“Boo-Boo,” she whispered, “hurry!”
* * *
“I don’t want to make trouble for anyone,” Robbie said, her fingers twisting in knots. She had gotten to the weepy stage. Time for a little more liquid courage. Ken poured another splash of tequila in her glass and added a double dose of drugs. “This has been the best job of my life, working for Green Fire.”
“Come on, honey,” he said, holding out the liquor, “they’re no good to you.” She drank it without paying attention. She was numb.
“Oh, yes, they are!” she insisted, muzzily. “Lloyd is always wonderful. Nigel is great. I really love Nigel. He called in those secret agents.”
“Those spies are there to get you, baby,” Ken said, looking into her eyes seriously. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot.
“They can’t be,” Robbie said, shaking her head. The action was grossly exaggerated. Ken caught her just before she fell over. “They’re too nice.”
“They’re here to take you away,” Ken insisted, whispering in her ear. “The government thinks you’re a freak. They’re evil. They’d lock you up in a little lab if they could. Run tests on you.”
“Oh, no!” Robbie protested. “That’s what you told me about the nice man in Dublin. He wasn’t a spy. What happened to him, Kenny?”
“You told him to go away,” Ken said, with major satisfaction. The guy had been a basket case the last time he’d seen him, slumped outside St. Stephen’s Green shopping center off Grafton Street. No more sticking his nose into the Council’s affairs for him. Robbie, annoyingly, picked up on his triumph, and started crying.
“I did something to him, didn’t I?”
Hastily, Ken offered her more tequila. “Here, baby. Here’s something to make you forget all about it.”
“Don’t wanna forget . . .” Robbie said, fighting him. She shoved away, put her hands on the ground unsteadily, trying to get to her feet. He’d pushed her too far. Let her relax a little, and work her back to where she could create the big effect he was hoping for.
“Come on, baby,” Ken urged her, pulling her down beside him. She slumped into a boneless heap, staring at the sky. “You can’t leave. The show’s not over yet. You know what I want. Do it. Do it!”
Robbie’s voice was almost completely indistinct. He lowered his head to hear her. “The Jumbotron belongs to the Superdome. They’ll get upset if we move it.”
The fireworks changed tenor as the music shifted from the jazz piece to a martial march. Ken took her face between his hands and turned it toward the show.
“Never mind the Jumbotron. Look at all those pretty flowers!” he said. “Picture ones just like that happening in the Superdome. Big, fiery flowers, with petals that burn the people they fall on. Burning your enemies to cinders. Picture them falling, falling, right on Fionna. Look at them!”
A tongue of light sizzled up into the sky and burst right over their heads into a purple star twice the size of a football field. Robbie screamed and hid her head in her arms.
“They’re coming too close. Too close!”
Bad move, Ken thought. He’d given her too much. He held the squirming woman in his arms, trying to keep her from burrowing into the grass.
Some of the passersby had turned around at the frantic scream.
Ken looked at the crowd apologetically.
“Sorry,” he said. “She just accepted my proposal. We’re engaged!” Indulgent smiles all round, left them alone. Decent people, giving decent privacy. They wouldn’t be so nice if he told them what they were engaged in.
But he’d miscalculated how much Robbie’s system could hold. Her body lay limp on the ground, but her hands were frantically picking at the grass.
“No no no no no no . . .” she murmured.
“Hey, baby.” Ken turned her over. She drew her knees up to her chest and screwed her eyes shut.
Ken heard activity nearby, the sound of hurrying footsteps, and looked up to see the agent dressed like a bum heading his way. He shook Robbie by the shoulder.
“Robbie, you’ve got to finish off the concert hall right now!”
“No no no no no no!” She started kicking and lashing out with her arms. Agent Boudreau was getting closer. He mustn’t get Robbie. Ken tried to gather her up, intending to carry her away from the Moon Walk.
She smacked him in the face with a wild swing.
