License Invoked (20 page)

Michael stepped forward, coming up beside Fionna. The two of them circled, challenging one another line by line with the melody. Liz watched his fingers fly with fascination, then gave herself a mental slap on the wrist. She was not to fall into a trance, no matter how wonderful it was to have the Guitarchangel playing only steps away. Her job was to protect Fionna.

Which was not too difficult at present. Robbie had not turned up again, according to Hugh Banks, the floor director, who was hovering around behind the scenes, whispering orders into his headset. Liz was concerned with the steady buildup of magical energy in the hall, but perhaps the threat would not be realized, since the antagonist who might have misdirected it was gone.

She had been trying all this time to work out the ramifications of a magical onslaught against someone like Fionna Kenmare. What purpose could it possibly serve? She was famous, but there were hundreds of music stars with household name recognition. It had to be because of the magic. She was associated with it. No one would blink an eye if tomorrow he or she read a headline that said there had been a magical blowout at a Green Fire concert. But what was the international connection? No foreign presence had been remarked upon at the site of the previous attack in Dublin. Only an insider could have recognized the undercover agent for what he was.

The biggest puzzle was why Robbie?—and, more to the point, how? How had she channeled her natural though untrained knack for magic into a formidable, focused weapon without it showing up on the radar of either Boo-Boo's department or Liz's own? The incantations involved must be new, powerful and far-reaching, the product of some heavy-duty research. That made Liz nervous. The department had a watchlist of hundreds of fringe groups that called themselves Satanists or black magicians. It would be horrifying to find one that had actually found a means to attain massive quantities of power. She sighed. She didn't relish bringing up such a suggestion in her next report to Mr. Ringwall. He was having enough difficulty accepting the notion that magic or other inexplicable causes were actually to blame. Her reports were probably the talk of Whitehall right now.

Colored spots and lasers arced over and around the stage, creating patterns of light and shadow through which Fee and Michael moved as though they were the Fair Folk dancing in the woods. The lighting effects that had been arranged to take the place of the pyrotechnics looked amazingly good considering Liz knew they had been put together in haste. Michael slipped past them, his long black hair plastered to his head. Time for his first costume change. Fionna, accompanied by the traditional Irish instruments and the backup guitarists, was giving the audience a ballad of frustrated love. Her voice soared to the dome.

Liz touched Boo-Boo on the arm. When she caught his eye, she tilted her head toward backstage. He nodded. She wanted to check around. He crossed his arms, and continued a dispassionate scanning of the stage and the audience.

Liz moved into the dark space. The stagehands were busy with a piece of the set, a tiered dais that went in the middle of the stage for one of the numbers. Hugh Banks was still there, shouting into his headset mike, but now he was red-faced with frustration. Something was not going well.

Michael shot back through the tunnel, now clad in black leather pants and gleaming black silk shirt, hair flowing and dry again. He clapped Liz on the shoulder with an encouraging pat. The roadie nearest the entrance handed back his guitar. Michael stepped onto the stage. His key light hit him within a few paces, but it was late. Liz winced, knowing how picky the guitarist was about timing.

As soon as he appeared, Fionna backed away from center stage, ready to change into her white silk dress. Her light didn't turn off quickly enough. Fee gave a snort of frustration as she came off stage into the capable hands of Fitz and Laura.

“They love you, me darling,” Laura shouted at her. “It's going marvelously.” Liz followed them downstairs to the dressing room, where the costume change was accomplished within moments. Fee stood and stared at nothing while they ripped the green silk off and zipped her into the peach-nude sheath. She gulped a tepid mineral water and strode upstairs, fringes flashing in every direction. Her retinue followed in silence, not wanting to break her concentration.

The crowd roared with delight as Fee reappeared, all in white under the lights. She twirled, letting them see the new dress. Did Liz imagine the tiny stumble? That uneasiness Liz had sensed while observing the stage manager continued to build, small mistake piling upon small problem. Liz felt rather than heard when Voe slipped a beat, throwing everyone else off just slightly. Eddie's fingers fumbled a note, flattening a chord. The audience didn't seem to care. The rapport had been established. The magical give-and-take between them and the performers that Liz so loved was beginning. Energy was building like the Pyramids.

