License Invoked

The green fire blazed into life. The readout on the laptop computer beside the special effects station began to scroll down its long list.

Liz squirmed back into her place next to Boo-Boo. The American seemed troubled.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, pointing vaguely up toward the ceiling. "It ain't exactly music."

Liz listened intently. A chord had added itself to the topmost registers of the music, a disturbing harmonic that set her teeth on edge. Fee and Michael both heard it, glanced at each other, wondering what it was. Michael gestured at the techies with a flattening hand, ordering them to do something about it. They all shrugged. Alarmed, both singers glanced backward to where Liz and Boo were concealed. Boo-Boo waved his hand, showing them there was nothing to worry about.

"What is it?"

"Du

"Then why did you tell them to go on?"

Boo-Boo's blue eyes glinted at her. "It'd be worse if they stop."

Hastily, Liz started chanting the protection cantrip over and over. She hadn't begun a moment too soon. The cascade of colored lights had just ended, changing Fio

No one noticed the effect but Lloyd, who glanced toward the agents and gave them a surreptitious thumbs-up. He approved.

Fee looked nervous for a moment, then took the reappearance of the pyrotechnics in her stride. She stretched out an arm toward the fire as though she was invoking power from it. As the rockets launched, she matched them scream for scream. The crowd loved it.

"I thought they were doing this without effects," Liz said, watching the rockets zip around the huge arena. Mentally, she ticked off the sequence of events as they each appeared on schedule: rockets, lasers, smoke, more lasers, light show. It was as though Robbie had never left.

"Maybe the guys found another special effects technician here in town," Laura Ma

"What?" the agents asked in unison, turning toward her.

The makeup artist looked from one surprised face to the other.

"Nigel didn't tell you? Yeah, right after he ca

Boo and Liz exchanged glances.

"I thought that young lady wasn't doin' all this on her own," Boo said, his mouth set in a grim line. "It just seemed out of character. Now, him I could believe."

"We'd better check upstairs and make sure," Liz said.

Hugh Banks thought it was an odd question, but he grabbed his headset mike and inquired. His face was troubled when he looked up. "You're right. No one's at Robbie's desk. The whole thing is working by itself. Is it a ghost in the machine?"

"Could she have mechanized it to work off the cues?" Liz asked. "She had everything listed on a laptop computer."

"Possibly, but why didn't she tell us she was doing that?" Banks asked. He turned to the manager, who looked shocked.

"Can they turn it off?" Boo asked. Banks muttered to his microphone again. His usually ruddy face turned pale.

"No."

"It's going by remote control," Liz said, feeling icy fingers gripping her stomach. "She's making it all happen by remote control."

"But nothing bad has happened yet," Nigel Peters said, hopefully.

"I wouldn't take no bets on it stayin' that way," Boo-Boo said. Liz agreed with him. "Can't do anythin' now but stay on guard, and hope we can handle what he throws at us."

Nigel tore at his thin hair. "This is all my fault. I should have kept the silly girl where she was."

"Should we stop the show?" Banks asked. Boo-Boo shook his head.

"Just do your job, and let Ms. Fio

The star was responding magnificently to having the fireworks and lasers ru

The exciting rock number was ending. After a halt of a few beats, the tempo changed to the challenging rhythm of Green Fire's diatribe against hostile occupation of one country by another. The plaintive wail of the uillea

The music itself began to sound sinister to Liz. During rehearsal she had put it off to the subject matter of the song. It was a violent protest against partisan hatred, a touchy subject to one of her nationality, yet there was more to it than the theme itself. Something was wrong in the fundamental sound of it. A destructive force seemed to be taking hold within the Superdome, but how was it happening? The girl was not there, had never entered the building at all. Every security guard there had her picture and was on the lookout. Ken Lewis hadn't been seen either. Neither one was on site, yet it was undeniable that the feeling of the concert had changed. No matter how benevolent the meaning of the lyrics, it was being perverted somehow into bad magic. The figure of a rampant lion etched in green lasers leaped up out of the steam and roared at the crowd.

"Cor! Effects are getting better all the time!" Laura Ma

"They're not," Liz said. Cupping her hands around an imaginary bubble of air, she strengthened the ring of protective energy around Fio

It was too late. One more lunging step, and Fee kept moving, right off the end of the stage. Instead of falling into the crowd, she was hoisted up into the air by invisible hands. Her singing turned into more of a scream than usual. The dangling white fringes of her dress went into frenzied shimmying as Fee kicked at the air. Rockets began to blast off again, practically going up her skirts.

The question of how Roberta Unterburger was doing this, with or without Ken Lewis, would have to wait. Other things, like saving Fio

Liz sent an alarmed glance toward Boo-Boo. She couldn't stop the protection charm. He nodded and stepped forward with his arms outstretched.

"Spirits of the air, release. Let your hold on this one cease," he recited. He tossed out a pinch of the feathers he always carried in his pockets. They were caught up in the maelstrom that engulfed the singer and whisked out of sight in a twinkling. "To earth softly let her feet return..."

"Oh, my God, she'll crash and burn!" Laura Ma

"Do y'all mind?" Boo-Boo asked mildly, with a look of reproof at the makeup artist. "I'm chantin' here... and let her then in peace sojourn!" Boo-Boo threw a handful of energy up towards Fio