"First things first," Annabelle muttered aloud, and stuck her head under the faucet. The rush of freezing cold water did nothing to wipe out the image of that gnomish, spooky figure sitting in her front room. Repeated dunking in the ice-cold stream spewing into the sink did not wash away her panic.

Shaking the excess water out of her hair, she looked at herself in the mirror. Eyes wide with shock, the top of her head soaked with water, she poked her cheeks, her chin, her ears, to convince herself that she was actually awake. "Maybe I'm dreaming," she whispered to her reflection. "Maybe this is just a dream."

She rubbed her face and hair briskly with a hand towel and when she looked back up at the mirror, the reflection of a life-sized version of the figure from her altar appeared in the glass. "Oh, this isn't a dream, chicken," it said, its voice sounding like a combination of a whisper and an echo.

Annabelle ran out of the bathroom and back into the living room, and hid behind her little couch, leaning up against its back. She sat still and tried to take deep cleansing breaths, but her heart was pumping with such anxiety that she couldn't seem to breathe deeper than her collarbones.

Okay. Okay. How to forestall an anxiety attack: ground yourself in your body. Annabelle made herself become aware of the coldness of the floor under her butt, of the scratchy fabric of the couch biting through her light T-shirt. Okay. Now name your surroundings. "My computer, my camera equipment, my bookshelves, my pictures, my books ... " Annabelle trailed off as she got a good look at her usually meticulously organized bookshelves. Not only were they completely out of alphabetical order, all the genres had been mixed up, and some of the books had been replaced upside down, or with the bindings facing in, toward the back ... "I don't believe this!" She leaped up and began to pull the volumes out by the armful.

"Yes, you do. Deep down, you believe this. Else I wouldn't be here."

Goosebumps erupted along Annabelle's arms and legs. If this were a movie, the heroine would inevitably engage with the creature instead of doing the sensible thing, which would be to run out of the house. Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille, Annabelle thought giddily. Refusing to turn around, she strove for a light, conversational tone as she sorted her books into their proper order. "Maybe I do believe this. But did you have to make such a mess?"

The creature's tone turned decidedly sulky. "I cleaned it up, didn't I?"

"You made in the first place! So it doesn't count!"

"You said that you wanted to help! Calling out to the Universe in all the four directions, help me, help me!" She whined, pathetically.

"What?" Oh, yeah. I did, didn't I. "And this is the thanks I get?" Annabelle threw Jane Austen down on top of Virginia Woolf. "Do you have any idea how long sorting out my books is going to take?" Annabelle huffed an irritated sigh, and separated Joseph Campbell and Edith Wharton.

A low grumbling and a grudging mumble told Annabelle that she'd won a point. "Stand back!" the creature demanded. Annabelle turned and saw that she had now become a rather large swan, and that it was sitting on the 'dining room' table.

"Why?" Annabelle demanded, boldly, considering that since this thing seemed able to become anything it wanted, that it might not be very wise to spar with a supernatural entities with unlimited powers. "Why should I?" she demanded, recklessly.

One minute she was standing in front of her bookshelves, the next, in a blink of an eye, she was on the other side of her couch, and her books were flying around the room, swirling as if on the current of a hurricane, floating and flying about like a flock of birds. Spinning and spiraling in a crescendo of flapping pages and fluttering covers, they lightly set themselves back on their shelves, perfectly aligned, alphabetically according to genre, just the way Annabelle liked them. One dramatic beat later, her knick-knacks, photographs, and tchotchkes followed suit, arranged chronologically in a fashion that Annabelle had always thought about, but had never got around to doing.

"Satisfied?" it snarled, now an enormous black cat lounging on the arm of the couch. With a sound like the damp snuffing of a candle, only magnified, it disappeared.

Annabelle lowered herself onto one of her chairs. The silence was deafening, and she was exhausted. It was too early in the morning to be experiencing otherworldly phenomena, and now that the thing had shown itself, she didn't know what to do. Maybe she should go stay with Maria Grazia for a few days, or even just go out now for a bit of breakfast and a reality check.

She went to throw some stuff in a bag, just in case, and dragged on a sweat suit. Grabbing up her coat, and checking for her keys, she went to unlock her front door - and found she couldn't. The chain wouldn't budge, nor any of the locks. She fruitlessly tugged at the doorknob, but it didn't even move enough to make the least bit of noise. She was locked in her own apartment.

