Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

Four

Outside the natural history museum, shielded from the high tower that Molly and Micky were in by bare winter trees and a Beefeater hot-dog stand, AH2 stood shivering in the winter sun.

“She’s definitely up there,” he was saying to someone on the other end of the cell phone. “Unless the device is faulty.” The other person said something, to which AH2 replied with a wry chortle. “Yes, she’s well and truly trapped. She’s like a fox in a hole now. I’ll get the proof, and then we’ll confront her—or I should say we’ll confront it.” He laughed happily. “Over and out.” AH2 slipped his phone back into his pocket and rechecked his tracking machine.

He felt good, for, like a fisherman after a clever fish, he’d been trying to catch Molly Moon since he’d first come across her in New York City. And today here she was, swimming near his net.

Molly was extraordinary. As soon as AH2 had encountered this Moon girl he’d known exactly what she was. Even her name gave it away! He didn’t believe the outlandish story that she was named after the box of Moon’s Marshmallows she’d been found in as a baby. Nonsense! No, this girl had superhuman, unearthly talents. She could make other people do exactly what she wanted. AH2 had concluded that, without a shadow of a doubt, this Molly Moon was not human. No, it was very clear that this “girl” was definitely neither he nor she but instead an it. For she was, as sure as hot dogs were hot dogs, an alien.

AH2’s real name was Malcolm Tixley. He was twenty-five and was in the Royal Air Force, and he’d been an alien hunter since he was five years old. His obsession began when he’d seen a green alien sitting on the wing of an airplane. He’d been traveling with his parents to visit relations in Tanzania, and the plane had been cruising at forty thousand feet, but the alien had been there, all right. It had even winked at him. His mother had seen the alien, and so had the flight attendant.

Ever since then he’d been hooked. At ten he’d joined the Y.B.A.H.A, the Young British Alien Hunting Association, and had risen through its ranks so that he was deputy in command. Thus his title, AH2—Alien Hunter Two. At eighteen he had joined the air force and become an excellent pilot. He enjoyed his work, but deep down, his main reason for flying was to see an alien again. At night he took classes in space studies.

“Strange weather we’ve been havin’, haven’t we?” the fat-faced hot-dog man asked, holding out a bun and sausage. “Hailstorms with stones the size o’ Ping-Pong balls and then bright, bright sunshine.” AH2 was so deep in thought he didn’t hear him. “Hungry for it, are ya?” the man asked.

“Wh-what? For what?” AH2 stammered, caught off his guard in his daydream.

“For the hot dog, of course. Are you hungry for it?” The hot-dog seller wiped his hands on a checkered cloth.

AH2 took the hot dog and squirted some mustard on it. “Actually,” he said, dropping some coins onto the tin counter, “I’m hungry to catch an alien.”

“Ah. Right. I see,” he said. “Very nice.”

“So you’re hypnotists too,” said Molly slowly. She paused as the maid placed her hot chocolate in front of her. “I don’t think I’ll be drinking that hot chocolate, then.” She eyed the well-dressed collection of women before her. “Am I right in thinking, Miss Hunroe, that you aren’t a tutor at all?”

Miss Hunroe nodded. She looked down shamefully and fiddled with her gold coin. “I do apologize for misleading you both, and your parents and family,” she said, “but it was necessary. Your parents never would have let you come if they knew my real reason for wanting you here.”

“Unbelievable.” Molly glanced sideways at Micky. As the full impact of Miss Hunroe’s deception became clear, a steely anger filled her. “You had no right,” she said. “You wouldn’t take normal kids out of their family house by posing as a teacher. If the police knew, they’d lock you up. Who do you think you are?” Molly turned and walked toward the door. “Where’s the key for this? I noticed you locking it. It did cross my mind that that was a weird thing to do. We’re going home. Now.”

By now Micky was standing beside her. Both of the twins felt extremely anxious. The truth was, they were clearly in a tricky situation, because these five women, all hypnotists, seemed to have the upper hand. But this didn’t stop Micky and Molly from saying what they felt.

“You’ve acted in a really underhanded way,” Micky said.

“Completely out of order,” Molly agreed.

