He shook his head. "That terrorists blew up the power plant. Or maybe set off some kind of nuke. They can disrupt electronics and stuff, you know."

"I think someone might have noticed a nuclear explosion," I said.

"Oh, sure," he said. "But hell, maybe somebody did. Practically no phones, radio is damned near useless. How would we know?"

"I dunno. The big boom? The vaporized city?"

The vendor snorted. "True, true. But something happened."

"Yeah," I said. "Something happened."

"And the whole damned city is getting scared." The vendor shook his head as more shouting broke out farther down the block. A police car, lights and sirens wailing, tried to bull through the traffic to move toward the disturbance, without much success.

"Getting worse," the vendor observed. "This morning it was all smiles. But people are getting afraid."

"Halloween," I said.

The vendor glanced at me and shivered. "Maybe that's part of it. Maybe just because it's getting darker. Clouding over. People get spooked sometimes. Just like cattle. If they don't get the lights on, tonight might be bad here."

"Maybe," I said. I juggled the bag with my staff, trying to work out how to carry them both back down the street to the Beetle.

"Here," said the vendor. "I'll help you, son."

"Thank you," I told him, though to be honest I felt embarrassed that I actually wanted his help, much less needed it. "That old Bug there."

He walked the fifty feet down the sidewalk with me. He dropped off the sack in the front-end trunk of the VW, nodded at me, and said, "About time I got my old self out of here anyway, I think. Getting tense around here. Thunderstorm's coming in."

"Newspaper weatherman said it was supposed to be clear," I said.

The vendor snorted and tapped his nose. "I lived around this old lake all my life. There's a storm coming."

Boy was there. In spades.

He nodded to me. "You should get home. Good night to stay in and read a book."

"That sounds nice," I agreed. "Thanks again."

I nudged the Beetle out into traffic by virtue of being more willing to accept a fender-bender than anyone else on the road. I had everything I needed to try to whistle up the Erlking, but it had eaten up a lot of my day. I'd tried to call Murphy's place every time I'd stopped the car, but I never got a line through to Thomas and Butters, and now, with the afternoon sun burning its way down toward the horizon, I had run out of daylight.

It was time to rendezvous with the Wardens, so I headed for McAnally's.