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.
It took more than a little tearful conversation before it emerged that it wasn't Dwight who had been wishing for Kim—Dwight was happily married. It was Kim whose wish brought her high school flame to her as he was making love to his wife. In fact, it was Michelle Majors who took the most persuading, even though she had seen her husband simply vanish.
Madeline Tucker was able to borrow a really huge brassiere from Estelle Woener so that thirteen-year-old Felicia Danes could deal with the enormous breasts she had grown during the night.
Grand Harrison and Ophelia McCallister helped soothe a hysterical Andre and Monique Simpson after they found the desiccated corpse of their six-month-dead baby between them in their bed.
"We knew about the wishes last night," said Andre, when he could talk. "We tried not to wish for our baby to be with us."
"I don't think you can tell yourself what to wish, deep down," said Ophelia. "Because I didn't wish to be with my husband, not consciously. I thought I was waiting to see him again in heaven."
Aaron Graves, Alonzo's little brother, was returned by the firefighters who found him in his pajamas, straddling a firehose at the top of a crane that was working on saving the top story of a four-story apartment building.
And Mack performed CPR on Denise Johnston until she revived. He wouldn't tell her who had wished her dead, or why.
It was after eleven at night before all the wishes had been dealt with, as much as possible, and about seventy adults were gathered in front of Yolanda White's house. This time they weren't a mob.
They were frightened—more than ever—but Mack and Yolanda and Ceese had the only explanation that fit all the facts, and they were disposed to listen.
"It's going to go on like this," said Yolanda. "Night after night. Every time Oberon, bless his heart, uses his power in this world, your wishes are going to be set loose to break hearts and cause havoc."
"But we don't wish for these things," Ophelia McCallister insisted.
"Your wishes get twisted. And you can't stop them. They're already stored up."
Mack was grateful that she didn't explain exactly where they were stored.
"So we can't do anything?" demanded Myron Graves. "Both my boys tonight—we're lucky social services didn't come and take them away because we're negligent parents and don't watch them at night."
"Why is it happening now?" asked Denise Johnston. "And can the same wish be granted again? I have a right to know who's wishing death on me."
"No, you don't," said Mack sharply. "The person who had that wish never would have acted on it. It was malice but not murder. And I don't think it'll happen again to anybody. Except maybe for the little kids, because they didn't understand their danger so they still wish for the same things."
A lot of people wanted to know who it was, but Yolanda refused to tell. "He doesn't know that Oberon is using him as a tool. He's a good man and it would tear him apart to know what's happening. And it wouldn't change a thing because Oberon will get his way, as long as he's imprisoned and has to work through a pony here in your world."
"It's a horse?" asked Miz Smitcher.
"He rides a human being like a pony. His power is irresistible."
"So we can't stop him," said Grand.
"Not by talking to the poor tool he's using. But yes, I think we can stop him. And by 'we' I mean all of us. All of you."
They promised that they were willing.
"Oh, you're willing now," said Yolanda. "We'll see what you think when I tell you how it's got to go."
"What can we do anyway?" said Romaine Tyler. "I'll do anything if it can undo the damage that's been done."
"It can't undo real things. Magic things, yes, they'll fade. But the injury to your father, that was caused by a real I-beam falling on him."
"Then why can't my wish be granted before you stop all the wishing?" said Romaine. "Because every moment of my life I wish I had never wished my stupid wish."
"How can we bury our baby again?" said Andre Simpson. "How can we explain even having his body?"
"We'll work it out," said Yolanda. "But first we got to stop any more of these damned wishes being granted. Or are any of you curious to see how tomorrow night's wishes turn out?"
Nobody was.
"I don't have the power to stop him, not by myself. I've never been as powerful as he is anyway, and I've spent the last few centuries with my soul divided from my wanderer."