‘Now, now children,’ Armstrong said. He was clearly enjoying every minute of this. ‘I have phone calls to make. The two of you should run along.’

Bellows pouted. Actually pouted. ‘But I want to talk to you about the plans for next week when we…’

‘Later. We’ll discuss it later.’ Armstrong grabbed both our elbows and propelled us towards the door. He glanced at me meaningfully. ‘Report to me with your first findings before filming tomorrow morning,’ he said. And that, apparently, was that.

Back outside, Bellows wasted no time. He drew in close to me, with Brutus still in his arms. ‘Listen up, girly,’ he hissed quietly to avoid being overheard. ‘No one is taking my job away from me. I’m the magical expert around here and if you so much as think about commenting or showing off or doing anything that even ventures towards a spell, you’ll be out on your ear before you can so much as say abadarabacadra.’

I blinked at him. ‘Don’t you mean abracadabra?’

‘I meant what I said. Watch your step.’ And with that, he picked up his robe and flounced off. Brutus popped his head up from over Bellows’ shoulder. I could have sworn the damn cat was smirking.

Chapter Five

Despite half the world seeming to want to me to become some kind of bizarre double-agent, I spent the next few hours doing nothing more than menial work. Winter had been wrong. There was considerable running expected of a runner and I was growing mightily tired of it.

First of all, the sound technicians wanted coffee. They reeled off their orders at machine-gun speed and then got irritated when I asked them to slow down and repeat what they’d said. I was trying to do what they’d asked and to move quickly, but I still managed to arrive back with a latte instead of a cappuccino and the wrong sort of herbal tea for the hipster with the silly man-bun.

I was on my way back across muddy ground with the correct drinks when a prop guy hailed me and demanded that I send a message directly to wardrobe and tell them that the magical wands they wanted were useless and he didn’t care if they clashed with the contestants’ bandanas. When I relayed this information to two women surrounded by clothing racks, they looked at each other and burst out laughing, saying with a mocking sneer that he would use whichever colour of wand they decided. They shooed me off to tell him that but, when I tried to find the prop guy again, I was assailed by a member of security who growled darkly about the sheep that was breaching the far perimeter. He wanted to know whether he had permission to shoot it or not. I was sent dashing from one end of the set to the other and there didn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to my movements.

‘This is madness,’ I muttered to Amy when I passed her with an armful of last-minute herb displays to decorate the staging area.