Rose. The crowd parted to let him through.
My head! You hurt my head!
The thought shot through Pete’s mind like a flash. It wasn’t his. He dismissed it and focused on the job at hand. Rose was standing at the bar. He positioned Sticks to her left and tapped her on the shoulder. “Hello, Rose.”
“Drop dead,” said the old hag.
Pete was stunned. This was not the way it was supposed to go – he had the face of a famous rock and roll star, after all. He needed help. He removed the whatsit from his head, and was suddenly back in the alley.
“What’s going on in there?” asked Freddy.
“She told me to drop dead!”
Freddy closed his eyes for a second. “Say, ‘I’ll die like a flower deprived of the sun if you deny me the ecstasy of looking at your beautiful face’.”
“Okay!” Pete slapped the whatsit on and was hurled back into the club.
Rose was waving her hand in front of Sticks’s face. “Just seemed to black out,” she said.
“I’ll die like a flower deprived of the sun if you deny me the ecstasy of looking at your beautiful face,” said Pete.
Rose’s face contorted in disgust, multiplying her wrinkles by ten. “What a sicko!” She turned her back on Sticks.
Pete pulled the whatsit off. “She called me a sicko!”
“I’m sick with love for you!” shouted Freddy.
Whatsit back on.
“I’m sick with love for you!” shouted Pete.
No!
Another thought from nowhere.
“He’s kinda cute, don’t you think?” said a large woman next to Rose at the bar. “If you don’t want him, I’ll have him!”
Rose glared at her friend. “Who says I don’t want him? Who says he’d want you to have him?”
Pete saw the opportunity, and placed the automaton’s hand on the old woman’s bony shoulder. Squeak jumped from the sleeve onto her shoulder and disappeared under the strands of dyed black hair that covered her neck.
She turned to Sticks and commanded, “Kiss me!”
Pete tore the whatsit off. “Now she wants me to kiss her!”
“Women!” exclaimed Freddy. “Do it!”
Pete hesitated.
“It is just a wax head!”
“Right!” Pete put the whatsit on. He tried to remember the last kissing scene he had seen on television, and moved Sticks’s head closer to Rose’s upturned face.
No!
The automaton’s neck got stuck. Pete could not get the wax face closer to Rose’s wrinkled, puckering lips. He grabbed the head with Sticks’s right hand to get it unstuck.
Sticks’s left hand swung up and grabbed the other side of his head, holding it in position.
I won’t kiss her!
The thought bulldozed through Pete’s consciousness. Astonished, he withdrew his mind from the automaton.
Sticks straightened and adjusted his jacket. “I won’t kiss you. I love someone else,” he said in a smooth, rock star voice. “This whole situation is disgusting.”
He turned. A crowd of people stood around them.
“That’s him!” shouted a woman, pointing. “He’s a zombie!”
Two bouncers moved in to grab Sticks. The poor broomstick man stood petrified.
“Hey, it’s Elvis! It’s Elvis Presley!” someone else yelled, and the crowd went mad.
Pete realised he had to do something fast. “Stop right there or … I’ll blast your heads off!” he yelled. He moved Sticks’s right hand, grabbed the head and lifted it off the shoulders. “Like this!”
Everybody froze. The safety pin lady fainted again.
And then Rose screamed. She grabbed at her neck. “Mouse! My key! A mouse stole my key!”
Squeak tore across the countertop, ran up Sticks’s arm and dived across his collar into the cavernous chest. “I’ve got it. Let’s get out of here!”
Pete slammed the head back on and with superhuman effort made Sticks’s body vault across the counter. He made the broomstick man sprint through the kitchen and out into the alley.
Pete pulled the whatsit off, and he and Freddy grabbed Sticks and bundled him into the black plastic bag. Then they strolled out of the alley, carrying the bag between them, just as a gang of heavies came spilling out of the back door.
“The key. Did you get the key?” asked Freddy a block or so down the street.
Squeak grinned. “I dropped it down her blouse, and the chewing gum with the imprint is safely stuck to Sticks’s spine.”
Pete told Freddy about Sticks coming to life. “The Snowman’s going to skin Maggie alive when he finds out what effect her kiss had on Sticks.”
The mouse shook his head. “We’re not telling him. If we do, we’ll have to tell him we borrowed Sticks, and then there’ll be no end of trouble.”
4
The Inner Sanctum
Pete stormed into the flat at twenty-three minutes past nine. Twenty-three minutes late. Twenty-three minutes of trouble. He dreaded facing his father.
Peter Smith was sitting at the table, waiting. So were Mrs Burton, their neighbour from across the landing, and Nathaniel the Artist, and Mr Jones, who lived on the second floor, with his dog Mangler.
And Sandra. She was actually Her Royal Highness Cassandra, Queen of Fairy and Empress of the Lost Islands and the Ethereal Planes, but of course Pete’s dad did not know that. Very few adults believed in such nonsense. She was also Pete’s fairy godmother, but Pete would rather die rather than admit to anyone that he had such a thing as a fairy godmother.
Pete greeted everybody with a nod. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, trying his best to look very, very sorry.
His father shrugged. “It’s the weekend. I’ll let you get away with it this time.” He opened a tin to reveal a freshly baked chocolate cake. Then he got up and fetched a bottle of cool drink from the fridge. “We have something to celebrate,” he said, smiling.
“Wow! Where did you get this?” Feasts like this had never happened in their home before.
“Mrs Burton baked it for us.” Smith
