I had a lot of fun with this. I hope enjoy it too!

CHAPTER FIVE

Mildred peeked around the open door of the staffroom, a cardbox box under one arm and the ever faithful Maud at her side.

'Is Miss Bat there?' she asked of Miss Drill, who was sitting, apparently alone, at the big table, every line shrieking despondency.

'I'm he-ere!' trilled Miss Bat's voice from behind the door, and the girls grinned quickly at each other as they entered the room.

'We thought you might've gone into your cupboard,' Maud began apologetically with a glance towards the chanting mistress's favourite hiding place. 'What with Mistress Broomhead being here and all.'

'That's where I would like to be,' Miss Bat confessed, her eyelashes fluttering wildly. 'But you see, Miss Hardbroom locked the door the morning, and put the key – imagine, the key to my cupboard – on that belt of hers.'

Mildred beamed. 'I'm sorry for you, Miss Bat, but I'm glad for us. It would make this awfully hard, otherwise.'

Miss Bat looked puzzled while Miss Drill's head snapped up, her eyes narrowing.

'What are you two planning?' she asked suspiciously, looking not unlike Miss Hardbroom at that moment. 'Things are bad enough without any of your madcap plans making them worse –'

'Oh, ignore Miss Drill,' Miss Bat broke in, putting an arm around each girl and ushering them to a seat. 'Make yourselves comfy and tell us all about it – not that one, Mildred, it's broken. Try the one further down.'

Mildred nodded gratefully as she took another seat, prodding it first to check its stability before she sat down, the box on the table in front of her.

'So,' prompted Miss Bat, bringing her hands together in a prayer-like gesture, 'what's the idea?'

Mildred and Maud exchanged a nervous glance.

'We were thinking about what you said in the hall, Miss Drill,' Mildred began, eagerness coming to the fore. 'About getting at Broomhead with bats.'

'She doesn't like bats,' Miss Bat agreed sorrowfully, her body drooping.

Maud patted the little teacher on the arm. 'But that's a good thing, Miss Bat. We're going to use it.' She looked from one mistress to the other. 'Where are they now?'

'Broomhead's dragged them off the dungeons,' Miss Drill responded with a sigh.

'But Miss Hardbroom-' Mildred objected, and the Games mistress nodded, her features unwontedly grim.

'I know. She's doing it deliberately, to wear them down, especially Miss Hardbroom.'

Mildred's young face went hard. 'In that case, there's no time to waste.' She turned to the chanting mistress. 'We need to go down there, but we need you, too. Will you come?'

'You want me?' For a moment, Miss Bat looked girlishly pleased, but almost at once her lips began to tremble. 'I can't do anything with Broomhead, what do you want me for?'

Maud leaned forward, her expression filled with sudden mischief. 'Do you remember that holiday you took last year, the one in Inner Mongolia?'

'Of course. I would hardly forget it. It was wonderful….' Miss Bat gave a dreamy smile and the girls looked at each other in alarm. They could not afford to allow the little lady to sink into a world of her own.

Mildred gently shook Miss Bat's arm to rouse her. 'Do you remember the chants you taught us? The ones that shook the school and knocked the slates off the roof?'

Miss Drill groaned at the memory. 'I do. Those chants were horrendous, Mildred. My ears were ringing for days.'

'Exactly!' Mildred emphasised, her face alight. 'They upset the bats, too. It took ages for them to settle down again.'

'Let me get this straight,' Miss Bat interjected in such uncharacteristically business like tones that they all turned to look at her, 'you want me to do the Mongolian chants in the hope of – what? Upsetting bats?' She sounded justifiably puzzled.

For answer, Mildred opened her box. 'Not just any bats, Miss Bat. These bats,' and she tilted it slightly so that the teachers could see the four bats nestled within.

The girls watched as a slow smile spread across the faces of Miss Drill and Miss Bat. The latter jumped to her feet with airy grace, and flung out her hands. 'Then what are we waiting for? Come on, come on, come o-oon!'

And once Mildred had collected her precious box, she grabbed the girls and rushed them out of the room and towards the dungeons at a speed that left them dazed and breathless.

xxx

Deep in the dark and airless bowels of the castle, Amelia Cackle was sitting on the stone floor, her unconscious deputy in her arms. Never before had Amelia been so frightened, and never before had she felt so vulnerable.

