And seconds after Nick spoke, we turned a corner and saw Hotel Babylon standing across the distant end of a great wide street in front of us.
“The spell worked,” Nick said.
“Just as well,” I said. “It’s going to be dark soon and I’m not sure how the lights work. Now conjure me up the car park and we’ll get dancing.”
“Hey presto,” Nick said, calming shutting down his laptop.
Sure enough, there was an archway in the wall beside the hotel, labelled HOTEL CAR PARK GUESTS ONLY. I turned into it, saying, “Why the hell are you always so lucky, Nick? It’s bad for your personality. It’s not fair. I’ve had bad luck ever since I can remember.”
“Witchy Dance,” Nick said, throwing open the door on his side.
So I stopped the car just inside the archway and jumped out too, and we began the Dance at once: step-shuffle-step-hop-hop-step – stop. At every stop we did the flick, flick, flick, and chanted, “Luck, luck, luck!” My fingernails have now grown into great long yellow spikes, so the flicking was really satisfying.
And it was odd. The car park was pretty well full. I saw Janine’s car parked nearest the hotel as I hopped and turned. There was no sign of her and Uncle Ted. But there were people at at least half of the other cars and the vans, unloading things – suitcases, guitars and video equipment – and most of them barely glanced at us. There was an old man almost beside us where three people with waist-length hair and a baby went on unloading bags, bundles and the baby’s cot without even looking at us. You got the feeling they saw much odder things than the Witchy Dance every day of their lives.
This was rather encouraging. “Luck, luck, LUCK!” Nick and I roared, and danced and twisted like dervishes. I did hear a car hooting, but I honestly thought it was out in the road – well, it almost was, because it was halfway through the archway I had blocked by stopping Dad’s car – but I didn’t notice a thing until its driver came and screamed at us.
“Get this load of scrap-iron out of my way, you stupid bitch!”
“Screamed” is the right word. He had a thin tenor voice. He had a little pointed beard. His face was mauve and his nose was pointed too, and pinched with fury, so that white marks came and went on the sides of it.
Nobody calls me a bitch and gets away with it. Even Robbie only tried it once. I calmly pointed a flick! at his mauve face and turned to look at his car. It was a horrible old banger, covered with rust, and it was blocking the archway. I could see at least one car angrily backing away from behind it. I looked at Dad’s car. True, it was in the way, and it’s a bit weather-beaten these days, but nothing to the heap that his was.
“Same to you,” I said. “In spades. Bitch and scrapiron.”
“MOVE it!” howled curly beard. “I am a guest at this convention.”
“Me too,” I said. “For my sins.”
“I am Mervin Thurless!” he screamed.
“Then you need a deed poll,” says I. “Can’t help you there.”
He screamed I was a bitch again. I told him, “Once more, my good man, gets you pins in a wax image, or worse. I’d do it now, and curse you into the bargain, only I’m crossed in love and haven’t the energy. Now you get out of my way.” I pushed past him, climbed into my car again, and drove with immense dignity to the free space where Nick was now standing beckoning. Typical Nick, that. Brisk vanishment at the first sign of trouble. Nick waved me into the space with great flourishes to disguise the fact that tears of laughter were pouring down his face.
“How is it that this happens every time we do the Witchy Dance?” I said to him.
“This one forgot to pay you,” he giggled.
“Yes, but it was much more satisfactory,” I said. “I actually got a word in edgeways – several in fact – this time.”
That space turned out to be the last one empty. Clever Nick. Mauve Mr Thurless was forced to back out through the archway and drive away. That gave me great joy. I watched him doing it from under one of my arms while I was unloading the bags with our clothes in from the boot.
From Maree Mallory’s
Thornlady Directory: file
twenty-three
We entered into a large space full of suitcases and confusion. People in jeans and T-shirts were rushing everywhere, shouting things like “Tell Rocker to go straight to the Ops Room!” or “Hasn’t Jedda got those bloody files copied yet?” or simply “Slime Monster!” and hugging one another, men and women alike.
“Well, well,” I said to Nick. “They did build the Tower of Babel here after all!”
We ploughed our way through it all to the Reception desk near the back. I jumped the last clump of suitcases to find Nick saying to the harassed hotel-lady at the desk, “We’re Nick and Maree Mallory. I think we’ve got rooms booked here.”
Someone behind bellowed while Nick was speaking. “The badge machine’s broken again, I tell you!” Maybe this caused the girl to mishear Nick or something.
The girl’s neat little brooch said she was Odile and she had a permanently worried look. She punched things on her computer. “I’m sorry,” she said in a foreign accent. “That room is already taken.”