"And you ate enough breakfast this morning to satisfy three ordinary cats, so don't try to pretend you're starving. It won't work."

"Someone's coming," Jasmine observed from the window.

Trouble stood up and ambled to the edge of the porch. "It's the Chairwitch of the Deadly Nightshade Gardening Club. Wasn't she just here last week?"

"It's Archaniz? Oh, bother," said Morwen, sticking her paintbrush into the can. "Has she got that idiot cat Grendel with her? I told her not to bring him anymore, but nine times out of ten she doesn't listen."

Fiddlesticks joined Trouble at the top of the porch steps. "I don't see him. I don't see anyone but her. I don't want to see her, either.

She doesn't like me."

"That's because you talk too much," Trouble told him.

"I'm going inside," Fiddlesticks announced. "Then I won't have to see her. Maybe someone's dropped some fish on the floor," he added hopefully as he trotted into the house.

Morwen landed her broomstick and stood up, just as the Chairwitch reached the porch steps. The Chairwitch looked exactly as a witch ought: tall, with a crooked black hat, stringy black hair, sharp black eyes, a long, bony nose, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. She hunched over as she walked, leaning on her broom as if it were a cane.

Morwen put the paint can on the window ledge next to Jasmine, set her broom against the wall, and said, "Good morning, Archaniz."

"Good morning, Morwen," Chairwitch Archaniz croaked. "What's this I hear about you growing lilacs in your garden?"

"Since I don't know what you've heard, I can't answer you," Morwen replied. "Come in and have some cider."

Archaniz pounded the end of her broom against the porch floor, breaking some of the twigs and scattering bits of dust and bark in all directions.

"Don't be provoking, Morwen. You're a witch. You're supposed to grow poison oak and snakeroot and wolfsbane, not lilacs. You'll get thrown out of the Deadly Nightshade Gardening Club if you aren't careful."