“Marvelous,” Kingston gloated, foreseeing his own power rising like the sun. “The pipeline will bring in clouds of evil that will feed our evil, and make us immortal! . . . Er, you didn’t hear me say that.”
“No, sir.”
“How many people you say are coming to that concert?”
“A maximum of ninety thousand tickets. They’re not all sold yet.”
“You know,” Kingston said, easing back in his chair, “I consider every one of those empty seats a lost opportunity. Now, you’re sure your conduit doesn’t know what it is we’re doing?”
“Not a clue.” There was a hesitation. “Well, we’ve got one possible hiccup. There’s a couple of government agents on the job. They actually suspect magic,” the voice dropped to a whisper, “and it looks like they know some, too.”
“Really.” Kingston’s eyebrows went up, but he kept his voice from reflecting the dismay he felt. Chances were slim that these practitioners were his kind of people. “Don’t worry. Give me a full description of them.”
The voice ticked off the physical details of a prim, blond Englishwoman in a two-piece suit and a Southerner who wore ratty clothes that were half hippie, half ex-GI. Kingston took notes.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” the owner said at last. “I’ll take care of it. Get back to me tomorrow.” He hung up the phone and sauntered into the control room.
The Trenton show was well under way. The male wiccan was trying to defend his congregants from the leering megarightists. The women had a few things to say for themselves, but kept getting shouted down by the audience. One of the opposition was out of his chair, hefting the overstuffed piece of furniture as if judging whether he could actually throw it. It looked as though the first fight was about to break out, when Trenton signalled for a station break. Kingston grinned. That’d keep the television audience glued to their seats. They’d have to stay tuned to see if punches flew.
After the police had cleared the combatants off the set, Trenton stepped into the audience. Time for the night’s rail against Fionna Kenmare.
“ . . . Do you really want a woman like this evil person influencing your children?” he asked them, his voice smooth and suave. He pointed at the poster of her on stage above the pig-shaped altar. In no time he had them worked into a frenzy. “She’s horrible! She’s a goody-goody! She believes in white magic!”
Some of the audience were out of their seats chanting, “No! No! No!” Kingston smiled.
The new transmitter-receiver near the switcher panel was sparking up. It looked like it had come straight out of Frankenstein’s laboratory. The red digital indicator on the front read “16,” ticking occasionally to “17.” Kingston’s mystery connection was right. The chosen conduit was one heck of a powerful transmitter. Good thing that neither the conduit or anyone else suspected what was going on. A lot of people’s abilities were stifled when they became aware of what they were doing, or in this case, being led to do. It’d be one fine Saturday night.
Chapter 13
“Oh, well,” Nigel Peters was saying gamely, “they say that a bad dress rehearsal presages a good opening night.”
If that was the truth, then the Green Fire concert was going to surpass any performance in history by the Three Tenors, Barbara Streisand, the Boston Pops or Kylie Minogue. Anything balanced between going right and going wrong tilted and fell over into wrong. Lighting filaments popped and went black. Speakers refused to function, or wouldn’t turn off when disconnected. People went for unexpected slides on patches of floor that were perfectly dry. Costumes tore, guitar strings sprang, and synthesizer keys were silent one moment and blaring out of tune the next. The front doors to the Superdome arena popped open by themselves and refused to stay locked. A guard had to be called in from his day off to keep the ticket-buying public out in the lobby. Liz knew that half of them blamed her and Boo’s presence for the run of bad luck.
“Bloody government,” more than one crew member had muttered as they went past her. It was difficult to hide out of sight on a round stage, but she was as self-effacing as she could be. She and Boo stood among the coils of cable behind one of the huge speakers. They weren’t in anyone’s way, and they still had the best possible view of the action, but she could feel the resentment aimed her way from every direction.
So far it had been a disaster. Green Fire hadn’t made it all the way through the first song yet without at least one major blowup, and they’d been rehearsing for an hour. Liz put down part of the problem to sheer exhaustion. She knew she was reeling on her feet.
Last night’s late rehearsal had been everything that anyone could have wished for. Boo’s shamaness friend’s temporary fix had turned the trick. Fionna had come in on a musical high that carried everyone else up into the heavens with her. She had been in her best voice, and knew how good she looked and sounded. All the special effects had gone off on cue, the lights were where they ought to have been, and the musicians played all their numbers without a single hitch. Even the fussy Guitarchangel hadn’t been able to find anything to correct. He had just smiled his enigmatic, pre-Raphaelite smile as his long fingers wove music out of his instrument’s strings. Liz and Boo had walked the entire perimeter of the Superdome without finding so much as a sniff of malign magic. They had all been in good spirits when they broke up. If they’d filmed that performance and showed it on those gigantic screens that hovered over the stage like doomsday, they’d have been better off than they were now.
In celebration, Fionna promised to buy everyone a drink. The entire company had poured out into the French Quarter, chattering on about how well it had all gone. Buoyed up on the energy of success, Fee led her merry band from bar to bar in the French Quarter, until they simply ran out of places they hadn’t been to yet. While out on the road they seldom got a chance to enjoy the city sights.
“Might as well hold concerts out on a desert oasis for all we see of one place or another,” Eddie Vincent had complained, with a touch of bitterness. The others had agreed.
“Oi’d do anythin’ to have an afternoon’s shoppin’ here,” Fionna had said wistfully, as they passed by dozens of closed stores, “so this’ll have to do me.” Liz wasn’t happy about such an unstructured outing, but she understood the poignant urge. And, as Beauray pointed out, there was nothing she could do to make Fionna go back to the hotel.
“It’s best just to tag along and take it easy,” Beauray said. “Who’s going to attack her with so many people around?”
“Numbers could make an attack easier, not harder,” Liz grumbled. But Boo-Boo was right: it was just best to follow along with the crowd. Liz couldn’t defend against a negative. Until the mysterious malign force surfaced again, there was nothing she could do. She had kept on glancing into alleys and up onto the omnipresent balconies. Was everyone in New Orleans but her having a good time?
Wherever they had stopped, Nigel Peters had ordered drinks for everyone. Voe Lockney had fallen in love with Sazeracs. The band and crew put a serious dent in the Quarter’s supply of good whiskey. They sang along with every song they knew, and applauded the performers with drunken abandon. Robbie Unterburger stared with mooncalf eyes at Lloyd, who ignored her. Patrick Jones did humorous imitations of the people they saw walking in the street. Sooner or later, they wandered into the open-air coffee shop named the Café du Monde and ate square doughnuts frosted a quarter-inch deep in powdered sugar. Liz watched it all, staying awake on adrenaline, sugar, and the odd-tasting coffee Boo told her was flavored with chicory.
Dawn hadn’t been far off their heels by the time everyone finally went to bed. By the time the technical run-through had gotten under way, noon had come and gone.
Chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes, Nigel Peters had confided to the two agents that only with luck would they finish in time to take a decent dinner break and a rest before the concert itself. Everyone was on edge, but Fionna was in the worst mood possible. Her temper was beginning to affect everyone else.
“All right then,” Michael announced in his clipped voice from the center of the stage. His forehead was creased as though he had a headache. He probably had. “We’ll just take it from the top again. And we’ll do so until we get it right. If we can get the programme moving, the rest will follow more easily. Understood?”