Jane Blonde: Spy in the Sky Read online

  for my talented and brilliant nephews and nieces: richard, nick, emma, dom, christopher, hollie, jack and larissa xxx

  1 dark dreams

  2 the name game

  3 pelicans and pilots

  4 meltdown

  5 up and out

  6 too many spies

  7 sparrow storm

  8 raptor capture

  9 blame for james

  10 feathery forests

  11 compute and dispute

  12 i am a terror

  13 secret squirrel

  14 heated curlers

  15 trouble’s tale

  16 sunny jim’s swims

  17 black labs and bladders

  18 blonde the bombshell

  19 star of the spy film

  20 zoo’s news

  21 toothy terrors

  22 devolving dads

  23 tyre tracks

  24 everdene, ever blonde

  ‘No! No, you mustn’t . . . Please!’

  Janey Brown sat bolt upright and glanced at the clock. Ten o’clock. It wasn’t that long since she’d gone to bed, but these days it wasn’t unusual that she’d fallen so quickly into such a deep sleep. She’d been having some funny dreams lately too, since she’d been zapped in the stomach with Copernicus’s supersonic Lay-Z Beam a couple of months before. It was only thanks to her golden SPIsuit that it hadn’t blasted a hole straight through the middle of her. But her peculiar nightmares had never woken her up before. Had it been her own voice calling out?

  No. There it was again. A man’s voice. Her dad’s voice, to be more precise. Boz Brilliance Brown, also known as Abe Rownigan, and sometimes Solomon Brown, was shouting next door. ‘No, stop it. Let me . . . No!’

  He was in G-Mamma’s Spylab. Janey’s heart turned over. Perhaps, if they were lucky, he was sleepwalking and imagining things.

  But if they weren’t so lucky . . .

  Who could his attacker be? Their arch-enemy, Copernicus, was currently suspended in a glass case in the NASA centre in Florida, trapped in his vile half-squid body.

  ‘I . . . fight . . . not the revolver . . .’

  Her father’s frantic cries came through to her in jagged sound bites. But one word flung her into action: revolver.

  Someone was going to shoot him.

  Aware that she was only in her pyjamas, and that the route to the Wower, where she could transform into Sensational Spylet Jane Blonde, might be blocked, Janey grabbed the nearest heavy item – her clock. She smacked the wall above her fireplace at the ten-past-two position to activate the panel at the back that led to the Spylab and crouched down, ready to spring forward.

  With agonizing slowness the iron plate separating the two rooms edged upwards, and the scuffling beyond grew louder, more furious. Janey could just make out her father’s legs, bent at an odd angle as if he was in a tug of war, pulling something heavy.

  ‘Please . . . I can help!’ he was shouting, his voice anguished. Janey had never heard him sound so . . . so desperate. Almost begging. What must that creature be doing to make him sound like that?

  ‘Come on,’ urged Janey as the panel finally slid up and the tunnel through to G-Mamma’s fireplace opened up fully. She drove herself forward on her elbows, desperate to get in there before the revolver had a chance to go off. She was almost through now. Almost able to see what hideous enemy her father was struggling with. She could make out a pair of legs. Feet. Small. Smaller than hers. One of her old enemies returned, maybe? It could be Freddie/Freda, or Paulette – they were both tiny. And Freda had been very fond of her little bronze gun.

  But it was hard to figure out anything more in the whirl of wind that was flinging papers and small SPI-buy gadgets across the Spylab, plastering her father’s trousers to his legs, as he leaned . . . reached . . . grabbed for something . . .

  ‘Dad!’ Janey scrambled forward, trying to shield her eyes from the strange light, a glaze of midnight blue that seemed somehow to be all darkness and all brightness at the same time. She wished desperately for her Ultra-gogs, which would have given her a clear view of what was going on, a chance to attack the gun-wielding monster at large in the Spylab.

  ‘Dad, I’m here!’

  Her mousy hair was plucked from her shoulders, lashing her face from all sides. The mysterious glow was pulsating, that strange combination of dark and light. She couldn’t make anything out, but she raised the clock above her head in what she hoped was the direction of the enemy. ‘Dad . . . let me . . .’

