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fast as possible. I want to run the board for
Macbeth.”
    Eli grinned. “So now he wants to run the whole show. All of a sudden Mister Big Shot. Don’t worry, there’s plenty you can do. About the performance, we’ll see how many plugs you’ve rewired. I might let you run a change or two.”
    “I knew you would,” Bren said. “Now show me about these plugs.”
    “With pleasure,” Eli said, and handed him a screwdriver.

Chapter Four
    Erika sprinted through the rain. She had pulled a short black skirt and an oversized white turtleneck on over her leotard. Shiny black boots and a red umbrella completed her costume for the rainy afternoon. As she ducked and skipped, her umbrella swerved overhead; once, when she raised it high to get out of someone’s way, it struck the branch of a tree and deluged her with raindrops. She laughed and skidded to a stop at Broadway, which was crowded and gleaming under the street lamps, already lit in the early dusk.
    Erika’s apartment building, the Apthorp, was built in a square with a garden in the middle and tall, wrought iron gates on Broadway and on West End Avenue. The doorman stood under the arch and waved to Erika as she galloped past. He was pleased to see her look so happy. Doormen know everything, and this one disapproved of Erika’s father, who left her largely alone in the big apartment overlooking the Hudson River.
    She, however, was delighted to be by herself. Once inside the apartment, she shed boots and umbrella on the floor, put an old Stones record on the phonograph, turned the volume up full, and gave herself over to a state of unaccustomed joy.
    Rose trudged through the rain with a shopping basket on her arm. The dampness made her bones ache, made her think of dreary things like age and decay and the steady passage of time. She, too, had an umbrella, which she held firmly jammed down over her head. From its shelter she peered gloomily at a glistening display of fruits and vegetables. She reached out and pinched a peach. “Lady, no touch!” cried the Korean grocer, who was watching the fruit.
    “I’ll touch if I like, and I’ll pinch you too, if you don’t get some ripe fruit,” Rose said.
    The Korean made a hasty sign with his hand, a sign that in his country was believed to avert the evil eye.
    Shaking her head, Rose turned the corner. There were plenty of these stores to choose from—all beautiful, all useless. “Plastic,” she muttered. “Plastic fruit, plastic vegetables.” They should sell that monster of a house and go live in the country, where, Rose thought, the food would be scruffy but real. She sighed. Miranda would never move. She was as happy as a flower drifting around the big rooms, dreaming and concocting spells in her lofty studio. And Bren had another year of school. Make the best of it, she thought, and stopped in front of another Korean greengrocer.
    Miranda, however, was not particularly happy. She wandered about her room in the twilight and gazed out discontentedly at the rain. Her studio was in the tower which bulged from one corner of the stone mansion. When she and Bob had first moved in, she had chosen this third-floor tower room. It had seemed a snug and, important for a witch, a very private space. Gradually, however, she had come to feel that something was missing—a sense of mystery, a touch of grandeur. It had then occurred to her that perhaps a twelve-foot ceiling was not enough. Finally a pair of baffled workmen had been hired to cut through to the floor above, and now the studio rose twenty feet to the very top of the house. Since the fourth-floor room had been provided with stained glass windows, this renovation produced a curious and gratifying effect. On sunny days the high spaces were washed with multicolored light, but on a dismal evening such as this, they were filled with purple shadows. One could imagine bats and other, less material things.
    On an impulse, Miranda went to a cupboard and selected a handful of