‘You don’t want to kill anyone, and you don’t want to eat anyone either. You’ve not really hurt any of us.’ I shrugged. ‘Sure, you smacked me around a bit and made a lot of threats, but I’ve got nothing more than a few bruises. If you’d wanted to, you could have hurt me a whole lot more. You were fast enough and strong enough to break my skull if you chose to, but you chosenotto. I know what you really want.’
‘I want to eat you all!’ Baudi bellowed, still keeping her distance from me.
‘Nah.’ I shook my head. I thought about the information Mark had given me and I felt more sure of myself. Baudi had attacked two hikers in 2003 and they’d reported that she’d nearly killed them, but she obviouslydidn’tkill them or they wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. They’d obviously escaped and not ended up in a cauldron of will-o’-the-wisp soup.
‘All you want is a bit of company,’ I continued. ‘It can’t be easy out here on your own all the time. The curse on the Fonaby Stone means you don’t get many visitors.’ I corrected myself. ‘In fact, it means you don’t getanyvisitors. There are no unwitting travellers to lead astray, nobody to chat to. That’s rough.’
Baudi didn’t say anything.
‘Being alone can be really hard,’ I said softly. I lifted my head and, for the first time, looked directly into her eyes. ‘I think I can help with that.’
Chapter
Ten
The negotiations went surprisingly smoothly. I’d had to leave the clearing to get a phone signal and Baudi had trailed me all the way, muttering, but Agatha Smiggleswith had answered her phone almost immediately and was more enthusiastic than I’d expected.
‘I have a few conditions,’ she said on speaker once I’d put my suggestion to her. ‘We’ll need to engage the services of a sorcerer to bind the wisp for the duration of each visit. It wouldn’t go down well if she decided to attack any of the museum visitors.’
I raised my eyebrows questioningly towards Baudi. Rather than looking offended, she seemed pleased by the idea that she was a dangerous creature who had to be magicked into submission. ‘That’s not a problem,’ she said.
‘We’ll also have to put her on probation to begin with. A trial period of, say, two months?’
Baudi’s mouth twisted. ‘One month.’ We eventually settled on six weeks, thus appeasing both parties.
‘I have a few conditions of my own,’ Baudi said loudly, keen to wrestle some control over the situation. ‘I want to be paid.I’m not giving my time up for free. In return for every hour I spend at the museum, I demand one bushel of apples. No stinting – I want a full bushel.’
I didn’t have the faintest idea how large a bushel was but apparently Smiggleswith did. She agreed without question.
‘Somebody will need to pick her up,’ I said. ‘I don’t think Baudi can travel into Doncaster on her own.’
‘That can be arranged, as long as she agrees to meet us by the road,’ Smiggleswith said. ‘I won’t risk any of my people tramping past the Fonaby Stone every two weeks.’
‘The curse doesn’t frighten me!’ Baudi said loudly.
I ignored her. ‘That’s settled then. Every two weeks Baudi will give a presentation to the public at Doncaster Museum. I am sure there are any number of topics on which she can wax lyrical.’
The will-o’-the-wisp nodded emphatically. ‘Damned right there are.’
‘She’ll be a very popular addition,’ Smiggleswith agreed. ‘No other museum in the country can boast of a will-o’-the-wisp on its staff. That was a fabulous idea of Lord Pemberville’s. The man is a genius.’
She wouldn’t have said that if she could have seen him at that moment, standing slack-jawed and stock-still in a smelly marsh. There was even a dribble of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth.
I refrained from commenting and ended the call. Hester flew up to my ear. ‘It’s not too late to kill her, you know. You can still do it.’
I waved her away and looked at Baudi. ‘Your turn,’ I said. ‘Let the others go.’
‘Perhaps I could keep them until the end of the week?’ she said.
I folded my arms and stared at her. She sighed. ‘Alright,then. Come on.’ She turned around and hovered back towards her lair. I followed, texting Mark and Rizwan as I walked:Disaster averted. All good now.
The three little dots appeared again. A moment later, a reply appeared:Very glad to hear it.More dots.We could only find one mention of a Chuchi. He was a nasty ogre who was known for manipulating weaker magical creatures to do his dirty work.
Hmm; like persuading will-o’-the-wisps to entrap travellers and imprison them until he arrived to crunch on their bones. I gazed at Baudi’s retreating blue back and typed another message.Was?
The response came quickly:He was killed in a fight in the nineties.
A wave of sympathy for Baudi washed through me. If she’d been holding out for a scammy ogre for thirty years, it was a wonder she’d done as well as she had. She deserved better; any living creature did.
