Golden & Grey by LOUISE ARNOLD

Author:LOUISE ARNOLD
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin Paperbacks
Published: 2006-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

“He dropped something. When he vanished. The Collector dropped something. I think it might have been, no, I’m sure, it was a coin. But that doesn’t make sense. Why would a ghost need money? It’s not like you go shopping. Is it?”

“Well actually, I do,” replied Mrs. Scruffles. “Only during the sales, but I do. But I can’t imagine the Collector standing in line to buy groceries. No, it has to be something else.”

“A Wish Coin,” Montague said, looking seriously at Mrs. Scruffles. “Well, that’s got to be it, surely. He uses Wish Coins.”

“A Wish Coin?” asked Tom.

Mrs. Scruffles was nodding. “You know how you humans have this strange custom of making a wish on money . Not paper money, as that would go soggy, but coin money, and then you throw it into a well, or a fountain? Well, those coins, all heavy with wishes, that’s how they get their name. Wish Coins.”

“Like on the news, eh Tom?” said Tike. Tom looked at him, lost for a while, before he realized what Tike was talking about.

“Actually, he’s right. It was on the news! Erm, something about coins vanishing all over the country from wishing wells and so on. The police think it might be antique-coin dealers or something like that.” Tom looked at Mrs. Scruffles, hoping that this information would help.

“Well, the police are very much out of their depth. Okay . ” Mrs. Scruffles sipped her tea thoughtfully. “So it looks like he is using Wish Coins. So we have to assume that’s how he does it.”

“Does what?” asked Tom.

“Collects the ghosts,” replied Mildred, following Mrs. Scruffles’ train of thought. Tom began to feel that familiar headache feeling that built whenever the ghosts started talking about things that were far too weird for him to understand. He massaged his forehead.

“You’re really going to have to spell this out for me. How can coins, Wish Coins, or whatever, collect ghosts?” The ghosts at the table looked at each other, waiting for someone else to respond. In the end, as usual, it was Mrs. Scruffles who took on the task.

“It’s so hard to explain this to someone who’s spent so long seeing the world from a strictly human perspective, but I will give it a go.” She topped up Tom’s tea again, for the umpteenth time in as many minutes, and continued. “The world is riddled with different types of magic, Tom. Just because most humans choose not to believe it, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. When humans take a coin, a strictly normal, could swap-it-for-penny-sweets or put-it-in-a-piggy-bank coin, and they make a wish on it, it changes. The wish clings to the coin, melds with it. It makes it special. It makes it magic.”

Tom’s brain groaned. “But I thought that you said before that wishes don’t come true. Remember, when I asked you how I could see ghosts, when all this first happened?”

Mrs. Scruffles was shaking her head, smiling. “Oh, wishes come true all the time, Tom.

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