Liz grinned. Vincent had a little benevolent magic of his own. Nigel Peters, Lloyd Preston and a cordon of security guards swooped in. They rounded up the protesting group of reporters and escorted them toward the door, talking all the while to distract them. Very quickly, the Superdome was cleared of members of the press. Green Fire seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Liz followed Boo into the boxes surrounding the stage. The two of them split up and went in opposite directions.
The tiers of seats were raked steeply and the space between them was alarmingly narrow. Liz hated to admit it, but she was afraid of heights. Her heart pounded every time she stumbled, grabbing for the metal railing to keep herself from plummeting down the concrete stairs. There was no way for her to watch what was going on down on stage and walk at the same time. If she was to concentrate on magic-sniffing, it was better for her acrophobia not to be able to see how far up they were. She kept her gaze on the few feet of floor immediately in front of her, and listened.
She began to understand why Green Fire had chosen the Superdome as a concert venue. The acoustics were surprisingly good. Voices carried well into the bleachers from the stage. Over the racket created by grips dragging equipment to its places, the tuning of instruments, and the pounding of feet on the hollow platform, Liz eavesdropped on the crew and the band. They all sounded impatient and resentful of the long interruption of their jobs.
“ . . . my opinion, Fitz won’t admit he had a cigarette in his hand under . . .” a deep male voice rose out of the hubbub. “ . . . set fire to it himself and . . .”
“ . . . silk goes up in a puff . . .” another man’s voice agreed.
“ . . . filmy sleeves . . .” one of the stagehands drawled, scornfully.
“ . . . really an attack on Fee?” piped a woman’s voice. Liz recognized Laura Manning.
“No!” “Maybe.” “Yes, and by whom?” echoed around the stage.
“ . . . one of us?” asked Lockney’s voice.
“No!” came the immediate protest, but other voices chimed in. “Maybe.” “Could be.” “Who?”
“Who knows?” Michael Scott’s clear voice cut above the noise. “Let’s get this done.”
Who indeed? Liz wondered, as she reached the end of the tier. She had not sensed any magical evidence whatsoever in the circuit. She glanced across the open arena at the sea of multicolored seats, but she couldn’t see Boo-Boo. If it wasn’t an accident, perhaps the prank was the work of an earthbound stalker trying to make Fionna’s life miserable. In that eventuality Liz would have to turn the case over to the FBI. Ringwall wouldn’t like that, but he’d be relieved. Anything that smelled of the mystical worried the ministry. On the whole he would be happier if Liz could prove a negative instead of a positive. You open the floodgates, she thought wryly, and that let in all the bogeys down the coal cellar, the walking ghosts, and before you know it Panorama and 60 Minutes are doing a special on you.
A dark-skinned man in a plain gray guard’s uniform sprang up out of nowhere in front of her. Liz jumped in surprise and clutched for a handhold.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” he asked, his warm brown eyes serene but watchful. The temples of his black, curly hair were a distinguished gray. Liz showed him her credentials, which he examined with raised eyebrows. “Well, isn’t that interesting. Welcome to America, ma’am.”
“How is it going, Captain Evers?” Liz asked, reading his name tag.
“Under control, ma’am,” the man said, taking a side glance down at the stage area. “We’re clearing out the rest of the city folks. Pretty soon it’ll just be us chickens in here. There’s no damage we can find, no signs of a break-in. I guess they were right about that flash powder causing the fire in the first place . . .”
Liz found she was only half-listening to him. She was aware of a looming presence overhead, like a storm cloud. She glanced up at the large, square box hovering over the stage, a huge cube covered with lights, screens and speakers.
“What is that?” she asked, cutting Evers off in the middle of his explanation. His eyes followed hers upward.
“Oh, that’s the Jumbotron, ma’am.”
“What’s it for?”
“She raises and lowers so you can watch the screens. They use her all the time during concerts and games, to show the scores, instant replays and so on.”
“Good heavens,” Liz said, gawking at its size. “What does that thing weigh?”
“Seventy-two tons, ma’am.” Evers sounded proud.
Liz frowned. “Could it be detached?” she asked. “Is there any possible chance it could come down on anyone?”
