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  Epub ISBN 9781407050720

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  WITCH BABY AND ME AFTER DARK

  A CORGI BOOK 978 0 552 55678 1

  Published in Great Britain by Corgi Books,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  A Random House Group Company

  This edition published 2009

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Debi Gliori, 2009

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

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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  Printed and bound in the UK by

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Praise

  Also by Debi Gliori

  Winding up the witch

  1. A hair-raising bit

  2. In the wild wood

  3. WayWoof gone

  4. A real hiss

  5. Demolition howl

  6. Big, hairy, venom-dribbling things

  7. Another hissy fit

  8. Of geese and inflatable dogs

  9. My demon sister

  10. Your personal maggot

  11. Go on, I dare you

  12. A bolt from the boo

  13. A little bit of bat

  14. The Chin chills out

  15. The pesky bat mobile

  16. The fairly oddmother

  17. Spell it out

  18. A doggy bit

  19. In The Doghouse

  20. My not-so-little sister

  21. Little beasts

  Ae last Hiss

  Dedicated to devourers of books,

  lovers of stories, turners of pages

  and especially Readers who

  Laugh Out Loud.

  Praise for the Witch Baby series:

  ‘. . . enjoyable, comical series full of interesting characters’

  Primary Times

  ‘The combination of quirky humour, sibling rivalry and real-life problems . . . had me captivated from start to finish’

  Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

  ‘Witch Baby and Me is what I have come to expect from a Debi Gliori book, jammed with hilarious and often gross jokes. I giggled all the way through . . . I can’t recommend this story highly enough for lovers of magic, humour or even books. A wicked triumph’

  Eoin Colfer

  Also by Debi Gliori

  WITCH BABY AND ME

  WITCH BABY AND ME

  AT SCHOOL

  For Older Readers:

  PURE DEAD MAGIC

  PURE DEAD WICKED

  PURE DEAD BRILLIANT

  DEEP TROUBLE

  DEEP WATER

  DEEP FEAR

  WINDING UP THE WITCH

  In the hall, a clock chimed five times, paused, and then chimed fifteen times more. Marvellous. It’s twenty o’clock – time for supper at Arkon House. This crumbling ruin is home to the Chin, the Nose and the Toad: the legendary Sisters of Hiss. In case you haven’t already heard of them, you should be warned: the Sisters of Hiss are witches. They are very, very old and quite wrinkly. Nobody is quite sure, but it is possible that the Chin, the Nose and the Toad are at least four hundred years old. And, as you can imagine, four hundred years of making breakfast, lunch and supper for her Sisters has turned the Toad into a brilliant cook. Lucky Sisters of Hiss. Tonight’s supper is bound to be delicious.

  In the kitchen, the Toad is thriftily preparing supper from yesterday’s leftovers. At least, that was the plan until she discovered that someone had already been in the fridge and eaten her ingredients. All of them. Ten cold roast potatoes, a bowl of orange-and-honey-glazed carrots, three redcurrant jelly vol-au-vents, five slices of rosemary and garlic roast lamb and . . .

  ‘. . . every last DROP of gravy. Drunk. Gobbled. Slurped. Gone,’ the Toad moaned. ‘For heaven’s sake, Nose. Did you have to eat everything?’

  Her face hidden behind the newspaper, the Nose blushed.

  ‘And,’ the Toad continued, ‘you also ate all my lemon meringue pie. Every last crumb of it. I was sooooo looking forward to having it for pudding tonight. It was the best one I’ve ever made. How could you?’

  The Nose wriggled uncomfortably in her seat, and from behind the paper came a loud and fruity belch. Across the kitchen, the Chin looked up from her computer and Tsssked. ‘Disgusting.’

  The Toad slammed the fridge door shut. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Since you ate all the food, Sister dear, you can go and pick up some carryout pizzas for our tea.’

  A muffled squeak came from behind the newspaper but the Toad was not to be put off. ‘And don’t think we’re fooled for one minute by your pretending to study the paper. We know you can’t read.’ And with one effortless leap, the Toad vaulted onto the table and plucked the newspaper out of the Nose’s grasp.

  Exposed in mid-gobble, the Nose chewed frantically and tried to pretend she hadn’t just been polishing off the last redcurrant jelly vol-au-vent. She blustered, ‘Whatever do you mean?’ but since her mouth was full of vol-au-vent, all she managed to say was, ‘Foff effa oo oo een!’ before spraying the Toad and most of the table with flecks of uneaten puff pastry.

  At this, the Chin gave a despairing groan and stood up. She marched across to the table and raked her Sister with a slitty-eyed glare. ‘I’ve a good mind to turn you into a ssslug,’ she hissed. ‘You’re a disssgrace to the name of Hiss. We are the Sisters of Hiss, not the Piggies of Swill. We are witches, not mobile puff-pastry disposal units.’

  ‘I beg your pffff,’ the Nose tried to say, but the Chin was unstoppable.

  She bent down close to the Nose. ‘Sssoon it will be Halloween,’ she said. ‘One of the biggest days in the witchy year. The night when every human child for miles around thinks that all they have to do is slip into a black plastic bin-bag, paint their faces green, hurl talcum powder into their hair and – hey, presto – they’re witches.’

