Thankfully, the fireworks stopped before he could put that into effect. There was a smattering of applause, and the crowd began to break up. He was left alone on the steps of the gazebo with Robbie slumped beside him.
"The show's over. Did that do it?" he asked the phone. "Did the effects stop?"
"No," Liz said. "The place is still shaking itself apart."
Boo-Boo's heart sank. "Then it's all goin' on in her head."
"How can we turn off her subconscious? There are only a couple more numbers to be played. Everyone is going to want to leave soon, and the place is a hermetically sealed drum full of power that will blow if someone breaches the walls."
Boo-Boo's eyebrows went up. He had an idea. The girl had pretty much been following her cues in the beginning. Maybe her subconscious would continue to do it. He hoped he could connect with those ingrained reactions.
"Let's try and reestablish her connection to the show," Boo said. "Hold the phone toward the band."
* * *
Liz nodded to the roadie holding the phone to her ear. He pulled it away and prepared to turn it off.
"No, don't do that," she said. "Hold it out between the speakers so it picks up the music."
Whatever the concertgoing audience thought of seeing a disembodied hand with a telephone at the top of the stage Liz couldn't guess, but Boo-Boo was right. After a few falters, the special effects began again, this time following the cue sheet that the astonished stage manager held in his hand. Robbie certainly did know her work backwards and forwards. Lasers touched the stage. A few Roman candles popped into the air in sequence. The steam box played. At last the show was going according to the plan the producers wanted. The gigantic box overhead stopped swaying. Liz was able to relax her stance for a moment.
It had taken her a short while to appreciate the skill of the young man who had been holding the phone up for her. Not once did he let the instrument slip off her ear or jam it too tightly against her head. He was watching her, moving when she did, and adjusting his grip accordingly. He must also have muscles like iron. Her arms were getting tired being held aloft for hours, and she was trained to hold that pose. It had taken a great burden off her, not having to worry about the telephone slipping off her shoulder and falling down because she couldn't spare a hand for it.
"You are very observant," she told him, and was rewarded with a smile.
"In this business you have to be, ma'am," he said. "You're pretty good at what you do, yourself."
Liz smiled. "I'm beginning to find that out."
Everyone was being so very cooperative. Over the last hour they had formed a special bond. United at first by necessity, they were now freely enjoying all the positive energy running throughout the room and one another. She knew how many people were in the huge auditorium. She knew them all intimately, every emotion, every urge. How many were in tune with the music. How many of them under her overlay of calming magic were excited, terrified, angry, in love, afraid, relieved. How many of them were heading for the lavatory, and how many were coming back. No one was bored.
With the cool beat of jazz running through her veins like blood, she could do anything. The final song was a rocking ballad in a minor key that sent chills up the audience's collective spine even while it thrilled and elated them. The lyrics were an allegory about a mystical underground power that rose up from beneath the earth to destroy humanity because it was destroying nature, but decided to give it one more chance because humans cared about music. If they could understand one kind of harmony, it could learn to appreciate the other. It was a warning, but it had a happy ending. Liz fervently hoped that Robbie could hold it together just a little while longer.
"This is the last number, Beauray," she said into the phone.
* * *
"I hear you," Boo said. He shifted Robbie and cuddled the phone closer to her ear. Pretty soon it would be all over.
A tiny, faint beeping began. He realized it was coming from his cell phone. Oh, no! The battery mustn't die now!
It wouldn't. He leaned in close to the receiver.
"Liz, send me a little of that power," Boo said in a very calm voice so as not to alarm Robbie and set her off. She was still out, but her eyelids fluttered, and she was drooling down her chin. He wondered again how much of those drugs Ken Lewis had given her. "Just a tickle."
A tickle was all he got. The small phone grew warm in his fingers. He held it just far enough from Robbie's ear to see the miniature screen. Battery full. Whew.
The music coming from the tiny speaker reached a thrilling crescendo, and died away.
"Okay," he whispered. "Fade to black."
"Beauray." Liz's calm voice issued forth from the earpiece. "It has stopped."
"Whew!" Boo-Boo slumped down on the concrete steps with the unconscious woman in his arms. "Thanks, darlin'. I'd better get this poor young lady back to the hotel. See you at the party."
He pocketed the phone, stood up and hoisted Robbie into his arms.
* * *
The park emptied out swiftly. The FBI agent passed within a couple of feet of him. Ken could have reached out and touched his shoulder, but contact with Beauray Boudreau was the last thing he wanted. Or the second last. Ken waited until Boo-Boo had stopped at the street corner with his limp burden, then insinuated himself into a large crowd of happy merrymakers heading north along the riverfront toward a bar near the French Market. He needed a very large drink.
The last thing, really the last thing, Ken wanted, was to have to tell his employer that he had failed. Mr. Kingston wasn't going to like what happened. And neither was the Council. They'd find out sooner or later, but not from him.
He ripped off the headset and stuffed it into the nearest garbage can.
