“He’s not worth it,” Lia murmured, caressing his face. “The coast is clear. Your illusion worked. Let’s blow this hotdog stand.”
She motioned with her head towards the open door.
Only one of Gregor’s goons remained outside.
After a brief pause, Loki frowned.
Then, aiming a last glare in the direction of Gregor, he took Lia’s hand, leading her and Maia towards and through the open front door.
11
Brothers
Loki flipped the seat forward in the Bugatti, and Maia crawled into the back, taking up residence in the section of seat directly between theirs.
“You drive,” the god told Lia, motioning her towards the driver’s side. “I might need to concentrate on other things.”
Lia frowned a little, but didn’t ask him to clarify.
She watched Loki look up at the sky, mystified when she saw nothing but blue with a few small, white, cottony clouds.
“Tut-tut,” Loki said, motioning at her again as he opened the passenger-side door. “We mustn’t dawdle, lover. Perhaps I have not conveyed the depth of urgency, but we really, really must hurry now.”
Lia nodded.
Holding her coat closed over the white dress, she opened the driver’s-side door and got in, yanking her leather coat in after her. Turning the key in the ignition as Loki got in beside her and closed his door, Lia threw it in gear and stepped on the gas, even as she glanced back at her sister, reaching her hand back to briefly clasp her hand.
“I’m so happy you’re with us,” she said. “I’m so, so happy, Maia.”
Her sister grinned back at her in the rearview mirror.
Her eyes grew brighter.
In those few seconds, it really hit Lia that Maia was with them.
She was out, she might even be free, and Maia was with them.
“I’m so happy to see you,” Lia repeated, her own eyes stinging.
“Okay, okay,” Maia said, wiping her eyes. She motioned towards the windshield with a wave of her hand. “Just don’t be so happy you drive us all off a cliff. I want to get far enough away to do a real happy dance.”
Lia nodded, but still found herself staring at her sister.
Twelve-year-old Maia looked thinner than Lia remembered, and too damned mature, even apart from the remnants of make-up and lipstick on her face. It was more the look Lia saw there, the observant-verging-on-wary expression in her sister’s blue eyes.
It reminded her too much of herself.
Even so, Lia couldn’t stop smiling. Tears stung her eyes above the shit-eating grin on her face. She released Maia’s fingers to rest her hand on the gear shift, focusing back on the road as she wiped her cheeks and eyelashes with her fingers.
She maneuvered them forward off the grass lawn and around the other cars, leaving tire tracks and mud as she pulled the Bugatti Divo back out onto the white cement driveway. Once she’d straightened the car, she gunned it, aiming them for the first turn looping them up towards the Pacific Coast Highway, or PCH.
“Where are we going?” Maia said, poking her head through the opening between their two seats. “You have a plan, right? You and your nutty friend?”
Maia looked at Loki fondly, then back at Lia.
“Can you believe what he did to Ernie?” she added, grinning wider. “That was AWESOME! You remember that jackass, right? He’s been a total, lecherous jerk for the past few months… and he’s worse whenever Gregor’s not there. I think Gregor keeps him off me because of you.”
Maia frowned, glancing at Loki, then back at Lia.
“Anyway, your friend here fucked him up,” Maia crowed. “He messed him up bad. He’ll be even stupider now.”
“Maia!” Lia laughed, still wiping her face. “Watch your mouth!”
“Seriously?” Maia gave her a disbelieving look. “You know where I’ve been living, right?”
Lia sighed, acknowledging that with a frown.
She didn’t want to know what Maia had been exposed to over the past five years.
“So?” Maia said, nudging Lia with a hand. “Is this guy your boyfriend? Or what?”
Looking away from where he’d been peering out the passenger-side window at the sky, Loki laughed, then grinned at the two of them.
Before Lia could figure out how to answer that particular question, the God of Mischief turned in his seat, facing Maia directly where she perched between them.
“Yes,” he said, adamant. “Yes, my little elf’s tiny, tiny sibling… I am her boyfriend. And she is my girlfriend. And my squeeze. And my hunny-bunny. And my little potato.”
