Chapter 9: Speeding

"Ow," the King said again. "Jeez. Wh..."

Innocent took a moment or two to register the fact that 'Ow' was not a curseword or a raspberry noise, and snuck a glance into the back seat. The King winced back at him. "Cramps."

Innocent tapped on Christian's arm, and, when he failed to get a response, yanked off his headphones. Christian turned to him indignantly, and Innocent nodded at the back seat.

"I'm sick," the King explained helpfully. Christian pulled over to the side on the road, turned around backward in his seat, and eyed him for a minute. "You're going staticky," he said, fascinated.

He was right. The King's skin was flickering, like it had gone transparent and there were circuits shorting under his skin. Innocent had a feeling that this was not a good sign. The King, apparently operating under the same set of assumptions, said something very rude indeed.

"Well, there goes Kooza. Time for me to leave," Christian said cheerfully, swinging his legs out of the car through the open window. "Byeeee! - Excuse me? Let go, my friend?"

"No," the King said, maintaining his grip on Christian's wrist. "Look at yourself."

"Why?" Christian looked down at his hands. And stared.

"Ohmondieu," he muttered. It occurred to Innocent, in the way that you notice things which don't really matter at all when you're about to die, that this was almost certainly the wrong language.*

Christian, legs still dangling out the window, yanked up his sleeves and stared at his lower arms. "No. No way. Not happening. I'm not from... I'm human! You- This is not fair!"

The King grinned evilly. "We've marked you. Kooza's not just a place to stay for the weekend and leave, thief. If we're going down, you're coming with us."

The Innocent didn't have a clear view of what was going on until Christian slumped back into the driver's seat, but he had already realized what he was going to se. The Pickpocket was crackling too - not as dramatically as the King, but still undeniably short-circuiting. Innocent took a look at his own hands, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Strange, he thought - so Kooza had claimed Christian for its own, but not him. This depressed him, in a stupid way. If all the people who he had ever met and actually liked were going to die, he wasn't sure he wanted to stay behind.

Christian took a deep breath, like he was having trouble getting air into his lungs, and swerved onto the road, stomping on the gas again. If they made it through this alive, they were probably going to be arrested for continual violation of the speed limit. "We're going back to the crazy trapeze artist's house. You were right, my friend, that stupid wand is our last chance."

"You're such a selfish bastard," the King muttered. "Don't run into any trees."

"Shut up and I won't," Christian snapped. "I'm the one who is going to get his head bashed in by a trapeze in five minutes, you can go find the wand yourself if you're so smart. Okay?"

"Fi-owwww... How much time do we have?"

"I don't know! Almost dying is not my hobby!"

The two of them continued to argue with each other as they sped through the city streets. Innocent prayed that they wouldn't run into any policemen. That was not something they could afford to deal with right this moment.

He found all this strangely exciting - at least they were doing something! Something which might actually result in Kooza's getting rescued! He'd already had the realization that Christian was not overly inclined to risk his own neck for others, but it was also apparent that if anyone could steal back the Trickster's wand from under Tia's nose, Christian could.

"Policeman," the King said warningly. Innocent looked. There was indeed a blue-and-white police car parked by the side of the road, lights flashing lazily, just waiting for a car full of idiots who were going ninety miles per hour in a 45-mile per hour zone. Its headlights came on as they approached.

"Shit," Christian said. "Okay, hang on." They sped up as they passed the police car, a feat which Innocent wouldn't have thought possible, and as it pulled out to follow them, Christian swerved them onto a side street, then another and another, until there was no way that anyone could have followed them. Pedestrians and bicyclists ran out of their way screaming.

"You are going to be in so much trouble." the King said, grinning.

"Nah. They won't catch up with me. Besides, if we are all alive at the end of this, I will not care all that much. You, my friend?"

"As long as you don't expect me to pay. Hey, are we lost?"

"No."

"If you say so." The King paused. "We'd better not be, 'cause I'm flickering more."

"Shhhhhh."

Amazingly, they really weren't lost. Christian managed to get them to Tia's house in something like five minutes - it was like he had some kind of magnetic homing device or something. But even so, by the time they got there, the King was curled up in a ball in the back seat, and Christian's flickering had intensified to a point where it looked distinctly uncomfortable even from the outside. Innocent was still, he had to admit, a trifle sulky over the fact that he apparently wasn't Koozian enough to suffer any ill effects.

Christian jumped out of the car, grabbing his briefcase as he did so. "Okay, m'friends," he said, scanning the parking lot. "Our friend's car isn't here, so I'm going to go inside. If we all die anyway, I'm sorry." And he was gone.

