"To walk through the plane," she said. "To see if I notice anything."

"I'll come with you."

"No," she said. "One of us stays here to guard our place. So she can't leave a curse for us here."

"Then I'll walk the plane," said Ivan. "I'm more likely to notice if something is wrong."

She agreed. Ivan got up and walked back into coach. People were still boarding, but the crowd was thinner—most people were in their seats. At the back, Ivan scanned the lavatories. He even thought of lifting the toilet lids, and then laughed at himself for such an absurd idea—and then had to go in and lift every last one of them, because once he had thought of it, he had to do it, in case it was Aware that had caused him to pick up on some subliminal clue. Naturally, the toilets were normal—stained with blue fluid, in rooms so tiny that you had to be a ballet dancer to turn around. There was nothing wrong with them that hadn't started at the design phase.

"Is something wrong?" asked the flight attendant behind him.

"No," said Ivan. He came out of the bathroom.

"It's a good time to take your seat, sir," she said.

He was a little embarrassed, but now it felt all the more urgent to him that he check every toilet. Yet he had already checked every one of them, hadn't he?

On impulse, he asked the flight attendant, "How many lavatories are there back here?"

"Just here in the back?" she asked. "Six."

"That's funny," said Ivan. "I only counted five."

"You only need one at a time, anyway," she said with a smile.

"Really? Six?"

Humoring him, she pointed to them all in turn. "One, two, three, four, five. See?"

"OK," he said. It was clear she had no idea what she had just said.

He needed to get her out of the way. "Do I have time to use one?" he asked.

"If you're quick." She smiled her official smile—the one that said "You're an idiot but I'm paid to be nice to you"—and went back up the aisle, helping people settle in.

Ivan thought about what had just happened. Or tried to. His brain was a muddle, suddenly. She had said there were six bathrooms, hadn't she? He tried to count them. He placed a hand on each door and said the number. And he got to six, all right. But had he counted one of them twice? Had he touched every door?

And then he realized. It didn't matter where the missing bathroom was, or even if there was a bathroom missing. The flight attendant had said six and then counted five. He himself was confused about what was before his eyes. Maybe it was just nerves or carelessness. But maybe it wasn't. And Ivan wasn't taking any chances.

He walked briskly to the front of the plane. The flight attendant was about to close the door. "Wait," he said to her. "We're getting off."

"What? Why?" she demanded.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "We've decided not to go."

"You're going to delay the whole flight," she said. "We can't take off until we've found your luggage underneath and removed it."

"It doesn't matter. We're getting off."

He took a step toward first class to get Katerina, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the flight attendant resume closing the door. He whirled around. "If you close that door I'll sue the airline and you for kidnapping!"

"What are you talking about?" she said.

"I asked you not to close the door."

"I have to close the door. We can't take off unless we close the door."

Another flight attendant came up to him. "Sir, please take your seat now."

"I'm not flying on this plane! I'm getting off! I told her not to close the door, I have to get my wife. She doesn't speak English. We're not taking this flight."

"Of course, sir. Even though that will be an inconvenience to everyone else, since we have to wait while your luggage is unloaded, and—"

"The other flight attendant already explained that," said Ivan.

"Honestly," the first one said, "he never said a word about it to me."

To Ivan, the confusion, the forgetfulness—they were proof that he was absolutely right. There was magic on this plane, and he was not going to be in it when it took off. He couldn't walk away from the door of the plane or they would forget that he was leaving and close it—and he knew that once it closed, they would cite FAA regulations or some such nonsense and refuse to open it again. Yet he also was quite sure that if he sent one of them to get Katerina, she'd forget what she was doing before she got to Katerina's seat, or screw it up in some other way.

So he called out. Not Katerina's name, because there was a chance Baba Yaga, who was almost certainly hiding in a bathroom stall, could hear him. So he called, "Ruthie!" And again. And a third time, until finally Katerina turned around. He beckoned to her. She unfastened her seatbelt and came toward him. "Bring your things," he said, when she was close enough to hear a whisper. "Hurry."

She rushed back to their places, pulled everything out from under the seats, and came back. The whole time, Ivan had to keep saying, "My wife is coming, she's getting our things, please be patient, don't close the door." As long as he kept talking, they remembered that he was leaving. If he left a pause, they forgot everything and he had to start all over.

Only when they were physically off the plane, standing at the entrance, did the flight attendants finally recover their short-term memory. Now they were quite cold to him and Katerina. But despite all the folderol, the baggage compartment hadn't even been closed yet, and it took only a couple of minutes for one of the baggage handlers to return with the two small suitcases they had checked. Bags in hand, Ivan and Katerina hurried back along the ramp and the tunnel just far enough for the flight attendants to stop glaring at them and get back to business. There the two of them waited until the door of the plane closed. Then they quickly made their way back to the gate, where the clerk at the desk demanded an explanation of why they had changed their minds about the flight.

"I'm superstitious," Ivan finally said. "This didn't feel like a lucky plane to me."

"You realize that a report will be filed on this," said the clerk.

"I'm counting on it," said Ivan. "And now, would you be kind enough to book us on the next flight?''

"How will I know if it's lucky?" he said sarcastically.

"I'll tell you before takeoff," said Ivan.

Only then did Katerina get to ask him what it was that made him get off the plane. He tried to describe what happened at the lavatories, and to his relief, she agreed with him immediately. "You were right. It might not have been her, but if it was, that's just how you would feel. Confused."

"The frightening thing is how close I came to not even noticing it."

"You're not supposed to notice it. That's what the Widow's spells are all about."

"So was it Mother's Aware charm that did it?"

Katerina smiled. "Remember telling me about vaccinations? Well, when you don't get the disease, do you know whether it was the vaccination that saved you, or just that you never happened to catch it?"

Ivan grinned. "And to think you never even went to college."

When the tickets were changed to a flight two days later—the next day's flight was full—Ivan was faced with the problem of what to do in New York for two days. Not that he would mind holing up in a hotel with Katerina—in fact, that was his preferred solution—but he didn't have the money for it. So he did what every self-respecting young husband would have done in such a situation. He phoned his parents.

They told him to call back in fifteen minutes to find out where to pick up the money they were wiring. He and Katerina browsed around the shops. That's where they were when they began to notice airline personnel scurrying around quite urgently, and a buzz of conversation, knots of people jabbering about something. It was probably just Aware still working on him, Ivan thought. Until the clerk from the gate pointed out Ivan and Katerina to a couple of security guards, who approached quickly with their hands on their guns, ready to draw. "Ivan Smetski and Katerina Taina?" asked the one.