Which was no longer so desirable. In fact, he didn’t want it at all anymore; his earlier lust for it made him a little nauseous.

She stayed there for an awfully long time as he slowly picked himself up out of the dirt and assessed the damages. Not bad, really. A couple of bruised ribs, some other bumps and bruises and scrapes. She didn’t seem the least interested in him anymore, and he was torn between being fawningly grateful and really pissed off. If there was a death worse than fate—well, she’d just saved him from it.

If the Little People had gotten hold of me, they’d have killed me, and they’d have taken their time about it. Not only that, but I’d have had to join them.…

He shuddered, and his nausea increased. An eternity of hunger and frustration, never being able to leave the earth, never doing anything constructive … and he could just imagine the reaction Calligan and the press would have had to finding him cold-dead on Calligan’s property.

Calligan would have had a field day, and David probably would have inadvertently taken a lot of innocent people down with him.

Not an hour ago, he’d scoffed at the Little People as being no more than superstitious drivel. Oh, he was a believer now.

Jennie continued to ignore him. He decided not to say anything. In a strange way, he was actually afraid of her. Where had she gotten that kind of power?

Maybe the stuff she had done the night he’d come over wasn’t all stage-magic crap after all.

Maybe? Get real, Spotted Horse. She’s got it, whatever it is. You should be glad she just shoved you out of her house, instead of a million other things she could have done to you for talking to her like that.

In his mind, she took on a kind of mythic status; a kind of Great Mother, like Spider Woman or Changing Woman. He wondered if he should just try to slip away before she noticed him again.

Then she spoke, and the sarcastic tone and completely ordinary words shredded his building mental image of her to rags.

“You blow your own mouth off often enough,” she said quietly, “you happen to know anything about bombs?”

Bombs? He blinked, suppressed an automatic and equally sarcastic reply, and walked over to join her.

She had his penlight in her hand; evidently he’d dropped it when she hit him. She had it focused on the medicine-pouch, and she had moved some of the dirt from around it. Now he saw the trip wires leading to it—and now he knew why the Little People had been waiting for him. They hadn’t been planning on killing him themselves; they were going to let him blow himself to pieces.