Miss Hunroe was totally unruffled. “I do understand your reaction,” she said. “And if this is really how you feel, of course you are free to go. But I have one favor to ask. Please just listen to why you are needed here. If you still feel the same way afterward, we respect your decision and you can, of course, return to Briersville Park immediately. We will get you a chauffeur-driven car to drive you home as soon as you would like.”

Like birds cooing around her, the other women voiced their agreement. “Yes.”

“Yes, we will.”

Molly looked at Micky and raised her eyes to the ceiling. He narrowed his eyes at the female crowd, then made a tiny gesture of a shrug to Molly. Molly breathed out irritatedly. “It better be good,” she said, returning to the third sofa and leaning against its back.

“And quick,” Micky muttered, joining his sister.

“Well, we spotted you quite a while ago, Molly,” Miss Hunroe began. “Word got to us that you had moved into Briersville Park. We were suspicious to start with. We were aware of the huge success you had had in America, starring in a Broadway show, and we calculated how much money you had made.” Miss Hunroe pulled some cuttings from newspapers out of an envelope. They were from American newspapers.

“‘Moon is out of this world!’” Miss Hunroe read. “‘Molly Moon has eclipsed Davina Nuttel and taken her part in Stars on Mars. Last night the whole of Manhattan was alive with the gossip. Who is this Molly Moon? Nobody knows…’ And so it goes on.”

Molly hung her head. She was slightly ashamed of how she had conned her way to the top in Manhattan.

Miss Hunroe continued. “At first we thought you were a bad egg. But then we saw how you used the money to help the other children in the orphanage that you grew up in. We saw your loyalty to them, especially your good friend Rocky. Then it all clicked into place. We realized that that huge twenty-five-room house, Briersville Park, was in fact your family home. For though you are called Moon, you are really a Logan—the great-great-granddaughter of Dr. Logan who wrote the phenomenal book Hypnotism: An Ancient Art Explained.”

Molly bit her lip. It was really odd how these women knew so much about her life.

“I don’t know whether you realize this, but the world is full of hypnotists,” Miss Hunroe stated. “Full of people who have mastered the ancient art.” She paused. “It has to be said, very few are as good as you. It’s an honor to meet you,” Miss Hunroe said smoothly. “My friends and I are elite members of the National Society of Hypnotists. Only a small proportion of these registered hypnotists are truly talented. There are very few time stoppers, and there are even fewer time travelers. What’s more, I have yet to come across a mind reader….”

A shiver went up Molly’s back as Miss Hunroe spoke. She wondered whether Miss Hunroe somehow knew about Molly’s secret mind-reading skill. Molly really didn’t want this to be exposed now. Her heart galloping, Molly decided to read Miss Hunroe’s mind again. She knew that what she was doing would be invisible to everyone in the room, and yet she found her nerves were on edge as she did it—as though this time, she was going to be caught. What are you thinking? Molly thought to Miss Hunroe.

A bubble popped up again over the blond-haired woman’s head, and as she continued to talk, pictures in it, illustrating her words, appeared.

“As you might suspect, Molly and Micky,” Miss Hunroe continued, “not all hypnotists are good, kind people. Hypnotism can be used for a person’s own fulfillment, and if that person has no morals, and they don’t know the difference between right and wrong, these bad hypnotists can use their powers entirely for themselves. They can easily become powerful, influential, rich. Yes, bad hypnotists can be destructive without a care for the damage or suffering they are causing others.” Above Miss Hunroe’s hair, the thought bubble filled with pictures of different people in wonderful surroundings—a gray-haired woman in a large, lavishly furnished room, a Mexican-looking man sipping a cocktail on a yacht on a calm sea somewhere hot and tropical, and an ugly, tall man posing in front of a casino called Black’s Casino with a cigar in his hand. Then fast cars shot through the bubble, as well as racehorses and jet planes.

“I believe that you learned how to hypnotize from your ancestor Dr. Logan’s book. Am I right?” Now above Miss Hunroe’s head was the picture of a bespectacled man in Victorian clothes with a potato-shaped nose.

“Yes, that’s right,” Molly admitted.

