As quietly and unobtrusively as possible, Dov tucked Ammi back inside his shirtfront, gathered up his carry-on bag, and headed for the gate area to catch his next flight. The untrained eye would have seen nothing odd or disquieting about a well- dressed single traveler walking nonchalantly through L.A. International Airport, but the eye trained in the detection of magic and all of its attendant effluvia would have noticed a pale, minty mist floating off Dov's shoulders and drifting away in his wake like a foggy cape.
It was a spell that caused the victim thereof to become a human magnet for every bore on the planet. Total strangers would glance at the spell's target and feel the irrational compulsion to unburden themselves of the full details of their gall bladder operation, or their four children's latest achievements, or the absolutely darling trick that their cat Fluffy always did when he wanted to be fed. The spell's power to attract tedious, rambling, unstoppable chitchat was quadrupled when it detected that its victim was in an escape-proof situation, such as a moving vehicle of any kind. Silent but deadly, it wafted through the terminal corridor, blew into the newsstand, and settled itself lightly over Peez.
As for Peez ...
"Is he gone yet?" Without looking up from her copy of Cosmopolitan, Peez nudged her own carry-on bag gently with the tip of one shoe.
"Yeah, he's outa here." Teddy Tumtum stuck his muzzle out of the bag. The little bear was just as unaware of Dov's parting "gift" to his sister as she was. "Him and that dumb amulet of his. What kind of a person talks to a communications device?"
"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that." Peez closed the magazine and took it over to the cashier. As she pocketed her change, she rubbed one of the quarters in a very particular way. It was one of those commemorative issue States quarters, specifically the Massachusetts coin. Its "heads" side still showed George Washington's profile, but "tails" was no longer the American eagle. Instead, in honor of one of that great state's most memorable historic events, it gleamed with a miniature representation of Paul Revere making his famous midnight ride.
Or so it did until Peez got her hands on it. Rubbing her thumb counterclockwise over the slightly raised design and muttering a few well-chosen words of power had the desired effect: A ghostly horse and rider rose up from the surface of the coin, leaving only smooth metal behind, and set off at a gallop after Dov. Peez chuckled.
"Just wait until they catch up to him, Teddy Tumtum," she said. "As soon as that horse rides right up his pants leg, he'll be hexed good and proper." She turned her back on the departing spell and headed for Baggage Claim.
"The Lost Luggage spell, I presume?" Teddy Tumtum sighed wearily as he swung along in her carryon. "That is so juvenile. So ineffective, too. Sure, he'll be annoyed the first time it happens, but he'll get over it. And by the second time, he'll catch on to the fact that someone jinxed him. Then he'll just invoke a counterspell. In the meanwhile, he's got credit cards and he's not afraid to use them. There's nothing in his check-in bag that can't be replaced by a quick shopping trip."
"A shopping trip that will steal precious time from his interviews with potential allies," Peez pointed out. She smiled.
"Why are you smiling like that?" Teddy Tumtum asked, looking suspicious. "I've never seen you smile that way. It's almost ... Machiavellian. You're up to something more than a simple Lost Luggage spell. What is it?"
"Oh, nothing much." Peez said airily. "Just a two-for-the-price-of-one deal for my darling baby brother. Not only will his check-in bag go wandering through the cosmos, but every time he comes up against any kind of security checkpoint in his travels, he's going to set it off like Krakatoa on a bad day."
"Why, you sly dog, you!" The bear was impressed. "I didn't think you had it in you."
"And he won't just set off mechanical screening devices," Peez went on, relishing Teddy Tumtum's admiration. "It works on humans, too. When he tells the person at the check-in counter that he packed his bags himself, they won't believe him. When he's asked to step out of the boarding line for a spot search of his carry-on bag, they'll examine it so closely they'll split the seams. Strip-search will become his middle name, and by the end of his trip he'll be announcing his engagement to a pair of latex gloves!" She cackled wildly.
"Oh, Peez." Teddy Tumtum sighed in bliss. "My little girl is growing up. You were never this ruthless when you were a virgin."
Peez blushed. "That has nothing to do with it," she said.
"Maybe yes, maybe no. Could be that you always had the capacity for sheer, cold- blooded skullduggery, but you've never really exploited your talent to the fullest until now." The bear wiped away a nonexistent tear. "I'm so very proud of you."
It was the strangest thing: While waiting for her suitcase to appear, Peez was accosted by a kindly little old man who decided that she looked just like his late sister, Beruria Jane, who had done missionary work in China and came back home to Ohio with the most fascinating collection of hand-carved ivory snuff bottles. There was one that looked like a dragon. Was she aware that the Chinese used an entirely different zodiac system than we did? They still had a dozen different signs, but instead of your fate depending on which month you were born, it all relied on a rotating twelve-year cycle. Each of the years was ruled by an animal, including the dragon, the horse, the ox, the rat, the monkey, the tiger, the snake, the dog, the rooster, the rabbit, the pig, and what was the twelfth one again?
She smiled and tried to be polite about it—he was such a dear, grandfatherly type— but he kept droning on and on and on about that elusive twelfth animal. Then he let her know that he had been born in the Year of the Rabbit, while Beruria Jane had been born in the Year of the Dragon. Naturally this led him to explain the characteristics of people born under those two signs, and which signs were compatible, and that his late wife had been born in the Year of the Horse. He had forgotten whether that made the two of them compatible or incompatible, but since she had been run over by a combine harvester on their fifth anniversary they really had not had much opportunity to discover whether or not they were compatible in the long run.
"And have you ever seen a combine harvester in action, my dear? Fascinating things, really. Even in spite of their tendency to run over a person's wife now and then, they are quite ingenious machines. It makes me proud to be an American, just thinking about them. Even if the Industrial Revolution didn't get started over here, we Yankees sure as shootin' knew how to make the most of it, I'll say. Although a body could come to believe that the Industrial Revolution has generated more problems than solutions, especially if you listen to the way Beruria Jane's boy, Kelvin, tells it. Not to speak ill of one's own nephew, but if that boy wasn't a born Bolshevik, then God didn't make little green apples, and I know for a fact that He did. Mighty tasty things, too, with enough sugar sprinkled on 'em. There's not enough sugar in this world to take away the taste of that Kelvin's sour attitude, though. Still, he's my dear, late sister Beruria Jane's only child, and children are a blessing. Too bad my darling Lucy Kathleen and I were never so blessed—did I tell you the peculiar way she died? It's not the sort of thing you hear tell of every day—but it was the Lord's will, and what's more—"
The man was still bemoaning the fact that he and his prematurely harvested wife had not had any children of their own—not even a Bolshevik to bless themselves with—when Peez croaked out a desperate, " 'Scuse me, please, but I really have to go to the bathroom right now," and fled for her life.