Part Three: Cut Adrift
Chapter Three

Mark sat underneath a tree in the park, where Wyatt had asked him to wait. He caught sight of orb lights in his peripheral vision, and turned to see Wyatt and someone Mark didn't know materialize about ten yards away.

The unfamiliar boy yanked his arm out of Wyatt's grip. "I can't believe you did that!"

"Are you afraid you'll miss class? Never knew you were such a good student, Joe. Or are you just not prepared? Sorry, demons won't change their plans to fit your schedule. But you can go back if you want," Wyatt said as he started striding away.

"How?" Joe demanded, jogging to catch up.

"Take a cab." Wyatt then called out to Mark, who was pulling himself to his feet: "How long have you been waiting?"

"Not long. About a half hour."

"Since I called you."

Mark smiled and shrugged.

Joe was suspicious again. "Who is this?"

"The guy who's getting us where we need to be." Wyatt's tone toward Joe was one of unwavering contempt.

"I hope I can," Mark said. "I've never been to this market before. But you know, even with me here, I don't see how they'll ever let you in, Wyatt. They all know you."

"Yeah, I thought of that. I've got it covered." And in an instant he transformed his appearance, glamoured into a look he had dreamt up from observation of far too many examples — "generic demon minion," he'd call them. Dark clothes, unkempt, human-like appearance, neither youthful nor old. "How do you like it?" he asked Mark.

"Scary."

"Time to get scary yourself."

Joe, who had merely looked annoyed by Wyatt's Whitelighter tricks, stepped back, repulsed, as Mark's hands developed claws. "What the hell — and his tongue, too, don't think I didn't see that. What is he?"

"Not an asshole like you," Wyatt replied. "Let's go."

Mark stepped forward tentatively, then jumped when a wide portal opened in front of him. It was flanked by two burly guards, who stared at Mark as he attempted to look nonchalant and kept walking forward. Wyatt, unconcerned, passed his friend, and Joe brought up the rear, eyes darting between the glowering guards. Once all three were through, the portal and guards alike appeared to vanish behind them.

"That was easy," Mark muttered.

"I told you if it sensed demon blood, it would open right up." Wyatt turned to Joe. "Have at it. Good luck hunting."

"Hey! You have help — demon help."

"Yeah, and why don't you announce to everyone around us that that's unusual. Tough — life isn't always fair, and fighting demons never is." With that, Wyatt moved on, into the dirty lanes of the market. Mark trailed after his friend, and Joe wandered off in a different direction.

"So that's the big, bad Joe, huh?" Mark asked as they browsed the stalls' clutter of weapons, amulets, books and potion ingredients.

"Yeah. Not too impressive, is he?" Wyatt spoke offhandedly, his attention captured by a row of jars with strange, vile contents. Mark didn't know much about potions, but he guessed some of the more suspect creature parts — eyeballs, delicate wings, bones — would not be allowed in the Halliwell household.

Finally, Wyatt returned his gaze to displays of magical knickknacks that might be more likely to have the object they were looking for, and continued: "He doesn't have any active powers — or he didn't until today — and it just drives him nuts that other people do. And since we're half-Whitelighter, that's even more power that he's jealous of."

"And now he's got an active power?"

"Right, this mysterious new Firestarter ability, as of this morning. He needs to learn right away that doesn't give him a license to come after us. I can handle him, but Chris … Chris doesn't realize that you have to break some rules when it comes to someone like this. Otherwise, you just get taken advantage of."

Mark asked with a smile, "Are you sure you're not just mad at him for getting you into trouble before?"

"I'd do it all over again. Penelope was fine, even if Aunt Phoebe freaked out about it. So I got saddled with a tutor — the point was, Joe backed off. He has to get that point again."

Mark spotted the boy in question, who never seemed very far, an aisle or two over, failing to look as if he were casually inspecting the merchandise.

Of course, Wyatt spotted the object first. It sat in a case of several evidently prized objects. Mark expected Wyatt to orb it into his hand, but then he considered that the case's slight glow might be a shield against just such kind of magical theft. In any case, Wyatt did not seem to try, and instead swaggered up to the proprietor, a Hawker demon, and pointed at the case.

