“Mommamammid!” He repeated the slobbering mumble until Magpie reached out and yanked his tail. “Pomegranate!” Batch said as it whipped out of his mouth, flinging a spray of warm spittle.

Wiping her hands and grimacing, Magpie repeated, “Pomegranate?”

Batch nodded.

“Well, that doesn’t make much more sense than a turnip! What’s he want it for?”

“Flotched if I know!” retorted the imp. His tail groped for a large and particularly lovely monarch wing, and he held it to his face and honked his nose into it repeatedly before crumpling it and tossing it back onto the heap. Particles of orange wing clung to his quivering nostrils.

“A pomegranate,” Magpie said to Talon. “What the skiffle?”

Batch caught sight of Talon’s face then and did a double take. “Munch! Ye’re one of them shouty faeries,” he declared, drawing back.

“Aye,” said Talon. “You want to tell me what happened to the others you saw?”

The imp sniffed and snuffed, wiped at his eyes and nose with the backs of his hands, pulling himself together. “Master happened,” he told him with a shiver that worked itself all the way down his tail and set his rings to rattling.

Talon noticed the brass handles on the cabinets were rattling too and realized it wasn’t Batch’s shiver that was doing it. He nudged Magpie and said, “Mannies,” and they both turned to the door.

“Quick,” Magpie said. “Put on your skin. And you, imp, you’re coming with us.”

As Talon pulled his falcon skin out of his pocket Magpie visioned the glyph for floating and Batch rose right up out of his mound of butterfly wings with a squeal. Magpie stepped hastily into her bird glamour and grabbed his tail.

By the time the crowd of white-frocked lasses thundered into the room for class, all they glimpsed were the shadows of a falcon and a small brown bird darting out the open window, dragging a squealing rodent through the air behind them.

“Hoy! There’s the lad in his skin!” Magpie heard Swig’s voice. “Jacksmoke, Ming, there’s the imp!”

Still in their disguises, Magpie and Talon flew up to the roof of the school as Swig and Mingus came sweeping toward them, cawing out the squawk that would alert the others to come. “Ye seen Mags, lad?” demanded Swig. He gave the little brown bird a curious look as it deposited the imp on the broad stone ledge of the roof, and just then it shivered and turned into Magpie.

Swig and Mingus gasped.

A hint of dizziness came over Magpie, and she teetered slightly on the edge of the roof before Talon reached out fast and grabbed her wrist. “Steady!” he said.

“Eh, Mags, y’all right, pet?” the birds fussed, but their voices were cut off by the noisy arrival of Pup and Pigeon, followed shortly by Calypso and Bertram.

“Ye don’t go off without telling us, ye hear?”