Nine and her friends have cured the house's hiccups and are off to the strange and utterly unpredictable Back of Beyond in search of Professor Dish - Spoon's best friend and partner in all things alchemy.When they find Dish trapped by the greedy witch Ophidia in the basement of a particularly marvellous shop, it soon becomes clear they're going to need something more than Flabberghast's dicey magic and Nine's quick thinking to triumph this time. What they really need is a rather clever witch - one particularly good at curses.