  But then the whistling wind, swirling around like the vortex from her SPIroscope, twitched the clock from her hands. It clattered on to the tiled hearth and she saw – or rather felt – her father spin around to see her.

  ‘Janey! No! Get back, I can handle this. Get . . . I . . . it . . .’

  For a few seconds he was there in front of her and then he disappeared out of view, off to the left. Then he was back again. And gone. Again and again. Brief glimpses of his face. Pained. Terrified.

  But just as she managed to reach out a hand to grab a desk lamp she spied someone shrinking back into the corner. Now. She should throw the lamp at the attacker now. But there was her dad again. She might hurt him. Gone. Back again. Gone. Back again.

  And suddenly the decision was taken out of her hands – literally. With a brutal twitch, the spinning wind took hold of the lamp and flung it into the centre of the Spylab. It split the cylinder of light that Janey could now see more clearly as the lamp disappeared inside it. There was a cry . . . two cries . . . and then a hundred things happening at once . . .

  With a stomach-churning ripping noise something substantial pounded across the Spylab floor and flew out through the open window. Her father screamed and then slumped to the floor; the SPIral staircase creaked as someone leaped on to the top step and raced downstairs, through the door and out; the peculiar column of sickly black light made a furious zipping noise, stretched towards the window, blowing out all the screens in the computer banks along the workbench and the wall, and then folded in on itself until it disappeared in one last tiny pinprick of concentrated darkness.

  ‘Dad?’ Janey raced over to her father’s prone body. He looked dazed and a bit green around the edges, as if he’d just got off a fairground ride. ‘Are you OK? What was that?’

  She took his hand as he propped himself up on one elbow. ‘What was what?’ he said slowly, when he finally looked sure that he wasn’t going to be sick.

  ‘That weird light and dark thing. Was that . . . was that an enemy?’ It had not looked like something of this world. And Janey would put nothing past Copernicus and his team of evil spies.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Boz, rubbing her fingers with his thumb. ‘Nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘But there was someone here! Someone with a gun. I heard you say,’ said Janey. ‘That wasn’t nothing.’

  Her father sat up and tousled her hair. ‘Go back to bed, Janey,’ he said, easing himself into a standing position and pulling Janey to her feet. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I am a bit . . .’ Janey smothered an enormous yawn ‘. . . a bit sleepy, now you mention it.’

  Her father nodded, his expression one of great fondness tinged with a tiny hint of . . . of what? Janey couldn’t quite work it out. Sadness, maybe? Regret? She shrugged. No idea. Her head felt rather woolly.

  ‘Did you have a dream, Janey? You’ve been having them a lot lately.’

  She wasn’t sure. ‘I thought . . . Oh, I don’t know. I have been dreaming some funny things.’

  And Janey’s father dropped a kiss on to her forehead and pushed her gently towards the fireplace tunnel. ‘A good sleep will make you feel better.’

  ‘Ye
s,’ said Janey. ‘A good sleep.’

  She clambered back through the tunnel and into bed, wondering at how wild her imagination had become. That Copernicus had a lot to answer for . . . Good job she was a Sensational Spylet, with SPI – her father’s international spy organization – behind her, she thought. And then she fell sound asleep.

  The summons to the naming ceremony came at two o’clock that morning. G-Mamma had squeezed her way through the fireplace tunnel between her Spylab and Janey’s bedroom and was looming over the bed like Mummy Christmas, in her scarlet and white SPIsuit, complete with floppy hat.

  ‘Come on, Blonde,’ she barked, sergeant-majorlike. ‘Important stuff going on next door.’

  Janey sat up abruptly. ‘Am I dreaming again?’

  G-Mamma grabbed Janey’s arm between two talons and pinched hard. ‘Did that hurt?’ she purred innocently as Janey cried out. ‘Then you’re awake, Janey baby.’

  ‘Ow,’ grumbled Janey, rubbing her arm as she swung her long legs out of the bed. ‘So what’s going on? I just had this weird . . . dream. It was all tall and black and dark and light, all at the same time. With a gun! Yuck.’

  ‘Too much cheese before bed?’ suggested G-Mamma. ‘This is nothing like that.’

  ‘Well, what then?’

  ‘You’ll see with your spying eyes,’ was all G-Mamma would say, before she dropped to her knees and squirmed her way back through to her Spylab next door.

