“We always know,” I said, tapping my nose. The other girls instantly tapped their noses, or peered around under their hands. “We’re A.U.N.T.I.E.S. It’s our job to know.”
“Run along,” Nap said again, more sharply. “We’re busy.”
“Girls, did you hear that? We can’t let an Auntie be Uncle’d!”
“No!” Gwen gasped.
“Neeeeeeuw,” Irene crooned.
“No!” Faline said, hands on hips, bare toes tapping.
“NO.” Diana scowled.
“What good could little girls possibly do in the dangerous world of espionage and counter-espionage?” Wavey asked, steepling his fingers.
“This,” I said, and muttered a spell or two, and the three rose into the air.
The girls cracked up as the men clutched at air, then at the sides of their chairs, then looked down, expressing surprise, dismay, and shock.
“That’s always good for a starter,” I said cheerfully.
“Give ’em more proof,” Diana said, eyeing Nap.
“Variation,” Irene recommended, nose elevated.
So I made Wavey rotate on his chair.
The other two reached for their pistols. I whispered a transportation spell and made the pistols twitch away from their fingers, and sail across the room to me. Then I applied a special spell, and as the men watched, the pistols melted into goo on the floor. Stinky goo.
“Sooo.” I crossed my arms. “Convinced? Need more?”
“No,” Wavey and Nap said, the latter shaking his head. “No. Nononono.”
“Let us down, please,” Pill said in his accented voice.
“All right then.” I let them down. Then rubbed my hands. “Let’s discuss these T.H.R.U.S.H. birds’ latest bomb. We know Tinfinger is going to pull a nefarious deed, but we don’t know where or when. In order to discover the details, we must get someone into their lair—”
“Nest,” Irene said.
“Pit,” Diana corrected.
“Stinkpot,” Faline amended.
“Stinkbomb,” Gwen finished.
“—so my idea is, one of the three of you should let yourselves get captured. They know you, see. They’ll be expecting you, which means they won’t be looking for us. Now, Wavey’s too old, and besides, he has to stay behind to direct the fumblings. Of you others, Nap is the most popular.” I held my nose when I said it.
“Good idea.” Irene rubbed her hands.
“But—” Wavey began.
“Excellent plan.” Gwen turned thumbs up.
“Wait,” Nap started.
“Do it.” Diana gave a nod.
“So ... where should we send him?” I asked the girls.
“To T.H.R.U.S.H. HQ?” Diana asked.
The three men started loudly demanding we listen, but we gave them exactly as much attention as they would give girls our age: zip.
“Where’s that?” Gwen asked.
“In Thrussia,” I said.
Both Gwen and Faline asked, “Where’s that?”
“Russia,” Pill said. “Though you should say Soviet Union.”
“Why are you talking to these brats?” Nap asked Pill.
“Thrushia, Russia, sounds the same to me,” Irene said airily.
“Who told you urchins to interfere!” Nap demanded, planting himself before us.
“Anyway.” I leaned around Nap. “T.H.R.U.S.H. HQ is where we’re going.”
“Oh!” Faline snapped her fingers. “Then to some other spy spot, where they want you to think they have something going on, but there isn’t, but if you go there, then they wonder how you found out, and so they have to follow you anyway.”
Everybody was quiet—even the guys—as they disentangled that one.
“Good idea,” I said.
Nap tried again, in what he obviously considered a polite voice. “What are you girls—excuse me, you A.U.N.T.I.E.S. talking about?”
Irene huffed, “We’ll tell you where you’re going to get captured when we’re good and ready!”
o0o
Well, we dropped Nap off at a manure-refinement plant that was actually a secret planning site that was actually the old headquarters of S.M.E.R.S.H. before T.H.U.D. and S.Q.U.I.S.H. captured each other’s spies and brainwashed them into changing sides, so they all went to the other guys, and when they recovered, couldn’t figure out whose socks and toothbrushes belonged where. So now they were back in business, spying in both directions between Russia and the U.S. because who would actually send manure between continents, except spies smuggling other stuff?
