"The Lost Luggage spell, I presume?" Teddy Tumtum sighed wearily as he swung along in her carryon. "That is so juvenile. So ineffective, too. Sure, he'll be annoyed the first time it happens, but he'll get over it. And by the second time, he'll catch on to the fact that someone jinxed him. Then he'll just invoke a counterspell. In the meanwhile, he's got credit cards and he's not afraid to use them. There's nothing in his check-in bag that can't be replaced by a quick shopping trip."

"A shopping trip that will steal precious time from his interviews with potential allies," Peez pointed out. She smiled.

"Why are you smiling like that?" Teddy Tumtum asked, looking suspicious. "I've never seen you smile that way. It's almost ... Machiavellian. You're up to something more than a simple Lost Luggage spell. What is it?"

"Oh, nothing much." Peez said airily. "Just a two-for-the-price-of-one deal for my darling baby brother. Not only will his check-in bag go wandering through the cosmos, but every time he comes up against any kind of security checkpoint in his travels, he's going to set it off like Krakatoa on a bad day."

"Why, you sly dog, you!" The bear was impressed. "I didn't think you had it in you."

"And he won't just set off mechanical screening devices," Peez went on, relishing Teddy Tumtum's admiration. "It works on humans, too. When he tells the person at the check-in counter that he packed his bags himself, they won't believe him. When he's asked to step out of the boarding line for a spot search of his carry-on bag, they'll examine it so closely they'll split the seams. Strip-search will become his middle name, and by the end of his trip he'll be announcing his engagement to a pair of latex gloves!" She cackled wildly.

"Oh, Peez." Teddy Tumtum sighed in bliss. "My little girl is growing up. You were never this ruthless when you were a virgin."

Peez blushed. "That has nothing to do with it," she said.

"Maybe yes, maybe no. Could be that you always had the capacity for sheer, cold- blooded skullduggery, but you've never really exploited your talent to the fullest until now." The bear wiped away a nonexistent tear. "I'm so very proud of you."

It was the strangest thing: While waiting for her suitcase to appear, Peez was accosted by a kindly little old man who decided that she looked just like his late sister, Beruria Jane, who had done missionary work in China and came back home to Ohio with the most fascinating collection of hand-carved ivory snuff bottles. There was one that looked like a dragon. Was she aware that the Chinese used an entirely different zodiac system than we did? They still had a dozen different signs, but instead of your fate depending on which month you were born, it all relied on a rotating twelve-year cycle. Each of the years was ruled by an animal, including the dragon, the horse, the ox, the rat, the monkey, the tiger, the snake, the dog, the rooster, the rabbit, the pig, and what was the twelfth one again?

She smiled and tried to be polite about it—he was such a dear, grandfatherly type— but he kept droning on and on and on about that elusive twelfth animal. Then he let her know that he had been born in the Year of the Rabbit, while Beruria Jane had been born in the Year of the Dragon. Naturally this led him to explain the characteristics of people born under those two signs, and which signs were compatible, and that his late wife had been born in the Year of the Horse. He had forgotten whether that made the two of them compatible or incompatible, but since she had been run over by a combine harvester on their fifth anniversary they really had not had much opportunity to discover whether or not they were compatible in the long run.

"And have you ever seen a combine harvester in action, my dear? Fascinating things, really. Even in spite of their tendency to run over a person's wife now and then, they are quite ingenious machines. It makes me proud to be an American, just thinking about them. Even if the Industrial Revolution didn't get started over here, we Yankees sure as shootin' knew how to make the most of it, I'll say. Although a body could come to believe that the Industrial Revolution has generated more problems than solutions, especially if you listen to the way Beruria Jane's boy, Kelvin, tells it. Not to speak ill of one's own nephew, but if that boy wasn't a born Bolshevik, then God didn't make little green apples, and I know for a fact that He did. Mighty tasty things, too, with enough sugar sprinkled on 'em. There's not enough sugar in this world to take away the taste of that Kelvin's sour attitude, though. Still, he's my dear, late sister Beruria Jane's only child, and children are a blessing. Too bad my darling Lucy Kathleen and I were never so blessed—did I tell you the peculiar way she died? It's not the sort of thing you hear tell of every day—but it was the Lord's will, and what's more—"

The man was still bemoaning the fact that he and his prematurely harvested wife had not had any children of their own—not even a Bolshevik to bless themselves with—when Peez croaked out a desperate, " 'Scuse me, please, but I really have to go to the bathroom right now," and fled for her life.

Alone in the stall, she leaned her throbbing head against the cool metal wall and mumbled, "What did I do to deserve that?"

Meanwhile, Dov had just been asked to step into a side room and disrobe. He heard the snap of a latex glove being donned and shuddered. What did I do to deserve this? he wondered.

He was not alone. The spells that the warring siblings had unleashed upon each other were fired off in haste, impulsively, and without filing an Environmental Impact Statement beforehand. Innocent bystanders and passers-by in the general vicinity when the spells were launched found themselves enduring weaker versions of the same ordeals assailing Dov and Peez. Never had so many suitcases taken off for parts unknown, never had so many bores and buttonholers decided that the total stranger who just happened to be seated next to them on the plane needed to know their life stories.

As for that part of Peez's spell causing security systems to go berserk, the less said, the better. Things were bad enough without vindictive magic mucking them up even further.

Fortunately for the continued smooth running of L.A. International, the fallout effect of the Godz siblings' spells had a very short half-life. Though the magic would continue to dog its original targets until they realized they'd been hexed and wiped it away with a counterspell, it did not continue to plague the truly innocent indefinitely. By the time Dov's Seattle-bound flight was airborne, most of it had dissipated, and by the time Peez arrived at the Serene Temple of Unfailing Lifescores, it had all vanished.