At eleven A.M., Annabelle's stomach rumbled for the millionth time. She'd been hiding out in her bedroom for hours, and now she was starving. She'd kill someone - something, more like - for a cup of coffee, two chocolate croissants, some strawberries, and a big, fat cheese omelet. Her stomach rumbled louder at the thought. She knew she had nothing in the fridge, and that she hadn't bought coffee in almost six months.

Annabelle tried to psyche herself up. "Come on! You are being a total wimp! This is your house! You let that plant push you around, and now you're cowering in your bed just because some, some, some thing is shapeshifting all over the place?"

She remembered crazy Maeve and her prediction about the Pooka - was that what it was? She never did do that research, having gotten sidetracked by the flippin' plant. Fine, then! Time to get to work on figuring this whole thing out, and time to eat something. She flung open the door once more.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the apartment, and a beautiful spread of chocolate croissants, strawberries and raspberries, in cream, and a steaming plate of the largest, fluffiest eggs Annabelle had ever seen, was laid out on her little table. Beautiful cutlery and crockery added to the overall impression of bounty, and she took a chair, poured herself a cup of the aromatic brew, took two big bites from a croissant, lapped up three heaping spoonfuls of the berries and cream, and felt like this was the best breakfast she'd ever had - until it occurred to her to question where the food had come from.

"Bleerrgh!" She spat out a berry and dropped the delicate china coffee cup, which didn't break, but bounced and righted itself in its saucer. A robust yet echoing laugh filled the room, and Annabelle, mindful of the myth of Hades and Persephone, wondered if she was going to be making an unexpected holiday in Hell.

"Hell has nothing to do with it." It was back, lounging on the couch in it its original, vaguely female, gnome shape. Its cloak and hair moved like the light of a candle on the wall, and the creature's big greenish-hazel eyes fixed unwaveringly on Annabelle. "If you'd bothered to learn a bit about me, you'd know that."

"Yeah, well, there don't seem to be any websites about hazelnuts turning into plants turning into ... you." Annabelle looked longingly at the empty coffee cup, which filled itself a split second after her fleeting thought.

"Seems a shame to waste it ... " It purred, returning to the form of a black cat as it leaped lightly up onto the tabletop next to the coffee pot. "Go on, then. It'll do you good. Go on."

Annabelle got up and moved to the couch. "I won't! Any fairy story or myth that features the eating of magical food always ends badly."

"The bargain is struck, in any case." The cat leaped down to sit on the chair. In mid-leap it transformed into a satyr, and crossed its furry, goat-like legs.

"Would you mind picking one thing and staying with it, please?" Annabelle moodily picked at the nub of the couch. She glared at the satyr. "It's getting on my nerves. And what bargain? We don't have any bargain."

The satyr let out a gleeful laugh and clapped its hands. "Oh, indeed we have. You did, in fact, eat of the food I laid before you, and in doing so you have agreed to help me get back home. Hmmm, let's see ... " As it rose, it changed shape again, this time into a large blue heron. Holding aloft one large wing, it counted out what Annabelle ate on several feathers. "One cup of coffee," the bird clucked as it trained a beady eye on Annabelle. "Two bites of a chocolate croissant, and three spoonfuls of berries - " Its voice rose to cut off Annabelle's protest. "You'll wish it was more, missus. So." Flapping its great wings, the heron turned its other, equally beady eye in the direction of the couch. "You have exactly five weeks in which to return me to Ireland ... or else."

"What? I'm not going to Ireland! And this isn't fair, at all. I didn't know what was going on, I didn't know the rules, so there's no bargain! And why should I help anyone that, that, forces innocent people into taking unwanted trips!"

Back in its semi-human, cloaked guise, the creature tried for a conciliatory, wheedling tone. "But what about all I've done for you? Organizing your new career, getting some spirit back in that blood - not an easy feat when I was stuck, planted in that bloody wee pot! Helping you get over your little break-up with that tosser ... isn't that what you wanted? Wasn't that what you asked for?"

"I never asked ... " Annabelle trailed off. Well. Okay, that's what all the rituals had been about, and she was stunned to think that it had actually worked, and not at all surprised that it hadn't gone the way she wanted.

"Ha!" It rose and began to pace back and forth in front of the couch. "'Hadn't gone the way you wanted'! You human! Never satisfied, never happy, always asking for more, more, more, while we work ourselves down to the bone, trying to take on board all your wishes and satisfy all your whims. Never a bit of thanks for our magic touch, the slightest show of appreciation, it never occurs to you that we have a better grasp of the consequences of your silly little dreams, while we - "

"Who's 'we'?" Annabelle demanded, cutting off the creature's tirade.

