The dwarfs felt partly responsible for the run of bad luck that the BoyStarz had endured because it was they who had ruined the filming of the video for the BoyStarz’s Christmas single “Love Is Like a Castle (Built for Two).” They had done this by taking bits of the castle in question and flinging them from the battlements until the castle built for two looked like a shed built for one. When the dwarfs had decided to set up a talent agency with Dan, it seemed only right and proper that they should try to find work for the BoyStarz. So far, the only work they’d found for them was in a hamburger restaurant, and even then they’d lasted only a day because they insisted on singing about how love was like a lettuce leaf, or a chicken nugget, or a bun.

“All right, boys,” said Jolly, “the song’s had enough. Time to put it out of its misery.”

The BoyStarz stopped wailing.

“Has you got work for us?” asked Gemini.

“Is we going to be stars again?” asked Twinkle. As he said the word stars, he tossed fairy dust in the air.

“Where do they get that fairy dust from?” asked Angry. “They never seem to run out, do they?”

“I’ve searched their cell—I mean, their room—and I can’t find a trace of it,” said Dan. “I think they just produce it from their pores, like sweat.”

“What are you feeding them?” asked Dozy.

“Mostly cheese.”

“Well, that doesn’t explain it. Whatever you get from eating lots of cheese isn’t going to look like fairy dust, or smell like it either.”

“When is we going to sing again?” asked Starlight.

“What does he mean, ‘again’?” asked Jolly. “And why can’t they tell singular from plural?”

“I think they’re becoming a single entity,” said Dan. “Except for Phil, of course.”

“Ah.”

They all looked at Phil, who bore the same relationship to the other three as an emu might to three ducks. Every boy band had to have someone who looked like Phil in it. It was a rule.

“What are we going to do with them?” said Angry. “We can’t keep them down here forever. Eventually somebody is going to come looking for them.”

“Really?” asked Jolly.

Angry thought about it.

“Possibly not,” he said. “Still, we have to find something for them to do or else we’ll just end up with four old people living in our basement who can’t sing, smell of cheese, and appear to be made partly of fairy dust.”

There was a soft thud from above them as a copy of the Biddlecombe Evening Crier dropped through the letter box.

“Maybe there’ll be a job for them in the newspaper,” said Dozy.

“Unky,” said Mumbles.

“You’re right,” said Dozy, “it is highly unlikely, but you never know. Sometimes good things happen to good people.”

“And what about us?” said Angry.

“Sometimes good things happen to us, too,” said Dozy, “although only by mistake. Or through theft.”