Free Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones

whole lot would have been scooped up there and then.
    Then separate, you fools! Cat thought. Why don’t you all fly different ways?
    But this, it seemed, the terrified souls could not bear to do. Cat could feel them thinking that they would be lost if they were alone. They streamed on in a cluster, up into the corner of the room and then on around it again, just below the ceiling, with Master Spiderman close behind, net raised, and Cat pelting after him. There was a heart-stopping moment then when the old, small soul flew too near the draped cobwebs and got tangled in them. Again the other souls swirled to a stop and waited. Cat only got there just in time. Butterfly nets clashed as Cat managed to stumble into the cobwebs and carve them apart to let the trapped soul loose.
    As it went fluttering after the others, Tonino galloped across the room and squeezed behind the bench that Cat had stood on to open the window. The bench went over with a crash. The line of souls had just gathered speed again, but this brought them almost to a standstill. Tonino stood waving his net back and forth beside the window, trying to give them a hint.
    The souls understood—or at least the big new one that had been Gabriel de Witt seemed to. It made for the window in a glad swoop. The luminous green line of the others followed and all went whirling out through the gap into the dark night as if they had been sucked out by the draft.
    Thank goodness! Cat thought, leaning on his butterfly net and panting. Now he won’t need to kill us either.
    Master Spiderman uttered a great scream of rage. “You opened the window! You broke my spells!” He made a throwing motion toward Cat and then at Tonino. Cat felt a light, strong stickiness close about him. He had barely time to think that it felt remarkably like when you brush through a cobweb by accident before Master Spiderman was rushing up the basement steps. Cat and Tonino, sweaty and breathless and covered with dirt as they were, found they were forced to rush up the steps behind him.
    “I am not letting you out of my sight from now on!” Master Spiderman panted as they pelted through the room overhead. They were going too fast for Tonino, who nearly fell on his face as they reached the hallway. Cat dragged him upright while Master Spiderman was hurling open the front door, and they pelted on, out into the street. It was pitch-dark out there. Curtains were drawn over the windows of all the houses and there were no kinds of streetlights anywhere. Master Spiderman stopped, panting heavily, and seemed to be staring wildly around.
    For a second or so Cat had hopes that the escaped souls had got away, or at least had had the sense to hide.
    But the souls had no sense. They did not have proper brains to have sense with , Cat thought sadly. They were hovering in a little cluster at the end of the street, just as greenly luminous and easy to see as they had been in the basement, and bobbing anxiously together as if they were discussing what to do now.
    “There!” Master Spiderman cried out triumphantly. He dived down the street, nearly pulling Cat and Tonino over.
    “Oh, fly away! Go somewhere safe!” Tonino panted as they stumbled on down the pavement.
    The souls saw them at the last possible moment—or they made up their nonminds what to do, Cat was not sure which. At all events, as Master Spiderman’s butterfly net was sweeping toward them, they swirled upward in a spiral, with the big soul that had been Gabriel de Witt’s leading, and vanished across the roof of the house on the corner.
    Master Spiderman screamed with frustration and rose into the air, too. Cat and Tonino were lugged up into the air after him, spinning and dangling sideways. Before they could right themselves, they were being towed across chimney pots and roofs at a furious speed.
    By the time Cat had hauled on Tonino and Tonino had clutched at Cat, and they had discovered that they could use the butterfly nets they still held