It stopped pacing and turned to face Annabelle fully; as it did so, it increased its size until it seemed to fill the whole room - its voice certainly did, resonating off the walls and ceiling. "I am a Pooka, neither male nor female, animal or mineral, flora nor fauna, but any of them at any time, on any whim. I am a mischief-maker, a shape-shifter, a trickster. I have the knowledge and the means to bestow upon you your heart's desire - " The Pooka shrunk down to half size. "If you have the brains to realize it yourself."

It sighed. "Pookas are usually relegated to the realm of the poltergeist. People think we exist simply to make things go missing, to fiddle with electricity and wiring, to manifest ourselves in any number of small things that go wrong. Ha!" Her hair seemed to wave more exuberantly as she warmed to her rant. "Luckless Pookas are we who are attached to a family, time out of mind, for our responsibility is great, and even more thankless! We are ever at the beck and call of any member of a family to whom we have become attached - "

"Oh!" Annabelle leaned forward, touched. "Are you attached to me? Oh, wow! And you've come all this way, to help me?"

The Pooka looked down its nose at Annabelle. "We only come when the humans for whom we are responsible are in danger of making a complete and total bollix of their lives."

Annabelle leaped to her feet. "I was doing just fine, thank you very much! So what, I got dumped, I didn't have a job, or any prospects, um ... I was going to be fine! I was definitely going to get better, and, and, and ... damn it!" She threw a throw pillow - as well suited for throwing as its name implied - at the Pooka. It stopped short of touching the creature, suspended itself in mid-air, and then floated to the floor like a feather. "I don't need your help, I don't want anything to do with you, and I sure as hell am not going to Ireland!" She fled for the apparent safety of the bedroom, leaving the grinning Pooka to groom its flowing locks as it faded from sight.

Chapter Nineteen.

Six fifty-five P.M. In the hours since the debacle of the magical brunch, Annabelle had organized two and a half bags of clothes to donate to the Salvation Army; had purged her make-up collection of any and all lipsticks, eyeshadows, and eyeliners she'd had for more than a year; had arranged her underwear and sock drawers chromatically; had cleaned out the top shelf of her closet and decided, without too much guilt, too keep everything up there just as it was; and changed her sheets - twice. Occasionally, she stuck her head out the door, and even though the room was empty, she stayed inside where it was safe. Did she feel threatened? She sat down on her bed, and wrapped her arms around a couple of pillows. Not really. Just irritated, the kind of adolescent irritation that came from feeling like her life was being organized by forces beyond her control.

Annabelle sat up straight. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe these forces weren't beyond her control. The thing ... Pooka ... said that it was there because it was attached to her. Maybe she herself had to take control of it. Maybe she herself had to grab the bull by the horns - uh oh, Annabelle thought. What if it actually turned into a bull? Maybe she needed to get a major grip, on herself.

Maybe she needed to get up out of bed and out of the bedroom. One step at a time, she thought. Time to take back the living room.

She scooped up the cast-off clothing and nonchalantly strolled over to her little couch, upon which she rested the bulging bags. She hummed to herself as she put on the kettle, relieved that the Pooka hadn't decided to turn off her gas. The cupboards were, as she had suspected, bare; that's what happened when she got busy. She wondered if the Chinese food guy would hand her some egg foo yung and fried rice through the window? No, there was enough leftover spaghetti and meat sauce to get her through the night. And as for tomorrow ...

She had a gig tomorrow! She banged her fists on the countertop. She had research to do, CDs to listen to, batteries and micro cassette tape to buy. Time to multi-task: she tossed the pasta into a pot, added a bit of sauce and turned the gas on low. Pouring hot water into a mug of fennel tea, she booted up her computer to start surfing Dan Minnehan. As she waited for her Powerbook to get ready for business, she packed up her laptop bag, threw in a pad and paper, checked her cassette recorder, realized she had plenty of batteries ...

Hey, she thought. For a minute there I forgot I was haunted.

In almost no time at all, thanks to her orderliness, she was as ready as she'd ever be for the music guy interview. She sat down on the couch, pushing the bags aside, and finished off the rest of her tea. The spaghetti was beginning to bubble on the stove top. The door, from where she was sitting, still looked locked. Sighing, she got up gamely to give it another go. Nope. She wasn't going anywhere soon.

She and the Pooka needed to have a little talk. Annabelle cleared her throat, and, since she was pretty used to it already, began addressing the thin air.

