“You worked quickly,” she murmured to Pettifog.
The imp shrugged. “The robes fit your friend much better than they fit you,” he whispered back, “and I didn’t bother with the vocal powder this time.” He raised his voice to catch the countess’s attention. “Madam, Wizard Torville is ill. That’s why we’re not allowing visitors.”
“I see.” Countess Snoot-Harley paused. “Is it catching?”
“Oh, yes,” said Pettifog. “He’s extremely contagious.”
“We think it’s skin-crawling sickness,” Marigold added, not wanting to be left out.
“But that’s deadly!” The countess backed away as Collin blew his nose again.
“Only most of the time,” said Marigold. “Still, we didn’t want to send him to Whitby in this condition. Was there something you wanted to say to him?”
Countess Snoot-Harley tightened her grip on the little bottle of garlic potion. “No, thank you,” she said. “I really must be going. I’ve got to retrieve my coach, and it’s getting late, and . . .” Without bothering to think up any more excuses, the countess turned and walked to the door. “Let me know if the wizard’s condition improves,” she said to Marigold in a low voice. “I’d planned to hire him to curse the freesias in Duchess Teasewhistle’s garden — though if those rumors of a peace treaty are true, I suppose I won’t be able to.”
In the kitchen, Collin groaned like a rusted hinge. He sneezed six times in a row.
“Goodbye!” said Marigold. Countess Snoot-Harley hurried outside, and Marigold shut the door behind her. Then she bolted it.
“Are all of Torville’s clients so awful?” Marigold asked. She sank into the kitchen chair across from Collin. Queen Amelia and King Godfrey had never had a kind word to spare about the people of Whitby, and if the rest of them were anything like Countess Snoot-Harley, Marigold could understand why.
“Of course all the clients are awful,” Pettifog said. “Who else do you think would hire an evil wizard? At least the countess won’t be returning anytime soon.” He sat down, too, sighing a little. “I do wish you’d gotten Torville’s payment, though. We could have used it.”
Collin pulled down his hood and rolled up his sleeves. “Now that I’m done having skin-crawling sickness,” he said, “would someone please tell me what’s going on with Wizard Torville?”
Pettifog refused to say a word in case the Archdemon might be listening, so Marigold was left to explain the whole calamity herself, skirting around the most embarrassing parts as well as she could. As she talked, Collin chewed his lower lip, trying to follow along. “I think I understand,” he said once she’d finished. “You have to help the Miseries make everyone miserable, or they’ll curse you and get rid of Pettifog?”
“Something like that,” Marigold agreed.
“All right.” Collin leaned forward on his elbows. “What are we going to do?”
Marigold blinked at him. “Pettifog and I have to go to Blumontaine to speak to Queen Hetty,” she said carefully, “because Vivien and Elgin will be furious if we don’t. You are going back to Imbervale.”
Collin’s usual grin faded away. “But I want to come with you!”
“No, you don’t. It’s awful being tangled up in the Miseries’ schemes. And you ought to get back to the palace. Does Cook know where you’ve gone? Will she be angry with you?”
Collin shrugged. “Everyone will be angry with me if I tell them I left you alone to get cursed by a bunch of wizards.”
“Not alone!” said Pettifog. “With an imp!”
Marigold ignored him. “I won’t let you get into any more trouble on my account,” she told Collin. “That’s why you’re always supposed to be the lookout!”
“I’m tired of being the lookout!” Collin protested. “I don’t want to be the lookout! If you’re going to have an adventure, I want to have one, too!”
The expression on Collin’s face now was one that Marigold had never seen before, or at least not that she’d noticed: he looked hurt. She tried not to mind, but her heart still wasn’t as shriveled as she’d hoped — and he had come all the way across the wildwood with her biplane in his bag. Even Torville hadn’t turned her away after that kind of journey.
“Well,” said Marigold, “maybe . . .” She leaned forward, then backward, studying Collin as he shifted uncomfortably in Torville’s robes. Pettifog was right; they did fit him well. And it was true that Marigold could use some help. Collin didn’t have much else in common with Torville, but he’d already fooled Countess Snoot-Harley, and that had been without the particular contraption Marigold had in mind. She could almost hear the real Torville’s voice in her ear, telling her it was the appearance of things that counted.
