Magic Street Page 0,82

wanted to do was kill you."

"I don't know why," said Ceese. "I just know that it took all the strength I had to keep from doing it. And I'm not going to let her kill you now."

Yolanda laughed. "You poor stupid sumbitch, don't you get it yet?"

And with those words, Ceese felt an overwhelming need to turn and point the gun at Mack.

"God help me," whispered Ceese. But he knew with all his heart that he was going to kill Mack.

The person he loved best in all the world. There was his finger on the trigger. The gun pointed straight at Mack's heart.

"God doesn't sweat the small stuff," said Yolanda. "He ain't going to interfere."

"Like you'd know," said Ceese. He was sweating from the effort of not pulling the trigger.

"Ceese, please put down that gun," said Mack.

"Just get out of here," Ceese said between clenched teeth.

"Yolanda," said Mack. "Let go of him. Please."

"He the one with the gun," said Yolanda.

"Titania," said Mack, in a louder voice. "Let him go."

She laughed. "You silly boy, do you think I ever told Will Shakespeare my real name?"

"Mab," said Mack. "Don't do this to him."

"Those things are dangerous. You never know where they'll be pointing when they go off."

"He couldn't have hurt you," said Mack. "Your soul is in a glass jar in a clearing with a panther watching over it."

When the compulsion left Ceese it felt like somebody removed a wall he'd been leaning against.

He stumbled and fell to one knee.

"Bend yo' knee, bow yo' head," said Yolanda. "Tote that barge until yo' dead."

"Mack," whispered Ceese. "I'm sorry."

"Why don't you boys just both sit down on the couch and tell me why you come to see me,

'stead of messing around with guns and shit."

Ceese wanted to plunge out that front door and run home. Or farther. As far as he could go to get the sense of helplessness off him. It clung to him like the stink of skunk.

So he found himself sitting on the shaggy white couch, Mack beside him, his gun still lying on the floor where he'd dropped it.

"I came to warn you," said Mack. "About the neighbors. They plan to use the law on you. Cause your house's deed got a clause in it - "

"Sandy Claus?" asked Yolanda brightly.

"Anyway, that's cause I didn't know who you were. Till you made him point the gun at me. Then I knew."

"You knew less than you think," said Yolanda. She turned to Ceese. "And you, did you come to kill me?"

"I had to know if it was you. The same one."

"You're very strong," said Yolanda. "Twice now, you told me no. Nobody tells me no."

"You can't kill Mack Street," said Ceese.

"Oh, you silly boy," she said. "That was then, this is now. I don't want him dead now. Back then he was still new, just a little wad of evil that my husband squirted out into the world. I was cleaning up. Only you wouldn't do it, Cecil Tucker. And now Mack's grown up into something else. Not just a changeling anymore."

"What's going on?" asked Mack. "Why did I suddenly dream your dream?"

"Because I came into your neighborhood," said Yolanda. "Because I needed a hero. Because nobody around here can wish for anything without it showing up in your dreams."

"Why?"

"Because you the Keeper of Dreams," said Yolanda. "You the Guardian of Wishes. Deep desire, it flows to you. From the moment you popped out of that chimney up there, all the desires around you, they got channeled. They flowed. Right to you, into you, all the power of all the wishing of your whole neighborhood."

"Why?" demanded Mack again.

"So he can worm his way back into the world."

"Who?" asked Ceese.

"My husband," said Yolanda. "The one Will Shakespeare knew as Oberon. Or as he likes to think of himself, the Master of the Universe." She laughed bitterly. "He was cruel, my husband. Not like Puck - not just playful. He was tired of flirting with the human race, he said. He was going to make an end of you and start over with some other kind of creature. One that wouldn't keep fighting him. And I didn't want to. I like humans. And Puck, he doesn't so much like you as like playing with you, but I was able to persuade him to help me."

"Bind the old devil deep inside the earth," said Yolanda. "It took the two of us and a great circle of fairies. We danced on Stonehenge and I called