"You want a ride, you get to the bus stop on time."

Mack whirled on her and glared at her and damn if he didn't discover in that very moment that he had a look. Just like Mrs. DeVries. He could just focus his eyes on this mean bus driver and she wilted like lettuce in the microwave. "You paid to take children to school," he said to her. "You do your job or lose it."

Then he jumped down the steps like he always did, and behind him the other kids, who had heard the exchange, whooped and laughed and whistled their way past the driver and out of the bus.

I did my own little revolution, thought Mack, and I feel fine.

But that night, when he got back into the neighborhood, it didn't take long for him to hear that Hershey Fillmore had found the perfect way to get rid of Yolanda White. Baldwin Hills had originally been built as a white neighborhood, and as old Hershey suspected, there were covenants in the deeds of a lot of the houses. There was one on the deed to Dr. Phelps's house, which Yolanda White had just purchased.

"You mean a bunch of black people are going to sue to enforce a racist deed?" Mack asked, incredulous.

"They not going to enforce it, those things don't hold up in court anymore," said Ebby. "No, they going to try to nullify the sale because she didn't strike it out of the deed when she bought the house."

"They lost their minds or something? Dr. Phelps didn't strike it out either or it wouldn't have been there."

"Hate is an ugly thing," said Ebby.

"I'll tell you what," said Mack. "Somebody needs to tell that woman what they planning to do."

"And I guess that means you plan to be that somebody?"

"Who else? I already talked to her once."

Ebby was taken aback. "When you talk to her?"

"She give me a ride to school a couple of weeks ago."

"And you didn't mention that last night?" Ebby asked.

"Didn't come up," he said.

"The very woman everybody was talking about in a whole meeting and it 'didn't come up'?"

Was Ebby going insane on him? "I told you she went by Yo Yo," said Mack. "So I must have met her. If you asked me how, I would've told you."

"I thought we was friends, Mack Street." And she turned around and went back inside her house, leaving him out on the street, feeling, for the first time in many years, excluded from one of the homes in Baldwin Hills.

Chapter 14

PLAYING POOL Mack had a cold dream that night, and it was Yolanda White's dream.

In the dream, Yo Yo rode a powerful horse across a prairie, with herds of cattle grazing in the shade of scattered trees or drinking from shallow streams. But the sky wasn't the shining blue of cowboy country, it was sick yellow and brown, like the worst day of smog all wrapped up in a dust storm.

In the dream Mack saw a mountain of bones, and perched on top of it a creature like a banana slug, it was so filthy and slimy and thick. Only after creeping and sliming around awhile on top of the pile of bones it unfolded a huge pair of wings like a moth and took off up into the smoky sky in search of more, because it was always hungry.

It was Yo Yo's job to stop it from eating her cattle.

The thing is, through that whole dream, Yo Yo wasn't alone. It drove Mack crazy because try as he might, he couldn't bend the dream, couldn't make the woman turn her head and see who it was riding with her. Sometimes Mack thought the other person was on the horse behind her, and sometimes he thought the other person was flying alongside like a bird, or running like a dog, always just out of sight.

Mack couldn't help but think: Maybe it's me.

Maybe she needs me and that's why I'm seeing this dream. Maybe her deep wish is not the death of the dragonslug. Maybe what she's wishing for is that invisible companion.

The girl rode up to the mountain of old bones, and the huge slug spread its wings and flew, and it was time to kill it or give up and let it devour the whole herd. Only then did she realize that she didn't have a gun or a spear or even so much as a rock to throw. Somehow she had lost her weapon—though in the dream Mack never noticed her having a weapon in the first place.

The flying slug was spiraling down at her, and then suddenly the bird or dog or man who was with her, he—or it—leapt at the monster. Always it was visible only out of the corner of her eye, so Mack couldn't see who it was or whether the monster killed it or whether it sank its teeth or a beak or a knife into the beast. Because just at the moment when Yo Yo was turning to look, the dream stopped.

It stopped, and not because Mack had been able to turn it into his own dream of the canyon. It just stopped.

But he remembered his dream, and realized that his dream and hers were alike. She had somebody beside her in her dream, and Mack had somebody beside him in his. Somebody you could never quite look at.

Each of us is in the other one's dream.

She needs me to kill that dragonslug. And I need her to... or do I? She's the one driving, if she's the person in my dream. She's the one who drives me into danger.

But in her dream she needs me. In her dream I'm the hero who slays the...

If it's me. If I'm the one who attacks that flying slug.

If I'm part of her wish, and her wish comes true, then it'll come true some ugly way, and do I want to be a part of that?

So he decided not to go up the street to her house today. Instead, though it was so early in the morning that it was still full dark, he got up and jogged down the street to Skinny House. If he woke Puck that was too damn bad. Puck was immortal—waking up early one morning wouldn't kill him.

He should have known Puck would be awake, racking up a game of pool on a table that nearly filled the living room. The other furniture was stacked up along one wall, and there was more of it than could have fit in the living room even without the pool table.

"Going into the moving and storage business?" Mack asked him.

"Quiet. This is a tricky shot."

"It's the break," said Mack.

Puck looked up at him, put a finger to his lips, then let fly with a sharp stroke of the cue.

The white ball struck at only the slightest angle from dead center on the front ball. All of them took off, four of them going directly into four different pockets. And after only another rebound or two, all the others but the eight ball and the cue ball were in the pockets. And the eight ball teetered on the edge.

"You distracted me," said Puck. "Ruined my shot."

Mack snorted. "Like a three-year-old. 'Look what you made me do.' "

"I don't use magic on shots like that," said Puck.

"Bullshit," said Mack.

"Not to an exorbitant degree, anyway," said Puck. "I've had a lot of practice."

"She's in my dream and it's not like the others," said Mack. "It's not her wish."

"You mind telling me who 'she' is?"

"Yolanda White. Yo Yo. Girl on a motorcycle, lives just below the drainage basin. She gave me a ride to school a couple of weeks ago."

"Stay away from women on motorcycles," said Puck. "They're usually bad for you."

"Why do I get her dream when it's not a wish?"

"Doesn't explain why I dreamed her dream."

"Backup," said Puck.

At first Mack thought he was giving him a command, and he took a step back.

Puck rolled his eyes. "Come on, Mack, you're not stupid. I mean you're like a backup device for a computer. She's storing copies of her most important dreams in your head."

"I don't mean to repeat myself, but bullshit."

"You asked me a question, I did my best to answer."

"That wasn't your best," said Mack. "You know what happens with those cold dreams is magic, and magic is something you know about."

"I don't always know what he's doing."