  Janey pulled on her dressing gown, brushing away the little square of clear plastic that was lodged in her hair. A sweet wrapper, no doubt, courtesy of G-Mamma. She followed, only to find that when she stood up at the other end of the tunnel, the room she was in was no longer her SPI:KE’s Spylab. In the corner where G-Mamma’s make-up bench had stood there was now a large bed, and next to it an expanse of desk covered in maps, architectural drawings and all sorts of doodles and scribbles in her father’s handwriting. Maybe that was what her nightmare was about – she’d heard the removals going on in here and her overactive brain had incorporated the noise into her dream.

  Lined up along the edge of the bed were her father, her mother (even after a few weeks it still amazed her that the quiet, unassuming Jean had finally uncovered her own identity as Gina Bellarina, super-SPI) and the newest member of the family, James, in shorts and a T-shirt. Her friends Alfie Halliday and his mum were leaning on a nearby computer bench, Wowed up in their finest SPIsuits, and loitering near the SPIral staircase were two more spies: Spylet Titian Ambition and her mother, Magenta, glowing in their matching red Lycra suits. Everyone looked solemn, but not in the usual SPI way that meant some dire disaster was about to befall the universe. More like people going into church, thought Janey.

  She was the only one in pyjamas. G-Mamma gestured towards the shower cubicle with her eyebrows and, stepping in, Janey instructed the Wower to work its magic. In mere moments she emerged in her stretchy silver SPIsuit, hair tumbling bright and blonde from a topknot, and her grey eyes framed by slender Ultra-gogs.

  ‘We’re all ready then,’ said Boz. ‘We let you sleep in a bit, Janey, after . . .’

  ‘. . . after I zapped myself in the stomach with a world-numbing Lay-Z Beam,’ finished Janey. ‘But I’m really much better now, apart from the odd nightmare. Right back to normal.’

  She looked over at her new little brother, whose gloomy dark eyes featured a lot in those dreams. They were brighter now, of course, now he’d found a family who cared for him, but still tinged with a certain sadness. Janey felt like rushing over to give him a hug, but Gina was taking his hand, and together they walked towards the middle of the room.

  Boz waved his hands to draw the SPIs in around him, and Janey linked arms with Magenta and G-Mamma, surprised at the seriousness of her father’s expression. ‘We’re welcoming a new member to our team,’ said Boz quietly, gazing straight into James’s furrowed little face.

  ‘Yes, we thought we’d do something special for James,’ said Janey’s mum, smoothing down her bronze Lycra suit self-consciously. ‘He’s a special boy, after all.’

  ‘No kidding,’ muttered Alfie, round to Janey’s left, and his mother gave him a shove. Rolling his eyes, he motioned that he was buttoning his lip.

  But it was the truth, after all. Until James had come into contact with the Rapid Evolution process, he hadn’t been a boy at all. He’d been quite happy sitting in a cage, conversing in sign language with the other chimps, especially his sister, Belle.

  Boz laid his hand on James’s head. ‘James, we want you to know that you are part of our family, and part of our team. You are a SPI Spylet now, and we would like to give you your Spylet name and Spylet identity.’

  ‘Do you have to wet his head like a baby’s at a christening?’ blurted Tish, direct as ever.

  ‘Sort of,’ said Boz with a grin. ‘Only we’ll do it in the Wower.’

  And with that the circle of SPIs opened, forming a corridor. Boz led James over to the spy shower, the mirrored exterior reflecting Boz’s solemn, handsome face alongside James’s slightly bowed figure. He walked along quietly until Boz reached over to open the door, but then suddenly he started to struggle.

  ‘Dad, he’s frightened,’ called Janey. ‘Last time he went in a machine he got changed into a whole different species, not just a new SPIsuit.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Boz, loosening his grip on James’s hand. The boy pulled free and ran over to Janey.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Janey softly, smoothing down his hair. ‘Look, I just went through the Wower, and I’m still me, just in a SPIsuit. It won’t hurt.’ She held up her little finger. ‘Pinky promise.’

