Floods 9 by Colin Thompson Page A

Aubergine.
    â€˜Well, the last place I’d look for someone would be right under my nose behind me,’ said Chrysanthemum, ‘or Belgium.’
    â€˜I think I’d rather get caught than go to Belgium,’ said Aubergine. ‘Did you know they’ve got a town called Silly?’
    â€˜I did, actually,’ said Chrysanthemum. ‘WhenI was a teenager I spent a summer there working as a nanny to a family of Silly bottle makers. I think I agree with you about going back there.’
    â€˜OK, well, that only leaves the option of going right under their noses.’
    â€˜What will they do if they catch us?’
    â€˜I’m not really sure,’ said Aubergine, ‘but it won’t be nice. You have to remember that the Floods are the most powerful wizards in creation. 47 I mean, they don’t just make armchairs of puppies float round the room. They could make the whole apartment block where the room is float around and not just around the street, but off around the moon and back, and when it got back the puppies on the armchair in that room on the fifth floor would have changed into sabre-tooth goldfish that breathe fire and speak Welsh.’
    â€˜Really?’
    â€˜Oh yes, they’ve done it before – and that was just because someone gave them fifty cents short in their change when they bought a cabbage. We’re running away with billions.’
    â€˜So, do you think they’re out looking for you now?’ said Chrysanthemum.
    â€˜Probably not,’ said Aubergine. ‘I reckon they won’t realise I’m missing until school starts next week and I’m not there.’
    â€˜How about lying?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜Why not just go back to school as if nothing has happened and if they say anything, just say you gave everything to the lady who took over the Summer School building for the Manhattan Home For Lost & Lonely Puppies?’
    â€˜That’s you.’
    â€˜Oh yes, so it is,’ said Chrysanthemum with a big grin.
    This was not a cheating grin that meant she was about to rob Aubergine. It was a conspiratorial, naughty grin that meant they were both about tocon the Floods, which if it worked would be the first time in history, apart from the time Mordonna’s father, ex-King Quatorze, took over the whole of Transylvania Waters. Compared to that, keeping a few billion dollars didn’t seem so bad.

----
    43
He also kept several gold coins up each nostril and wore origami underpants folded out of a one-million-dollar bank note.
    44
Because they were all inside his head, they were not so much all over the place as racing round, tripping over each other and making him dizzy.
    45
Apart from Betty, who has a strange version of Very Advanced Magic called Unfortunate Magic, where she can theoretically do very advanced magic, but it often comes out wrong.
    46
This was completely accurate.
    47
Apart from the Legendary Grand Master Wizard who is so legendary he may not actually exist, or may just be messing with our minds to make us think that he might not exist when he really does, or doesn’t. Or both.

‘The Headmaster tells me that Aubergine Wealth has gone missing,’ said Nerlin at dinner that night. ‘There’s no one at his home in Switzerland, nor has he been anywhere near his secret hideaways that we’re not supposed to know about. The Headmaster sent people to check. They say that the Belgian Fish Repair Shop where he has a secret apartment, the Leek Weaving Works in Wales where he has another hidey hole and the Potato Museum on Tristan da Cunha are all deserted. No one has been anywhere near them in months. It would appear that Mr Wealth and the seventeen-billion-plus dollars he made at the Summer School have done a runner.’
    The Floods and the Hulberts were all gathered in the Friday Night Dining Room at Castle Twilight to celebrate the fact that it was Friday night and dinner