Nerlin.

‘They are at JFK airport,' said Winchflat, ‘trying to decide where to fly to.'

‘They?' said Mordonna.

‘Yes. Aubergine Wealth appears to have got married.'

‘Are you sure?' said the Headmaster. ‘When you say married, you do mean to another living person and not a pocket calculator or a spreadsheet?'

‘No, it's a person,' said Winchflat. ‘A human being.'

‘Not a witch?'

‘No, it's an ordinary human. If it was a witch, my bug would say so.'

‘And can your bug tell us what they are saying?' said Nerlin.

‘Only what he is saying, not her,' said Winchflat. ‘I can usually tailor bugging devices for each situation, but Mr Wealth getting married was not a possibility that I thought was remotely likely.'

Aubergine and Chrysanthemum decided they would go back to Transylvania Waters, and not some remote part as far away from Castle Twilight as possible, but to a small house built right into the outer wall of the castle itself. They also decided that to avoid
detection, they would actually fly to Belgium and then travel the rest of the way by horse and cart. Belgium would be the last place the Floods would expect them to go. They bought their plane tickets and went through security and, of course, as soon as Aubergine stepped into the electronic scanner, the lead shield in his head set off all the alarms.

‘Take your shoes off, please, sir,' said the security officer.

‘Take your belt off, please, sir,' the officer said when that made no difference. ‘Pull your trousers up, please, sir.'

This went on until Aubergine Wealth was down to his underpants and small children were hiding in tears behind their parents. Actually everyone was hiding behind something because Aubergine Wealth in his undies was a sight that no living creature should be made to look at. Even Chrysanthemum, who adored her new husband, felt herself beginning to go faint. It wasn't because he was displaying anything rude so much as the strange colour and texture of his skin. It was like pea-soup-coloured corrugated
cardboard that had been soaking in water for a very long time.

But even then Aubergine Wealth set off the security alarm each time so they took him away to a special x-ray room and scanned him. As soon as they did that everyone could see his lead anti-spell head shield and that explained everything. Aubergine had been watching the screen too and that was when he saw Winchflat's secret tracking device.

I wondered why I had a bit of a headache when I came to,
he thought.

He was just about to tell Chrysanthemum about the bug when he stopped himself. He guessed that Winchflat – and it had to be him because no one else was clever enough – could hear every word he was saying. He motioned to Chrysanthemum to say nothing and scribbled her a note explaining the situation.

Brilliant,
Chrysanthemum wrote back.
If we play this right it could work to our advantage.

What's your plan?
wrote Aubergine, quite happy for his wife to take charge.

First we will buy two airplane tickets for Mongolia,
she explained.
When we get there, we will remove the bug from your head and implant it into a yak. The Flood boy will track the yak through the wilds of Mongolia while we travel on the Trans-Siberian railway back to eastern Europe where we will slip into Transylvania Waters disguised as tourists.

Brilliant,
Aubergine scribbled, falling in love with Chrysanthemum all over again – which was a bit confusing because he hadn't fallen out of love with her since the first time.

‘I think we should go to Mongolia,' Aubergine said in a loud clear voice. ‘No one will ever look for us there.'

‘They've just bought two tickets for Mongolia,' said Winchflat.

‘Are you sure?' said Mordonna. ‘It seems a bit of an obvious place to go.'

‘That is true,' said Winchflat, ‘but I think that's
why they're going there. They'll think it's so obvious that we won't expect them to go there.'

‘It's all beyond me,' said Nerlin, but then there were a lot of things that were beyond him. He may have been Top Wizard by the fact of being King of Transylvania Waters, but wizards are like humans in that respect. Hardly anyone is king of anywhere because they are intelligent or resourceful. They usually get the job because their dad had it and he got it from his dad and so on back in history until the first ancestor became king by killing everyone else who wanted the job. The fact that they are not best friends with thinking is probably quite a good thing. Otherwise they would just sit there feeling really guilty at having all that privilege without having earned any of it.
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Unlike other royal families, the Floods did NOT wear dead animals on their hats and necks.

Nerlin is seen here wearing Andrew and Christine – the two Royal Ermine, who are very much alive.

‘Mmm, the old double-bluff trick,' said the Headmaster. ‘It's that sort of devious thinking that has made Aubergine Wealth so incredibly rich.'

‘Exactly,' said Mordonna. ‘Well, I have cousins in Mongolia: Surge and Alexeye. We can send word for them to watch the airport for when they arrive.'

Once they realise we are going to Mongolia,
Chrysanthemum wrote,
I expect they will have spies waiting at the airport.

Of course they will,
Aubergine wrote back.
Probably Surge and Alexeye. They are Mordonna's cousins. They run a yak kebab shop and are incredibly stupid.

Because he firmly believed in the famous statement Knowledge is Power – to which he added the footnote And Power is Money – Aubergine Wealth always made sure he knew as much about everyone as he possibly could. The details that he knew about every single one of the students and teaching staff at Quicklime College and all of the Floods and a million other people were staggering.
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