All right, so Ken had created a monster—but she was his monster! He couldn’t let the agent take her away. Ken wasn’t a natural practitioner. His superiors had equipped him with a few easy spells in case of emergency. The disappearance charms were all used up. No way to vanish handily into the crowd. Instead, he had to rely on offense.
He sprang to his feet and assumed a martial arts stance.
* * *
Boo-Boo saw him assume a bent-knee crouch with his hands out at right angles. He’d been waiting for something like that. Ken had little magical ability of his own, or he wouldn’t have needed Ms. Robbie in the first place. In a moment the agent had taken his opponent’s measure. Ken Lewis had wrestled, most likely in high school, and had maybe a little storefront karate. He was no match for Boo-Boo in any way that the American agent could think of.
From his pocket Ken whipped out a white envelope and flung it down on the ground between them. It burst with a puff of white smoke.
“Spirits dark, hear me call you, hold my foe still like a statue!”
Boo-Boo almost scoffed out loud. Standard immobilization spell, only you were supposed to hit the one you wanted to freeze with the powder to make it work. Ken had wasted it on maybe an ant hill or a passing caterpillar. Boo-Boo wasn’t impressed. The guy was so jumpy he was making stupid mistakes.
But Ken was a dirty fighter. Under the cover of the white cloud, he rushed to close with Boo-Boo, pounding him over the kidneys with his fists. Luckily for Boo-Boo, his old friend of an army jacket, padded with years’ accumulation of odds and ends, absorbed most of the force. Boo-Boo twisted out of his hold just in time to keep his ear from being bitten in half. Ken Lewis must have gone out of his mind. Boo-Boo grabbed his wrist and flipped it up behind the other man’s back.
“Now, you just hold still,” he said. He turned his head to look for Ms. Robbie.
The poor young woman was lying on the ground, mumbling and writhing, her hands waving in the air. Her eyes were fixed on the fireworks, the effect of which she must still be transmitting to the Superdome. Drugged or bespelled, it was hard to say which.
“What did you give her?” Boo-Boo demanded, shaking Ken’s wrist. The other gasped but didn’t speak. “What have you done to her?”
An urgent beeping sounded nearby.
“Beauray,” Liz’s voice, much muffled, came from the depths of his pocket, “what is happening out there?”
Ken took advantage of Boo-Boo’s momentary distraction to kick out viciously. Boo-Boo took a healthy blow to the shin, but let his weight drop forward. He ended up sitting on Ken.
“Now, what you’re doin’ is wrong. Y’all want to make it stop before anyone gets killed.” Boo looked down at Ken, who was gnashing his teeth. “Or is that just exactly what you want?” He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his hip pocket and snapped them on Ken’s wrists.
The everchanging crowd had by now noticed that a fight had been going on in its midst. A few men jumped forward to pull Boo-Boo off his quarry, no doubt thinking he was an insane vagrant. With regret, he stood up over his prisoner and produced his billfold with his Department credentials. The men stood back, surprised.
“Folks, this fellah’s in possession of an illegal shipment of pixie dust,” Boo-Boo said amiably but with fire in his eyes that showed he meant business. “Y’all want to move along now. Everythin’s under control.” To back up his statement, he made a few quick mystic passes of the “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” variety. Distracted, the crowd went back about its business. Boo-Boo was relieved.
He had let his guard down too soon.
In the darkness he missed the foot sweeping out from underneath that caught him across the shins. Boo-Boo went flying onto the grass. The cuffs were now around his wrists. Pretty slick, he thought.
Ken sprang up. Pausing only to kick Boo-Boo once in the ribs, he fled into the crowd.
Boo gasped, catching his breath around the pain in his midsection. Lewis was gone, but he was not the real problem. Boo-Boo crawled over to Robbie, who was lying on her back with her hands and knees in the air, kicking like a dying fly. Her hair was tangled into a rat’s nest, and her clothes were stained and torn. She looked as though she’d been assaulted, but it was all from flinging herself around on the ground.