  James watched her for a moment, then raised his pinky to link with hers. It was how they communicated – with gestures and sign language – since James could understand English but couldn’t speak it. They both pulled once, twice, sealing the promise, then Janey pushed him gently towards the Wower. With one backward glance in her direction, James took a deep breath and stepped inside. ‘Wow him,’ Janey ordered the machine as the door closed.

  It only took a minute, or maybe less, before she heard a tapping at the Wower door. She pulled it open, and out stepped a confident young man with his shoulders back, smiling broadly. He wore a brilliant white SPIsuit with black slashes across the legs and arms, rather like zebra stripes, and black-rimmed Ultra-gogs the same colour as his glittering eyes and hair. James looked around a little shyly, then stuck both thumbs up in front of him and grinned.

  ‘You like that then?’ Janey laughed. ‘You look great.’

  Boz smiled. ‘SPIs and Spylets, I introduce our newest member: Spylet Jimmy Sable.’

  ‘Sable the able!’ yelled G-Mamma, thinking up a rap on the spot. ‘Oh yes indeedy! Able and sable, that’s our boy, and with us he’ll have loads of joy . . .’

  Tish looked confused. ‘What does “sable” mean?’

  ‘Black, like his hair,’ Alfie told her. How he knew that, Janey couldn’t imagine – but then she noticed that he’d whipped off his PERSPIRE hat and looked it up on the mini-computer in its crown. Alfie really liked to be the first to know things.

  Jimmy Sable looked down at his suit as proudly as Janey had the first time she had transformed into Jane Blonde. She held her hand out to him and he shook it solemnly. ‘Welcome, Spylet Sable,’ she said.

  And then everyone took his hand in turn, making him feel special, making sure he felt wanted. His smile became even bigger when Janey’s mum turned around with an enormous cake lit with candles that looked like tiny sticks of SPInamite, and everyone in the room applauded.

  After that it was just like a birthday party. Or at least, she imagined it was. She hadn’t been to many. Janey chatted to Tish, played computer games with Alfie and ate handfuls of cake, once she’d managed to distract G-Mamma from it with a toss-the-jelly-bean-into-your-mouth competition. G-Mamma won easily, then complained that the sugar was hurting her teeth.

  All too soon, the party was over. Slivers of pink light were
peeking through the blinds. Morning.

  ‘Time to de-Wow, I think,’ said Boz with a yawn.

  ‘I’ll go last, seeing as my bedroom’s closest,’ offered Janey, but her father pointed to the bed in the corner.

  ‘I’m taking this room, and James will sleep downstairs,’ he said. ‘That way you and your mum can still have your space next door without us boys getting in the way.’

  Janey stared at him. ‘What about G-Mamma? And where’s all her stuff gone anyway?’

  ‘I’ve been rehoused.’ G-Mamma managed to sound only a tiny bit frosty, but Janey could tell that she wasn’t happy about it.

  ‘It’s only temporary,’ said Boz quickly. ‘G-Mamma’s got a new Spylab in the garage at the bottom of the garden.’

  ‘So actually, G-Mamma,’ said Alfie, snickering, ‘you’ve been re-shedded.’

  G-Mamma smiled brightly, making the best of things. ‘All the latest gadgetry, in my own little granny flat. I mean, erk, in my G-Mammy flat. It’s lovely. Drop by,’ she finished with a toss of her pink-tipped blonde curls, before flouncing off down the SPIral staircase.

  Hmm, thought Janey. Her father and new Spylet brother living next door. Her mother desperate to start spying again after so many years. And G-Mamma ‘rehoused’ in the garden.

  It was going to be a very interesting summer.

  So this is what it’s like for everyone else, thought Janey a couple of weeks later. She propped her head up on her hand as she tipped milk on to her cornflakes. Opposite sat her father, hunched over the newspaper, which he flicked through with one hand while feeding himself boiled egg with the other. Badly. At least Janey’s mother, scraping the cremated crumbs off her toast, added some colour to the scene: she was wearing her bronze SPIsuit, as she’d insisted on doing every morning since she’d rediscovered her spy identity. She’d even gone to her cleaning jobs in it, with the gleaming Lycra cleverly hidden under a long overall and rubber gloves.

  James nudged Janey’s arm, and she followed his long finger to see what he wanted. ‘Yoghurt? Oh, sugar.’