As the final number concluded, Liz watched Fionna settle back to earth as lightly as a feather. Michael ran up to her and threw his arms around her. The two of them spun around the stage, laughing. The fringe of Fionna's dress flashed in the spotlights like electricity made physical. Voe Lockney launched into a fusillade of drumbeats that ended with a crash of cymbals. The sound died away. The Jumbotron stopped rocking. It was over. They'd survived.
The lights dimmed to the sound of wild applause and cheering. Green Fire took its curtain calls. The four members of the band stepped forward to take individual bows, and pointed out the guest musicians and singers for recognition. The applause went on and on.
"Encore! Encore! Encore!" the crowd began to chant.
The musicians looked at one another. Michael shook his head firmly. No. Instead the band waved and bowed to their fans, picking up flowers and small presents that came sailing onto the stage from the audience. Fionna, a huge bouquet of roses balanced on her arm, waved to the teeming crowd like a beauty contestant crowned queen. The band took one bow after another. The crowd didn't want them to leave.
The crew backstage cheered. They'd survived, too.
"It's all over," Nigel Peters said, with relief. He dropped his hand from her shoulder and flexed his arms.
"Not quite," Liz said, keeping her pose.
Peters looked at her in alarm. "What?"
"The question that must be answered immediately is what to do with all the raw, tainted power still swirling around the concert hall. The doors would be thrown open in a moment. We must rid ourselves of the gigantic overload to avoid letting it spill out into the streets of New Orleans."
Peters frowned. "How do you get rid of used power?"
A perfect solution had just occurred to her. Liz smiled, charmed at the simplicity of the answer.
"Why, we'll send it back to the givers, of course," she said. "A tradition of magic says that whatever one does comes back threefold. The concertgoers certainly deserved to have all the love they projected given back to them in triplicate." And whoever was behind poor Robbie being used as a tool deserved what was coming to them, too.
"Attention, please!" she called, as the group around her began to break away. "We're not quite th
rough yet. We need to clear the air before anyone tries to leave the Superdome.
"Aww!" some of them complained.
"Can it!" Lloyd shouted. "Do what she says. Now."
They returned readily to their original positions. Liz looked around at all of them. They weren't really all that eager to give up their chance to have touched real magic. She was their leader in wonderworking. Every eye was on her.
"Now, everybody breathe in. Take in all of the power that has been raised here tonight that we've shared. Keep only what you need for the health and strength of everyone here. Then—breathe out. Push the rest of it back where it came from. Send it back. Send it all back. Ready? Inhale. Now, push!"
Liz thrust her arms out in front of her. All the others followed suit. The huge glut of energy went rushing away from them in a hurricane gale. Anything not nailed down swirled in the breeze, sheet music, programs, posters, cables, but the roadies and stagehands weren't afraid this time. They were a part of it. A grand tornado touched at the edges with green seemed to rise up from their nucleus, opened out to the very edges of the arena, and disappeared into the walls. The power was gone, back where it belonged. Liz let out a sigh of relief. The ordeal was over at last.
Everyone grinned at each other like idiots and slapped one another on the back or caught one another in energetic embraces. They all picked up Liz, passing her from one to the other for hugs.
"All right, people," Nigel Peters said, holding his arms up in the air. "Party time!"
"Yay!" the crew cheered.
The band came off stage, holding up weary hands in victory salutes. The roadies leaped forward to take instruments or microphones and hand out drinks as the group headed downstairs to their celebratory party. Liz felt triumphant. She'd succeeded, against the wildest odds, at the first really important assignment she'd ever been given. She fell in with the band and found herself beside Fionna.
"I've never been so tired in my life," Liz said.
"And ye didn't do a thing except stand back here and wave yer arms," Fionna complained. "We're the ones who did all the real work. Look at me! I had to sing all me numbers hangin' in the air like the week's washin'! And I didn't get to wear all my costumes!"
Chapter 18
"Ken Lewis was your problem all along," Liz told Nigel Peters the next morning in the private corner of the Mystic Bar as they waited for the rest of the company to come down for a belated brunch feast. "He'd been using Robbie as a power conduit to attack Fionna. All the things Fee told you about scratches appearing on her skin and unexpected knocks were true."
"I feel awful not believing Fee," Nigel said, running nervous fingers through his thinning hair. "It's just not the sort of thing you run into every day."
"You were right to be skeptical," Boo-Boo said, in his easy way. "It's not an everyday thing. But once the attacks started comin' in public, he didn't have much of a chance of escapin' notice."
"Lewis was trying things out, working toward the grand climax of this concert, when the main attack would come," Liz said, seriously. "I believe he really meant to kill Fionna. Robbie was unaware of his true intentions, or she wouldn't have gone along with it. She's not evil, she's just..."
"In love," Nigel said, sighing deeply. "I know. It's totally hopeless. Everyone can see it, poor kid, but Lloyd's got enough sense to stay where his bread's buttered."
"It's none of my business," Liz interrupted, "but there are real feelings between them. I was... rather in a position to know, last evening."
"I guess you were," Nigel said, a little uncomfortably. "Er, how long did Ken have Robbie, er..."