I meant to just drop Nap off, but Irene, who was still steaming at all those ‘brats’ and especially ‘urchins’ told Nap that we just got a coded message that he had to search the manure bags for smuggled diamonds.
He was busy doing that when he got captured. He was actually glad to get captured. And capturing him meant that all those spies had to toil and boil around reviewing their security once again—and search the manure bags, Just In Case.
While they were all busy, we got Pill to take us to the real T.H.R.U.S.H. HQ, which was in Russia (not Thrushia, which made more sense), as he knew his way around and spoke the lingo.
Once we were outside the main HQ, which was disguised as a trench coat factory, we had a quick meeting.
“Okay, Pill.” I turned to him. “You have the experience here. What should we do?”
“Rush in, guns blazing,” he said. “That’s our usual M.O.”
“M.O. What’s that in spy lingo?” Faline asked Irene.
“Moonpie Octopus,” said Irene (who can’t stand not to know something).
A whole lot of looks and grins, but nobody interrupted, not even Irene, who does catch a hint. Finally.
“That makes no sense,” Diana muttered, but Faline shrugged. It made as much sense as the rest of the spy business.
“Okay,” I said, not bothering to point out that none of us had guns. “Why don’t you go ahead and do that, and get captured. When they take you to be interrogated, it’s sure to be by the head snakes, and then we can nose in.”
He raised his brows. “Makes as much sense as the rest of this ... affair.”
Faline nodded, hands out, as if to say, hey, I’m not the only one.
Pill walked inside, and a minute or two later we heard yells and thumps and shouts from inside, behind all the coat racks, and the mirrors with customers busy trying the coats and looking around in sinister ways.
Diana jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I think they got him.”
“Leave us to leave.”
“Where to?”
“The secret underground interrogation chamber, of course.”
All I had to do was use magic to search for Pill. We turned invisible, sank through several floors, past even more miles of sinister computers with tape machines whirling, until we finally arrived in a small room with a very bright lamp hanging overhead. I kept us invisible.
Pill was tied to a chair, blinking, below this light, and trying to breathe in air made blue from the four huge, hulking men smoking cigars and belching out stinky smoke.
“Ansver me!” one man bellowed.
“Why are they speaking in those weird accents, instead of their language?” Gwen whispered.
“Because they’re spies,” Faline said, forefinger upraised.
“How would you know he was a spy if he spoke like regular people?” Diana asked, quite reasonably.
Irene finished, “You have to speak in the spy accent, so they know you’re really a spy.”
Pill said to the bad guys, “How (choke) can (gag) I speak (cough) in all (glug) this smog?”
“Why isn’t Pill using the spy accent?” Gwen whispered. “He’s a spy.”
“It’s because he already has an accent,” Faline explained.
“Oh.”
The sinister heads of T.H.R.U.S.H. set down the cigars.
“Now hvat does U.N.C.L.E. know about zees place?”
“What the A.U.N.T.I.
E.S. told us.”
“Hvat vas that?”
“Ask the A.U.N.T.I.E.S..”
“Hvoo iss dat?”
“I’m one,” I said, and snapped away the invisibility illusion.
“Grab her!”
The muscle-bound clods in berets who stood in the background jumped forward to grab my arms, and push me forward three feet toward the circle of light, as if I hadn’t been about to go there anyway.
The biggest man glared at me. “Are you a—uh—A.U.N.T.I.E.?”
“I’m not an uh, but yes, an A.U.N.T.I.E.”
“Anti-agent?”
“Agent, no. A.U.N.T.I.E.”
“Hvat?”
I repeated it carefully.
“Hvoo are you! Hvat do you know!”
“I know my name, what country this is, how to burn toast, how to—”
“Hvat do you know about T.H.R.U.S.H.?”
“Say it, don’t spray it. Pshew. What I know about T.H.R.U.S.H. is none of your business.”
He folded up a fist the size of a watermelon and tried to smack me. I ducked. “Hey, striking a kid is bad manners!”
“Shut up or you’ll get ze thrashing of your vorthless life, brat. Now, tell us all—hvoo led you here, and hvat you know!”
