Jasper Fforde - The Last Dragonslayer. Jasper Fforde

CONTENTS

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright Jasper Fforde 2010

The right of Jasper Fforde to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him 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 without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN 978 1 444 70719 9

Book ISBN 978 1 444 70717 5

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

An Hachette UK Company

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

www.hodder.co.uk

For Stella Morel

1897-1933

2010-

The grandmother I never knew

The daughter I will

Once, I was famous. My face appeared on T-shirts, badges, commemorative mugs and posters. I made front-page news, appeared on TV and was even a special guest on The Yogi Baird Show. The Daily Clam called me The years most influential teenager and I was the Mollusc on Sunday s woman of the year. Two people tried to kill me, I was threatened with jail, had sixteen offers of marriage and was outlawed by King Snodd. All that and more besides, and in less than a week.

My name is Jennifer Strange.

Practical Magic

It looked set to become even hotter by the afternoon, just when the job was becoming more fiddly and needed extra concentration. But the fair weather brought at least one advantage: dry air makes magic work better and fly farther. Moisture has a moderating effect on the Mystical Arts. No sorcerer worth their sparkle ever did productive work in the rain which probably accounts for why getting showers to start was once considered easy, but getting them to stop was nigh-on impossible.

A taxi or minibus would have been a needless extravagance, so the three sorcerers, myself and the beast were packed into my Volkswagen for the short journey from Hereford to Kings Pyon. The well-proportioned Full Price was driving, Lady Mawgon was in the passenger seat and I was in the back with Wizard Moobin and the Quarkbeast, who sat panting in between the two of us. We were three-fifths of our way through an uncomfortable silence as we showed our passes to the sentry and drove from the walled city and into the suburbs. The silence was not unusual. Despite the three of them being our most versatile sorcerers, they didnt really get along. It wasnt anything particularly personal; sorcerers are just like that temperamental, and apt to break out into petulant posturing that took time and energy to smooth over. Running Kazam Mystical Arts Management was less about spells and enchantments and more about bureaucracy and diplomacy working with those versed in the magical Arts was sometimes like trying to herd cats. The job at Kings Pyon was too big for Price and Moobin alone, so Id had to coax Lady Mawgon into making up the shortfall. She thought this sort of work beneath her, but like all of them, was realistic. Kazam was almost broke, and we badly needed the cash.

I do wish you would keep your hands on the wheel, said Lady Mawgon in an aggrieved tone as she shot a disapproving glance at Full Price, who was steering by spell. The wheel was turning by itself, while Prices arms were folded neatly in front of him. To Lady Mawgon, who in better days had once been Sorceress to Royalty, open displays of magic were the mark of the guileless show-off, and the hopelessly ill bred.

Im just tuning up, replied Full Price indignantly. Dont tell me you dont need to.

Both I and Wizard Moobin looked at Lady Mawgon, eager to know how she was tuning up. Moobin had prepared for the job by tinkering with the print of the Hereford Daily Eyestrain . Since leaving the office twenty minutes before he had filled in the crossword. Not unusual in itself since the Eyestrain s crossword is seldom hard, except that he had used printed letters from elsewhere on the page and dragged them across using his mind alone. The crossword was now complete and more or less correct but it left an article on Queen Mimosas patronage of the Troll War Widows Fund looking a trifle disjointed.

I am not required to answer your question, replied Lady Mawgon in a haughty tone, and whats more, I detest the term tuning up. Its Quazafucating , and always has been.

Using the old language makes us sound archaic and out of touch, replied Price.

It makes us sound as we are meant to be, replied Lady Mawgon, of a noble calling.

Of a once noble calling, thought Moobin, inadvertently broadcasting his subconscious on an alpha so low even I could sense it. Lady Mawgon swivelled in her chair to glare at him. I sighed. This was my life.

Of the fifteen sorcerers, movers, soothsayers, shifters, weathermongers and carpeteers at Kazam, Lady Mawgon was certainly the oldest, and probably the most powerful. Like everyone else she had seen her powers fade dramatically over the past three decades or so, but unlike everyone else, shed not really come to terms with the failure of the Mystical Arts to be relevant in everyones lives. In her defence, she had fallen farther than the rest of them, but this wasnt really an excuse: the Sisters Karamazov could also claim once-royal patronage, and they were nice as apricot pie. Mad as a kettle of onions the pair of them, but pleasant nonetheless.

I might have felt more sorry for Mawgon if she hadnt been so difficult all the time. She had an intimidating manner that made me feel small and ill at ease, and she rarely if ever missed an opportunity to put me in my place. Since Mr Zambinis disappearance, shed got worse, not better.

Quark, said the Quarkbeast.

Did we have to bring the beast? asked Full Price, who had never really got along with it.

It jumped in the car when I opened the door.

The Quarkbeast yawned, revealing several rows of razor-sharp fangs. Despite his placid nature, you never argued with a Quarkbeast, just in case.

I would be failing in my duty as acting manager of Kazam, I began cautiously, if I didnt mention how important this job is. Mr Zambini always said that we needed to adapt to survive, and if we get this right we could possibly tap a lucrative market that we badly need.

Humph! said Lady Mawgon, irritated by my words, true as they may have been.

We all need to be in tune and ready to hit the ground running, I added, directing the comment at Lady Mawgon. I told Mr Digby wed all be done by six this evening.

They didnt argue. I think they knew the score well enough without me spelling it out. In silent answer, Lady Mawgon tapped the Volkswagens fuel gauge and it rose from half to full. Despite her sulky demeanour, she was well tuned.

I knocked on the door of a red-brick house at the edge of the village, and a middle-aged man with a ruddy face answered.

Mr Digby? My name is Jennifer Strange of Kazam, acting manager for Mr Zambini. We spoke on the phone.

He looked me up and down.

You seem a bit young to be running an agency.

Indentured servitude, I answered brightly, trying to sidestep the contempt that most free citizens had for people like me. I had been brought up by the Sisterhood, who were not really up with the times, and still thought Mystical Arts Management was a worthy and gainful career. I was almost sixteen years old, and still had four years of unpaid work before I could even think of leaving.