She viewed the scene with deliberate detachment. The visions in the laser works had ceased to be bloodthirsty monsters with scales and huge fangs. Instead, green-edged horses, rabbits and other natural animals sprang about on the misty gray wall, as though the programmer had tapped into a benevolent nature show. Dragons appeared, too, but they were friendly dragons, with softer muzzles and not so many spines on their tails. The crowd reacted with polite applause and shouts of “Hurray!”
“Ain’t that a little bit of overkill?” Boo-Boo asked, beginning to ready his next incantation.
Liz shook her head. “I’ve only grabbed hold of the edge of this blanket of energy. It could still explode into . . .”
“Explode” was the operative word for what came next. From the frameworks on either side of the stage that held the Roman candles, huge cylinders launched toward the ceiling. Popping in time with the music, they burst overhead into stars of color that filled the whole room. The crowd burst out in cheers of delight. Clouds of gold spangles expanded under the light plastic ceiling like dandelions opening on time-lapse photography. Fionna dodged this way and that, trying to avoid the onslaught. Liz stopped meditating on peace to renew her protection spell around her old school friend. The sparks might scare her now, but they couldn’t hurt her.
“I don’t remember seeing this kind of sophisticated fireworks on Robbie’s list,” she said, puzzled. “It looks like Guy Fawkes Day up there.”
“Y’mean like the Fourth of July,” Boo-Boo corrected her. “You’re in the U.S. of A. right now, ma’am.”
“Don’t argue,” Liz gritted through clenched teeth. The crowd was loving what they saw as unique special effects, but they were getting more excited the longer the display went on. Fights were breaking out again, and she heard some angry shouts. “The power is growing. Help me dampen it down.”
Her American counterpart was already chanting. A feedback loop of some kind was at work here in the arena, transforming the positive energy flowing out from the fans into negative power. That influence had to be coming into the building from somewhere or someone. She wished she could pull away to search for the source, but that was impossible. Until the concert ended, she had to maintain her post and keep the audience in order. If she left now, noisy chaos would follow within moments. It wouldn’t matter if she found what she was looking for, apprehended the perpetrators, and managed to solve the mystery that had led across two continents and at least three countries. She’d be too busy explaining to HQ why she allowed a riot to begin when she could have stopped it.
Calm, she instructed herself. Mustn’t let maybes and coulds interfere with the here and now. Most of the audience was responding well to her determined serenity.
But such high-minded platitudes didn’t help when the level of power was rising higher all the time. Liz threw her entire soul into keeping the peace. The laser pictures displayed a placid beauty now. Landscapes. Waterfalls. Eagles soaring above the clouds. A dove with a budding branch in its beak. Perhaps, Liz was forced to admit, not a perfect fit with the wild, acid-rock song Fionna and the others were performing. She heard some unhappy voices not far away to her left, criticizing the mix. Liz worried that someone might begin to panic and set the whole thing off all over again. Her shoulders sagged. She was getting very tired.
Beauray moved behind her and put his hands over the hollows just underneath her collarbone. Before she could ask what he was doing, she felt a rush of energy flow through her. He was very good at multitasking, being able to continue his own spell-working and at the same time feeding her more Earth power. Liz perked up as she felt her psychic batteries recharging. And only just in time. More fireworks filled the air, exploding in multiple colors. The next boom! shook the building. She sent out a burst that pacified the pockets of unrest beginning to break out in the east quadrant. The audience let out a collective “Ahh” of pleasure.
Nigel wailed behind them. “But we don’t have any chrysanthemum skyrockets! The fire marshall wouldn’t approve them! Or those spinning Catherine wheels! Where are they coming from?”
It was just bad luck that Michael was passing close enough to the rear speakers for Nigel’s frantic voice to be picked up on his guitar mike and carried throughout the auditorium speakers. The band paused for half a beat, not knowing what to do. The audience heard and felt the hesitation, and shuffled uncomfortably. The rowdy ones picked up on the uncertainty, threatening to start rioting again. Liz felt control slip. She dug deep into the new power reserves, refreshing the protection spell around Fionna and keeping the peace.
On stage, Michael gave the musicians a stern look. They were to carry on and pretend nothing was wrong. Even though their lead singer was hanging in midair kicking like a hooked salmon. Even though they were surrounded by rockets as though they were on a battlefield under attack. The Guitarchangel whipped the band into a musical frenzy, using gestures and shouts. He strode around the stage, urging the audience to clap along with the beat.
As he passed Liz his next circuit around, he hissed, “Do something!”
“We’re trying!” she growled back, frustrated, not wanting to interrupt her multiple chants for long.
Boo’s cell phone rang, somewhere deep in his pockets. Liz shot him an exasperated look.
“You’d better answer it,” she shouted. Boo scrabbled for the little box. He popped it open.
“This is Tiger,” the tinny voice in his ear said. “I think I’ve seen your lady, man. She walked by with some guy a little while ago. I couldn’t get to the phone until now.”
“Which way they goin’?”
“Toward Decatur.”
Boo reached into Liz’s shoulder bag and felt for the little cell phone. He turned it on and tucked it into her neck.
“I know where she’s gone,” he shouted. “Keep things together here.”
Leaving Liz chanting, Boo-Boo trotted out of the Superdome arena, out the back door onto Giraud Street.
A taxi swung into the curb at his wave. Boo-Boo clambered into the back seat. The young black man behind the wheel twisted around to exchange hand slaps with him.
“Hey, Boo-Boo, where y’at? Where you want to go?”
“The Quarter,” Boo-Boo said, settling back against the seat. “Run the lights. I’ll make it right later.”
Chapter 17
Ken Lewis held Robbie cuddled against his chest on the grass in the shelter of the gazebo overlooking the riverfront, hoping passersby would take them for a pair of overamorous lovers in the dark enjoying the fireworks display along with the thousands of other people hanging out along the Moon Walk. At least, he was enjoying it. He doubted whether Robbie was truly aware of them in any intellectual way. She’d had quite of few hits of LSD and one or two of Rohypnol. The “date rape” drug made her easier to manage. She reacted to exterior stimuli, including his voice, without conscious will power. It was too bad he’d had to drug her so heavily, but he couldn’t let that strong moral backbone of hers interfere with his last chance to make his plan work. No matter how he played up the provocation she had been suffering, she didn’t really want to hurt anyone, not even Fionna. Who ever heard of somebody with the perfect opportunity to take revenge on a hated rival without consequences who didn’t take it?
On the way to the park he had picked up a bottle of tequila and a couple of glasses, and he had more acid in his pocket, all the better to make sure she didn’t regain control of her faculties before the show was over. He splashed some of the booze into her glass and held it up to her lips.
“Had too much,” she said, her voice slurred. Tequila dribbled out of the corners of her mouth.
“No, you haven’t,” Ken said, wiping up the spill with the cuff of his shirt. “The night’s just beginning.”
“Oh, all right,” Robbie said. She swallowed and made a face as the liquor burned its way down to her stomach. “Oooh.”
“Now, concentrate,” Ken said. He squeezed Robbie’s face between thumb and forefinger and held her head up, making her look at the pulsing waves of white-hot light shooting up into the night. “Follow the sequence exactly. Can’t you hear the director? He wants the flames to rise higher. Higher. Higher! Yes!”
Robbie’s chin sagged slackly against his palm, but her muddy-colored eyes were fixed on the starbursts filling the air over the river.
“Like that?”
“Wonderful, baby. You’re the best. Keep it up. More. Yes, more!”
He caught the indulgent smile of an older couple sitting close by on the grass. So what if they thought he was talking about sex. This was better than sex. This was better than anything.