Miss Hunroe continued. “That book holds lessons for hypnotizing animals, then people, long-distance hypnosis, crowd hypnosis, that sort of thing, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s true,” Molly agreed. And now, to check on the other women in the room, she opened thought bubbles over their heads, too. All were thinking about what Miss Hunroe was saying, except for Miss Suzette, who was thinking about a jam-and buttercream-filled cake, and then a chocolate cake, as though she was hungry and making her decision about which she would buy at the local café when this was all over.

Miss Hunroe flipped her coin. Then she asked lightly, “Did you know that your great-great-grandfather wrote a second book? Volume Two?”

Both Molly and Micky were taken completely by surprise at Miss Hunroe’s announcement. Molly saw that above all the women’s heads, their thought bubbles filled with the images of a heavy book, with an oval shape in each of its corners.

“Which makes it all the more amazing,” Miss Hunroe went on, “that you, Molly, have actually learned some of the lessons from that book. You seem to have learned them intuitively, without the book.”

“Hmmm,” agreed the large German woman, Miss Oakkton, on the sofa, smiling encouragingly and rubbing her white-gloved hands together. “It’s arbsoluteleeey extraordinarrry. It is as if you have a natural gift.”

“What lessons?” Molly asked, though deep down she had already guessed what some of them might be. Miss Oakkton answered.

“Time stopping and time traveling are lessons in zat book. Mind reading is in it, too.”

“Mind reading?” Molly, determined to keep her own mind-reading skill a complete secret, frowned. “That sounds tricky.”

“And morphing,” said Miss Hunroe. Above her head, a person appeared to turn into a cat.

“Morphing? What’s that?” asked Micky.

“Oh.” Miss Hunroe sighed. “It is perhaps the most dangerous of all the hypnotic arts.”

Above Miss Hunroe’s head, a horse turned into an owl, then the owl into a short, hairy man. Then that man turned into a baby. It was too much for Molly. She wanted to listen intently to Miss Hunroe, to concentrate on this new thing, morphing, but she couldn’t while mind reading at the same time. And so she let the bubbles above Miss Hunroe’s and the other women’s heads dissolve. She would put her suspicions of them to one side for a moment.

Besides, Molly’s suspicions of them were beginning to fade. These people weren’t entirely angelic, she could tell, as they did have their maid hypnotized—but then Molly had kept Cornelius back home hypnotized to think he was a lamb. They probably had good reasons, just like her.

Miss Hunroe picked up a remote control and pointed it at a projector with a slide wheel above her. It began to purr electronically. Miss Speal, practically curtsying to Miss Hunroe before she did it, shut the room’s blinds and dimmed the lights.

“If you can morph,” Miss Hunroe elaborated, “you can change from a cat”—on the screen up came a picture of a black cat—“to a dog.” Now a photograph of a shaggy sheepdog appeared. A succession of animals followed—mice, a whale, an elephant, a bird, even insects, flies, beetles, and a red ant. “A morpher can only change into an animal that he or she can actually see. The morpher borrows their bodies for a while, so some people prefer to call morphers ‘body borrowers.’”

Molly was now even more taken by the idea of morphing and body borrowing. To be able to borrow a bird’s body and fly, or be a fish and swim, was fantastic! But Molly kept very still and quiet and didn’t show her excitement.

“How do you know about this stuff?” Micky asked. “Do you have a copy of the second book?” From the sofa, Miss Teriyaki laughed. Miss Hunroe smiled.

“Oh, dear no. If we did, well, all would be well and you two wouldn’t be here. Now where was I? Ah, yes. To move from animal to animal is the elementary form of morphing. But do not think for one second that it is easy to do.”

“Can you do it?” asked Micky.

“Oh, I wish,” sighed Miss Hunroe.

“How do you know about it?” asked Molly.

Suddenly the wrenlike voice of Miss Speal, the skinny, tiny, dark-haired woman with the thin face, piped up. She rose to her feet and spoke quickly, in a half whisper, as though frightened that if she spoke louder something horrible would happen. “My parents were hypnotists. They looked after the book for a while, when I was about seven years old. But it was a dangerous thing to possess, for its contents are extremely powerful.” Molly found the hairs pricking up on the back of her neck. Miss Speal’s face was so pale and bloodless that she looked like a ghost, and now, talking about the book in this way, she was even spookier.

