Attack of the Cupids (26 page)

She did see Imogen, hurrying after Cassie and Tara who were talking in high fits of giggles that left them dangerously short of breath. Imogen had her oboe case and was looking horrified and embarrassed. So probably someone had told them about the pink heart and who had been carrying it. And Cassie and Tara thought this was hysterically funny, and Imogen did not think it was funny at all. Whatever she was playing for her exam this evening was going to sound a lot like
The Ride of the Valkyries
.

Poor Charlie!

Viola passed, towing Alec by the hand. Alec was looking dazed (and was going to be in
big
trouble with the Year Twelve girls tomorrow). Viola was grinning from ear to ear. She too was going to be hearing from the Year Twelve girls about this, but she didn't care. She even said ‘Hi' to the twins as she passed.

Sally counted four, five,
six
other couples all hand in hand. Mr Kingsley and Miss Tackle were getting into Miss Tackle's car. Somewhere some bird was singing its head off.

Birdsong. The war was over. At least until the
Year Twelves got going. Everyone was smiles. The teachers had their victim. And who had taken the fall?

He had.

‘Aren't you even
interested?
' said Billie.

‘Mm? Oh, yes. Who?'

Billie's eye gleamed in triumph. ‘
Wouldn't
you like to know . . .'

Not really, thought Sally. The way you're going, you'll be on number three by the end of the week. Or five.

‘Tall and handsome?' she sighed.

‘Yes to both. Going to guess?'

Sally was looking around again.

‘You all right, Sally?'

‘Hmm? Oh, I'm fine.'

There was still no sign of him.

The CIA (Celestial Inspections Angel) was huge. He was also humourless. High on the crest of his flaming hair he wore a peaked cap. He took notes by burning the letters into a small tablet of stone with his fingernail.

‘. . . deny that I entered the City illegally,' he intoned. ‘I deny attempting to obtain controlled store
items under false pretences. I deny assaulting a citizen of the City. I deny the charge of theft. I deny the charge of—'

‘Ahem,' said Muddlespot. ‘
You
don't get to charge me with anything.'

‘That's right,' said Sally, standing by with her arms folded.

‘So mind your manners or I'll bite your kneecaps,' snarled Muddlespot.

The angel looked down. Muddlespot did, indeed, come up to his kneecaps.

‘. . . state that I did not impersonate a duly-summoned witness to the Appeals Board . . .' said the angel, ponderously burning out his letters with his fingernail. ‘Accordingly I state that the facts contained in the full confession filed by the Guardian Windleberry are false . . .'

‘Ahem,' said Muddlespot. ‘I think you'll find that what my, er, my colleague over there has filed is not a “confession” but a complaint against another one of your departments . . .'

‘That is correct,' said Windleberry.

‘Which will be duly investigated,' said the CIA woodenly.

‘I have also said that whatever the results of her
examination, I believe Sally now has grounds for Appeal,' said Windleberry.

‘Oh,' said the CIA.

‘Which will be of interest to my Authorities in due course,' said Muddlespot smoothly. ‘In the meantime I am merely, as a professional, responding to your enquiries to the fullest of my professional ability.'

‘You mean you're lying with every word,' said the angel.

‘Now now,' said Muddlespot.

In the doorway two other angels, clad in white suits, were comparing notes.

‘. . . one hundred and twenty golden arrows and other missiles signed out from stores,' one was saying. ‘Fifty-six returned. That makes sixty-four fired on the mission . . .'

‘. . . and we have thirty-three impact sites within the brain. Fifteen external, plus eleven collateral hits – ten humans and one sparrow. Total fifty-nine. Five still unaccounted for . . .' He looked at Sally, Muddlespot and Windleberry. ‘Nobody stopped an arrow without noticing it?'

The three looked at each other. Beyond them the corridors of Sally's mind echoed with murmurs. Teams of angels were carefully picking over debris,
interviewing thoughts, examining little chips and marks in the walls. ‘. . .
fired from the steps up there. Impact here, ricocheting
 . . .
temporary impairment to the mathematical functions. May not be too serious
 . . .'

‘Arrows?' said Muddlespot. ‘Er no, no arrows. Not this time, anyway.'

‘I didn't stop anything,' said Sally with perfect truth.

‘Get the stores totals checked,' sighed a CIA. ‘It'd be just like the cupids to be sloppy with their paperwork.'

‘Have to interview each of the collaterals as well. Statements from every one. And see if there are any others we've missed. Anybody want to try the sparrow?'

‘Oh please, not me!'

‘Sally?' said Windleberry.

‘Hmm?'

‘Is there something you haven't told me?'

‘I'm totally fine.'

‘You know what?' said a CIA. ‘The Appeals Board will be going to town on this. They'll abso-lutely go to town.'

Sally's mobile beeped. It was a reply from Greg.

‘Well done, Greg,' Sally murmured. ‘You'll live to fight another day.'

‘Wossat?' said Billie.

Sally stopped on the pavement.

His bus went at quarter to, she thought. From the shelter just opposite the newsagent. If he had been kept back to see the Head, he'd have missed it. He'd be waiting there now.

And if he wasn't there, maybe he'd be in afterschool detention. In which case he'd still be at the bus stop at about quarter to five.

‘You go on,' she said. ‘I'll be home later.'

‘What's the matter?'

‘I've – left something behind.'

She turned and started the short walk back towards Darlington High.

It was strange, she thought, how quickly the streets had emptied.

