And now there was no point in remembering the past and sniveling and trying to catch Zabulon's eye again. He hadn't spoken to me since the hurricane last year-the one that had hit on the day when I was captured so shamefully. And he wouldn't speak to me for the next hundred years. I was sure of it.

A car moving slowly along the curb stopped with a quiet rustle of tires. It was a decent car, a Volvo, and it hadn't come from the junkyard. A jerk with a shaven head stuck his smug face out of the window, looked me up and down, and broke into a satisfied smile. Then he hissed.

"How much?"

I was dumbstruck.

"For two hours-how much?" the idiot with the shaved head asked more specifically.

I looked at the number plate-it wasn't from Moscow. So that was it.

"The prostitutes are farther down, you halfwit," I said amiably. "Get lost."

"Anyone would think you didn't screw," the disappointed idiot said, trying to save face. "Think it over, I'm feeling generous today."

"You hold onto your capital," I advised him and clicked my fingers. "You'll need it to fix your car."

I turned my back to him and walked toward the building. My palm was aching slightly from the recoil. The "gremlin" isn't a very complicated spell, but I'd cast it in too much of a hurry. I'd left the Volvo with an incorporeal creature fiddling about under its hood-not even a creature really, but a bundle of energy with an obsessive passion for destroying technology.

If he was lucky, his engine was finished. If he was unlucky, then his fancy bourgeois electronics would blow-the carburetors, the ventilators, all those gearwheels and drive-belts that the car was crammed full of. I'd never taken any interest in the insides of an automobile except in the most general terms. But I had a very clear idea of the result of using the "gremlin."

The disappointed man drove off without wasting too much time arguing. I wondered if he'd remember what I'd said when his car started going haywire. He was bound to. He'd shout, "She hexed it, the witch!" And he wouldn't even know just how right he was.