“I remember finding it once when my parents were out. I wasn’t that good at reading, but I knew the book was very, very special, as I’d heard my parents talking about it, and so I opened it and made an effort to understand it.” The woman stroked her black, limp hair as she remembered. “It was a very heavy book. Four flat stones were embedded in its thick leather cover, one in each corner! One was orange with red streaks in it, one was light gray with white-and-black cloudy parts to it, one was green and brown like the color of plants and earth, and the last was blue with white flecks in it, like waves and white foam.” Miss Speal then pursed her lips and suddenly reached into her coat pocket.

“Miss Speal,” cautioned Miss Hunroe soberly. But ignoring her, the thin raconteur pulled a small piece of blue stone from her coat pocket and thrust it up toward the children’s eyes so that they both could see it. It was a watery-blue-colored stone, mottled with patches of white.

“This is the blue stone from the book!” the woman announced. “It fell out, and I’m glad it did, because a few days later the book was stolen.” Outside, a crack of lightning broke through the sky.

“Miss Speal,” Miss Hunroe cautioned again. “Please try not to get overemotional about this. The children need to know about the book. Do you want to tell them, or shall I?”

Miss Speal sniffed, and her eyes darted to look at the sky outside. “Yes, yes. Well, inside the book was the title, Hypnotism, Volume Two: The Advanced Arts. There were about ten chapters, but I can’t remember what all the skills were. It was intoxicatingly exciting, and I read it as though I had opened some sort of spell book.” As she spoke, she rubbed the blue stone. It was as though it was a talisman that brought memories of that precious evening back to her. Outside, thunder rumbled.

“MISS SPEAL!” Miss Hunroe now scolded the woman. “Please control yourself.”

Miss Speal put the flat stone back into her pocket and looked nervously at Miss Hunroe, rather as a dog with its tail between its legs might look at its master. “Yes,” she finished, her attention now on her audience. “As I said, the book was stolen….”

“Before you learned any of its lessons,” Miss Hunroe added, helping her along.

Miss Speal looked bewildered for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Y-yes, yes, before I learned any of its lessons. I read the list of lessons but never learned them.”

“Who stole it?” Molly asked.

Miss Speal shook her head. “The devil knows.”

“But the important matter,” said Miss Teriyaki, impatiently, “is where it is now.”

“First things first,” insisted Miss Hunroe, reprimanding Miss Teriyaki and tapping her sharply on the wrist with her remote control. “I haven’t finished explaining morphing.”

Miss Teriyaki put her hands together and humbly bowed to Miss Hunroe. “Sorry, sorry,” she said subserviently, readjusting the ice pack around her ankle.

Miss Hunroe pressed the button on her remote control again. “As I said, the elementary stage of morphing is into an animal, but the sophisticated level…” She turned toward the children and said very seriously, “The thing is that the second level of morphing is being able to change from human to human. And as you can imagine, anyone who could do this could become very, very powerful and influential. Why, a person with this skill might choose to morph into the president of the United States of America!” Up on the screen came a picture of the president of the United States talking to an important-looking army official. A line of soldiers stood behind them both, saluting. “Or they might morph into the body of the president of China.” Now on the screen was a picture of thousands of soldiers standing at attention, saluting the Chinese president. “Once inside another person’s body, they’d have control over that person’s very mind and so of course their actions. Do you see how dangerous this could be?”

“Of course,” Molly said.

“And so,” Micky guessed, “you’re telling us that the prime minister of this country is really someone else—that an evil hypnotist has morphed into his body.”

“No, not yet. At least I hope not.” Miss Hunroe crossed her arms. “But we do know that the book has passed into the hands of a very undesirable person. We know that he is highly likely to try to learn the book’s lessons for bad ends.”

Miss Hunroe pressed a button on the slide controls, and up on the screen came a photograph of a leathery-faced man with a mop of dark hair. His skin was rough and pockmarked. He wore a smart pinstriped suit with a red tie and a brimmed homburg hat. Molly recognized him from the thought bubble that had appeared over Miss Hunroe’s head earlier.