"That half-sphere thing. What do you want for it?"

The Hawker raised his eyebrows. "More than you can afford, I'm sure."

"You think so? I've got a trade to make, and you'll find it more than fair."

"Really. What are you offering?"

Wyatt's smile was vindictive, conspiratorial. "How would you like a Firestarter?"

Mark stood blankly stunned by this offer, and the skeptical Hawker nodded toward him. "This demon?" the seller asked.

"Of course not. It's a human. But he is here."

"Where?"

"You want me to tell you, so that one of your thugs can seize him? Like hell. Once you give me what I want, I'll point him out."

"And I'm supposed to believe you won't just take what you want, and send me off chasing someone who'd be worthless."

"Leave one of your thugs here, and I'll stay until you get him, even until you test him out."

The Hawker considered, then said, "Agreed." When he touched the case, the glow vanished, and he removed the item. As he handed it to Wyatt, an imposing demon, towering over both boys, stepped forward as well. Wyatt glanced at him with indifference.

This must be the moment he has a plan, Mark thought. But Wyatt's plan seemed to be straightforward: make a fair trade.

"He's the kid four booths down, wearing a jean jacket, he's got light brown hair — do you see him?"

"Looking at crossbows?"

Wyatt narrowed his eyes at that, and seemed to take pleasure in affirming, "That's the one."

With a tilt of his head, the Hawker beckoned another assistant to follow. The pair moved down and handily grabbed Joe, who shrieked and struggled to no avail. Passersby barely paid mind to the scene, and Wyatt wasn't watching. He was occupied examining his purchase as he stood in the shadow of the Hawker's thug.

Joe was dragged to the entrance of a room behind the seller's stall. Just before he disappeared inside he noticed Wyatt, and a note of indignation was added to his terrified protests, which were muffled when the Hawker closed the door.

"This shouldn't take long," Wyatt said flatly to Mark and their guard. "Anger, fear, stress — it's triggered by some powerful emotion, which I'm guessing he's feeling right now."

Wyatt was right. Within a few minutes, the Hawker re-emerged, smiling and coughing, waving away smoke. To the thug, he said, "Let him go. I'm satisfied." He looked at Wyatt with a new appraisal. "He said something quite interesting about you. But I don't care who you are. I don't care why you want that thing. What I got is better."

"No tricks?"

"As long as you don't play any on me. It's how I stay in business — and alive."

"Great. Thanks."

Wyatt sauntered off down the pathway; Mark followed, stumbling a little as he looked back at the Hawker's stall where Joe had been abandoned. Traded away. Wyatt put the artifact in a pocket, and resumed browsing.

"Wyatt …"

Mark had barely spoken above a whisper, but Wyatt warned, "Watch it!"

"Sorry. You, um … What's going on?"

"We got what we were after, and Joe's being taught a lesson."

"A lesson about …"

"Not messing with me or my family." He finally looked at Mark, and in response to his friend's disconcerted expression, Wyatt said, "We'll rescue him. In a bit."

"What if something happens to him?"

"There's no way the Hawker will hurt him. Firestarters are too valuable. Joe should know that too. But I'll give him a little time to imagine his lifetime of servitude to demons."

"Stop acting so jumpy," Paige said to Penka. At his scowl, she amended herself: "On second thought, you kind of always look jumpy, don't you? Carry on then."

"Thanks, I guess."

Not too long after the three boys had entered the market, Paige and Penka had followed through the same portal, Penka's demon blood providing the passkey, while Paige had glamoured into a crone.

"Are you picking anything up?" she asked him when they were well into the thick of the marketplace.

"Stop asking me that. It's hard enough to pick out one thought about one little object in all this crowd. Especially when they may not even be thinking about — oh. Oh, oh!"

"What is it?"

Penka had whipped around in the direction of a booth where Paige saw two male demons, one casually looking through items for sale, the other more distracted, looking around worriedly. Penka turned his back to them and muttered, "The younger-looking one, the one with the claws, he knows about the — your thingamajig. They just traded a Firestarter to get it. The other one, the taller guy, has what you're looking for."

"They traded a Firestarter for it?" Paige said, horrified.

"Yeah, so?"