Maia laughed.
“He’s totally nuts, isn’t he?” she said, turning to Lia. “Wherever did you find him?”
Again, Loki answered before Lia could speak.
“In the mountains of Nepal,” the god said loftily, grinning as Lia bumped up a gear, taking them up the driveway even faster, nearing the Pacific Coast Highway. “She plucked a very valuable ring right off my finger. Without my noticing for full seconds…”
“She’s sneaky like that,” Maia acknowledged.
Loki glanced back at her, quirking an eyebrow.
“Sneaky? It is utterly, utterly unheard of, my dear, for a human to steal from me. It is utterly unfathomable, verging on illegal… possibly full-blown unnatural. She did it without me feeling her there until she had already made it several blocks away. She nearly evaded me totally, if I were to be excruciatingly honest… which would have been most humiliating. I cannot tell you how long it has been since someone did anything remotely like that to me. I say ‘I cannot tell you’ in all truthfulness, too, my little raspberry crumpet with cheese filling… because I honestly do not know. Possibly a millennium ago. Possibly never.”
Maia let out a delighted laugh, clapping her hands.
Still grinning at her, Loki added,
“I was intrigued and furious. I was shocked and yet single-mindedly determined to track down this talented little elf-thief. It is damned lucky I was in Nepal, or it may have taken me months to find her, without the aid of supernatural means, given that I am sadly bereft of any notable prescient talents of my own. I confess, I nearly lost her even with that advantage. But then, I really didn’t anticipate my little pickpocket hopping on an international flight so quickly.”
Turning, he smiled at Lia fondly, tugging on her blond hair.
“Fortunately, a local Buddhist monk, a man they call an oracle, tipped me off about the airport,” he added to Maia, still caressing Lia’s hair. “That was after I paid him money to use his psychic abilities to help me track her down. It is quite lucky I did that right away, too, and didn’t get a sandwich first, like I’d contemplated. I barely got to the airport in time.”
Maia laughed again, the sound bubbling out of her.
Lia turned to look at him, frowning.
She couldn’t stare at him long.
Her hands gripped the steering wheel, rotating it to the right without taking her foot off the gas as she swerved them out onto the highway. She corrected their trajectory at once, bringing them back into the proper lane and gunning it to send the speedometer higher.
“You’re joking,” Lia retorted, once she had them on the straightaway.
Loki shook his head, grinning wider.
“Not at all, my little lion monkey. My little jam-covered hush-puppy, my little piece of fried spam…”
Maia snort-laughed, looking at Lia.
“Is anything he just said true?” she demanded.
“I love that you’re driving so fast,” Loki told Lia, winking at her. “My little elf is a talented getaway driver, in addition to all of her other wonderful and highly-intriguing qualities. So many lovely surprises––”
“What is that?” Maia said, pointing between them at something visible through the windshield. “There! Over the water.”
Loki turned sharply.
Lowering his head, he stared out the Bugatti’s tinted windows.
Lia glanc
ed over as she eased the car around a tighter corner along the cliffside highway, squinting up at the blue sky dotted by white clouds. She saw Loki frown, his gaze narrow, right before she returned her attention to the road, correcting the Bugatti’s trajectory as she floored it yet again.
“What is it?” she said, glancing at Loki.
“My brother.”
Lia looked over at him, alarmed. “Really?”
“Yes.” Loki exhaled, sounding more annoyed than anything. “Clearly, he’s caught up with us. I knew I felt him there. I dilly-dallied too long inside that fox’s den.”
“Yes, you did. Why were you gone so long inside Gregor’s?” Lia demanded. “You scared the hell out of me. I went inside, thinking you were both captured or dead. That couldn’t have all been Ernie. Or even the guard who shot at you.”
At Loki’s silence, Lia smacked his arm, the fingers of her other hand still gripping the steering wheel.
“What happened?”
“Well, it took him a while to deal with that guy, Aston––” Maia began.