I shut my mouth tight.
Pill, from the chair, said helpfully, “How can she talk when you told her to shut up?”
“ANSWER MEEEE!”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to sound scared. “Ask the C.O.U.S.I.N.S..”
“Cousins?”
“Or the S.T.E.P.M.O.T.H.E.R.S. Or I know, how about the F.O.B.O.S!”
“F.O.B.O.S! Is that a secret agency for espionage?”
“No, they’re a bunch of very annoying ladies who think they are queens.”
o0o
Who knew a bunch of guys the size of water buffaloes could move that fast? When the stars cleared there we were, on chairs, tied up, with Pill.
“You awake?” Pill asked.
“Wow, what a stupid question,” I grumped.
“CJ, are you tied up, too?” Gwen asked.
“That’s an even dumber question. What are we doing here, anyhow?”
“For the dumb question contest, that clinker just took the prize,” Irene muttered, and all the girls loudly agreed.
“Where are we?”
“They dumped us in the basement storeroom of the East Wing of the Croaklin, or Crumblin, or Groatmoat?” Irene said. “I couldn’t hear that last bit.”
“Kremlin,” Pill supplied.
I sighed. “Well, is everybody ready to escape? Or should we make a plan first?”
“You must be kidding!”
“Nope, I’m CJ.”
“We cannot escape,” Pill said. “We—U.N.C.L.E.—the world is doomed.”
“Not the A.U.N.T.I.E.S.” I trilled in my best Fobo imitation. “It’s time to give Tinfinger the bird.”
“I got a great idea for a plan,” Faline said. “C’mon, CJ, let me make the plan. I never get to make the plan. Me first, okay?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Everybody do what they can. Okay?”
“Great idea, Faline! Glad I thought of it!”
“Hey.”
Pill had his eyes closed, as if he hoped the next thing he saw would be a firing squad. That being a step up from Present Company.
I took pity on him, and muttered a special Reverse Knot spell, made for spies. Pill’s eyes flapped open when he felt the knots untie themselves, the ropes whizz around in a reverse of being wrapped, and drop to the floor like dead snakes.
“Well, you kids were right, you do have special abilities,” Pill said. “But it takes bravery to pick a deliberate fight with the dreaded Tinfinger.”
“Tinhead,” Irene commented.
“Looked more like Fathead to me,” Faline put in. “Wow, talk about no sense of humor.”
“Tinfinger, Tinhead, same difference,” I said, in a bad mood. “His fingers are as fat as his head.”
“C’mon CJ, let’s go.” Irene kicked a pile of ropes. “This place is for the birds.”
“Yeah. T.H.R.U.S.H.!” Faline bent over laughing at her own joke.
Pause.
“Sorree, sorree... .” Faline wheezed. “I can’t help how funny I am even when it’s not me being me.”
“So what now?” Diana said, turning to me.
“Where are we again?” I asked Pill.
“In a part of the Kremlin which officially doesn’t exist.”
“That has to mean where all the nastiest stuff is done.” I rubbed my hands. “Okay girls, here’s the plan. Er, Faline’s plan. Everybody go upstairs and wreck the place, and every mess you make, leave some sort of sign that points to Tinfinger.”
So I magicked us upstairs, and we went to work.
Faline and Gwen played bowls with the computer reels, snapping them with wrist action so that they unreeled, until the floor was a spaghetti plate of tape. Irene and I rampaged through file cabinets, yanking them out and tossing papers in a snow of carbon copies. At first we started to cut the originals into paper dolls, but that didn’t last long. Too much trouble.
One time a guard jumped out and started to strangle Diana, but I whistled up my Shoe—and kicked him ten feet! He took off running.
I loaded more magic onto the Shoe, and ran around kicking the guards through the windows. One of them just before he could aim his pistol at Pill, who was looking the other way at another guard taking aim.
All the Kremlin guards got angry, and pretty soon Tinfinger arrived in the first of a fleet of smoky-windowed black sedans. A bunch of Commissars were uttering threats, and Tinbrain kept waving his hands and insisting he hadn’t ordered anyone to do anything in the Secret Chambers of Doom.
