Magic Street Page 0,97

missing him. But there's an evil force loose in the world, making wishes come true."

"It's that witch!" cried Ophelia.

"What witch?" asked Mack.

"That motorcycle-riding witch! She did it!"

Grand helped her sit down on the sofa in her living room. "Mrs. McCallister, Yolanda White was helping us. She held the flashlight while we dug. She kept the security guard from coming over and finding out what we was doing."

Mack and Grand looked at each other. Why would she believe such a ridiculous thing? Where did the idea come from?

"She hates me," said Ophelia, lying down on the sofa. Mr. Harrison pulled off her shoes. "Get rid of that witch...," mumbled the woman. She was nearly asleep, even if she wasn't quite there yet.

"I've got to go," said Mack. "I'm worried about Yolanda. If people start thinking she's a witch..."

"Nobody's going to believe that."

"Ophelia McCallister does," said Mack.

"Well," said Grand, "I guess you got to believe something, strange things like this going on."

"Mr. Harrison, I - "

"After what we just did, Mack Street, I think we definitely on a first-name basis."

"Sir," said Mack, who couldn't call a man older than Miz Smitcher by his first name no matter what he said, "what's going on here is magic, and Yolanda White is a magical person, but she did not cause these things tonight. It was her worst enemy caused it, and she's trying to fight him, and if she gets blamed for it, well it's just what that enemy wants."

"I'll stay with her," said Grand Harrison. "I won't let her go calling Yolanda White a witch." He thought for a moment. "I'll call my wife to come over with me."

Mack thanked him and headed out the door.

He jogged down the steep hill and as he rounded the hairpin turn he saw two things.

First, the standpipe was glowing. No longer the color of rust, it was a deep red, and it glowed as if it were being heated by lava under the earth.

And second, there was a crowd outside Yolanda's house, shouting, and some of them were beating on the door with their fists.

Was Yolanda even in there? When she left them at Ophelia's house, she said she was going to find Ceese.

But even if she wasn't in there, she could arrive at any time, and in the mood they were in, even she might not be able to keep them from dragging her off her bike. Could she change them all so they loved her? Maybe there was a reason witches in the past were mobbed - if they were really malevolent fairies, it would take a mob to overwhelm them.

Was it all true? Fairies that might be tiny or regular size. Giants. Possession by devils. Witches that flew and cursed people. All distorted memories of real encounters with beings like Puck and Yo Yo, or real trips into Fairyland.

But the reason people believed in witches in the first place - they didn't just make them up.

Maybe they met Yolanda. Or Puck. Or Oberon. Saw their power. Felt their own helplessness. Hated them, feared them. And remembered.

Did that mean there were werewolves and vampires, too? What about Superman and Spider-Man and why not Underdog, too?

It couldn't all be true. But some of it was. There was real power in the world, and it was dark and cruel, and Mack didn't know if he was right to trust Yo Yo; he knew he was right not to trust Puck.

Maybe the human race had reason to fear little creatures lurking in the woods, or people who walked the earth in human form but were really controlled by cruel entities who could make you love them, or beings of light that could be captured in bottles or jars, and if you turned them loose they'd grant your wishes and then laugh at the agony your own wishes brought to you.

Maybe the mob outside Yolanda White's house had the right response. Maybe powers like this needed to be destroyed whenever they surfaced.

Then again, he liked Yo Yo.

But how could he trust that feeling, when he knew she could make him like her, make anybody like her?

The people gathered outside her house, pounding on her doors and getting ready to break her windows, they were his neighbors. She was the stranger.

Hadn't Ceese said she tried to kill Mack himself when he was a baby? He owed her nothing.

But when he tried to imagine himself joining his neighbors in attacking Yolanda, he knew he couldn't do it. She wasn't the