Captain Evers looked very worried until Boo leaned around from behind her. “She’s with me, Abelard.”
The dark-skinned man’s lined face relaxed into a wide grin.
“Boo-Boo, is that you?” Evers asked. He rocked back on his heels, and stuck out his hands to clasp the American agent’s. “You young rascal, how you be?”
“Not as good as you look, old man,” Boo said, grinning back. “Now, tell the lady what she wants to know.”
Evers turned to Liz with an air of apology.
“Well, no, ma’am, the Jumbo can’t come down; not without a lot of help. She’s anchored to the steel girders holding up the roof. The roof’s a soft plastic, not very heavy.”
“How do they control it? Do you have to go up there?” Liz shuddered. Evers’s eyes lightened mischievously.
“Oh, there’s catwalks, ma’am,” the captain said, his eyes crinkling. He seemed unable to resist teasing an obvious acrophobe. “Way high up. Yes, ma’am, you can climb up right inside the ceiling. But don’t fall off those catwalks, or you’ll come right through. Do you want to go up and see?” he offered, the impish grin returning. “It’s just about two hundred sixty feet above the floor.”
Liz, feeling green, shook her head weakly. She thought of the fall from such a height, and swayed slightly on her feet, holding onto the banister with a firm grip. “Not unless there’s an alternative.”
“Abelard!” Boo looked at the man with a wry smile.
“Well, you don’t have to,” the guard captain said, releasing his prisoner reluctantly. “They work her from the control room with a couple of buttons. It’s as easy as raising your garage door.”
Boo took her arm in a firm and reassuring grip as he helped her to the next level.
“Find anything?” he asked.
“Not a whisker,” Liz said. “It’s beginning to look as if it’s a job for the Men in Black, not us.”
Boo came up alongside her as she reached the top of the steep stairs. “I have to admit I’m kind of hoping not,” he said.
“Me, too,” Liz said. Though she would far rather not have to deal with a supernatural menace and it would be a relief if Fionna’s troubles turned out to be a set of coincidences and accidents, the department needed all the credibility it could get, and this was her first solo mission. Negative results were no way to earn promotion.
They went out into the broad, tiled hallway. Names of corporations were engraved on plaques set into the metal doors on her left. Those must lead to the luxury skyboxes she saw from the stage level. Boo steered her toward a set of blank doors. Scraping sounds shook the floor, and sirens echoed through the corridors. Liz looked around in alarm.
“That’s just the loading bay doors, opening to let the fire truck out,” Boo explained. “Come on, let’s take a look in the control room.”
He rapped on the blind door, and a bearded man in T-shirt, jeans and headset let them in. Inside the cramped, glass-fronted room the crew was in a frenzy of activity. The technical director, Gary Lowe, stood shouting into his headset behind a man and a woman seated at the console. Behind him, the event director was talking simultaneously to Lowe and to the floor director down on the stage. Robbie Unterburger glanced up from her high-tech keyboard, and cocked her head to beckon them over. Her hands flitted from one control to another, tweaking levers, knobs and keys.
“This is a fantastic setup,” Liz said, staring at the control panel as she tried to figure out what any of it did. “You aren’t running all your machinery, are you?”
“No,” Robbie said, tossing her straight, brown hair, “this is a dry run. I’m just following my cues this time. I’ll test everything, and we’ll have one live technical run-through just before showtime tomorrow. These are the triggers for the lasers, and here are the joysticks for each one. I can run them manually or program the whole thing to run by computer. They did not go off and set Fitzy on fire.” Her dark brows drew down as she dared the agents to say otherwise. “This is the control for the smoke pots,” she said, pointing to a bank of a dozen switches, “and here’s the hologram projectors that show images on the clouds. It’s fantastic.” Robbie’s eyes sparkled as she turned one of four small screens toward them so they could see the turning figures of constellations and mythical beasts that were cued up and ready to run. Liz found the change from sullen child to lively effects wizard a charming transformation. Liz caught Ken Lewis glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. He saw Liz looking at him and swiftly turned away. “The firing mechanism for sparklers and fireworks is disabled just now; we’re not permitted to use it unless the fire engine is on standby. Pity. This is a great place for flash and bang. The bigger the better.”