“Ready to cue the cascade of rainbow light,” Banks said to his headset. “This replaces the Roman candles over the conclusion of this number. Yes, maybe. We'll go to a short instrumental break after this, give Fee a chance to breathe. Somebody make sure she has something to drink on hand when she comes off. God knows she'll need it. She must be sweating buckets. Ready? And . . . cue!”

* * *

In the bar, Robbie was getting nicely suggestible.

“Why, if Fee wasn't in the picture,” Ken said, “you could just lift your little finger, and Lloyd would come running right to you.” Involuntarily, Robbie's little finger raised itself off the surface of the bar. “Yeah, you could give him a little wink, and the guy would be on his knees.” Wink. Ken grinned. He could go on like this all night.

That magical electricity Robbie was generating had aroused Ken's hopes. If his supposition was correct, his idea could fulfill the conditions of his assignment and save his butt.

“Hey,” he said casually. “It's seven-thirty. Time for the concert to begin. Boy, if we were back in the Superdome, the first number would be beginning right now. Michael likes everything to start right on the dot.”

Robbie seemed to understand some kind of response was called for, and stirred herself out of her drug-and-alcohol-induced haze to make it. “He's very prompt.”

“That's right,” Ken said. “You'd be heating up your stuff right now, wouldn't you?”

“It's already ready,” Robbie said, and giggled at the rhyme. “Already ready. To go. Everything. Lasers. Lights. Rockets.”

“Lots of rockets,” Ken agreed, keeping his voice low and smooth, like a snake creeping up on an innocent prey. “I know you've got all your cues on computer, but you don't really need the list, do you?”

“I”—hic!—”memorize everything,” Robbie said, unsteadily. “Otherwise, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. Got to do my job. My job!” Tears started leaking from her eyes. “All gone.”

“No, baby, no,” Ken said lightly, mentally crossing his fingers. “You've still got your job. You've got to do the special effects for the concert. Everybody's counting on you. Look out the window. Down below, there are eighty thousand people in the dark waiting for the show to start. Are you ready? Cue the first effect. Wait for Gary to tell you to go on three, two . . .”

“No,” Robbie interrupted him, growing agitated. “Nigel fired me. He doesn't want me to do it.”

“Sure he does, baby.”

“No! He threw me out. Hates me. Hates me!” She was crying, digging at her eyes with the side of her fist like a little girl. Her nose turned red.

Ken was keenly aware that the bartender was keeping an eye on them. She had noticed Robbie's distress and was starting to walk toward them with intent. Gulping at the thought of the baseball bat under the bar, he pulled a handful of money out of his pocket and slapped it on the bar. Very gently, he helped Robbie to stand up.

“Let's go for a walk,” he suggested. He put his arm around Robbie and helped her off the bar stool. Casually, he strolled with her out into the neon-glazed night, with one final glance over his shoulder to make sure the bartender wasn't picking up the phone to call the police.

“Okay,” Ken said, steering her out onto Toulouse. “I know a good place to go.”

“Okay,” said Robbie, biddably, her sorrows forgotten. The drugs were taking effect at last. Ken held out his free arm and gestured toward the sky.

“Now, the lights are coming up. Michael's already out on the stage with the band. You're sitting behind your console. Your hand moves toward the control board. . . .”

* * *

Upstairs, in the empty press room beside the control room, a finger of green-tinged power crept out of the metal box containing the transmission lines, down the cables snaking from it to the room next door. Everybody in the control room was too busy to notice the tongue of flame dancing along the black cables. It rippled over to the special effects station, which hummed into life.

“Tone down the mikes on Voe's drums, Sheila,” Gary Lowe, seated at the lighting station, was saying. He slid several pots and hovered his finger over a button. “We want to hear Dijan's bodhran here. Bring up Carl's harp. Lovely. And . . . cue the cascade.”

The green fire blazed into life. The readout on the laptop computer beside the special effects station began to scroll down its long list.

* * *

Liz squirmed back into her place next to Boo-Boo. The American seemed troubled.

“Do you hear that?” he asked, pointing vaguely up toward the ceiling. “It ain't exactly music.”