  ‘Bless,’ sighed the tender-hearted Toad. ‘If only it were that simp—’

  ‘The night, the Chin interrupted, ‘when real
witches become so full of magic, they almost sizzle. Spells pour from their mouths, their hearts beat faster and faster, their eyes burn like fire, their hair whips from side to side like a nest of maddened snakes—’

  ‘It’s not a good look,’ muttered the Toad, but the Chin was deaf to all criticism.

  ‘Sparks fly from their fingertips, they almost glow in the dark, and woe betide any feeble human who gets in their way. Woe, woe and thrice wo—’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ the Nose hissed impatiently. ‘And your point is . . . ?’

  The Chin’s mouth shrank down to a pucker of exasperation. ‘My point . . .’ she said. ‘My point is that this year we’ll have to keep a lid on Halloween. This year we’re surrounded by humans. That means we mustn’t do anything to make them suspect that we are witches. At Halloween we will have to stay at home and pretend to be two little old ladies and their pet toad. That means no sparks, no fire, no glowing in the dark and definitely no whippy snake-hair.’

  ‘Tell me this is a wind-up,’ the Nose gasped. ‘You’re joking, right?’

  The Chin slowly shook her head. ‘No. No. NO. It’s no joking matter. This year’ – she took a deep breath – ‘this year, Halloween is cancelled.’

  One:

  A hair-raising bit

  I’m staring at my notebook, wishing I could think of a really brilliant idea for a Halloween costume. So far, all I’ve written is:

  Werewolf and witch have circles drawn round them because, as my best friend Vivaldi pointed out, we’ve already got one of each of those.

  To explain: my baby sister, Daisy, is a Witch Baby. That’s witch as in: casts spells and will probably sprout chin warts when she’s older. As if she can read my mind,* Daisy stands up, scowls at me, mutters, ‘No tin watts, Lil-Lil,’ before stomping off to fling herself down on the floor beside her dog, WayWoof. She calls her dog WayWoof because she’s too little to say werewolf properly.

  Way Woof rolls over on her back and stretches blissfully, gives a fifty-fang yawn and promptly goes back to sleep again. She does a lot of sleeping these days, does WayWoof. Sleeping, eating and growing really fat. Or at least, her tummy is. The rest of her is normal, if you can say that about a dog who is

  a) magical

  b) invisible (to everyone except Daisy, Vivaldi and me)**

  c) something my witchy baby sister conjured up

  Oh yes, and d:

  d) the smelliest dog imaginable.

  Add together a skunk, a gas leak, a decomposing squashed toad and a pile of rotting turnips and you’ve got Eau de WayWoof

  I wonder if her puppies will smell as bad?

  Vivaldi is lying on the floor next to WayWoof, patting her tummy (WayWoof’s) and trying to guess how many puppies might be growing in there. Daisy has grown bored of WayWoof-adoration: she has turned herself into a bat and is hanging upside down from the lightshade.

  Strange as it may seem, this is what passes for a normal afternoon at my house.

  ‘So,’ I groan, ‘Halloween. Help me out here. What can we go as?’

  ‘I like the idea of mummies,’ Vivaldi says. ‘It’s probably pretty easy to do – it won’t be difficult to find some old sheets to rip up as bandages, and once we’re all wrapped up, nobody will have a clue who we are.’

  Good point. There’s nothing more embarrassing than going round houses at Halloween, all dressed up in what you hope is a really nail-bitingly terrifying costume,* only to have adults peering at you and saying, ‘Very nice, dear. Lily, isn’t it? And what are you supposed to be, pet?’

  ‘No wantit be mumma,’ Daisy chips in. ‘Wantit be pider.’

  I look up. The Daisy-bat is dangling from the ceiling, wings folded across her chest, a determined glint in her beady black eyes. I look down. WayWoof is snoozing on the rug. A bat and a WayWoof. Yikes. Daisy is doing two spells at once. I wonder if it’s the approach of Halloween that’s making her more powerful.

  When Daisy first magicked WayWoof into our lives, I quickly realized how useful she was. (WayWoof, not Daisy.) WayWoof acted like an early-warning, incoming-spell alert. Daisy was just a tiny baby witch, so she could only manage one spell at a time, so when WayWoof started to f a d e away, that meant Daisy was about to cast a new spell. Back then, Daisy was a strictly-one-spell-at-a-time Witch Baby. But now my little sister has magically transformed herself into a bat, yet . . . WayWoof is still there, still visible, still— Aaaaagh. WayWoof. Urrrghhh. Blissfully unaware that WayWoof has just let rip, Daisy flaps her wings and repeats herself. Somewhat louder.

  ‘NO WANTIT MUMMA. WANTIT PIDER.’

  ‘Cool,’ Vivaldi agrees. ‘Good plan. Lily and I will be mummies and you can be the spider from the mummies’ tomb.’

  I was about to point out that this would mean making a spider costume for Daisy when I remembered. Witch Babies don’t need Halloween costumes made for them. Witch Babies come as themselves.

