Free May Contain Traces of Magic by Tom Holt

who is to come steal Jill’s biscuits, SatNav?’ he persevered, and in front of him the road narrowed, hedges closing in around him like the fingers of a grasping hand.
    â€˜I do not know,’ she replied. ‘Presumably the one who is to come happens to like plain digestives, though personally I prefer Maryland chocolate-chip cookies.’
    For some reason a great surge of joy swept through him as she said that, and he was about to tell her that he liked them too when Karen wriggled, made a noise like a pig and dragged all the bedclothes over to her side, waking him up.

CHAPTER THREE
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    â€˜ I t’s not really our sort of thing,’ the manager said, after a long silence. ‘No, sorry, I don’t see our customers going for that,’ she added, as the tiny genie hovered a few inches above the spout of its lamp, its minuscule fingers dabbing at the keypad of its mobile phone. ‘I mean, it doesn’t really do anything, does it?’
    Very true, Chris thought. ‘You get three wishes,’ he said cheerfully.
    The manager shook her head. ‘Not much good for anything, though, are they? Can’t do this, not allowed to do that—’
    â€˜Terms and conditions apply,’ he conceded reluctantly. ‘But it’s very attractively priced, and you can add the upgrade packs, which give you extra wishes, so—’
    â€˜No,’ she said firmly. ‘No, we already do the Imadjinnation range from Zauberwerke, they’re much better, you get six wishes as standard and they can actually do stuff. All yours does is sit there on its little cloud, saying, “That option is not available with this product.” Sorry, but I’ll pass on that one, thanks all the same. What else have you got?’
    â€˜Ah,’ Chris said. ‘Now I know you’re going to love this.’ He opened the sample case and took out the book. ‘ The Book of All Human Knowledge , new edition. Always been a strong seller, and now all new with additional—’
    â€˜No.’ She cut him off. ‘Sorry, we had two dozen of them last year, and when the customers got them home and opened them, all the pages were blank. Very embarrassing for us, having to explain—’
    She had a point there, too. Even with the all-new operating system (which he told her about, but she clearly wasn’t impressed) the Book was severely limited by the fact that it only told you what you really needed to know, not what you wanted, or what you thought you needed. If you tried to override the system - by, for example, thinking this isn’t what I wanted to find out about, why hasn’t the stupid thing got an index? - the Book tended to freeze, its pages blank apart from a tiny little black hourglass constantly revolving on the copyright page, just below the ISBN number.
    Chris moved on. ‘Instaglamour cream,’ he said, holding up a small glass jar. ‘Apply sparingly last thing at night, and in the morning you’re irresistibly beautiful; no-quibble guarantee, lasts up to nine hours, very sensibly priced at—’
    â€˜We stock the Superglamor-Me from Michigan Magical,’ she said wearily. ‘Lasts longer, doesn’t fade in direct sunlight. I’m surprised you’re still bothering with that stuff.’
    He explained that the Instaglamour came in four handy sizes, whereas Superglamor-Me only came in three, and it was the glamour cream of choice of international supermodels such as Ariana Vetterli and—
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜She’s not so well-known over here,’ Chris admitted. ‘Very big in Monaco, though, and she won’t use anything else. We provide a range of promotional—’
    â€˜Nah. And the same goes for the Silvertongue syrup,’ she added. ‘Doesn’t work. After all,’ she went on, a trifle unnecessarily in his opinion, ‘if it worked, you’d be using it and I’d be