Liz listened intently. A chord had added itself to the topmost registers of the music, a disturbing harmonic that set her teeth on edge. Fee and Michael both heard it, glanced at each other, wondering what it was. Michael gestured at the techies with a flattening hand, ordering them to do something about it. They all shrugged. Alarmed, both singers glanced backward to where Liz and Boo were concealed. Boo-Boo waved his hand, showing them there was nothing to worry about.

“What is it?”

“Dunno. Bad mojo on the way. Any minute now, I'm guessin'.”

“Then why did you tell them to go on?”

Boo-Boo's blue eyes glinted at her. “It'd be worse if they stop.”

Hastily, Liz started chanting the protection cantrip over and over. She hadn't begun a moment too soon. The cascade of colored lights had just ended, changing Fionna's white dress to every color of the rainbow. Without warning, there was an explosion at the south end of the stage. Brilliant pillars of white and gold roared up practically under Fionna's nose. The Roman candles were launching! With shrill whistles, fingers of flame shot up halfway to the ceiling. They burst into sparks that showered down on the wildly yelling crowd. Tiny red embers fell over Fionna's head, but bounced harmlessly off the bubble provided by the spell.

No one noticed the effect but Lloyd, who glanced toward the agents and gave them a surreptitious thumbs-up. He approved.

Fee looked nervous for a moment, then took the reappearance of the pyrotechnics in her stride. She stretched out an arm toward the fire as though she was invoking power from it. As the rockets launched, she matched them scream for scream. The crowd loved it.

“I thought they were doing this without effects,” Liz said, watching the rockets zip around the huge arena. Mentally, she ticked off the sequence of events as they each appeared on schedule: rockets, lasers, smoke, more lasers, light show. It was as though Robbie had never left.

“Maybe the guys found another special effects technician here in town,” Laura Manning speculated, huddling in behind them to watch Fionna dance. “After all, she left her cue sheet program and all the equipment. Good thing, too. Gary Lowe's had just one headache after another. It's bad enough that the lighting director took off, too.”

“What?” the agents asked in unison, turning toward her.

The makeup artist looked from one surprised face to the other.

“Nigel didn't tell you? Yeah, right after he canned Robbie Unterburger, Kenny Lewis disappeared. Went out to make a phone call, Sheila said, and has never been seen again. I thought he had feelings for Robbie, but she couldn't see he was alive with the eye magnet over there,” Laura nodded in Lloyd's direction. “Poor Gary's running the lights himself.”

Boo and Liz exchanged glances.

“I thought that young lady wasn't doin' all this on her own,” Boo said, his mouth set in a grim line. “It just seemed out of character. Now, him I could believe.”

“We'd better check upstairs and make sure,” Liz said.

Hugh Banks thought it was an odd question, but he grabbed his headset mike and inquired. His face was troubled when he looked up. “You're right. No one's at Robbie's desk. The whole thing is working by itself. Is it a ghost in the machine?”

“Could she have mechanized it to work off the cues?” Liz asked. “She had everything listed on a laptop computer.”

“Possibly, but why didn't she tell us she was doing that?” Banks asked. He turned to the manager, who looked shocked.

“Can they turn it off?” Boo asked. Banks muttered to his microphone again. His usually ruddy face turned pale.

“No.”

“It's going by remote control,” Liz said, feeling icy fingers gripping her stomach. “She's making it all happen by remote control.”

“But nothing bad has happened yet,” Nigel Peters said, hopefully.

“I wouldn't take no bets on it stayin' that way,” Boo-Boo said. Liz agreed with him. “Can't do anythin' now but stay on guard, and hope we can handle what he throws at us.”

Nigel tore at his thin hair. “This is all my fault. I should have kept the silly girl where she was.”

“Should we stop the show?” Banks asked. Boo-Boo shook his head.

“Just do your job, and let Ms. Fionna do hers.”

The star was responding magnificently to having the fireworks and lasers running, however unexpectedly. Privately, Liz thought she must be vastly relieved. No need to show her bare face, so to speak.

The exciting rock number was ending. After a halt of a few beats, the tempo changed to the challenging rhythm of Green Fire's diatribe against hostile occupation of one country by another. The plaintive wail of the uilleann pipe began to snake in and out of the melody.