Byng, Georgia - Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

“It’s easy,” Micky replied, “because as a ladybug, you were born to do it. Just stretch out.” He extended his wings, and Molly copied him. “And just kind of reach for the air and cup it in your wings and push it down to the ground with them.”

“Like thi—?” Before Molly could finish her sentence, she had shot up into the air.

“Yes,” Micky said, now flapping beside her. “It’s great, isn’t it?”

“Amaaaaazing!” Molly yelled back as she dived upward, her laughing fit now completely behind her. “It’s a bit like swimming underwater! Except the air is thinner and easier to push than water.”

“Brilliant, isn’t it?” he shouted, laughing as he landed on the top of the sofa back.

Now they could both see Black beside his desk.

“Book, book, book,” he grunted under his breath. These words weren’t actually decipherable to Molly and Micky, because they now only spoke Ladybug, but they could understand exactly what Black was doing. He had slipped the hypnosis book into a large black shoulder bag and was gathering his coat from the back of the chair.

“We’d better follow him,” Molly buzzed. “Before he shuts the door.” Micky wiggled his front legs in agreement.

From her window-ledge vantage point, Miss Hunroe twitched her tail furiously.

“Black’s got the book,” she hissed angrily to the fat ginger cat. “And somehow those children have morphed.”

“All is not lost,” Miss Oakkton, the ginger cat, replied. “Zay probably read ze lesson on morphing into humans. We can at least get zat information from zem. Zay have no idea who we are yet, so we have ze advantage. If we can learn zose lessons from ze brats, we are halfway to achieving our aims.”

“We just need to follow Black,” purred the fluffy Miss Suzette, who had hopped back up beside them.

“Shh,” meowed Miss Hunroe, highly irritated by the turn of events. “Follow me.” Turning, she leaped off the window ledge.

Micky and Molly took flight and, still a little unsteady, followed Black out of his office, slipping past him as he switched off the light. Micky, it had to be said, was better at flying than Molly. She tipped from left to right like an erratic seesaw. She found the noise of her wings much louder than she’d expected. Not as loud as the blades of a helicopter, but the whirring, flicking noise meant she could hardly hear Micky when he called over to her.

“Relax, Molly. You look so serious!”

“How can you tell?” she yelled back.

“Your antennas are too stiff!”

Molly noticed there was a distinct smile on the black, glossy face of Micky the ladybug. Now it was his turn to laugh.

“Okay, I’ll try to relax!” she shouted, and she gave a sigh as she flew. Immediately the flight improved. “Less turbulence now!”

Molly and Micky flew high in the casino room, dodging the massive golden chandeliers that now seemed as big as buildings. Molly looked down. The green baize card tables seemed like green fields, and the casino customers were like huge giants. Ahead of them, Theobald Black’s head bobbed slowly up and down as he negotiated the crowds and crossed the room.

“Quick!” Micky shouted as Black reached the revolving door. “We have to get through.” He dived kamikazelike toward the revolving segment of the door with Black. Molly misjudged her speed and hit the glass. Surprisingly, the collision didn’t hurt as much as she thought it might, but it did cause her to tailspin.

“Pull out, pull out!” Micky screeched, and like some sort of super bug he jetted below Molly and budged her upward so that she moved forward as the door turned. In the next second they were blown out into the cold night air of the street.

“Thanks! I could have been squashed there, Micky. Thanks.” Molly shuddered as she regained control of herself. Both ladybugs treaded air and watched Black set off. “The best thing to do would be to land on him, and get a free ride.”

“Good idea!”

Opposite the casino, standing on the marble porch of a very smart jewelry shop with his brown collar up, AH2 heard his red tracking device beep. Pulling off a glove, he quickly tugged it out of his pocket to consult it.

Molly Moon was coming out of the casino. AH2 looked up expectantly but, to his puzzlement, saw only a dark-haired man in a camel-hair coat. As he stepped out to turn right, so AH2’s gadget told him that Molly Moon was also turning right. In fact, she seemed to be following him. She was invisible . AH2 gulped. If Molly Moon was an alien, perhaps the true alien form was like this—invisible! Why, if this was true, there might be millions of aliens living on Earth without humans having the slightest knowledge of them!

Then something else grabbed AH2’s attention. Those cats! There they were again! They’d come out of the alley and were darting from shadow to shadow in pursuit of the man. AH2 waited until Black, the Molly Moon alien phantom, and the cats were all a safe distance away, and then he began to follow.

Up in Black’s office, Lily sat in the dark cupboard. Her father had left the room and turned off the light. She thought about the cats. She wondered what the twins were doing. And she waited for them to start talking in low voices again. But they didn’t. Minutes ticked by. Ticktock. Ticktock. Lily’s legs began to feel cramped, and the cupboard began to feel uncomfortably small. Lily considered her predicament. She didn’t want to be hypnotized by the children, yet she didn’t want to sit in this cupboard all night either. It was so quiet. Were they there anymore?

Full of trepidation, Lily silently and slowly opened the cupboard door and slipped out. The room was dark except for some street light that was coming through the slit window where the cats had been. She glanced up at the open air vent. Perhaps the two children had escaped through the vent, or maybe, just maybe, they were still behind the sofa. With her heart pounding and her mouth dry, Lily tiptoed aross the room. She could, she knew, simply unlock the door and run, but now her curiosity had gotten the better of her. In the semidark, she peered over the sofa.

The twins had gone. Vanished. Now Lily rushed back to the desk and turned on the lamp. There on the floor behind the sofa were two heaps of clothes. The clothes that the children had been wearing!

For a moment Lily was confused. Then she realized what had happened. Those kids had morphed. There was no other way they would have left the room and left all their clothes behind.

Lily scrambled over the sofa and rummaged through the clothes. She delved in the jeans pockets for anything that might tell her who these children had been. But the pockets were empty. Whoever they were, it was clear they were after the hypnotism book.

Lily’s temper began to stir, and then guilt began to smolder like a fire inside her. She wished she had warned her dad when she had had the chance. Because of her, the book was in danger of being stolen. Maybe he was in danger.

Hundreds of miles away, Petula walked along a muddy country road. Petula followed her senses, for she could feel where Molly had been. It was as if there was radar inside her head, and Molly glowed there.

When Petula had set out, she was so full of determination and fury that this had kept her going for a good few miles. The country lanes edged with brambles and the fields full of sheep or cows or horses kept her amused for a while. She sniffed the air as she walked past unfamiliar farms where strange dogs barked. She raised her nose as she went through cottaged villages. There were hundreds of different smells, from baking smells to engine oil to hives and honey. How had she not guessed that the woman might be a threat? She shook her head at herself as she walked, making her collar rattle. When she stopped at puddles to drink, she saw her black reflection and frowned at herself. She prided herself on the way she’d kept an eye on her friend Molly. How had her guard slipped? She dropped the pebble she’d been sucking into the puddle so that her reflection was cut up by ripples.