“Hush, hush.” Loki gave the younger Winchester a faintly warning look, focusing back on Lia. “She doesn’t need to know all of that.”
Lia felt her alarm spike. “I don’t? Who’s Aston?”
“I had to attend to a few problems inside,” the god said, adjusting his leather coat against the Bugatti’s seat. “Unfortunately, it took a bit longer than I’d anticipated. One of those idiots caught me looking around the place before I found your sister. Before I’d quite caught up to him, he called your ex-employer and let him know that something untoward was happening inside his little beachside cottage… which is likely why Gregor and the others rushed back. And likely why the guards came looking for me later.”
“Guards?” Lia said, alarmed. “I thought it was one guard?”
Loki gave Lia a charming smile.
Lia scowled. “And what happened to that other one? The one who caught you skulking around Gregor’s place? Did he shoot you, too?”
“Oh, no. I chucked him over the balcony. It seemed the most efficient thing.”
Maia burst out in a laugh.
Lia winced, staring at him. “And what about that guy, Aston?” she said, frowning, glancing back at her sister. “What Maia said? Just now? Or is that the same guy?”
“No, no. An entirely different matter, my dear.”
“So what happened to him?” Lia pressed. “Aston?”
Loki gestured fluidly with both hands. “Well, my darling dearest elf, that was an issue I simply had to address. You can’t possibly fault me for that! Clearly, he lacked a strong father figure in his life, so I had to fill that gap as best I could. In the limited time I had, anyway.”
Maia giggled.
Lia snorted, and Loki flashed her another of his wicked smiles.
“One might even say I was fulfilling my civic duty,” he said loftily. “As a fellow denizen of Earth.”
“Are you a denizen of Earth?” Lia said, arching an eyebrow.
“I am now. My girlfriend lives here.” Loki grinned at her. “Which means all attendant duties are now relevant. Even if I am an immigrant.”
Maia burst out in another barking laugh.
Lia’s kid sister was obviously far too delighted by Loki, and by the way the god chose to explain all of this.
Lia frowned at both of them.
“Okay. So I’m really going to need to hear the rest of this story at some point,” she said, glancing at the road only to glare at them both a second time. “You get that, right? Like, there’s no possible way one or both of you isn’t telling me every single detail.”
Loki was still staring out the window, though, a frown hardening his mouth.
“We might need to go a bit faster, love,” he murmured, still following whatever he’d seen with his eyes as it traversed across the sky. “I suspect we’ll need to switch cars again soon, too. Likely very soon. As in, whenever we get somewhere that might allow us to ditch this one.”
Lia fought to think.
She didn’t know exactly what was after them, or what Loki feared might happen if his brothers caught up to them, but she had to assume it was bad. Even if it was only bad for Loki himself, that was bad for her, for multiple reasons, and not only because she owed him for getting her sister out of that mafia stronghold in Malibu.
She tried to scan through options objectively.
Clearly, they had to get out of Los Angeles, and soon.
Unseen, if at all possible, since Gregor and now Loki’s “hysterical” brother would be tracking them, assuming they weren’t following them already.
Lia thought about different ways out of the city.
She considered Burbank Airport, or even flipping around to use the one in Ventura, or Santa Barbara. Conversely, she considered just getting on the freeway and driving for San Diego. Or Las Vegas. Or Palm Springs. Or possibly even going the opposite direction and heading for San Jose, Sacramento, or Fresno, which were far less obvious choices.
She wondered if it would be more or less obvious to simply go back to LAX, maybe catch a plane for Europe.
They could even do the usual thing if they managed to switch out cars.
Meaning, they could just hit the road and drive for the Mexican border.
When she glanced at Loki that time, the god was looking at her.
From his eyes, she found herself thinking he’d heard her thoughts, and that he was mulling through the options she’d presented him with.
“What about a boat?” he said, studying her face as she looked between him and the view of the road through the windshield.
“Why a boat?” Lia said, pursing her lips.
He grinned faintly, shrugging.
“I like boats.”
“Does your brother know that?”