  Woo-hoo – here comes the REAL THING.

  After supper it’s time for Vivaldi to go home. She lives at Four Winds, which is a six-and-a-half-minute walk from our house. Normally I’d walk her halfway home, then turn round and come back, but by the end of October it’s dark after supper, so Mum gets my big brother, Jack, to be our bodyguard.

  She has to ask several times because Jack has his earbuds in.

  ‘Jack?’

  Tsss, tsss,

  ‘Would you walk Vivaldi home with Lily?’

  Tss, tss, tsss, tss.

  ‘I promised Vivaldi’s mum that we’d get her home before eight.’

  Tsss, tssss, tsss, tsstssstssst.

  ‘Jack? Oh, for Pete’s sake. JACK, TAKE THOSE THINGS OUT OF YOUR EARS AND JOIN THE HUMAN RACE, WOULD YOU?’

  ‘What?’ squawks Jack. He hauls out the earbuds and lets them dangle from his collar while he blinks up at Mum as if she’s dragged him out of a deep coma. ‘Keep your hair on, Mum. Honestly. What is your problem?’

  Yikes. Jack is skating on thin ice here. Vivaldi and I pull faces at each other and try to make ourselves invisible. Fortunately Daisy saves the moment.

  ‘Keep you hayon, Mumma,’ she cackles, obviously delighted at the idea of Mum not keeping her hair on. ‘Keep you hayon, Lil-Lil, keep you hayon, Dack—’

  ‘All right, Daze, that’s enough,’ Mum mutters, turning away to stack plates in the dishwasher.

  Which is why she doesn’t notice Jack’s hair rising up to the ceiling and doing two laps of the lightshade before settling back down on its owner’s head. Jack doesn’t notice, either because

  a) Jack never notices anything

  b) his hair is so short it doesn’t count

  and c) he’s got his earbuds back in.

  *She can read my mind, it’s just that she’s too wee to understand what it says yet.

  **To explain: Daisy can see WayWoof because it was Daisy who magicked her into existence. I’m not one hundred per cent sure, but I think Vivaldi and I can see WayWoof because we were both born under a Blue Moon. Dad says Blue Moons are rare and magical things, and if you’re lucky enough to be born under one, then that means you can see things that nobody else can. Like WayWoofs, for instance. But my big brother, Jack, says that’s complete rubbish and a Blue Moon is simply the second moon in a month that has had one full moon already. Or the fourth full moon in a season with three full moons. Or . . . Understandably, Vivaldi and I prefer Dad’s explanation. Vivaldi and I are slightly magical – wee WOO-HOO – but nothing like as magical as Daisy – big WOO-HOO.

  * In Scotland, this is called guising. This is short for we-disguise-ourselves-and-perform-in-the-hope-you’ll-give-us-sweets-and-money. In America they have something faintly similar called trick-or-treating. This is short for we-trick-or-terrify-you-into-giving-us-a-treat-or-else. Not the same thing at all.

  Two:

  In the wild wood

  Walking back through the woods from Vivaldi’s house, I’m really glad Jack is with me. As bodyguards go, he doesn’t say much,* but he doesn’t jump at shadows or g
et anything like as spooked as I do. Plus, he’s got a wind-up torch, whereas I only have a completely rubbish one that eats batteries. Talking of which—

  Jack stops, gives a huge groan as if he’s been mortally wounded and pulls his earbuds out of his ears. This can only mean one thing. His batteries have gone flat. Jack needs to head for the nearest plug socket. At least this way he’ll talk to me.

  ‘Jack, d’you know anything about dogs?’

  Jack frowns. ‘Not a whole lot, Lil. Er.

  They’re sort of furry. Leg at each corner—’

  ‘Jack. Be serious. I need to find out how long dogs normally take to have puppies.’ Although, I remind myself, WayWoof is nothing like a normal dog.

  ‘How long? Um. A few months, I think. We can look it up when we get back. Why d’you need to know?’

  Oh, boy. You’d never believe me if I told you. I imagine Jack’s eyes popping out on springs if I were to explain:

  Well, see, our little baby sister . . . I know this sounds insane but – she’s actually a witch. No. That’s not me calling her names. No. A real witch. Yes. Pointy hats, broomsticks and cauldrons. Yes. Black cats and talking toads. Yes, yes, whatever. Anyway, our dear little Witch Baby has a dog. I know you’ve never seen her dog. Oh, sigh. That’s hardly surprising since she’s invisible.

  By which time Jack would be backing away from me and hoping that madness wasn’t catching. I’ll have to make up something to explain why I suddenly need to know how long it takes to grow a litter of puppies. Here goes: ‘Er . . . it’s an, um, homework thing. We’re doing a project at school about puppies.’

  I could have saved my breath. Jack isn’t listening. He’s stopped again and has turned to stare behind him. I turn too, because I can hear something crashing towards us. Something that is gasping and snorting, louder and louder, as it heads our way. Aaargh. What is it? I glance at Jack. He looks every bit as nervous as I feel.