Physik - By Angie Sage Page 0,80

while its occupant stepped ashore and, with a disapproving expression, picked her way up a muddy path that led to a little thatched cottage.

Queen Etheldredda Passed Through the door and the cottage's inhabitant - a comfortable-looking woman dressed in a large patchwork tent - looked up from her seat by the fire, puzzled at the Disturbance she had felt blow into the room. She shivered as Queen Etheldredda drifted by, sending the candle flames guttering. Aunt Zelda got to her feet and, through half-closed bright blue witch's eyes, she surveyed the cozy room, which suddenly no longer felt quite so cozy. But for all Aunt Zelda's Looking, she could not make out the ghost of Etheldredda as she drifted about, searching for Jenna.

Aunt Zelda was spooked. She could see a Disturbance pass across the walls of books and potion bottles as Etheldredda inspected them for signs of a hidden door, but found only a cupboard hiding a giant flask. And as Etheldredda ascended the steep stairs to the attic, her pointy nose leading the way, Aunt Zelda followed, though she did not know why.

Convinced that Jenna was there, Etheldredda searched the little attic room from top to bottom. Etheldredda Blew back the covers on all three beds, fully expecting to find Jenna hidden under one of them - but found nothing. Then she stuck her pointy nose under the beds - there was nothing - and looked in Aunt Zelda's closet, which was full of identical patchwork dresses - and still found nothing.

Aunt Zelda was, by now, frantic. She knew there was an UnQuiet Spirit in her cottage. She ran downstairs to find her Expell Spell, leaving Etheldredda poking around the attic. It was then that Etheldredda found something that Aunt Zelda had promised to keep safe for Jenna: her silver pistol. With a great effort of will, Queen Etheldredda picked up the pistol, while downstairs Aunt Zelda began to chant the Expell. In a rush of stale air - for Aunt Zelda's spell was old and had been kept in a damp cupboard - Queen Etheldredda was Expelled from the cottage and hurled into the low-tide mud of the Mott. Etheldredda picked herself up, and clutching the pistol, she reembarked on the Royal Barge.

Sitting in her cabin, away from the prying eyes of Aunt Zelda, Etheldredda inspected the pistol. Then she drew out the small silver ball that she had taken from Jenna's room. Holding the bullet in her increasingly Substantial hand, Etheldredda inspected it closely and smiled a grim smile. It was inscribed with the letters I.P. - short for Infant Princess - and had been Named for Jenna when she was a baby. It had been a stroke of luck, thought Etheldredda, bumping into the ghost of the spy who had betrayed the Heaps all those years ago. If the UnQuiet Spirit of Linda Lane had not crawled out of the river and hauled herself up onto the Royal Barge, Etheldredda would never have known about the power of a Named bullet. And luck was still on her side, because now she had the silver pistol to go with it - all she needed was the princess to point it at.

The ghostly Royal Barge drifted away from Keeper's Cottage, leaving a very unsettled Aunt Zelda in its wake. Lounging on her cushions, rocked by the slight swell of an ancient storm, Queen Etheldredda closed her eyes and dreamed of the day soon to come when the Princess would be no more and the Castle would revert to its rightful Queen - Queen Etheldredda the Everlasting.
Chapter 31 Draco's Hoard
The pale light of a frosty autumn morning was trying to shine in through the high windows at the back of the ground floor of Warehouse Number Nine. It was not helped by the thick green glass in the tiny windows or by the layers of grime that covered them, but it did its best and eventually emerged as long shafts of feeble brightness swimming with great shoals of dust.

"Where did you say this wretched mirror was, Alther?" asked Alice crossly, as she negotiated her way out from underneath a stuffed elephant. Alther was sitting on an ebony chest, which was firmly bound with thick iron straps and secured with a huge lock. DUTY UNPAID: IMPOUNDED was stamped all over it in bright red, as though some past Customs Officer had lost his temper and taken it out on the chest.

Alther looked ill; he felt as if he had eaten