Just as everyone looked up into the flies, a gigantic flash of light burst overhead. Liz almost threw a spell to protect the people on the stage. Only well-honed reflexes kept her from crushing the components in her hand when she realized it was just a light popping. Sparks showered down onto the stage. The stage crew threw their hands up over their heads. Only Michael stood there in the rain of fire, looking authoritative and indignant. “Was that my key light?”
“Someone check!” shouted the stage manager, setting his staff into a flurry of motion.
Boo took a firm but not dangerous hold of Liz’s wrist, and pried her fingers open. She stared at him in surprise as he picked up the fragile wax shell she had been clutching. “Y’can’t use that in here, Liz,” he said.
“And why not?” Liz asked. “It’s perfectly safe. It’s a fire-prevention cantrip.”
“You’ll have to forgive me sayin’ so, but it don’t have the range to cover the area of the stage.”
“I could double the amount,” Liz said, indignantly. “That would be more than plenty.”
“Well, then it will be too heavy to have the range you want, no matter how loud you chant. What if you’re not as close as you are right now?”
“And I suppose you have something better?” she asked, peevishly.
“Sure do,” Boo said, companionably. “I checked with HQ this mornin’. They said I can give you these.” He handed her a couple of sachets. Liz glanced at them dubiously. They smelled strongly of myrrh and purslane, a protective herb traditionally ruled by the element of water. She had to admit they were beautifully constructed, the edge of each fragile paper envelope sewn shut with corn silk. “You can have the formula later on. If these give satisfaction, that is.”
“Oh, thank you,” Liz said, trying not to sound sarcastic. Helping the poor cousin, she thought, furiously. Thought he knew it all. Their government could obviously pay for higher quality than her government. Another way of shamefully showing off. “This isn’t the spell you think it is,” she said, now ashamed of the irregularly-shaped bubble containing a cluster of damp crystals like a handful of bath salts sealed in waxed paper.
“Well, actually, I think it is,” Boo said, returning the components to her between cautious thumb and forefinger. “Our intelligence is pretty good.”
“We’ve made improvements, and . . .” Liz stopped just short of telling him she was a hereditary witch and knew how to put together a workmanlike spell, dammit! With dismay she realized he probably knew all that, too. Annoyed at her own outburst, she reasserted her professionalism. There was a job to do. She’d give him a piece of her mind later. With grace, she accepted the spell components and his instruction on how to chant the incantation.
“Bimity polop caruma?”
“Caruna,” Boo corrected her. “It’s an `n.’ “ Liz nodded. It was ironic that though the Americans claimed to believe less in magic than the British, their department produced a better line of counterspell that they didn’t believe would do anything to counteract the occurrence that they didn’t believe could happen.
“Quiet!” shouted the stage manager. Liz looked up, startled, wondering if they’d been overheard. But they hadn’t been the only ones making noise. Liz just became aware of the last faint echoes of a mechanical screech, as the huge box overhead swayed slightly. She felt giddy just looking up at the Jumbotron. She had enormous sympathy for the workers who had to climb the narrow iron catwalks twenty-six stories above the ground to maintain it.
Hugh Banks walked out to the center of the stage, accompanied by a representative from building maintenance, a heavyset man in khaki coveralls. They looked up at the grid. The burned-out spotlight was a black dot at the edge of the framework.
“One of those posters of yours was touchin’ the light,” the supervisor said, with an experienced nod. “Coulda started a fire. Lucky just the one light went out.”
“We need that spot functioning again,” the stage manager said, reading from a complex diagram. “Can you fix it?”
“We’ll just have to replace that light filament,” the supervisor said. “Have to raise the Jumbotron to do it. It can’t be done while it’s lowered.”
“Wait until after the rehearsal,” the stage manager said, with a sigh. “Five o’clock, all right?”
“No problem.”
“This is supposed to be the technical rehearsal,” Michael Scott said, peevishly. “What about the cues?”
The stage manager spoke into his headset again.
“We’re on it,” Ken Lewis’s voice echoed over the public address system in the vast room. “I’ll swap another spotlight as Michael’s key light for the time being.”