‘Charlie
B
?' said the Angel of Love.

(That's ‘said' as in ‘about six octaves above normal pitch'.)

The wrecking-ball cupid, who was still wearing his hard yellow hat because it was nice to get a chance to wear anything in his line of work, shuffled his feet on the Floor of Willing Sacrifice. He muttered something.

‘Charlie
Beee
???' repeated the Angel of Love. ‘We mobilized the
whole
Department, we descended unto Earth with
fate
and
music
and
passion
and what we gave her was
CHARLIE BEEEEEEE
??????'

‘You just said to get ‘em, Erry,'
muttered the cupid.

The Angel of Love leaned forward. She rested her elbows on her desk (which was, of course, still beating). ‘Are there
no
professional standards in my Department?' she said, in a dangerous, cold voice.

The cupid hesitated. He wanted to say ‘no'. Or did he? ‘No' seemed right. It fitted with his cupid's natural desire to deny everything. But he wasn't sure that the double negative would work in his favour.

‘We were going to harrow her soul,' said the angel lightly. (So lightly that it was terrifying.) ‘Unrequited love, you remember? Fever? Rend the fabric of her being? There's a Guardian there who needs to wish he
had never existed! Tell me, sweetie – how are we to do
that
with Charlie B?'

‘Could still . . .'

‘Charlie B?' sighed Love. ‘She'll make him into a safe, reliable chemist in six months.'

The cupid launched a last, desperate defence.
‘Er . . . Harrows and fevers an' stuff, Erry. Come ter fink of it. ‘Snot very angelic, is it? Maybe it's just as well we don't—'

Then he looked into his leader's glittering stare and wished he hadn't.

‘I am
Love
, my darling,' she whispered. ‘Those rules do not apply to me.'

‘Sorry, Erry,'
said the cupid, who was trying to hide under his hat.

‘No, don't be sorry. I think you've just been working too hard. You need a change . . .'

‘No, Erry!'
pleaded the cupid.
‘Please, no . . .'

‘. . . Report to my secretary. I believe he's been looking for a replacement.'

‘Aiiiiieeeeeeeeee!!!!!'

Bells rang, a sudden chime. The angel picked a golden telephone from her bumping desk. ‘Yes?' she snapped.

‘It's the Appeals Board, Erry,'
said her soon-to-be-relieved secretary's voice in her ear.
‘Yer summoned.
They've got ter do an Inquiry into the Jones kid case.'

The angel's eyes hardened. ‘Oh, have they?' she said. ‘Oh dear. What
shall
we do about that, I wonder?'

‘And that great sucking sound you hear,' said Doomsday, ‘is the Appeals Board all licking their lips together.'

‘They don't have lips,' said a very dejected Mishamh. ‘Or if they do, they can't lick them.'

‘Metaphorically. Anyway, notice has been given of an Appeal. The case includes entry by an unauthorized person, theft of a restricted item and a number of other things for which there is no precedent. And, of course, the Department of Love is in the thick of it – again. The Board is opening preliminary hearings. They also want to see the candidate's full examination papers . . .'

‘But that will take decades,' groaned Mishamh. ‘She can hardly have started them!'

‘At a guess, she has just reached question two thousand and something.'

‘So we'll have to postpone, after all,' said Mishamh gloomily.

‘It was a
good
asteroid,' said Doomsday kindly. ‘Very neat. Very efficient. Ask it to call back again in, er, in two thousand six hundred years. There's every chance we'll need it then.'

‘I just don't understand! How can the Governors allow this? Shouldn't Love just be reined in? What
about
the Curriculum?'

‘Mm, yes,' said Doomsday. ‘I have a theory about that.'

The bus stop was empty. The pavement outside the school gates was empty. So was the school car park. The windows stared silently at Sally.

She settled down to wait.

‘Sir?' said Mishamh. He felt he had nothing to lose now.

‘Mm, yes?'

‘You said you had a theory, sir.'

‘I did say that.'

Doomsday might have left it there. But as archangels go, he was merciful. At least to his staff.

‘. . . I think the Governors like things the way they are,' he said.

‘But—'

‘
Why
, Mishamh? Is that what you were going
to ask?'

Mishamh heard the warning note. He felt the weight of it settle upon his shoulders. He looked up into the eyes of ice.

‘Yes . . . yes, sir, it was.'

‘
Why
do the Governors, who are entrusted with Heaven, who wrote the Great Curriculum, who make the Laws by which all Creation runs, allow such confusion?
Why
, indeed, is Love a part of the Curriculum at all? I have a theory, but I cannot tell it to you. Can you tell me? Can
you
tell
me
why the Governors allow what they allow?'

‘Yes, sir,' said Mishamh with a hollow, tingly feeling in his chest. He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I think I can – now.'

‘And that is?'

‘It's so they can cheat when they want to.'

Down below them, small and blue and beautiful, turned the world they could never destroy.

John Dickinson lives near Gloucester and writes all kinds of things amazingly well (says his guardian angel).
Attack of the Cupids
is the sequel to
Muddle and Win
.

Muddle and Win: The Battle for Sally Jones

The Cup of the World

The Widow and the King

The Fatal Child

The Lightstep

W.E.

ATTACK OF THE CUPIDS
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17199 6

Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children's Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company

This ebook edition published 2013

Copyright © John Dickinson, 2013

Cover illustration © Lorenzo Etherington, 2013

First Published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, 2013

The right of John Dickinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.