Hecketty Broomhead loomed over them, her figure transformed into something infinitely monstrous and menacing by the twisting shadows and flares of light cast by the single lantern at her feet. Her face was almost entirely hidden, and this discomfited Amelia further, causing her to feel that she was alone with some entity that was barely human.

'So this is what you've come to,' Hecketty bellowed, her voice bouncing off the walls and echoing in the caverns in a suitably eerie fashion.

Amelia exhaled a silent breath of relief. Hecketty's silence had unnerved and disoriented her; as long as she could keep the other woman talking she would be able to control her panic.

'We're still here,' she said as lightly as she could. 'It takes more than a little bureaucracy to defeat us!' she went on, the Cackle stubbornness stiffening her spine. 'There's been a Cackle academy of some kind in this castle for more than three hundred years, Hecketty Broomhead, and you're not going to finish us off!'

'Brave words, Miss Cackle,' Hecketty hissed. 'Brave words indeed. Don't speak too soon, Amelia – I may call you that, mayn't I?'

'I can hardly prevent you,' Amelia told her icily. 'I take it I may do likewise?'

'Naturally, my dear Amelia,' Hecketty cooed, her tone oozing sugar and slime. 'Naturally. Let us get on, shall we? In the past years the standard of witching education has fallen. Fallen terribly! Our schools are rotten, and the rot must be dug out without delay and without mercy!' The shadows and flares trembled as she vibrated with her fervour.

Amelia said nothing. Her fingers had found the pulse point at her deputy's neck, and she left them there, the steady beating of the younger woman's heart providing some reassurance that she was not alone.

'Tradition, standards, history: in too many schools, they have been betrayed and pushed aside, one by one,' Hecketty continued ranting, the gist of which Amelia heard many times before, albeit without the venom that permeated every word that passed the inspector's lips. 'Luckily, times have changed, and these things will no longer be tolerated!'

'All right. What are you going to do about it?' Amelia demanded.

'Hah.' A gleam of white in the near darkness as the lantern-light caught Hecketty's bared teeth. 'It's simple, my dear: we suspect everyone, no school is exempt.' She moved closer to Amelia, close enough that Amelia could feel the fabric of Broomhead's long dress brush her ankles, and she shivered and repressed the desire to move away.

She's a predator, she remembered Constance saying the year before. As long as you can pretend you're not afraid, you've got a chance. If you don't… Constance had refused to elaborate further, but she had said enough to assist Amelia now.

'Even the merest hint of sloppiness is enough to warrant an inspection,' Hecketty continued passionately. 'Thus far, only two schools have passed with flying colours. All of the others have lamentably failed to meet our expectations.'

'What happened to them?' Amelia asked, hoping that she sounded no more than casually interested.

There was that gleam of teeth again. 'At best, they were stripped of their GAS. At worst… well, you understand, don't you, the power of examples?'

'What did you do to them?' Amelia pressed, no longer caring that her voice had started to shake. It did not matter whether Hecketty sensed her fear or not; she would still be the predator and Cackle's her prey.

Hecketty bent down so that her face was in Amelia's. An overpowering stench of sickly sweet perfume washed over Amelia, and she suddenly understood why Constance reacted so strongly to Davina's endless flowers and oils.

'Ah,' Hecketty breathed. 'That would be telling, wouldn't it?' Her glance dropped downwards, to the still oblivious Constance. 'She looks so peaceful, doesn't she?'

Amelia's arms tightened around her deputy. 'You leave her alone, Heck – Wilhelmina!' she flung at the other woman.

'Is that the best you can do?' Hecketty sounded amused, and Amelia gritted her teeth. 'Oh, there's one thing you might like to know,' the inspector added as she straightened. She paused, then: 'Pentangle's was closed last week.'

Amelia's breath caught in her chest and she slumped against the walls, gasping, Contance's head lolling on her shoulder. Once again, she was swamped with despair: Pentangle's was Cackle's old enemy and occasional ally. Pentangle's had seemed to be everything Cackle's was not: how could they have fallen?

Hecketty continued to drip her stream of poison and fear, but Amelia was no longer listening. Instead, she was trying to plan. The school in its current incarnation was undeniably finished; Hecketty had made no secret of her intentions and they were in no position to prevent her from turning them into reality.

