Terrence ran the heated comb through his dense curls and tried to think himself into his third project, the one Lady Tchainsaw had said would be a work of immense genius. He quite liked Lady Tchainsaw. You couldn’t always tell what poets meant, especially not when they were Russian, but she had come quite close to him—close enough that he could smell her perfume, the top notes of which were dead things and violets—and whispered straight into his ear. What she had said sounded something like “Your abundant locks, they are so beautiful, darlink.”

Then she had asked him to write the blueprint for a whole new universe.

This was the project Terrence was having most trouble with. Given that he couldn’t even manage to get going on his epic adventure for adults, how the flip was he supposed to author an entire universe? He just couldn’t face it today.

So once he’d finished his hair, he began changing slowly into the special outfit the Diberi had given him: a dangerously tight yellow jumpsuit with a small red cape. Did this ensemble suit him? It did not. It did not make him feel remotely diabolical or magical. It made him feel like something from early evening Saturday night TV shows from the olden days.

And he was ready five hours too early, like some kind of freaking teenager attending their first freaking ball. Still, once he was part of the Diberi, everything was going to be different. Terrence would be officially evil! In return for his initiation, and for promising to kill the children, Terrence would give the Diberi all the information he had on the location of Dragon’s Green, in which they had seemed extremely interested.

Then, somehow, the Diberi were going to take control of the entire universe. And Terrence, once a mere children’s writer snubbed by big prize juries and reviewers despite selling millions of copies of his books, was going to be the author of this universe. If only he could get started on the freaking thing.

How did you write a whole universe? Lady Tchainsaw had given him some tips, as had Professor Gotthard Forestfloor. The main thing they’d told him was that this universe had to depict only the Realworld, and that this world should be extremely magical and controlled by the Diberi. There was to be no Otherworld. They’d both been very insistent about that. “Write the Otherworld out of existence, darlink,” Lady Tchainsaw had said, “and you will be celebrated forever.” Being celebrated forever sounded quite nice, and Lady Tchainsaw was very pretty, in a harsh sort of way. Terrence already knew he was going to do everything she told him.

3

JUST AS CLOTHILDE WAS about to open the door there was a small scuffling noise, and then the sound of Bertie’s familiar soft voice.

“I thought perhaps you girls might want to use this,” she said.