"Under his spell?" Boo asked, with a smile. "Most likely's been movin' in on her since he started workin' for you. Lots of your people thought he had it bad for the young lady. His interests in her were purely unaltruistic."
"How do we... uh," Nigel's voice dropped to a confidential undertone as he drew the agents aside for a moment, "how do we keep this from happening again? I gave Robbie her job back, but what you were nattering on about this Law of Contagion... She hasn't got anything that's catching, has she?"
Liz and Boo exchanged glances.
"Not precisely," Liz said. "But it won't happen again. We've seen to that."
And so they had. Boo-Boo had dragged an exhausted Liz to a little store in a dark street to get the materials they needed for a protective amulet to prevent her from being taken over by malign influences ever again. Both agents were impressed and worried by the different levels of spells they had to delve through when clearing her aura. Robbie was fairly well disenchanted herself, with Ken Lewis, Lloyd Preston, and men in general. For the time being. She might not be vulnerable to love for a while, but she was a vulnerable young woman.
"We have amulets for the entire company," Liz said, indicating a pile of Carnival bead necklaces. "Just to make certain such attacks cannot come through another conduit."
"Here," Boo-Boo said, handing Nigel a string of garish, metallic blue beads, which the manager accepted with a nervous laugh. "This one's for you."
"A little bright, isn't it?"
"The more garish the better," Boo-Boo pointed out, "to scare away bad spirits, y'know."
As the members of the company filed sleepily into the bar on the way to the dining room, Boo-Boo stepped forward to loop a necklace over each of their heads. Liz handed him fresh ones as each new person arrived.
"Souvenir of N'Awlins," he said, pleasantly. "What we call a lagniappe, a little somethin' extra. Enjoy."
"Hey, thanks, man," most of them said.
"Is this extra special?" Laura Manning asked, with a wicked glint at Boo-Boo as he placed a bright gold necklace around her neck that went well with her dark skin.
He grinned at her. "Y'all might say so." She leaned over and kissed him.
Liz had an armload of protective necklaces in every color imaginable for Fionna to wear with every outfit. When the star finally arrived, Boo-Boo lavished amulets on her until the exhausted star looked like a carnival float. Liz held back a couple of the leftovers to take home to HQ for analysis. It never hurt to have more examples of protective magic in the grimoire.
"You're all safe now," Liz assured Nigel.
"At least from an attack like that one," Boo-Boo said, genially. Nigel didn't look reassured by Boo-Boo's qualified promise.
"But how did Lewis get a nice girl like Robbie to work for him?" he asked.
Liz looked grim. "She believed that Ken was doing magical work on her behalf, ostensibly to help her gain Lloyd's love. She didn't catch on as to why she wasn't winning her man. She put it down to Fionna's stronger magic. Frustration was why her power levels could build so high."
"That wasn't all her, y'know," Boo-Boo pointed out. "She was gettin' a power feed from somewhere else. An untrained practitioner like herself couldn't generate that much without bein' detected. That was why it took us so long to figure out it was her. Now, she'll just have to work out her love troubles in some other way. She might still be jealous of Ms. Fionna, but she won't be wired into a negative-energy pool any more by an unscrupulous bastard like him, y'all will excuse the language."
"Poor kid," Nigel said. "But what was it all for?"
"Power," Liz said. "Eighty thousand bodies' worth. When you have that many like-minded people in a room, they generate psychic energy that can be tapped by someone who knows what he's doing."
"Like radiation?"
"Sort of," said Boo-Boo. "Ken had a hookup to a satellite receiver feedin' into the control room, wired to Robbie's chair. Since the energy had touched her once, it would continue to have an effect on her. It was attached to the transmission lines in the press room, right next to the control room. We were in there, and never connected what was happenin' to what we were lookin' at."
"This is still too fantastic for me," Nigel said, shaking his head. "Dark sorcery, beamed here via modern technology. And we'll never know who was behind all this, huh?"
Liz held her tongue. Boo-Boo had kindl
y shared with her the early-morning report of the very bizarre destruction of a television station in the northwestern United States. The agent, a stringer named Ed Cielinski, reported that some new equipment installed at SATN-TV that gave off evil vibrations had been acting oddly over the last few days. Some time after he'd gone off duty the night before, the whole place was trashed, like a rock group's hotel room. His employer was discovered sitting on the floor in the middle of the ruins muttering to himself. So far as he knew no one had been hurt, but the place was a mess. The department was investigating, and would share its results with OOPSI.
"I'm afraid not," Liz said at last.
"I had no idea we were harboring a dangerous criminal," Nigel Peters said, shaking his head. "We were lucky he didn't turn up for the concert itself."
"He did almost as much damage by remote control as he would have if he was right there," Boo-Boo said.
"You can say that again!" said Gary Lowe, coming over to hand Nigel a drink. "We had everything planned to work without Robbie's effects, and he went and bollixed it all up by vanishing. It's a good thing I know how to run a light board, or the whole thing would have come off in darkness."
"In more ways than one," Boo-Boo said.
Gary Lowe gave him a puzzled frown. "Well, it made my job twice as hard, doing that along with overseeing everything else."
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