lost his concentration in the face of all this talk about demonic

visitations.

Jacqueline swore at him in French, and though he didn't understand the words,

the tone of her voice was clear enough. He redoubled his efforts at

maintaining

his levitation and impulsion spells, which were relatively undemanding,

really,

something any first-year warlock could do without much effort, but it was

precisely that sort of spell that got people into trouble.

If a transportational adept was easily distracted as, indeed, many of them

were,

otherwise they would have gone on to more advanced (and thereby more

profitable)

levels of adept certification, then the vehicle would lose levitation and/or

impulsion and crash. This was one of the reasons why most transportational

adepts kept their speeds down very low. Another was that collisions were all

too

frequent.

The best of the transportational adepts became airline pilots, a job with an

extremely high pay scale because it took an enormous amount of energy to hold

up

a plane. The job simply wore out pilots at an amazing rate, not to mention

what

could happen if they lost control of their levitation and impulsion spells.

Many

people wouldn't even get on board an airplane unless there was at least one

sorcerer along as a passenger on the flight, able to assist the pilot in case

of

an emergency. For this reason wizards and sorcerers always flew for free, in

first class, and a mage was treated as absolute royalty.

Wyrdrune hated flying, because he knew all too well how easily something

could

go wrong, if not with an exhausted pilot adept, then with an overtaxed ah-

traffic controller, whose eyes would start to cross after sitting hunched

over

for several hours, staring at all the tiny planes circling in a minature

holding

pattern inside a crystal ball. Wyrdrune's nerves were already badly frayed

from

the transatlantic flight, and now, the careening limo, skimming along way too

fast merely three feet or so above the ground, was finishing the job of

unnerving him completely.

"Could we please slow down a little?" he said.

"We are almost there," Jacqueline said impatiently. Like all the French, she

saw

driving less as a mode of transportation than as a contact sport.

"It's just that I would prefer to arrive in one piece," said Wyrdrune.

This vote of confidence upset the harried driver even more, and the limo

veered

wildly before he got it back under control. His collar was damp with

perspiration, and he kept glancing at them nervously in the rearview mirror.

"Look, it's all right," Wyrdrune told him. "Just relax. Slow down. We're not