License Invoked (15 page)

“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.

“And what the fokkin' hell do you think is funny?” Fee demanded.

“Sorry,” Liz said.

“Pack up and move it the hell out of here!” Fionna shouted. “Go on with you!”

Boo pulled Liz further away from the stage and bent his head close to hers. “Don't stir her up. There's something wrong here.”

“Can you feel it, too?”

“Yes, I can. Like sittin' on a powder keg, and everyone throwin' lit matches. It's makin' everybody touchy, but I can't find a source for it. Keep an eye peeled. I just feel somethin's goin' to happen. Don't know what, yet.”

Fionna burst vehemently into song. The musicians caught up with her a line or so later, weaving their threads with the instrument of her voice. It was an angry song about injustice and killing the innocent. Unlike the quiet hurt the folk song had engendered the first night in O'Flaherty's, this one grabbed the listener by the ears and made him despise the abusers. Liz felt fury crackle in the air. The magic Green Fire were making was a dangerous kind. Fionna stalked from side to side of the stage, exhorting the invisible audience to join with her in hating the oppressors. She flung an arm around the microphone stand at the east side of the stage and screeched a verse into that one. The fringes whipped around the metal pole, but didn't drop back when she let go. As she took one whirling step away, the microphone followed her. It leaned dangerously for a split second, then crashed at her feet. Swearing a blue streak that could be heard from every speaker in the room, Fee stood and quivered with rage while the grips and Fitz jumped forward to help her free.

“Cut the damned fringe off the damned sleeves,” Fionna's order echoed throughout the arena. Ears stunned by the level of the rock music, Liz couldn't hear Fitz's side of the discussion, but his pleading expression was eloquent. “I do not bloody care. I'm not a fokkin' snake charmer like St. Patrick!”

The costumer's face stiffened. Nigel Peters fairly leaped up the steps to make peace.

“Oh, no!” Fionna exclaimed, in answer to an unheard plea from her manager. “Do you think I want to have me own clothes making a fool of me?”

Nigel looked up toward the northwest and made a throat-cutting gesture at the booth. Fionna's microphone was turned off, rendering her inaudible to the rest of the people in the arena. She, Nigel and Fitz engaged in a three-sided pantomime row, only a few syllables loud enough to be understood. Nigel tapped his watch. As an argument, it was absolutely unassailable. There wasn't time to fuss. The show must go on. Sadly, Fitzgibbon produced his scissors and barbered the trim on the sleeves to three inches in length. A stagehand appeared with a broom. Fitz watched him sweep up the cuttings with the same dismayed expression a mother might watch her child's first haircut. Without looking back at him, Fionna returned to her spot at the east edge of the stage. The musicians struck up. Fionna grabbed the microphone and opened her mouth.

A mechanical shriek blasted out. Everyone jumped as steam started pouring upward from the pipes lined up in a long frame at the edge of the stage. Fantastic green figures swam upward along the insubstantial curtain. Snakes and birds twisted into Celtic knotwork, created with laser lights; Liz let out an admiring gasp, but it stopped everyone else dead.

“What in all the saints' names was that?” Fionna asked, recovering her wits.

“That effect isn't supposed to go until the sixth song!” came the despairing cry of the stage manager. “What's going on up there?” He seized the mouthpiece of his headset in one hand and started gesticulating with the other hand.

“Sorry,” came Robbie's tremulous voice over the intercom. The steam ceased rising. “My hand slipped and pushed the cursor too far ahead on my instructions. It won't happen again.”

“It had bloody not better,” everyone on the stage muttered, almost in unison.

But it did. Little things continued to go awry. Effects happened late, or went off on the wrong part of the stage. Liz watched with the feeling that she was seeing a building being demolished a few tiles at a time with the debris falling on innocent passersby. The wonderful feeling that had pervaded the arena early that afternoon was gone without a trace, leaving behind it deep gloom. Much of it could be laid at Robbie Unterburger's feet.

“The girl is just plain off,” Boo commented, not without sympathy, watching Fionna dodge tiny explosions that had been laid on the floor of the stage like an unlucky cowboy ordered to “dance” by a rival gunslinger. If Robbie wasn't clearly so apologetic, it would look like she was deliberately trying to make Fionna look bad.

“Do you think she senses the foreboding that's growing in here?” Liz asked. “She might be affected by it.” The thought interested her greatly for a moment. “Is Robbie a sensitive? Could she be a possible recruit for either of our departments?”

Beauray's fair eyebrows rose high on his forehead. “Never thought of that, ma'am. She might be just what you say, but I'd doubt whether she'd be interested. You have to admit our wage structure don't sound as appealin' when you know what these people are paid.”

Liz nodded. If it weren't for the call of patriotism she'd have been sorely tempted by the pay scales she saw listed on the FYI document in her briefing packet. She prided herself on her competence; she would probably do very well at one of these jobs—if it hadn't meant dealing with egos like her old school chum's.

The drummer struck a downbeat, and the rehearsal resumed. The band managed to get through a couple of numbers unhindered, for which everyone looked grateful. Protective spells at the ready, Liz maintained her vigilance, but she would have had to be lying to say she didn't enjoy having a rock concert virtually to herself. A small part of her missed the camaraderie of the crowds. In spite of the pushing and the occasionally impaired view, the people who attended an event like this one shared in a special kind of symbiotic energy. It came from the performers, but it was amplified a millionfold by the audience and given back again. At a really good concert, the transfer back and forth lifted the performance from enjoyable to stellar. Fionna and her players were certainly capable of lighting that kind of fire in their fans. They exalted, they comforted, they challenged, all at the same time. Liz stood rocking to the beat, watching Fee and Michael dance toward one another in the center of the stage, then whirl outward again, like a pair of electrons in a very active molecule. Michael, all in black, dignified, powerful, stepped backwards toward the north end of the stage, watching his fingers stirring the strings of his guitar. Fee, feminine, excitable, vibrant, reached the south end and turned in a wide circle. The flying fringes on her dress caught the lights in slashing sprays of white. She halted, standing straight as a candle. With the air of a priestess of a long-ago culture, she pointed down at a crystal formation the size of a pumpkin. And waited. She stopped singing.