"So Firestarters are human, and I'm not about to let one be sold into slavery if I can help it."

"Oh. I didn't think of that."

"No kidding."

"Hey, I'm new at this helping the side of good," Penka said, with a nervous look around for eavesdroppers. "I can't think of everything. So what are you going to do?"

"Do you know where the Firestarter is?"

Penka concentrated, and then said, "Oh yeah. It's that Hawker demon, the one about five booths down, under the red awning. He's quite happy with the trade."

"Good for him. Well, I can't go after the artifact and risk exposing myself before I get a chance to save the Firestarter." Paige paused, frustrated, then asked, "What about the tall guy, the one who has the artifact?"

Penka shrugged. "I get nothing from him. He's not a demon."

"Really? He looks like a demon."

"So do you."

"Point taken. Okay, just keep on eye on those two. I'm going to go talk to the Hawker."

Penka caught her before she walked away. "He's already got a buyer."

"Great. Look, I may have to just orb the Firestarter out the second I get the chance. I'll definitely be exposed then, so if that happens, just get out while you still can."

Her demon assistant actually looked touched, and said with awkward stalwartness, "I'll stick it out as long as I can."

Paige's wry smile was somewhere in the sour crone face she had adopted as a disguise. "Well, we've got our jobs to do." With an encouraging nod, she left Penka and headed for the Hawker's booth.

She didn't really have a plan. If time was running out, the best approach could be the direct one. If she could get the Hawker to bring out the "merchandise," she could try to get close enough to orb the Firestarter out and then get out herself.

"I heard you had a Firestarter for sale," she said. "Can I have a look at it?"

The Hawker looked her over with disdain. "It's not available to you. It's an exclusive item, and I already have a buyer arriving … ah, now. Good."

At a flip of the Hawker's hand, a large henchman seized Paige and pulled her across the pathway as a cloaked new arrival blazed in out of thin air.

"Thank you for coming," the Hawker was saying smoothly. "I've tested him myself; you won't be disappointed."

Another of the Hawker's thugs came out of the shack behind the booth. Paige immediately recognized his captive — a Magic School student.

Joe Lasota? He's a Firestarter? Paige wondered before a deafening, prolonged screech temporarily drove away all rational thought or action. All she could do was clamp her hands on her ears and hope the pain-inducing noise would stop.

Wyatt himself was thrown off-kilter by the racket, even though he knew its source — right next to him. He had been engrossed in his mental inventory of the sorts of useful things that could be found the market, when Mark, trailing behind, half-forgotten, let loose an unearthly Manticore scream and took off running.

Wyatt saw his friend, in the chaos and distraction his scream had caused, plunge through the crowd, nearly knock Joe down as he shoved him out of a thug's grip, and shimmer out, Joe in tow.

The Hawker, once he had recovered his senses, began furiously apologizing to a menacing cloaked figure, before he spotted Wyatt, and hollered at his thugs to go after him.

It was then Wyatt realized someone else was taking advantage of the situation: He saw her, a crone, staring at him, hand outstretched, saying something he could not hear from that distance. But he knew her intent. He got a firm grip on the artifact, which he could feel being somehow magically tugged away. His own effort was blocking the theft attempt, for now, but the thugs were closing on him, diverting his concentration.

Nothing left to lose, he resorted to the orbing telekinesis that would give him away. A jar expertly aimed at the crone's head knocked her down as it shattered, then he sent barrels flying at the thugs, impeding their progress. It would have been better to have vanquished them, but he had to use the materials at hand. Then he orbed away, instinctively heading for the spot in the park where Mark had already landed with Joe.

The crowd left behind began to return to business, chattering about the curious scene they had witnessed. The aftermath briefly caught their attention again when the cloaked customer concluded his tirade by dispatching the luckless Hawker with a fireball.

Paige was ignored as she struggled to her feet, gingerly touching a wound on her head, and brushing from her hair some broken glass and tiny, glittery wings — what remained of the jar and its contents. Penka — who had apparently fled — had said the taller "demon" wasn't a demon at all. And he was right. Paige knew of only one other who shared her power of orbing telekinesis. In a fury, she stomped off to find a less public place to make her exit and then track down her nephew.