The Chrestomanci Series: Entire Collection Books 1-7. Diana Wynne Jones

heating up. “I hardly know any spells,” he said. “I – I’m slow.”

      He had expected Angelica to laugh, and she did. But he thought she need not have laughed in such a mean, exultant way, nor keep saying, “Oh that’s good!” like that.

      “What’s so funny?” he said. “You can laugh! I know all about you turning your father green. You’re no better than me!”

      “Want to bet?” said Angelica, still laughing.

      “No,” said Tonino. “Just make the spell.”

      “I can’t,” said Angelica. It was Tonino’s turn to stare, and Angelica’s turn to blush. A thin bright pink spread right up the bulge of her forehead, and she put her chin up defiantly. “I’m hopeless at spells,” she said. “I’ve never got a spell right in my life.” Seeing Tonino still staring, she said, “It’s a pity you didn’t bet. I’m much worse than you are.”

      Tonino could not credit it. “How?” he said. “Why? Can’t you learn spells either, then?”

      “Oh, I can learn them all right.” Angelica took up the broken tap again and scribbled angrily with it, great yellow scratches in the varnished top of the table. “I know hundreds of spells,” she said, “but I always get them wrong. For a start, I’m tone-deaf. I can’t sing a tune right to save my life. Like now.” Carefully, as if she was a craftsman doing a fine carving, she peeled up a long yellow curl of varnish from the table, using the tap as a gouge. “But it’s not only that,” she said angrily, following her work intently. “I get words wrong too – everything wrong. And my spells always work, that’s the worst of it. I’ve turned all my family all colours of the rainbow. I’ve turned the baby’s bath into wine, and the wine into gravy. I turned my own head back to front once. I’m much worse than you. I daren’t do spells. About all I’m good for is understanding cats. And I even turned my cat purple too.”

      Tonino watched her working away with the tap, with rather mixed feelings. If you looked at it practically, this was the worst possible news. Neither of them had a hope against the powerful spell-maker who had caught them. On the other hand, he had never met anyone who was worse at spells than he was. He thought, a little smugly, that at least he had never made a mistake in a spell, and that made him feel good. He wondered how the Casa Montana would feel if he kept turning them all colours of the rainbow. He imagined the stern Petrocchis must hate it. “Doesn’t your family mind?” he asked.

      “Not much,” Angelica said, surprisingly. “They don’t mind it half as much as I do. Everyone has a good laugh every time I make a new mistake – but they don’t let anyone talk about it outside the Casa. Papa says I’m notorious enough for turning him green, and he doesn’t like me to be even seen anywhere until I’ve grown out of it.”

      “But you went to the Palace,” said Tonino. He thought Angelica must be exaggerating.

      “Only because Cousin Monica was having her baby and everyone was so busy on the Old Bridge,” said Angelica. “He had to take Renata off her shift and get my brother out of bed to drive the coach, in order to have enough of us.”

      “There were five of us,” Tonino said, smugly.

      “Our horses collapsed in the rain.” Angelica turned from her gouging and looked at Tonino keenly. “So my brother said yours were bound to have collapsed too, because you only had a cardboard coachman.”

      Uncomfortably, Tonino knew Angelica had scored a point. “Our coachman collapsed too,” he admitted.

      “I thought so,” said Angelica, “from the look on your face.” She went back to scraping the table, conscious of victory.

      “It wasn’t our fault!” Tonino protested. “Chrestomanci says there’s an enemy enchanter.”

      Angelica took such a slice out of the varnish that the table swooped sideways and Tonino had to push it straight. “And he’s got us now,” she said. “And he’s taken care to get the two who are no good at spells. So how do we get out of here and spite him, Tonino Montana? Any ideas?”

      Tonino sat with his chin in his hands and thought. He had read enough books, for goodness’ sake. People were always being kidnapped in books. And in his favourite books – this was like a bad joke – they escaped without using magic of any kind. But there was no door. That was what made it seem impossible. Wait a moment! The vast voice had promised them food. “If they think we’re behaving,” he said, “they’ll bring us supper probably. And they’ve got to bring the food in somehow. If we watch where it comes in, we ought to be able to get out the same way.”

      “There’s bound to be a spell on the entrance,” Angelica said gloomily.

      “Do stop bleating away about spells,” said Tonino. “Don’t you Petrocchis ever talk about anything else?”

      Angelica did not reply, but simply scraped away with her tap. Tonino sat wanly in his creaking chair thinking over the few spells he really knew. The most useful seemed to be a simple cancel-spell.

      “A cancel-spell,” Angelica said irritatingly, scratching carefully with the tap. The floor round her feet was heaped with yellow curls of varnish. “That might hold the entrance open. Or isn’t a cancel-spell one of the ones you know?”

      “I know a cancel-spell,” said Tonino.

      “So does my baby brother,” said Angelica. “He’d probably be more use.”

      Their supper arrived. It appeared, without warning, on a tray, floating towards them from the windows. It took Tonino completely by surprise.

      “Spell!” Angelica squawked at him. “Don’t just stare!”

      Tonino sang the spell. Hurried and surprised though he was, he was sure he got it right. But it was the tray the spell worked on. The tray, and the food on it, began to grow. Within seconds, it was bigger than the table-top. And it still floated towards the table, growing as it came. Tonino found himself backing away from two steaming bath-sized bowls of soup and two great orange thickets of spaghetti, all of which were getting steadily vaster the nearer they came. By now, there was not much room round the edges of the tray. Tonino backed against the end wall, wondering if Angelica’s trouble with spells was catching. Angelica herself was squashed against the bathroom door. Both of them were in danger of being cut in two.

      “Get down on the floor!” Tonino shouted.

      They slithered hurriedly down the wall, underneath the tray, which hung over them like a too-low ceiling. The huge odour of spaghetti was quite oppressive.

      “What have you done?” Angelica said, coming towards Tonino on hands and knees. “You didn’t get it right.”

      “Yes, but if it gets much bigger, it might break the room open,” said Tonino.

      Angelica sank back on her knees and looked at him with what was nearly respect. “That’s almost a good idea.”

      But it was only almost. The tray certainly met all four walls. They heard it thump against them. There was a deal of swaying, creaking and squeezing, from the tray and from the walls, but the walls did not give. After a moment it was clear that the tray was not being allowed to get any bigger.

      “There is a spell on this room,” Angelica said. It was not meant to be I-told-you-so. She was miserable.

      Tonino gave up and sang the cancel-spell, carefully and correctly. The tray shrank at once. They were left kneeling on the floor looking at a reasonable-sized supper laid neatly in the centre of the table. “We might as well eat it,” he said.

      Angelica annoyed him thoroughly again by saying, as she picked up her spoon, “Well, I’m glad to know I’m not the only person who gets my spells wrong.”

      “I know I got it right,” Tonino muttered into his spoon, but Angelica chose not to hear.

      After a while, he was even more annoyed