"Woman says her husband just fainted," said Rev Theo. "Go on with your ministry, we'll take care of the newlywed groom."

Mack woke up to the sound of a short burst from a police siren. He tried to sit up and found one of the deacons trying to hold him down. "Got to get up," he said.

"Don't worry, you not getting arrested today," the deacon said, smiling.

"Let me up," Mack insisted, and he rolled over and got up on his hands and knees, then stood.

Yolanda was there, but not watching him, and Mack turned to see what she was looking at.

A police car was at the edge of the crowd, which was even larger than when Mack came out of the church onto the street.

"Move out of the road," said a voice from the loudspeaker mounted on the roof of the car.

"There is no permit for this assembly. Clear the street."

Mack watched as Word stepped out from behind the pulpit and walked to the police car and laid his hand on the hood.

The car's motor stopped.

The cop turned the key and tried to start it, but the only sound was clicking.

The two front doors opened and two black policemen stepped out of the car. "Step away from the car, Reverend," said the driver.

"Son," said Word, "Jesus knows you didn't mean to do it. I tell you right now, he forgives you, and so does that boy you killed. He is happy in the arms of his Savior, and the Lord honors you as a good man and his true servant."

The officer staggered and leaned against the car for a moment, then turned and leaned against the roof and hid his face in his hands and wept.

His partner looked back and forth between him and Word. "You know each other?"

"Jesus knows you," said Word. "Stay out of your neighbor's bed. You've got no right there."

The cop got back into the passenger's seat and leaned across and tugged at his partner's belt to get him back into the car. They tried to start the engine again. Again.

Then Word laid his hand on the hood of the car and it started right up. They backed out of the crowd, did a Y-turn, and headed away.

them for yourself, and admit them all to God, and let the miracle change your life?"

"Did he heal anybody?" asked Mack quietly.

Yo Yo turned to him and grinned. "Oh, he's been doing miracles. Mostly, though, he's been whupping ass and taking names. I tell you, if this was what Jesus did when he was a mortal, no wonder they crucified him."

"I had cold dreams again," said Mack.

"I figured you did," said Yo Yo. "But I also figured I'd best wait till you were done before I woke you up."

"It's bad stuff, Yo Yo," said Mack. "We got to get back to Baldwin Hills and talk to Ceese and get going on saving the ones we can."

"It's a shame you missed the show," said Yolanda. "This Word boy, he's good at it. Oberon's got him a fine pony this time."

"He's Oberon's pony?"

"I saw all his plans, remember?"

"Yo Yo, there's terrible things happening in my neighborhood. Worse than last night, some of them. We got to go."

"Good idea." She took his hand and led him quickly away from the sidewalk in front of the church.

When they were free of the crowd, they began to jog, then to run. "So what did you think about the sex?" asked Yo Yo as they ran.

Mack couldn't believe she was asking him like that, as if it had been a movie. What did you think about the movie? Like it? Plan to see it again? Plan to recommend it to your friends?

"Oh, I forgot, you're shy."

"There's people in trouble," said Mack. "And the sex wasn't all that."

"Don't lie," said Yo Yo. "You want me again right now."

"No," said Mack truthfully. "I don't."

They jogged in silence for a few moments. "That son-of-a-bitch made you a eunuch."

"Stop!" she shouted.

At first he thought she was shouting at him, but then a police car pulled over to the curb. Yo Yo grabbed the passenger door, pulled it open, and said, "Get in, Mack Street, this is our ride."

The two officers in front welcomed them cheerfully and the driver listened as Yolanda explained where they were going. He reached over and switched on the siren and they made their way quickly back toward Baldwin Hills.

"What's going on?" asked Mack.

"I made love to you, and that filled me up with some of the power that my dear husband stored up in you. I could make this car fly right now, but only for a little way, so I thought speeding along the ground would be good enough."

Mack ignored the fact that she thought of "my husband" as someone other than him. "What do you mean, Word's his pony?"

"He's preaching what Oberon wants him to preach. And the miracles he's doing, he's not turning them over to Puck to make them perverse. He's playing them straight. But that's the worst trickery of all, because it's all about building up Word into some kind of miracle-working saint. Wish you could have seen it. Word's a great one. He uses language almost as well as Shakespeare. And it isn't written down, he speaks it right out of his head. It's like poetry."

She quoted Word as if his sermon had been broken up into lines of verse: Do you really need to come to me To face your sins?

Can't you see them for yourself And admit them all to God And let the miracle change your life?

"Shakespeare was better than that," said Mack.

"Not off the top of his head, he wasn't," she said. "He stammered, you know. When he didn't have written lines to say. Stammered. Not real bad. Just couldn't get words out. Made him quiet in company. Ironic."

"So Oberon doesn't give Word the words to say."

"Oberon gives him knowledge. Ideas. Then Word says what he says and Oberon makes it true.

Or makes the people hearing him believe it's true. Whatever works."

"Oh, sure they are," said Yo Yo. "Tells a woman to go home and save her baby from choking, and Oberon makes it so the baby chokes just as she gets there. That kind of thing. And some of it's probably true."

"So he doesn't really heal anybody."

"Of course he does. Don't you get it? That's the trick. He uses the power he stored in you to make wishes come true. But it'll also make Word famous. Important. A saint. And Word is a good boy. Smart. He understands people. Oberon doesn't understand anybody. So he trusts Word to show him what's good to do in order to win people over. By the time he's done, Word'll be king of the world."

"We don't have kings in America."

"You will," said Yo Yo. "Because the prophet of the beast is speaking, and can the beast be far behind?"

"I had a dog once," said the officer who wasn't driving. "He was always tagging along behind me. On my bike. Got killed trying to cross a street that I barely made it across before the light."

The officer's cheery little observation silenced them for the last couple of minutes of the drive.

Mack wondered what the policeman was thinking, underneath Yo Yo's control of him. Did he seethe with resentment? Would he, when his own will reemerged? Or was he oblivious?

For that matter, am I?

Nobody should have that kind of power, to make someone want what they didn't want, or feel what they didn't feel.

Now that so many people were aware of the perverse way magic was invading their neighborhood, Mack and Yo Yo and Ceese had help.

They were too late to stop Nathaniel Brady from waking up in midair, having dreamed that he was flying. But Ceese phoned to waken his parents, who found Nathaniel lying on the driveway, suffering from a severe concussion and several broken bones. The paramedics assured them that he would not have wakened on his own and probably would have been dead by the time anybody found him in the morning. "What, did he think he was Superman?" asked a paramedic.

And when Dwight Majors found himself in the midst of making love to Kim Hiatt, Miz Smitcher was at the Hiatts' door and was able to calm everybody down and reassure them that it wasn't rape.