Perhaps it's just as well we've all lost our magic, she thought dully. Surely no-one will care if we go, if we leave. Some of the girls will have to stay with us. We can go into hiding…go to France, perhaps.

'Amelia!' Hecketty shouted. 'You are not listening!'

Amelia tried to protest that she had been listening when there rose a most unearthly screech, a sound that rippled along Amelia's scalp and tingled the hairs of her neck, and she raised one hand from supporting Constance to clap against her ear.

'What was that?' Hecketty demanded, the sound of her voice obliterated by the wail.

Amelia shrugged, wishing that she could clap both hands to her head, anything to ameliorate the shrieking. Even the very walls of the castle are trembling with it, she thought numbly, and that point her head snapped up in realisation.

'This is your doing!' Hecketty screamed inaudibly.

Amelia shifted on the floor, ensuring that Constance was comfortable, and smiled. She no longer wished to block out the noise: it meant help was coming, it meant freedom.

Besides, it was rather fun watching Hecketty try to escape it. She tried to cast a noise-cancelling spell, but that failed. Then she tried a bubble-headed charm, and that succeeded, but perhaps a little too well: she gasped for breath and fell to her knees. Amelia watched curiously until the woman managed to break the spell and breathe normally again.

Meanwhile, the shrieking was getting louder and coming closer, and Hecketty began to whimper.

'I don't think we're finished with you yet,' Amelia said, knowing the other woman could not hear. Her smile broadened as the narrow passage behind them slowly filled with light, and several small winged black shapes emerged, flapping wildly.

'Bats!' howled Mistress Broomhead as they circled her head. 'Bats! I don't like bats!' She tried to move away, but the bats continued to swirl and flap. Amelia watched as she cast a vanishing spell, only to find that the number of bats doubled with every attempt, and all of them were fixated on their caster.

Amelia sat with her fallen deputy in her arms and tittered, closer to hysteria than she had ever been in all of her sixty-odd years. It was surreal; it was amazing; it was one of the funniest things she had ever seen, to watch the fearsome and austere inspector run frantically around the dungeon, trying to escape from her own personal nemesis, the sound of her screaming a descant to the banshee-like howls that were growing louder by the second.

And then a Bat of a human kind erupted out of the passage, and Amelia winced for the integrity of the castle foundations as the wailing reached a crescendo, before stopping so abruptly that Amelia wondered if she would ever be able to hear normally again.

Yet through the dimness of lantern light and tinnitus induced fog she was just able to make out Davina literally running circles around the increasingly distraught Hecketty, her black cloak flapping in a manner that was distinctly batlike.

'Go away!' she heard Davina shout, and the shout turned into a chant that went all the way up the scale: 'Go away, go away, go awaaaay' – and Amelia had to move her legs from the entrance to the passageway when Hecketty stumbled over them in her haste to escape, pursued by her spell-conjured bats and Davina, who was still alternately shouting and singing threats.

Too stunned to move, Amelia sat and blinked as the light faded until she was in darkness.

Then a soft voice from her left shoulder said, 'Well, it seems that Davina is not so flabby after all.' There was an exasperated sigh, followed by: 'And now I shall have to apologise!' and the disgust in that was the last straw for Amelia: she clutched Constance to her and laughed until she cried.

xxx

Miss Drill quite literally shoved Mistress Broomhead out the front door, with Miss Bat still swooping and chanting deliriously around the hall. The stairs and corridors were filled with girls who had swarmed there to see what all the fuss was about. Feuds and rows were temporarily put aside and the school cheered lustily when Miss Drill, aided by a willing Mildred and Maud, slammed and locked the huge oak door.

A familiar voice broke into the hysteria: weaker still than it should be, but instantly recognisable.

'What is all this shouting about, may I ask?' it asked, and guilty silence fell instantly.

The phalanx of girls parted like a sea, revealing their Headmistress and Deputy Headmistress standing side by side at the top of the stairs that lead done to the dungeons.

'Miss Hardbroom!' Mildred exclaimed from where she stood next to Miss Drill, her face split in a delighted grin. 'You're OK!'

'After a fashion,' her form mistress agreed sourly as she made her way to stand before Mildred. She was still pale, still too thin, and still leaning on her sticks, but she looked marginally better than she had for weeks, and unexpectedly invigorated.

'Well?' she demanded after a long moment where neither she nor Mildred said a word. 'Would you like to explain what has just occurred?'