"Excuse me! Hellloooooooo!" Annabelle rose and moved around the room, for lack of anything better to do than sit still and talk to herself. "I have a gig in the morning, if you don't mind? A gig that you worked so hard to drum up for me, talentless, pathetic little me, incapable of managing my own life!" Probably not the best tack to take ...

Okay. "Pooka? Pooka? Please unlock my door. Please let me out. You didn't like being trapped in the pot, did you? How do you think I feel? Pooka?"

Nothing. Annabelle, out of the mood for food, moved the pasta off the burner and shut off the stove. She dug out a pile of her witchy books, and started thumbing through the indexes. The book about fairies was informative, but Annabelle didn't think any of the extremely helpful hints applied in this case. The rituals in another volume were all designed to banish spirits, not call them forth. Poltergeists, phantoms, and apparitions of every stripe were covered in detail, but no one had a thing to say, good or ill, about Pookas. She slammed the last book shut; strike fifteen, she was out.

As always, she put everything back in its rightful place, and went around the room, lighting every candle she owned and lowering the light of her floor lamp. She'd gotten over her aversion to sage, and decided to fire up the fresh smudge stick she'd bought last week in Stick, Stone and Bone. It took some patience, as the tightly packed dried herb resisted easy lighting, but Annabelle persevered. As she inhaled the smoke and blew her breath on the struggling flame, she felt herself begin to calm down from the overly eventful day, and as the smoke began to fill the flat, Annabelle felt the first bit of peace she'd had in - A sharp, echo-y shout filled the room and the Pooka dropped straight down from the ceiling and onto the floor at Annabelle's feet. Its billowing hair seemed to snarl with annoyance, and Annabelle held the fully burning stick of sage in front of herself, like a vampire hunter flourishing a crucifix.

"Stop waving that bleedin' thing about," the Pooka groused, rubbing its bum and rising. "You summoned me properly, so put it out, why don't you."

Annabelle looked at the innocently smoking sage and shrugged. That's something to put down in a book - maybe she'd be the one to write about Pookas for posterity, and close the Pooka information gap.

"Well?" The Pooka took on the shape of a centaur and perched its near-side hindquarters on the arm of the couch. Its eyes glittered brightly hazel, the only consistency between shiftings, and Annabelle made another 'note to self' as regarded the increasingly interesting idea of a little Pooka handbook or something - "I haven't got all night!" The Pooka's bellow blew back Annabelle's hair; she put down the sage, and sat down on a chair, facing the glaring half-man, half-horse.

"What else do you have to do? Who else are you torturing?" Annabelle grumbled, glaring back at the mythical beast.

"You certainly weren't too keen on hearing me out earlier - "

Annabelle cut across the whining tone. "Listen, we have to come to some sort of an agreement. I have a gig tomorrow, one that you forced me into taking, I might point out, and I am still locked in here!"

The Pooka had the good grace to look a bit guilty, and hunched its massive shoulders in contrition. "Oh, right. I forgot. Sorry."

"Forgot! Sorry! What kind of all-powerful paranormal figure are you!" She would get a guardian spirit that was dotty and forgetful, wouldn't she?

"I am not dotty!"

"Stop reading my mind!"

More glares all around, and Annabelle realized that she'd been shouting at the top of her lungs. Great; all she needed was an untimely visit from - KnockknockKNOCKknock - KNOCK! Annabelle looked at the Pooka, and it turned into a little mouse. She gestured at it, and the mouse twitched its little nose in the direction of the door.

"This is all your fault!" Annabelle hissed, and the mouse ran down the couch, and jumped up into the sink. Annabelle undid the chain and locks, and shook a finger at the rodent. "You better help me!"

Annabelle opened the door, and surprise, surprise, there was Nosy Ned in all his fervent glory, his eyes practically rolled back in his head at the thought of a potential rescue.

"Hey, Ned," said Annabelle, in what she hoped was a passionless, disinterested, not-needing-help-of-any-sort tone.

"I heard a scream!" He was virtually foaming at the mouth. "I figured you were in trouble!"

"No trouble," Annabelle soothed. "It was the television."

"You don't have a television! Remember, when I asked you tape the Britney Spears concert for me, on HBO, you said you didn't have a television! Remember? You said you couldn't do it because you didn't have a - "

Unbelievable. "Ned, that was like, four years ago! Really, everything's fine, thanks anyway, but - "

She tried to shut the door, but Ned had slyly wedged his foot against the doorjamb, and he wasn't budging. In fact, he was quite forcefully pushing back, his roly-poly frame masking a surprising strength. Annabelle tried to shove him out without appearing to shove him out. It soon became clear that she was fighting a losing battle, and as Ned's avid little face lit up with imminent triumph, and as Annabelle was starting to see her life flash in front of her eyes, he suddenly went limp as a noodle and fell to the floor. Annabelle gasped, and made to lean down to help him, when just as suddenly he jerked to his feet. Head and hands flapping, he swung around and mounted the stairs, taking them two at a time, his feet barely touching the industrial strength carpet that covered the risers.

