“Oh, for heaven’s sake, this is getting to be like a drawing room comedy,” Fee said, in exasperation. “Look, are you finished?”
“I am now, lady,” Madam Charmay said, putting her rattles into her purse. “I can come again.”
“Yes, please,” Fee said, grabbing her small purse, little more than a wallet on a string. She riffled through the wad of American notes that she’d been given by Nigel and came up with three twenties, which she held out to Madam Charmay. The old woman regarded the money with distaste.
“No, do not give it to me. Give it to charity. This night. Without fail.”
“I will,” Fee said in surprise, ashamed of herself for not asking about the protocol of paying healers for their services. “Thank you so much.”
“It is all in God’s name,” Madam Charmay said, with dignity. “I will go now.”
* * *
Lloyd’s face turned beet red when he opened the door and saw Liz and Boo-Boo in the hallway.
“May we see her?” Liz asked politely. She hadn’t a hope of making this jealous man an ally, but at least she would keep from enraging him further. She had felt her ward alarms go off twice. There were, or had been, two strangers in the room. One of them was still there, yet Liz sensed no danger from the presence.
As if in answer to her unspoken question, a slender, little woman with a worn face and ineffable majesty was stepping daintily toward them. As she came through the door, she traded speaking looks with Boo-Boo. He raised his eyebrows, and the old woman shook her head very slightly. There was the ghost of magic in the room. Benevolent but very strong-minded. Concerned, Liz bustled toward Fionna, who was standing under the light fixture in the center of the room, eating jambalaya out of a carry-out container with a spoon.
“I don’t care what the old darlin’ said, this tastes wonderful,” Fionna said indistinctly, around a large mouthful. “Oh, there you are, you two! I can’t believe how hungry I am, and all. Have some.” She held out the container. The food smelled good to Liz, but it looked awful. Thick pieces of sausage pushed up through the brownish gravy like monstrous fingers emerging from a swamp.
“Thank you, ma’am, but we’ve had our dinner,” Boo said. “We came to see if you’ll be all right to come down for the late rehearsal. Your people are kind of countin’ on it.”
“Oh, without a doubt!” Fee said, managing to trill the words without spraying food on anyone. She scooped up one last bite and held it up in the air before eating it. “We’re going to do such a show tomorrow, me darlin’s!” She licked the spoon tidily and set it into the empty lid. “Come on, then! Lloyd, me love, get us a taxi?” Liz noticed that she was already wearing her purse.
“Who was that woman we saw?” she asked Boo as they followed in Fionna’s wake.
“Friend of mine from the Quarter, a Cajun healer. The real thing. Willie on the door told me Miss Fionna asked for a recommendation. I made sure they didn’t send her no charlatans.”
“Did she cure Fionna?” Liz asked, with interest.
“Naw. I can tell. There hasn’t been time to really get to the roots of what’s goin’ on. She did the stuff she does for visitors. A little chantin’, rattlin’ to drive away the bad spirits. Short-term fix, but you can see it’s cheered her up a lot. Half of healin’s mental, y’know.”
Liz sighed. “At least the show will go on.”
Boo tilted his head and gave her a little smile. “Don’t worry, ma’am. We’ll catch whoever’s behind this.”
Chapter 12
At 10:00 P.M., the SATN-TV host pointed into the camera lens.
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you, yes, you! You can keep your children from falling under the influence of wrong-thinking people like this woman and her ilk.” The camera pulled back from him to show the poster of Green Fire. In the amber spotlight, Fionna Kenmare’s dark eye makeup looked sinister and terrifying, and the male musicians hovered like thugs. “Tonight we show you ways to combat the insidious influence of so-called white magic and rock music. We’ve got a lot of guests tonight I know you’ll enjoy. Stay tuned!”
Augustus Kingston watched the screen with his eyes slitted like a pleased snake. This show was SATN’s bread and butter. The average pollster from the FCC or either of the two big services would have been very surprised if they ever took a survey in this area of the country. Never mind your late night reruns of situation comedies. Never mind your home shopping networks. The big deal in this part of the woods was the Hate Your Neighbor show, hosted by Nick Trenton. In the last five years Trenton had shown a genius for raising hackles among his guests, half of whom had something to do with evildoing, and the other half who were the subject of their rants. It was a poor night when there wasn’t one good fistfight. You could raise a contact high of black magic just sitting in the audience. The sponsors would see to it that it ran forever. They said that the evil that men did lived after them. Augustus Kingston could have thought of no better monument to himself than an everpouring fount of dark power that bore his name, although he intended to live a very long time and enjoy it.
That night’s programming was setting up to be a good one. They had rounded up a handful of wiccans, a man and four women, and coaxed them to come on the show to promote their peaceful nature cult. They were on the set already, looking nervously at the black candles and the pig-shaped altar. What they didn’t know was their fellow guests were unconstructed right-wing megaconservatives who didn’t believe women should even be taught to read. Kingston turned down the audio monitor as he picked up the phone and punched the internal extension.
“Ed, how’s that test running?”
“Pretty well, sir!” the engineer shouted over the noises in the control room. “I don’t know what you’ve got at the other end, but the needles are showing almost fifteen percent feed coming in on the line. Wow, almost sixteen percent! . . . Sir, can I ask what kind of transmission this feed is?” he asked in a worried voice.
“No, Ed, I’d rather you didn’t,” Kingston said, in a paternal voice. He pulled a Cuban cigar out of the walnut humidor on his desk.
“Well, sir, if it’s radioactive . . . I don’t want to make a fuss, but my wife and I want to have kids one day.”
“I promise you, son,” Kingston concentrated on getting the end clipped off to his satisfaction. “This is nothing that would ever show up on a Geiger counter. You still don’t want to stick your fingers in it, though.”
“No, sir.”
“Good boy. You got that transmission going in to the special power storage like I told you?”
“Yes, sir,” Ed’s voice said, resignedly.
“What’s the reading?”
“Almost sixteen percent.”
“Very nice. I’m proud of you, son. Keep me posted.” Kingston glanced up at the clock as he depressed the plunger and dialed the operator. “Charlene, I’m expecting a long-distance call. Put it right through, won’t you, honey? And don’t listen in. If you do, you’re fired.”
* * *
The watcher’s call came through on schedule, at a quarter to the hour. Kingston had never met the man on the scene. He had been hired by the friend of a friend of a friend. At least it sounded like a man. It could have been a woman with a deep voice. It was hard to tell, because the voice was distorted by one of those gizmos that they used on crime shows. Kingston didn’t care, as long as the person made the scheme work. Everything he was hoping for depended on it.
“Mr. Kingston?” the voice buzzed in his ear.
“That’s me,” the station owner said. “How’s it going at your end?”
“All the technology is in place. There was no problem hiding the mechanisms in among all the other electronics. What’s two or three more boxes or cables?”
“Exactly,” Kingston said. He felt pretty pleased. This friend of a friend had picked a smart one. “You need a feed from us this evening?”
“A short one, just to test the mechanism again,” said the voice. “I need to rewire the transmission lines in the control room.”
“Don’t they already go there?” Kingston asked impatiently.
“They go to the switcher,” the voice said. “I’m hooking it into my conduit’s chair.”
“Ahh,” said Kingston. “I was wondering how you were making a direct connection. The Law of Contagion says they have to touch.”
“The first connection was too general. It blew out. This one will be a lot better. I’m waiting until full dress rehearsal tomorrow afternoon for a full test. By then, it will be too late for the concert to be cancelled. After that, you can let the full power transfer rip. I promise you you’ll get a return feed beyond your wildest hopes.”