“You are very observant,” she told him, and was rewarded with a smile.
“In this business you have to be, ma’am,” he said. “You’re pretty good at what you do, yourself.”
Liz smiled. “I’m beginning to find that out.”
Everyone was being so very cooperative. Over the last hour they had formed a special bond. United at first by necessity, they were now freely enjoying all the positive energy running throughout the room and one another. She knew how many people were in the huge auditorium. She knew them all intimately, every emotion, every urge. How many were in tune with the music. How many of them under her overlay of calming magic were excited, terrified, angry, in love, afraid, relieved. How many of them were heading for the lavatory, and how many were coming back. No one was bored.
With the cool beat of jazz running through her veins like blood, she could do anything. The final song was a rocking ballad in a minor key that sent chills up the audience’s collective spine even while it thrilled and elated them. The lyrics were an allegory about a mystical underground power that rose up from beneath the earth to destroy humanity because it was destroying nature, but decided to give it one more chance because humans cared about music. If they could understand one kind of harmony, it could learn to appreciate the other. It was a warning, but it had a happy ending. Liz fervently hoped that Robbie could hold it together just a little while longer.
“This is the last number, Beauray,” she said into the phone.
* * *
“I hear you,” Boo said. He shifted Robbie and cuddled the phone closer to her ear. Pretty soon it would be all over.
A tiny, faint beeping began. He realized it was coming from his cell phone. Oh, no! The battery mustn’t die now!
It wouldn’t. He leaned in close to the receiver.
“Liz, send me a little of that power,” Boo said in a very calm voice so as not to alarm Robbie and set her off. She was still out, but her eyelids fluttered, and she was drooling down her chin. He wondered again how much of those drugs Ken Lewis had given her. “Just a tickle.”
A tickle was all he got. The small phone grew warm in his fingers. He held it just far enough from Robbie’s ear to see the miniature screen. Battery full. Whew.
The music coming from the tiny speaker reached a thrilling crescendo, and died away.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Fade to black.”
“Beauray.” Liz’s calm voice issued forth from the earpiece. “It has stopped.”
“Whew!” Boo-Boo slumped down on the concrete steps with the unconscious woman in his arms. “Thanks, darlin’. I’d better get this poor young lady back to the hotel. See you at the party.”
He pocketed the phone, stood up and hoisted Robbie into his arms.
* * *
The park emptied out swiftly. The FBI agent passed within a couple of feet of him. Ken could have reached out and touched his shoulder, but contact with Beauray Boudreau was the last thing he wanted. Or the second last. Ken waited until Boo-Boo had stopped at the street corner with his limp burden, then insinuated himself into a large crowd of happy merrymakers heading north along the riverfront toward a bar near the French Market. He needed a very large drink.
The last thing, really the last thing, Ken wanted, was to have to tell his employer that he had failed. Mr. Kingston wasn’t going to like what happened. And neither was the Council. They’d find out sooner or later, but not from him.
He ripped off the headset and stuffed it into the nearest garbage can.
As the final number concluded, Liz watched Fionna settle back to earth as lightly as a feather. Michael ran up to her and threw his arms around her. The two of them spun around the stage, laughing. The fringe of Fionna’s dress flashed in the spotlights like electricity made physical. Voe Lockney launched into a fusillade of drumbeats that ended with a crash of cymbals. The sound died away. The Jumbotron stopped rocking. It was over. They’d survived.
The lights dimmed to the sound of wild applause and cheering. Green Fire took its curtain calls. The four members of the band stepped forward to take individual bows, and pointed out the guest musicians and singers for recognition. The applause went on and on.
“Encore! Encore! Encore!” the crowd began to chant.
The musicians looked at one another. Michael shook his head firmly. No. Instead the band waved and bowed to their fans, picking up flowers and small presents that came sailing onto the stage from the audience. Fionna, a huge bouquet of roses balanced on her arm, waved to the teeming crowd like a beauty contestant crowned queen. The band took one bow after another. The crowd didn’t want them to leave.
The crew backstage cheered. They’d survived, too.
“It’s all over,” Nigel Peters said, with relief. He dropped his hand from her shoulder and flexed his arms.
“Not quite,” Liz said, keeping her pose.
Peters looked at her in alarm. “What?”
“The question that must be answered immediately is what to do with all the raw, tainted power still swirling around the concert hall. The doors would be thrown open in a moment. We must rid ourselves of the gigantic overload to avoid letting it spill out into the streets of New Orleans.”
Peters frowned. “How do you get rid of used power?”
A perfect solution had just occurred to her. Liz smiled, charmed at the simplicity of the answer.
“Why, we’ll send it back to the givers, of course,” she said. “A tradition of magic says that whatever one does comes back threefold. The concertgoers certainly deserved to have all the love they projected given back to them in triplicate.” And whoever was behind poor Robbie being used as a tool deserved what was coming to them, too.
“Attention, please!” she called, as the group around her began to break away. “We’re not quite through yet. We need to clear the air before anyone tries to leave the Superdome.
“Aww!” some of them complained.
“Can it!” Lloyd shouted. “Do what she says. Now.”
They returned readily to their original positions. Liz looked around at all of them. They weren’t really all that eager to give up their chance to have touched real magic. She was their leader in wonderworking. Every eye was on her.
“Now, everybody breathe in. Take in all of the power that has been raised here tonight that we’ve shared. Keep only what you need for the health and strength of everyone here. Then—breathe out. Push the rest of it back where it came from. Send it back. Send it all back. Ready? Inhale. Now, push!”
Liz thrust her arms out in front of her. All the others followed suit. The huge glut of energy went rushing away from them in a hurricane gale. Anything not nailed down swirled in the breeze, sheet music, programs, posters, cables, but the roadies and stagehands weren’t afraid this time. They were a part of it. A grand tornado touched at the edges with green seemed to rise up from their nucleus, opened out to the very edges of the arena, and disappeared into the walls. The power was gone, back where it belonged. Liz let out a sigh of relief. The ordeal was over at last.
Everyone grinned at each other like idiots and slapped one another on the back or caught one another in energetic embraces. They all picked up Liz, passing her from one to the other for hugs.
“All right, people,” Nigel Peters said, holding his arms up in the air. “Party time!”
“Yay!” the crew cheered.
The band came off stage, holding up weary hands in victory salutes. The roadies leaped forward to take instruments or microphones and hand out drinks as the group headed downstairs to their celebratory party. Liz felt triumphant. She’d succeeded, against the wildest odds, at the first really important assignment she’d ever been given. She fell in with the band and found herself beside Fionna.
“I’ve never been so tired in my life,” Liz said.
“And ye didn’t do a thing except stand back here and wave yer arms,” Fionna complained. “We’re the ones who did all the real work. Look at me! I had to sing all me numbers hangin’ in the air like the week’s washin’! And I didn’t get to wear all my costumes!”
Chapter 18
“Ken Lewis was your problem all along,” Liz told Nigel Peters the next morning in the private corner of the Mystic Bar as they waited for the rest of the company to come down for a belated brunch feast. “He’d been using Robbie as a power conduit to attack Fionna. All the things Fee told you about scratches appearing on her skin and unexpected knocks were true.”