Annabelle shut her door, and turned to look at the Pooka, now having taken the shape of what she guessed was an Italian puppeteer. The Pooka laughed merrily, and wiggled its fingers as if manipulating a marionette. Annabelle shook her head and blew out a relieved breath. "Thanks," she said, only a teensy bit grudgingly. "That was a close one. Hey!" Annabelle sat back down, and leaned forward eagerly. "If you can do that, do you think maybe you could - "

She was cut off by an irate and sarcastic braying bark. The Pooka shifted its shape, flapping its flippers and throwing back its head to balance a striped rubber ball on its nose.

"Yeah, okay, got it." Annabelle sat back. "So what's the point of this relationship, then? You only help me when it suits your mysterious whims, and I have to take you back to Ireland." She looked away, feeling a sadness that she thought she'd conquered days ago. "Wilson and I were supposed to go in June, and now I don't want to go at all!" She turned back to glower at the Pooka. "What in the world could possibly be in this for me?"

"Well, let's see ... " The Pooka shifted back to its elfin figure, and it tapped itself on its chin in thought. "You get your puir wee broken widdle heart fixed, you get to become a successful writer, and you get your husband. But sure, what's that in the grand scheme of things?"

"Hu - Hu - Huh? Husband? What? Who?" Annabelle jumped up and, lacking the room to get up a good session of pacing, sat back down again, hard.

"That's for me to know and you to find out." The Pooka sat back and allowed a triumphant breeze to tease its cloak.

"What if I don't want a husband!" Annabelle's hands were knotted in her lap.

"What do ye take me for? Some feckin' thicko?" The Pooka rose and came to stand over Annabelle, who refused to shrink back. "You will do as I say or there will be trouble, missy, let me tell you."

Annabelle rose and brazened it out. "Oh yeah? Not if I figure out how to get rid of you first!"

The Pooka smiled, its hazel eyes alight with guile. "Sure, what's an amended bargain between friends? Let's see ... " It floated up to the ceiling and spread itself out like a fresco. Annabelle sat back down, and refused to inconvenience herself by craning her neck back to stare at it.

"If, in the course of the five weeks, you contrive to banish me, then you are freed from the obligation of transporting me back to Ireland - " Annabelle opened her mouth to point out the creature's apparent ease of movement, but was cut off. "Transatlantic travel, once I have begun my journey through form, is an impossibility on my own. I need your help."

Annabelle wasn't fooled by the plaintive look in the Pooka's eye. "Right," It said, and before Annabelle could agree, the Pooka continued, "However! If, before the five weeks are up, you contrive to kiss your future husband ... well, then, dearie, all bets are off, you will have no choice whatever, and it's off to eire we go."

"My husband!" Annabelle scoffed, but she couldn't deny the fact that her whole body lightened at the thought. My husband? She scoffed again, "In a pig's eye."

A Pooka pig squatted on its haunches before her, and winked. Extending a hock, it smiled widely and said, "We'll shake on it, so."

Annabelle extended her hand, and when it made contact with the shadowy hoof, an electric tingle ran up her arm, the air pounded with sound of the ocean's roar and the apartment filled with the scent of salt air. Her head began to spin, her sight became fuzzy around the edges, and her breathing came fast and short as the Pooka laughed and laughed and laughed ...

And as soon as Annabelle let go, the sound died down, the scent dissipated, and the Pooka began to slowly float back up to the ceiling, a pig with lightly beating wings.

"Hey!" Annabelle had a thought. "If you won't keep to one shape, will you at least tell me what to call you?"

The Pooka laughed as it faded from sight, its gaiety fading along with its form, and just before both voice and figure finally disappeared, Annabelle heard, as if whispered directly into her ear: "Call me ... Callie."

Chapter Twenty.

If there was anything that Annabelle hated more that disorganization, it was lateness, and she was running very, very late. Lack of a decent sleep Saturday night/Sunday morning hadn't helped, nor had the fact the somehow, her alarm clock had failed to go off. Maybe the fact that it no longer told time, but ran LED stock quotes straight from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, had something to do with it.