“Collin,” she said, “do you think you could wear a false mustache?”
The real Wizard Torville was in a terrible mood.
At least that’s what Marigold guessed when she went to the workroom to visit him the next morning. He had smeared himself across the side of the cheese dome and refused to be scraped off, inching away from Marigold’s fingers whenever she tried.
“Don’t you want to see what I’ve brought you?” Marigold asked. She held out the contraption she’d started working on out by the moat: a scale pan that could spin in circles, fitted with a wire pointer. “You can sit inside it on the blackboard,” Marigold explained, “and spin it around so the wire points to the letters you’d like to spell. Then you won’t have to waste so much time squirming.”
Torville didn’t bubble as enthusiastically as Marigold had hoped, but he did let her help him into the scale pan and place him down in the center of the chalked circle of letters. It took some practice for him to ooze across the pan in just the right way to make it spin, but within a few minutes, he was able to point out simple phrases. GO, Torville spelled with effort, AWAY.
“As a matter of fact,” Marigold told him cheerfully, “we are going away, to Blumontaine. You’re the one who’s really supposed to go, but my friend Collin is going to stand in for you. He’s got a decent disguise. That vocal powder of yours won’t last long enough to fool anyone, of course, so I’ll speak for him as your assistant, and we’ll explain to everyone that you’re still recovering from skin-crawling sickness.”
Torville looked as incredulous as a blob of glop could.
“We’re going to tell Queen Hetty that the kingdom of Foggy Gorge has tried to hire you to curse Blumontaine,” Marigold explained. “If she thinks Foggy Gorge is plotting against her, she won’t want to make peace with them — or with anyone else. Then the Miseries will leave us alone for a while, and I can get back to finding a way to fix you. Doesn’t that sound like a good plan?”
Torville shifted his weight in the scale pan. UGH, he spelled out.
It wasn’t the sort of reply Marigold had hoped for. “Well, then, do you want to come with us?”
NO, spelled Torville.
Marigold put him back on his dinner plate and spooned out some porridge to keep him from going hungry while they were gone. “We’ll be back soon,” she told him, hoping they really would.
Downstairs, Collin was stalking through the halls and muttering while Pettifog looked on with a critical eye. “Torville doesn’t stamp; he stomps,” the imp advised. “Yes, that’s much better. Now shake your fist and say you’d like to pull the ears off your enemies!”
Once Pettifog was halfway satisfied with Collin’s performance, Marigold helped Collin into Torville’s robes and slipped the loops of the false mustache over his ears. She’d fashioned it quickly out of embroidery floss and wire, and while it didn’t look convincing up close, its stiff loops and curlicues were recognizably Torville’s. When Collin pulled up his hood and stood a few feet away, Marigold couldn’t see his hair or his cheerful grin any longer, but she could just make out the shape of the mustache in the shadows. “It’s perfect,” she told him. “My most useful contraption yet.”
“It’s a little scratchy,” said Collin. “Do you think real mustaches feel this way?”
Marigold pulled on her own robes and boots. “I have no idea.”
“Maybe this is why evil wizards are evil in the first place,” Collin said. “Maybe they itch.”
Pettifog had put on his best suit and even combed back the tufts of hair below his horns. From his jacket pocket, he pulled out a jar of purple dust and handed it to Marigold. “Torville’s traveling powder,” he told her. “Straight from the storeroom and relatively fresh. You’re lucky he made a new batch last month.”
Marigold weighed the jar in her hands. Torville used his traveling powder to poof all over the fortress, so it couldn’t be too hard to manage. “I just toss a pinch in the air?” she asked Pettifog. “Like I did with the vocal powder?”
Pettifog nodded. “You’d better say where you want to go, too. An experienced wizard like Torville can simply hold the intention in his mind, but —”
“No, you’re right.” Marigold didn’t want to try holding any more intentions. “Speaking aloud is safest.”
She linked elbows with Collin, and he did the same with Pettifog. “Don’t let go of me, child,” Pettifog warned him. “Torville did once, by accident, and I ended up all alone at the edge of Foggy Gorge.” He scowled at the memory. “It was very foggy.”
With her free hand, Marigold pulled the stopper from the jar and coaxed out a pinch of powder. “Are you ready?” she asked Pettifog and Collin.
“Ready enough,” said Pettifog.