“His name is Theobald Black. He’s a hypnotist. He uses his talents to embezzle money.”

“Embezzle. What’s that?” asked Molly.

“It means,” Micky quickly explained, “when you get something—usually money—through trickery.”

“Yes, that’s right,” agreed Miss Hunroe. “Mr. Black here picks on easy prey—rich old ladies or gentlemen. Here are some photographs we got of him in action. Here he is hypnotizing a very rich heiress who owns gold mines.” Up on the screen came a black-and-white photograph of Mr. Black on a park bench, holding a pendulum up in front of a small middle-aged woman in a hat with a stuffed bird on it. “And here he is taking control of an old man who has made a fortune in marmalade—”

“And jams, very good jams,” Miss Suzette interjected. “Wiltshire Jams is de company’s name.” Now another picture came up. It was taken through the window of a café and was of Mr. Black sitting at a table with an old man in a bowler hat. Their faces were very close, and Mr. Black was staring into the man’s eyes, as though hypnotizing him.

“He runs a casino, Black’s Casino. On the screen, Mr. Black, dressed in black, was talking to the casino doorman. “He has a daughter called Lily.”

Now a photograph of a girl of about seven with short, dark curly hair came up. She was dressed in a smart pink peacoat, with boots to match.

“As far as we know, she is not a hypnotist. But she is quite a number.” In the next picture, Lily was outside a restaurant with a furious look on her face. She seemed to be stamping her foot, and her hands were clenched in fury by her sides. “She was angry in this picture because her father couldn’t get a table at the Orchid.”

“But if he’s a hypnotist, surely he can get a table at any restaurant,” Micky said.

“I was at school with Black. I know what he’s like. Selfish. No doubt he wanted to go home and didn’t care what his little girl, Lily, wanted.”

“Lily Black—what a name,” Molly said. “So how do we come into all of this?” she asked, already half knowing the answer.

A new picture came up on the screen. Molly reckoned that a concealed camera must have taken it, for it was a photograph of the inside of Black’s Casino. Uniformed croupiers stood behind roulette-wheel counters and at game tables, dealing cards to their customers. And stacked on the green baize tables were little towers of brightly colored gambling chips.

“The place is crawling with guards,” Miss Hunroe explained. “And there are cameras everywhere. There is no way that any of us”—she let her hand turn like a soft wing over the assembled women near her—“could get in to retrieve the book. We’d be spotted instantly. You see, we tried once before to get Black’s time-travel crystals off him, but failed. In fact, Miss Teriyaki has the souvenir from that attempt.” Miss Teriyaki lifted her arm and showed Molly and Micky the long scar there.

“Didn’t you call the police?” asked Micky.

“The police! We don’t want them involved now! Black would only take further precautions to hide the book. Then we might never find it. Besides, we were trespassing. It was four in the morning, when the casino had closed. He could probably prove that we were attempting some sort of robbery. And don’t forget, he’s a hypnotist. Who knows what sort of witnesses he could drum up. He could hypnotize them to say whatever he wanted! We might find ourselves in prison!”

“You could always hypnotize your way out,” Micky tested her.

“True, but Black would always be a step behind. And get us put back in prison. We might end up there forever.”

“Indeed, it’s not worth the risk,” Miss Teriyaki agreed.

“So,” Miss Hunroe continued, “the long, the tall, and the short of it is that now Black is well aware of us. He knows that he needs to protect himself. Even if all five of us went in using our hypnotic skills, we wouldn’t stand a chance. He has taken precautions.” A picture on the screen focused on one of the casino guard’s pockets and zoomed in close-up. Poking half out of it were some dark glasses with a swirling pattern on them. “Anti-hypnotism glasses,” Miss Hunroe explained. Molly nodded.

“Seen them before,” she said. “I saw a version that were like normal glasses with white swirls, not so dark as those ones. They work.”

“Yes, and when the guards put them on, they look simply like dark glasses,” said Miss Hunroe. “So when anyone suspicious approaches, they wear the glasses.”

