I sat in my Volkswagen to be near the car phone. Any calls to the office would be directed through to here. I wasn’t just Kazam’s manager, I was also the receptionist, bookings clerk and accountant. I had to look after the fifty-two sorcerers in my charge, deal with the shabby building that housed them all, and fill out the numerous forms that the Magical Powers (amended 1966) Act required when even the tiniest spell was undertaken. The reasons why I was doing all this were twofold: first, I’d been part of Kazam since I was ten, and knew the business inside out. Second, no one else wanted to.

The phone rang.

‘The Kazam Agency,’ I said in my jolliest tone, ‘can I help you?’

‘I hope so,’ said a timid teenager’s voice on the other end. ‘Do you have something to make Patty Simcox fall in love with me?’

‘How about flowers?’ I asked.

‘Flowers?’

‘Sure. Cinema, a few jokes. Dinner, dance, Bodmin aftershave?’

‘Bodmin aftershave?’

‘Sure. You do shave?’

‘Once a week now,’ replied the teenager. ‘It’s becoming something of a drag. But listen, I was thinking it would be easier—’

‘We could do something, but it wouldn’t be Patty Simcox. Just a bit of her, the most pliable part. It would be like having a date with a tailor’s dummy. Love is something that it’s really better not to mess with. If you want my advice, you’d do better to try the more traditional approach.’

The phone seemed to go dead but he was just digesting my thoughts.

‘What sort of flowers?’

I gave him some tips and the addresses of a few good restaurants. He thanked me and hung up. I looked across to where Wizard Moobin, Lady Mawgon and Full Price were sizing up the house. Sorcery wasn’t about mumbling a spell and letting fly – it was more a case of appraising the problem, planning the various incantations to greatest effect, then mumbling a spell and letting fly. The three of them were still in the ‘appraising’ stage, which generally meant a good deal of staring, tea, discussion, argument, more discussion, tea, then more staring.

The phone rang again.

‘Jenny? It’s Perkins.’

The Youthful Perkins was the youngest sorcerer at Kazam. He’d been inducted during a rare moment of financial stability and was serving a loose apprenticeship. His particular talent was shifting, although he wasn’t very good at it. He’d once morphed himself into something vaguely resembling a raccoon but then got stuck and had to stay that way for a week until it wore off. It had been very amusing, but not to him. Because we were of a similar age, we got on fairly well, but not in a boyfriend–girlfriend kind of way.

‘Hey, Perkins,’ I said, ‘did you get Patrick off to work in time?’

‘Just about. But I think he’s back on the marzipan again.’