Magic Street

Mack shook his head. "I know all these people so well, and now I'll never see them again."

"You know what we have to do, don't you, Mack?" said Titania.

"What I don't know is why."

"Ah. Back to causality. But Mack, you do know why. As long as you're out here, then his virtues are gone from him. All he's got is his malice and his chains. And with you out here, he has a tool to use. It'll all start over again—if not this year then ten years or twenty or thirty. You're immortal, Mack. You'll always be here for him to use for some despicable purpose."

"I guess," he said.

"I don't see how it could be anything else. I won't be Mack anymore. I'll be Oberon. Which means I won't be anything, and he'll be everything."

Mack and Titania reached the hairpin turn, crested the ridge, and walked down into the basin surrounding the drainpipe. The grassy area around it had been blasted and burned and then even the ashes had blown away. There was nothing but grey California dirt.

Titania led him to the drainpipe and helped him climb up on top of it.

"What do I do, just fall down into it? It's got a grating in the way. Looks like crisscrossed rebar."

"Mack," said Titania, "your body isn't real. Not the way other bodies are. It has a whole different set of causes. So you have to trust me when I tell you that all I'm going to do is send you back down the pipe with this."

Mack looked at the gun in her hand. "That Ceese's gun?"

"Yes. And it's the gun that your mother used to stop Oberon in his tracks."

"And you're going to use it to kill me."

"Not kill. Disrupt the structure of your body and let your immortal parts back down the pipe."

"Oh, cool. Now it's fine."

"Mack," she said. "I have no choice, and neither do you. For the sake of all these people."

"I know that," he said. "That's why you didn't want to marry me, isn't it? Because you knew your victory wouldn't be complete until I was dead."

"Everything has a reason," said Titania. "But until you know all the reasons, you don't really understand any of them."

"Go ahead and shoot."

Titania aimed at him. "Bye, baby." She fired.

Mack felt nothing at all. "You missed."

"I didn't miss," she said. "It went right through your head."

"Didn't feel it."

"Jump down from there."

He did.

It hurt like crazy. Not as bad as the rip in his chest from the dragon's talon, but bad enough.

"Why did you shoot me in the hand! Now you've got to do it again!"

"This is great," said Titania. "I can shoot you just fine down here, but it wouldn't do a damn bit of good. And when you're standing up there, it halfway dematerializes you so bullets pass right through."

"Oh," said Mack. "Standing over the drainpipe does that to me?"

"It's where you came from," she said. "You popped out of there and floated around till Puck sent you up the road to Nadine Williams's womb. It was his job. As it was his job to go fetch Byron Williams and get him home before you were born."

"What about Ceese? Puck fetch him, too?"

"No, baby," said Titania. "Your own goodness called out to him. As it called out to Ura Lee Smitcher. Love and honor and courage know their own kind. Even Word Williams. It was that co

"It all comes back to me," said Mack.

"How's your hand?"

"Bloody and painful. How's your conscience?"

"Troubled," said Titania.

"You won't even miss me," said Mack.

"I will," she said, "but only for a little while."

Her words staggered him, but he nodded gravely and said, "Thank you for being honest with me."

"I'll never be anything else."

"As long as we both shall live," he said bitterly.

"How are we going to do this?"

"We aren't going to do anything. I'm going to do it."

"How?"

"If bullets go right through me when I'm over the drainpipe," said Mack, "then why would four sections of rebar stop me from dropping back down to hell?"

Then she backed away and hovered, watching.

"I'll do it," he said impatiently. "You don't have to watch."

"Yes I do," she said.

"Just have to make sure I don't cheat and run away," he said bitterly.

"Every voyager needs someone who loves him to say goodbye."

"Do you love me? Not Oberon, me?"

"I can't answer that," said Titania.

Mack turned away from her.

His feet balanced on the rim of the drainpipe, Mack made one slow turn, drinking in the hills that surrounded the little basin on three sides, and the view to the north, out over the city of Los Angeles.

I wish I'd known yesterday morning that I'd never see any of this again after today. I would have... I would have...

Only then did he realize that he wouldn't have done anything differently. Not yesterday. Not any other day of his life. There wasn't a single choice that he regretted.

Well, that's okay then, he decided. How many people get to leave this world without a single thing in their lives that they'd like to undo? Oh, there's people I wish I could have helped, but no harm that I did myself but what I set it right as quick as I could.

"Titania!" he called out.

She flew into view, a few yards away. Only now she was very small. About the size of a butterfly.

"Titania, I didn't get to tell Ebby goodbye. Will you tell her for me?"

"I will, after Puck fixes her up."

"I think maybe I might have fallen in love with her, if I'd had more time."

"In and out of love. That's what mortals do," said Titania. "Always in love yet never satisfied."

"You and Oberon are so much better?"

She smiled. "Touche, baby."

Chapter 25

ONE

Oberon stood wingless and in chains, guarded by two fairies with swords who never took their gaze from him. Over him vaulted a ceiling of solid rock, though if he had his freedom, the rock would not be solid if he didn't want it to be.

Out of the sometimes solid rock directly above his head, a small sprinkling of lights slid downward, forming a faint pillar that sank toward him.

Oberon recoiled, strained against his chains to keep himself from being touched by the descending column.

It came gently to the ground and there began to coalesce into a manshape, with a face gradually becoming clear. Mack Street. Oberon knew him well. A monster, that's what he was. All that he hated about himself, all he had purged from himself, now come back to torture him.

"Get away," he said. "I don't want you. You weaken me. You poison me."

The apparition did not answer. It wasn't solid enough to have a voice. All it did was drift toward Oberon. And reach out an ephemeral hand.

Oberon cried out as if it were torture to be so touched. But the moment the dust of light came into contact with his skin, the whole apparition brightened, thickened, until it was dazzling white light.

And Oberon thi

The two clouds of dust, bright light and infinite shadow, hovered beside each other until, with just the faintest tugging, they suddenly flew together into a single manshape.

The dust became a kaleidoscope of colors, until they finally took on a firm surface again. It was a man again, his skin warm and brown. He was still in chains, but not standing in pride as Oberon had done. Now his head was bowed, and he sank to his knees and wept, covering his face with his hands.

"What have I done," he groaned. Sobs racked his body.

As he knelt weeping, two patches of skin ru