“Good?” Banks asked Michael. The guitarist nodded, not happily.
The group began again. And again. The third attempt was interrupted by the arrival of the backup singing trio and the hired percussionist, Lou Carey.
“Very sorry we’re late,” Carey said. He was a razor-thin black man with a razor-thin mustache under his narrow nose. “We got the time wrong.”
“All right, then,” the stage manager said. “Get in your places.”
“Should we get our costumes?” one of the singers asked. A tiny girl with huge brown eyes, she had a thrilling contralto voice that resonated pleasantly even without amplification.
“You’ll have to get dressed during the break,” Michael said. “We’re delayed enough as it is.”
“Places for the fourth number, please!”
Michael started picking out a moody and frustrated melody. Liz recognized it as Green Fire’s well-known rant against environmental destruction. It was powerful and disturbing. She knew every note, swaying slightly with the music.
The others joined in. The latecomers hurried toward their assigned spots, eager to catch up and join in. Eddie Vincent brought his hands down onto his synthesizer keyboard for a crashing crescendo that imitated a rising gale. Fionna’s voice would rise out of the music like whitecaps on the crest of a foaming sea and tear the soul out of the audience.
Just then, the lights went down. Eyes accustomed to the glare of the spots and the brightness of noonday were temporarily blinded. In the momentary dimness, there was the sound of stumbling feet, a thud, a clattering. The wild music died away in a whine like deflating bagpipes. Liz felt a wrench in her chest from the unfulfilled promise of the song. Eddie Vincent’s deep voice reeled out a string of profanities.
When the lights came up a moment later, a spotlight highlighted the unfortunate percussionist flat on the floor with his feet tangled in a mass of cables. Several of the stagehands leaped forward to help him up.
“He pulled the power cords out of my rig!” Eddie shouted.
“I didn’t do it on purpose, man!” Carey said, his cheeks glowing with embarrassment. “I was nowhere near your stuff! Somebody pulled me—or something. The next thing I knew, I was on my face.”
“Get out of here,” Eddie said, angrily. “Move it. Nigel!”
“Eddie, he couldn’t have done it on purpose,” the manager said, striding up the stage steps. “We all saw it. He was going toward the opposite side of the stage. He must just have gotten lost in the dark.”
“What dark? It’s noon! He got lost walking across a wide-open stage?”
“I didn’t get lost. Someone pulled me into the cables,” Carey insisted. “Someone took hold of my arms and yanked me over that way. It just happened.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Eddie snarled. “What kind of story is that?”
“I couldn’t see, man! I’m sorry!”
Hulking roadies in T-shirts and jeans began to gather around the keyboards, looking menacing. Liz couldn’t tell whether they were prepared to defend Eddie or the other man. She sensed a measure of ill will in the room, but not necessarily between the two groups of stagehands. The energy simply didn’t feel normal. She was uneasy, but couldn’t put a finger on just what was bothering her.
“Please, guys,” Nigel said, holding his hands up for attention as he pushed in among them. “This gets us nowhere. We’ve got to get through this, or there’ll be no time to rest before the concert. I don’t know about you, but I could sleep for a year.”
“Look,” said Hugh, “he said he was sorry. Forget it, eh?”
Eddie lowered his thick eyebrows at the newcomer, but shook his head. He managed to find a smile somewhere among his dour looks. “All right, man. Just keep clear, all right?”
“No problem,” said the musician, backing away with his hands up. The unlucky man was glad to escape and take his place among his fellow temps, two more guitarists, a violinist, a flautist, a harpist and a woman playing the uilleann pipe. The harpist, a very tall man named Carl Johnson, gave him a sympathetic look. Eddie went back to frowning over his instruments.
Fionna, having thrown off Fitz and his paroxysms of fashion, appeared in her second costume, a white dress that consisted almost entirely of long fringe over a flesh-colored sheath. It was fabulously effective, even sexy, but at the same time Liz thought it made Fee look like a white Afghan hound. She wasn’t quick enough to suppress a snort of laughter. Unfortunately, the outburst came during one of the rare moments of silence. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at her. Liz felt her cheeks redden.