'It wasn't just Mildred,' Maud put in indignantly. 'I was in on it too, and so were Miss Bat and Miss Drill.'

Miss Hardbroom's eyes flicked in her direction. 'You don't need to tell me that, Maud; it is all too clear who Mildred's accomplices were on this occasion.' Her eyes narrowed. 'I am still waiting for an explanation.'

'Now just a moment-' Miss Drill tried, as Mildred burst out, 'We just wanted to get her away from here.'

Miss Hardbroom did not even glance at her colleague, all of her attention remaining focused on her most troublesome pupil. 'And did it not occur to you, Mildred Hubble, that your interference could make matters worse?'

Mildred's face fell. 'I thought it wouldn't matter,' she muttered, scuffing at the floor with the toes of her boots. 'You said we were going to lose our GAS anyway.'

'Hmmm,' said Miss Hardbroom. 'As indeed we almost certainly have; isn't that so, Miss Cackle?'

The Headmistress nodded and moved to stand near her deputy once again. 'I'm afraid it is, Miss Hardbroom.' Her gaze travelled the rows of newly sober schoolgirls that filled the hall. 'The WTC will try to force us to close. Some of you will almost certainly be removed by your parents. However, I promise you one thing: as long as the castle is in my hands, whether there is a school here or not, you will be welcome here.'

She glanced at Mildred and Maud. 'And thanks to these two, Miss Drill and most especially, Miss Bat, I don't think we will be troubled by a visit from Mistress Broomhead for the foreseeable future.'

The girls cheered again, and Miss Cackle let them have their heads for a few minutes before raising her hand for quiet. As usual, she was ignored, and – also as usual – the girls responded instantly to the soft but still insistent command to that effect from Miss Hardbroom.

Miss Cackle nodded at her. 'Thank you, Miss Hardbroom. Now, I must confess to being curious. Mildred, Maud, Miss Bat: what did you do?'

Mildred gave her trademark toothily joyful beam. 'We did it with bats, Miss.'

'I helped,' Miss Bat screeched from where she was standing on the gallery above, and everyone turned to look up at her. 'Mildred there, and Maud, they came to me and said, can you be a bat, Miss Bat, and I nodded' – she nodded her head so vigorously that her eyelashes fluttered – 'and said, of course, and what did they want. And they said, just flap about and sing those Mongolian chants, so…'

She swooped down the stairs, her cloak flying wide like bats' wings, 'That's what I did. And it worked!' Her hands clasped at her chest and she sank down almost to the floor. 'We got rid of her!'

'With a little help from some real bats,' Miss Hardbroom put in, weighting each word equally. 'Mildred Hubble, Maud Moonshine: am I right in thinking that Winky, Blinky, Nod and Barney had their part to play?'

The girls nodded, and Miss Cackle looked surprised.

'I didn't realise you were aware of the bats, Constance,' she interjected.

Her deputy gave her a half smile. 'I wasn't unconscious the entire time, Miss Cackle. In any case, the din that Miss Bat and Mistress Broomhead made between them would have woken the dead!'

Miss Hardbroom turned back Mildred and Maud. 'Congratulations, girls. Very well done,' she went on as the pair frankly gaped at her, their jaws dropping. 'You took the hint I gave you this morning and acted on it in a timely fashion.' Her tone was warmly approving but switched back to its usual no-nonsense tenor almost at once: 'Oh, for goodness sake you two, close your mouths and stop that unladylike gawping!'

The girls obeyed on the word, their jaws snapping shut with an audible click.

Miss Cackle came to put an arm around each of them. 'Let's just say the whole affair has been a triumph in staff-pupil co-operation – and without the aid of magic,' she stated with a smile. 'I think some kind of reward is in order, don't you, Miss Hardbroom?'

'If we must, Miss Cackle,' Miss Hardbroom sighed, but the girls were quick to notice that the usual opprobrium that she attached to such a statement was lacking.

'Excellent!' Miss Cackle beamed. 'In celebration of the fact that we have disposed of an enemy, and to acknowledge that Cackle's Academy will continue no matter what, I hereby declare the rest of today - a holiday!'

And the girls, lead by Miss Drill and Miss Bat, burst into another round of cheering.

xxx

A cheerful ending for once, and no cliffs (just for you, LongVodka!), but don't let go of your seats just yet...