When he saw me, he pointed a finger and shouted, “SHOOT!”
A bunch of guns went off, but I had a spell ready. All the bullets stopped in mid-air, then dropped into my hands with a bunch of clinks and rattles. I tossed them over my shoulder, where they turned into petunia pots.
Then I melted the weapons. The bad guys threw the guns into the air, bellowing, wringing their hands, and blowing on their fingers.
Tinsplat roared, “American spy!”
The guards all started toward me—then stopped. Their eyes bugged. Their mouths grimaced, then they started moving like teenagers dancing to rock and roll.
Pill gasped. “Are they poisoned? What terrible secret weapon is this?”
“Itchweed,” I said. “The really strong stuff.”
I turned back to Tinbonefat. “You want some?”
“No. I’ll go peacefully,” he whimpered, forgetting his Secret Spy Accent.
I made handcuffs appear on him.
“Where’s Napoleon Solo?”
“On an airplane to a secret site known only to—”
I did my seeker spell, and sure enough, he was flying over the ocean. A couple of spells, and he stayed midair, while the plane flew on by, minus one prisoner. He looked down just once, then squeezed his eyes shut again.
With a mighty spell I made us all appear in U.N.C.L.E. HQ.
“Well, another world problem solved,” I said heartily, as the spy duo sank wearily into chairs near Wavey.
He turned to them. Nap just shook his head. “Never mind. Nobody will believe it.”
“We need to ask questions,” Wavey addressed us girls. “Why, you could be an enormous help to national security—political goals—”
“And that’s why we’re going home,” I said.
And we did.
o0o
When I finished the story, I discovered that Clair had come in halfway through. She was grinning with the rest.
“I sure wish we could do that kind of magic,” Sherry said wistfully.
“So do I,” Clair said. “Well, we can in our stories, at least.”
I don’t know what it was, but something made me ask, “Is anything wrong?”
“Klutz and Id s
aid that Kwenz sent out a whole contingent of riders along our border.” Clair looked worried.
“Ugh.” I pinched my nose. “All the more reason to have more chocolate pie.”
“You already had two pieces,” Irene scolded.
“First course,” I said, though I hadn’t really wanted more. Instead I loaded three more pieces onto my plate.
“Irene, mind your own business,” Dhana muttered.
Which spoiled the atmosphere of my story, so I dug in, just to spite them both.
PART TWO
“Poor MH”
ONE
Much later, I—Princess Cherene Jennet Sherwood of Mearsies Heili—said that our toughest adventure so far began not with prophetic words, heroic poses, or even a warning rumble of thunder.
Nope. I had a gut ache from being a hog with the chocolate pie.
Typical.
I flopped over on my bed in the underground cave we girls called the Junky. No sleep. I flopped back. No sleep. I wished I could wake one of the others up, just to get her to put on my Shoe and launch me into next week, where I’d be past the stomach ache.
I rolled around in bed, repeating over and over, “Do NOT eat more than two pieces. Even if all your stories are spoiled by the others being as annoying as you are when you’re in a Mood. Even if the pie is still warm inside and cool on top, with a skin of chocolate ... You will never run out of chocolate pie! You are not going back to Earth for real!”
I groaned in disgust, and got up to take a walk.
The Junky was quiet, deep breathing the only sound coming up the short tunnels leading to the other girls’ rooms. I rounded the short curve from my room and emerged into the den, where the faint slivery-white light of a glow globe appeared day-bright to my eyes. I sighed, and wormed my toes into the woven rug on the magic-smoothed dirt floor to the main tunnel entrance, which was framed by the intertwined roots of an ancient, lightning-blasted hollow tree. Being there, alone, in the middle of the night, made me see anew what had become so familiar, and a little spurt of happiness splashed through me, like melted gold, or the light caught in water—I’m really here. This is my home, I thought gratefully. Even when I do dumb stuff like eat too much Just Because.
But thankfulness didn’t take away the gut ache. So I stepped directly under the inside of the hollow tree and held out my hand to feel for rain dropping down.