“If you don’t mind me adding, Miss Hunroe,” Miss Teriyaki said, “we also think that Black has given the guards voice-scrambling devices to put in their ears. Because we think that if Black has worked out how to counteract hypnotic eye glare, it’s highly likely he will also have thought of voice hypnosis and how to block that.”

“Yes, correct, Miss Teriyaki,” Miss Hunroe said, visibly irritated by Miss Teriyaki’s interruption.

“So how,” demanded Micky, “can we be of any help?”

“I expect,” said Molly, “it’s got something to do with the daughter.”

“Yas, you are right!” cried Miss Oakkton, slapping her knees.

“Yes,” Miss Hunroe agreed. “You see, the thing is this. The only people who the guards ever interact with normally are the children who are Lily’s school friends. They never put on their anti-hypnotism glasses when Lily’s friends come around for a playdate.”

“Of course,” Miss Suzette explained, “we could have hypnotized one of dese children to go in to fetch de book, but we felt that to use an innocent child would be unfair….”

“Yes, most unfair,” Miss Oakkton agreed. “Poor leetle things.”

“Our great hope,” Miss Teriyaki interjected, “is that you two could go to the casino with the excuse that you have to see Lily, your school friend.”

Miss Hunroe unfolded a sheet of paper with an architectural diagram of the casino on it.

“Once inside the building,” Miss Hunroe said, “you could access the private parts of the premises. With this map, you can see the vents and conduits that carry the pipes and cables from room to room, and you can access Theobald Black’s office. You could use your special crystals and freeze time and get the office keys.”

“I haven’t got my crystals,” Molly replied.

“But aren’t you wearing your crystals now?” Miss Hunroe asked, eyeing her neck. “You have some sort of pendant on.” Molly pulled out the chain with the black pug, the silver elephant, and the two blackbirds on it.

“Oh, no. These are just our pets.”

Gasps of disbelief and disappointment erupted from the ladies opposite.

“That’s a pity,” declared Miss Teriyaki. “We ought to fetch the crystals.”

“No time!” squeaked Miss Speal. “Oh, lord. We’re already risking it. What on earth are we going to do?” She began wringing her little hands as though she was trying to squeeze water out of wet socks. “Maybe your parents could send them up on a motorcyc—”

“NO!” interrupted Miss Suzette. “They might ban Molly and Micky from helping us.”

“Even though it’s for the bigger cause?” asked Miss Teriyaki.

“They wouldn’t be happy about letting us help,” said Micky. “They think Molly needs a bit of time being normal.”

“Which is why they advertised for a tutor,” added Miss Hunroe. Then she pursed her lips. “Oh, dear. Molly, Micky—I’m really not comfortable about this anymore. If your parents wouldn’t approve, then I don’t feel we should go against their wishes.”

Molly considered the assembled assortment of women. She could see why they were worried. The idea of a maniac learning how to morph into another person was scary.

“How do you know he’s not a morpher already?” Molly quizzed.

“We don’t.” Miss Hunroe flipped her coin as though the coin’s action of turning like a tossed pancake in the air was a comfort to her. “We know the book came into his possession a month ago. Since he’s only had it for a short time, the chances are he can’t morph ye—”

“How—” Micky asked.

Miss Hunroe cut him short. “An anonymous person called us.”

Molly studied the ladies in front of her. “If you don’t mind me asking,” she said, “how come you lot know each other? How come you are involved in all of this?”

“Well,” Miss Hunroe explained, her lips pausing for a second to blossom into a brief rose shape before moving to talk again, “as I said, there is a society of ordinary hypnotists. We met there. We were invited to join a group of elite hypnotists—though it has to be said we are all merely hypnotists, not time travelers or time stoppers. We vowed to use our powers to help people in the world. We try to sort out any foul play.”

“We want to catch the dodgers before they dart,” whined Miss Speal.

“Grab ze codgers before zay grunt,” finished Miss Oakkton.

“We are like Wonder Woman, I suppose,” explained Miss Teriyaki, smiling. “We root out crooks like Mr. Black. It is such a pity you haven’t your time-stopping crystals. What’s more, there is not time to get them.” She turned to Miss Hunroe as though the situation had moved on and Molly was now irrelevant. “I will go in, Miss Hunroe.”