“Sadly, yes.” Loki exhaled in a sigh. “I am not sure whether it would occur to him in this scenario or not… but he is aware of my fondness for the sea.”
“What do you hate?” Maia asked from the back seat. “What form of transportation do you completely loath? That your brother would also know about?”
Loki looked back at her.
Then he faced forward, tapping his lip with one finger, as if thinking.
“I dislike camels mightily,” he said after a beat. “Although they can be amusing. They are such disagreeable creatures. They stink. They are also wont to bite and spit for almost no reason whatsoever. I had one kick me once. Right in the knee.”
He pointed down at his knee.
Maia burst out in a laugh. “What else? I don’t think we have a lot of camels around here. Maybe at the zoo, but I don’t think they’ll let us take them for a spin.”
When Lia snorted, glancing at her sister in the rearview mirror, Maia grinned at her.
“Anyway,” the younger Winchester added. “A camel would not be a very sneaky way out of town. They’re kinda conspicuous in L.A. On the freeway, especially.”
Lia snorted again, rolling her eyes when Maia grinned at her.
“You are not helping,” she informed her younger sister.
Loki still appeared to be thinking about Maia’s question, however.
“Ugh,” he said after another pause, grimacing. “I deeply detest buses. Does this mean we have to take a bus somewhere? Gross.”
Lia burst out in a laugh, unable to help it.
That time, she laughed until her stomach hurt, in spite of the fact that they might have a god on their tail shortly, one that could possibly incinerate them with lightning, or pound them with hammers, assuming anything in those myths was remotely true.
“What about a fishing boat?” she teased. “Or maybe we can hitch a ride on an eighteen-wheeler? In the back of a refrigerated car?”
“I would prefer any of those things to a bus, my darling girl,” Loki sniffed.
He was back to staring out the window, but it seemed to Lia he was using the side mirror more than he was looking directly at whatever he still
tracked with his eyes.
“Did Thor go to Gregor’s?” Lia asked.
“It appears that way,” Loki muttered. “I left a kind of glamour behind for him, hoping to lead him there. I infused a lot of my presence in that thing I left in the living room.”
“So, he’ll figure out soon that you tricked him,” Lia said.
“Yes. It must be assumed so,” Loki replied, still watching the side mirror, presumably looking in the direction he’d last seen his brother.
“What the heck was he riding in?” Maia asked from behind their seats. “Was he on a glider? Wearing some kind of jetpack?”
Loki gave her a bare, half-attentive look.
“Unfortunately, no,” he said grimly, frowning harder as he stared at the mirror. “The myths about my brother, Thor, having the ability to fly are, thankfully, only myths… likely stemming from our ability to jump dimensions between worlds. Sadly, the myths about my other brother, Tyr, being able to fly, are not inaccurate. So it’s also possible the myths about Thor simply documented the wrong brother…”
From behind the front seats, Maia choked on a laugh.
“Wait… what?”
“You can jump dimensions?” Lia said, ignoring her sister for now. “Can you do that with us? Or just do it yourself, and meet us somewhere later? So your brothers don’t catch you?”
“Sadly, no.” Loki let out a sigh, his eyes returning to the Bugatti’s darkened windows. “Not without my father, Odin, knowing about it. He is attuned to the Bifrost, you see. He would be there, waiting, when I reached the other side… thus, the problem I encountered before. With the Asgardian jail. With the finger wagging, and the blah-blah-blah. It’s all most inconvenient. Especially now that I have a human girlfriend, and would very much like to stay here.”
He turned his head, looking at Lia grimly.
“While on Earth, I must adhere to the physical rules of Earth.”
Lia frowned. “But Tyr can fly?”
“Still a physical phenomenon.” Loki shrugged. “Birds fly. Airplanes fly.”
Lia’s frown deepened at that, but she didn’t argue.
“What about the mind-reading?” she said. Worry colored her voice, even as she focused most of her attention on the road. “Can either of your brothers read minds? Can they ‘glamour’ or whatever, too?”
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