Actually, we're going to follow him into the apartment and leave the Innocent behind for a few minutes, because to be honest he isn't really going to be doing anything very interesting until Christian gets back. If you like, you can picturing him shifting uneasily around and picking at the seams in the leather of his seat and glancing at the King every once in a while and eventually ending up sinking down and staring at the plastic of the door's interior in the blank way who has nothing at all to do with himself. But, for the sake of not boring ourselves to tears along with him, we're going to follow the Pickpocket instead.

The thief slipped into the building, cursing under his breath everything which had conspired to make him ever enter that stupid yellow-and-red tent. It had been a whim, an interesting place to explore, an episode of magic in a happy-go-lucky life. It wasn't supposed to be something he was going to die for.

Well, too late now, he decided. It wasn't that he was a coward. It was just that he avoided direct conflict whenever possible, which was pretty much whenever the crisis didn't involve him directly. At this point, he didn't have much to lose if Tia caught him.

He knocked on her door first, in case she happened to be at home - in which case he didn't have much idea of what he was going to do, except try to put her out of action and probably get put out of the action himself in the process. But nobody answered, so he picked the lock casually and let himself in.

The problem was, from what he knew of Tia she wasn't going to let the wand out of her sight unless she had a hiding place which she thought was more secure than her own physical security. But he had to at least try.

So after checking behind the pictures on the wall, of which there were not many, he headed for her bedroom, which was usually where people kept their valuables for some reason. After a little thought, he opened the window in case someone came home and he needed a quick and discreet escape route.

Searching in the closet and beneath the rug yielded nothing, so he performed a little tap dance on the floor to check for hollow-sounding boards. And lo and behold, there was one spot, almost but not quite underneath her low, faux-Indian-style bed, which practically shouted I'm a secret compartment! at him. So he knelt and peeled the short floorboard up, and there was the Trickster's wand, staring back at him.

Several warning bells went off in his head. This was way too easy.

"You're right," Tia said behind him. "It is."

The Pickpocket straightened up slowly, holding the wand slightly behind him so the trapeze artist couldn't grab it. "Hello, Tia."

"I'm not stupid," Tia said. She was leaning against the doorframe, in a tank top and rolled-up jeans, and to the Pickpocket's extreme relief, she wasn't holding her trapeze. She still looked plenty menacing without it. The electricity crawling under her skin was just visible from where he stood, and it didn't help any.

"If you didn't want to help me, you could have just told me," she said. "I trusted you about fifty-fifty - will cowardice win above fear? Apparently so. But why are you here? You're not stupid, either. You're not intelligent - clever, yes, but not intelligent - but you're not this idiotic. What's your motivation?"

The Pickpocket held out his free hand to show her, the sleeve still rolled up, blue sparks fizzing under his skin as if it was glass or water. "You're killing me, Tia. You're killing us. All of us. You're killing yourself. You cannot replace the Trickster, my friend, you're still his creation. If his dying is affecting me, and you know I'm just an idiot who wandered into a tent for a couple months, then it's going to get you too, no matter what kind of stick you're holding when Kooza collapses. This is our last chance. I... don't want to see you die."

One half of Tia's mouth quirked into a smile. "How thoughtful of you. Nice speech, Pickpocket, but it's not convincing me. Tell me, how do you know that this isn't just transferral stuff? No pain, no gain. We're not dying, idiot. Now give me the wand and I'll give you another chance."

The Pickpocket shook his head to clear the buzzing in his ears. This all needed to stop, right now. He couldn't think straight anymore, and he had to stop treating Tia like the person she used to be. "Nope," he said.

Tia took a step toward him, her brows snapping down like shutters. "Have it your own way, Pickpocket, and don't say I didn't give you a choice. You're with me or you're dead, that's how it's going to work, and you've just chosen to be dead."

The Pickpocket's brain cleared a bit at that, and he suddenly realized exactly how ridiculous this entire situation was. He was standing in an incense-scented apartment holding a magic wand, being menaced by a trapeze artist, and sparking blue. And to tell the truth, he didn't feel all that bad.

He grinned. "You can't catch meeeeee!" he called, and dove out the second-story window.

A/N:

*God, I love doing this with Pickpocket. I would have him speak in Swedish, too, if I had any illusions that any of my readers would be able to understand him. I've rather veered away from German Pickpocket to a universal-deceiver Pickpocket. XD But, you know, catchez-moi!