“But surely Molly can still go in wisout her time-stopping skills,” Miss Suzette commented.

Miss Teriyaki gasped. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Listen,” Molly interrupted. “Micky and I really don’t need time crystals for this. It’s a cinch. This job can easily be done without them.” Next to her, she could sense Micky’s eyes widening. But her appetite had been whetted. Just the day before, she had been yearning for a bit of adventure again. This little trip into Black’s Casino to retrieve the book looked like it might at least give her a taste of what she’d been craving.

“Besides, I’m very interested to get a look at that book. We could take it down to Briersville Park and keep it in the library there. After all, that’s where it belongs.”

Micky shrugged. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Zat’s de spirit!” Miss Suzette exclaimed, twiddling her silver cane enthusiastically. “Just ze idea I’d had for ze book myself!”

“Vunderful!” Miss Oakkton echoed, thwacking the coffee table with her white gloves.

Miss Hunroe clapped her hands.

“Absolutely not!” she decided vehemently. “I’m sorry, Molly and Micky, but I’ve acted like a fool, and completely improperly. You’ve said your parents wouldn’t want you to get involved with this risky business, and we cannot ignore that.”

“But Miss Hunroe,” Miss Teriyaki interrupted, “Molly herself thinks that she and her brother can retrieve the book easily. Maybe this is our only chance.”

“Miss Hunroe, it is madness not to accept ze children’s help.”

“No, Miss Oakkton, I’ve been influenced by you enough. These children cannot be involved without their parents’ consent.”

“Listen,” Molly interrupted. “We want to help. And our parents have only just become our parents. Micky only met them recently. I haven’t known them that much longer. We’ve lived our lives for a long time without them. So we aren’t like normal kids. Maybe Micky hasn’t made his mind up about it yet,” she added, smiling, “but I have.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Miss Hunroe said, her decision hovering. She pulled out her gold coin again and turned it over and over in her fingers.

“I think zay must help,” Miss Suzette advised. “Zese children, Miss Hunroe, are not ordinary children. Molly has special abilities, and Micky ez probably gifted, too. After all, zay are twins. With Molly’s gift come special responsibilities. Zis is a critical problem that needs specific solutions. No one can help as Molly can. What is more, if we don’t get Molly’s help, the whole world may suffer the consequences.”

Miss Hunroe’s coin flipped through the air and landed in the palm of her hand. She smacked it onto the back of her left hand.

“Heads you win,” she said.

A hundred and eighty miles away, Petula woke up from a midday sleep. She’d had a nightmare of Molly leaving her all alone in Briersville Park, which was silly, she knew, because apart from Molly and Micky, everyone else—Rocky, Ojas, and the adults—were all there. She shook her head, and her ears and her lips flapped and the sparkling nametag on her collar rattled. But it was odd, she thought, that her sleep had been so undisturbed.

Petula had been out the night before, down on the neighboring farm where her friends the sheepdogs lived. She’d stayed with them until well past midnight. Then she’d trotted home under a starlit sky, barked at the local fox, who she could smell was in the llama field, and she’d gotten back in late. Now she would go and visit everyone and see how they were. It was peculiar, as normally at this time of day she’d hear the butler, Todson, laying tables for lunch. But all was quiet.

So off she trotted from her basket in the pantry, along the corridor to her basket in the hall. There she picked up a small pebble in her mouth and, chewing and sucking it, made her way up the wide hall stairs to the first landing that led to the house’s master bedrooms. Portraits of Molly and Micky’s ancestors looked curiously down, their eyes seemingly fixed on her.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?” Petula barked at them.

On the second floor, the hundreds of clocks that lined the second floor passage ticked like clockwork crickets. Petula nudged open Primo Cell and Lucy Logan’s bedroom door.

The room was dark, as the curtains were closed. Both Lucy and Primo were sitting in bed. They were leaning back on cushions, staring upward. For a moment Petula thought that perhaps they had bought a very modern new television screen that was set in the ceiling. But as she trotted into the room, she could see that there was nothing on the ceiling. What was more, neither said hello to Petula. She dropped her stone and barked. Primo and Lucy were still. Petula put her front paws up on the side of the bed. She whined at Lucy and pawed at the silk bedspread beside her, but neither of the humans uttered a word. Then Lucy took a sip of water. She didn’t even glance at Petula.

