spend and cackle, cackle, cackle. Even Berkeley, who was awfully shy about singing in public, had fallen under a spell. She perched prettily on the handle of the Brewing cauldron and bewitched the customers with her lovely silvery songs.
Jessica, as the witch-in-training, was left to do all the hard work. She fetched ingredients, filled bottles with Walpurga’s magic well water, parcelled up new capes and helped load cauldrons full of shopping on to the backs of brooms.
More and more customers arrived. They stood around, yakking and drinking and cackling their heads off at Miss Strega’s old jokes.
The noise was so deafening that Jessica didn’t hear the door click.
She was on her knees behind the counter, searching for a Cover of Darkness blanket, when she realised that the shop had gone very, very quiet.
She stood up slowly and peered over the counter.
All the witches had disappeared. There was not a single hag trying on a cape or enjoying a natter with Miss Strega.
On the other hand, an awful lot of cats had appeared from nowhere. They padded across the floor and sprawled on the windowsills. Several were lying on the counter. One or two were even attempting to climb into the drawers. And where three witches had been sitting gossiping around the Brewing cauldron, there were three life-size garden gnomes that definitely had not been there before.
“Oh my goodness!” exclaimed an unfamiliar voice. “What a lot of cats.”
Jessica whirled around. There was an Ordinary Person standing in the doorway!
Jessica rushed out from behind the counter. “I’m sorry,” she croaked, for her mouth had gone completely dry, “we are closed. Miss Strega has already left.”
At the same time she was thinking, blithering batwings, what if some witch flies in on her broomstick while this Ordinary Person is here?
“Tell me,” said the Ordinary Person, fixing Jessica with a steely stare, “exactly how many cats do you have?”
Jessica said nothing, but she began to shoo the cats towards the cat flap with the end of her broom.
Miss Strega, help! she prayed.
The problem was that the cats just wouldn’t leave. They mewed and howled, scratched and hissed. Some of them arched their backs and refused to budge. Others tried to trip Jessica up by doing figures of eight around her legs. Another big fat black one bolted from behind the counter and upset a teetering pile of cauldrons.
“Oops! That pot missed me by the pompom of my hood,” one of the garden gnomes whispered. “I feel quite faint.”
Jessica was flabbergasted. “So that’s it! You’ve all changed into cats and gnomes and left me all alone. It’s not fair!”
The Ordinary Person began to walk around. She looked at the jumble of cobwebby mole traps and hurricane lamps in the window. She pursed her lips at the black cauldrons and raised an eyebrow at the heap of broomsticks that the witches had left beside the door.
“They’re for brushing up fallen leaves,” Jessica muttered as she trailed after her.
The Ordinary Person wasn’t listening. She was staring at the three curious garden gnomes whose eyes seemed to follow her as she walked around the room.
“I’ve never noticed this shop before,” she remarked in a very frosty voice, “and that is odd because I work next door in the toy shop.”
“Really?” Jessica squeaked.
The Ordinary Person wrinkled her nose. She began to count all the cats: on the counter, stretched out on the shelves, asleep in the cauldrons and peeping out of drawers.
“It’s all a bit odd, isn’t it? Not to mention smelly.” Jessica’s face and ears turned scarlet.
Get out, she thought. Go away and leave us alone!
But now the Ordinary Person marched to the drawers at the back of the shop and scrunched her eyes up at their spidery handwritten labels.
“Well, since I’m here I’ll have a flea collar, just in case one of these flea-bitten old strays bumps into my little moggie.”
“Sorry, we don’t sell them.”
“Nonsense! There’s a drawer here marked Flea Collars. I’ll get one myself.”
The Ordinary Person went to pull open a drawer that Jessica knew contained a bloodcurdling collection of freaky hollers: WHOOOO! WAAAARGH!
There was no time to lose.
She stomped across the shop, whacking the floor with her broom: left, right, left, right.
“Don’t open that! It’s empty. We have no flea collars for sale. None at all. Goodbye.”
And she practically swept the Ordinary Person out on to the street and banged the door shut.
“Blithering batwings and warty warlocks!”
Behind her, all the stray cats began clambering out of drawers, hopping off the counter and carefully picking their way over the spilled pile of cauldrons.
Suddenly, before you could say moonbeams and marrowbones, the racket started again. Witches cackled. Glasses clinked. Berkeley trilled. And there were all the witches standing around, leaning on their brooms, trying on capes, leafing through Spell Books and sipping fresh glasses of Midnight Magic.
“Thank you, ladies, for such speedy Switching,” said Miss Strega.
“It’s years since an Ordinary Person barged in like that.”
Jessica rounded on her. “Why did you leave me all alone? We could have been found out!”
“Great
