They gave him wide-eyed looks. “You mean, flirt with him?” Ilsabil asked.
“Be rude?” said Isadora. “But, my dear, I’m a polite person!”
“Then you can’t do it,” Nick said. “Okay. You stopped that fat schoolmaster in the middle of a spell, but this one is about a hundred times more difficult. Sorry I asked. I can see it’s too much for you.”
The Izzys drew themselves tall. They looked at one another. “Shall we show him?” Ilsabil said.
“As a great favor,” Isadora suggested. “Graciously.”
“Right,” Nick said, and without more ado he lifted the nearest twin over the plastic wall. Romanov, grinning a bit, swung the other twin over beside her. “I still think you can’t do it,” Nick said.
Both Izzys stuck their chins up at him. But they had not done yet. They turned round, with their stomachs and their hands pressed against the wall, and looked sulky. “We need a bribe,” said Isadora.
“We can’t proceed without,” said Ilsabil. Both pairs of their eyes flickered toward Romanov, calculatingly.
“Oh, for—” Nick began, but Romanov interrupted him. “What bribe?”
“One of us is going to be turned out when we’re fifteen,” Ilsabil explained.
“So could you make it that Heppy dies, please?” Isadora said. “So there will be only three Dimbers and we can both stay.”
Quite honestly, they took my breath away. The Merlin’s jaw dropped, and we shook our heads at one another, speechless. The boys were not at all speechless. They all said in different hoarse whispers that the Izzys were unfeeling brats—and worse—and then looked nervously over at Joel’s distant, brooding figure, in case he realized what was going on.
Romanov made no attempt to be furtive. He said, in that level, cutting voice of his, “You must have a very limited outlook. Do you really want to spend your lives in the same old place, doing the same old rituals, year after year? I couldn’t. I was booked to do that, and I couldn’t face it. I got out.”
The Izzys’ two little pointy faces turned up to his, amazed and arrested. “Do you mean we don’t have to?” said Ilsabil.
“But we’re hereditary witches,” Isadora said wistfully. “We can’t both leave.”
“I don’t see why not,” Romanov said. “Haven’t you got any cousins?”
Ilsabil turned to Isadora. “The hereditary men are always having daughters,” she said. Isadora nodded. They both looked expectantly up at Romanov.
“I’m sure I can arrange for one of those daughters to take over,” the Merlin said. “But you have to get me free first.”
They gave him startled looks, as if they had forgotten he was there. Their backs straightened. Their chins stuck out. “We’ll do it,” Ilsabil announced.
“As a great favor,” Isadora added.
“Go on, then,” said Romanov.
They turned round. They raised their arms. Then they advanced upon Joel in his chair with little twinkling steps, wafting their arms like ballet dancers. “Where is this thick, sweaty man?” warbled one.
“I love men who pray all the time!” the other’s voice rang out. “So godly!”
“Oh, you’re wonderfully disgusting!” they both cried, and threw their arms round Joel.
It was marvelous. I leaned on the wall to watch. Joel was jerking around in his seat, looking panicked and bewildered.
“I don’t think he’s got a chance,” Toby said, full of rare family pride.
“The glamour’s on like a searchlight,” Grundo agreed.
Beside me, Romanov was now crouching beside the Merlin’s chair and sweating with effort and urgency. “Back me, friend,” he said to the Merlin. “Help me find the pattern. The thing’s like matted wool.” Then he looked up at me, even more urgently. “You go to Blest and raise the land,” he said to me. “Take the boys with you to help you. You should have done it weeks ago. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve finished here. That way.” He pointed along the wall. “Go that way. And hurry!”
The four of us set off along the wall at a run. Nick groaned because after a few yards we were in a narrow, rocky passage with no light at all. “I seem to have spent aeons in these paths,” he said, stumbling about. “Bloody ages!”
Grundo and Toby and I raised magelight the way we had been taught. This was the first time I had done it in earnest, and in spite of my dread that we were going to be too late getting to Blest, I was delighted when the blue light appeared, cupped in my hand. Or I was until our three blue lights blazed in the wide green eyes of a huge, gaunt spotted cat that was trotting swiftly toward us. We all gasped and backed against the rock wall. But the creature simply trotted straight past us, intent on something else. It had such an intent look, in fact, that it brought me out in shivers. It was off to do something terrible.