Something was wrong, very wrong. Petula barked again, and then some more, but it was useless. Petula suddenly felt very scared. She’d seen humans in this state before. It was as obvious as an unburied bone, Lucy and Primo were hypnotized. But by who? Petula looked about her to see whether her barking had summoned anyone to the room. Then, turning on her heels, Petula fled.

Panic rushing through her, she bowled along the passage of clocks until she came to the small flight of stairs that led to the children’s quarters. She must let Rocky and Ojas know what had happened and get their help! Her claws slid and scrabbled up the polished wooden steps. Skidding to stop herself, she reached their bedroom. The room was empty. Petula turned and began to run along the corridor to the attic stairs. Her heart lifted as she approached the children’s den. The sound of jingles on the TV escaped through the crack of the closed door. Everything was normal, she thought. Rocky and Ojas were watching TV. But when she pushed the door open, her hopes were dashed. For there in the dark with the curtains shut, reclining in armchairs with glazed expressions on their faces as they gawped at the TV, were Ojas and Rocky.

Petula leaped into Rocky’s lap and barked right into his eyes, but he was like someone half dead. The light from the television screen danced across his brown face. Petula pounced at the TV. An ad was on. Three pots of mustard, each with a smiling face, jigged about in front of a barbecued sausage. This should have seemed funny, but today, as though in some nasty dream, the pots of mustard looked sinister. Petula growled and tried to hit the off switch. Having no success, she attacked the television plug and eventually pulled it out of its socket. Now the room was pitch black except for the light from the passage. Frightened and confused, Petula left that room, too.

Forest the hippie or Todson or the new cook must be all right, Petula thought as she sped along the carpet to the main stairs. Inside she felt desperate. A howl of fear was building up in her. For surely Forest or Todson would have called Molly and Micky back home if they knew what had happened to the others. Then a horrid thought occurred to Petula. Perhaps Todson or the new cook were the guilty hypnotists.

Down in the sitting room, Forest was so still he looked like he’d rooted to the floor like a human tree. Even the children’s pet blackbirds, sitting on his shoulders, had been hypnotized. Petula was scared. As quietly as she could, she tip-pawed to the kitchen. She found Todson and the Thai cook sitting in armchairs with their eyes closed.

Petula’s head swam as the nightmarish reality of her situation sank in. Moving as quietly and as quickly as she could, she crept to her special low chair. This was a chair that she could hide under where no one would find her. Finally under its velvet-fringed bottom, she caught her breath and tried to think straight.

She thought of the strange, glamorous woman who had smelled of red lipstick and rose perfume. Before, Petula had detected a scent of thorn in the perfume. Now she realized that the perfume had been the rose smell and that it covered the woman’s true scent, that of sharp thorn. Petula remembered how the woman had whisked Molly and Micky away, and a horrid mixture of anger and worry rose in her guts.

Emboldened by this detective work, Petula made her way to the drawing room, where she knew Lucy Logan had hidden Molly’s collection of time-travel and time-stopping crystals. She nudged the inlaid mother-of-pearl box from its low shelf near the fireplace until it fell on the floor and burst open. Nothing fell out of it. Nothing was in it. Someone had stolen the crystals.

Now Petula saw things clearly. This woman stealing Molly’s crystals meant she knew about Molly’s talents. The woman was obviously a talented hypnotist, for she’d switched every person in the house into neutral. But what about Molly and Micky? Perhaps, just perhaps, they weren’t in real danger yet.

Petula shivered. She felt small and hopeless and all alone. But there was nothing for it. Molly and Micky must be helped. If Petula didn’t go to their rescue, who would?

Petula made her way down to the kitchen, to the back door. With a deep breath, she nudged the wooden dog flap with her forehead and stepped out into the cool, damp air. Raising her black nose to the wind and cocking her head to sense Molly and Micky’s whereabouts, she set off up the long drive.