License Invoked (13 page)

* * *

Lloyd Preston put his hand over the phone and turned to Fionna, who was sitting anxiously on the big bed on the upper floor of her suite.

“That was Kenny Lewis, wants to know when you're coming back to finish rehearsal.”

“Not yet—not yet!” Fionna said, holding out her long-nailed hands. “I can't face them. It's been just too awful. I feel if I pull down one more disaster that it'll kill all of us!”

Lloyd spoke to the phone. “Maybe later, Ken boy. She needs a break. We're going to stay here for a while.”

Fee's keen hearing picked up the tone of the grumble coming through the wire. She knew the others were upset with her, but she didn't know what else to do. Blast that Elizabeth Mayfield! She was always right—always had been. Fee started pacing around the sitting room, its dimensions suddenly too small. She flung herself into a chair and reached for a cigarette. Lloyd automatically dug into his pocket for the lighter before he even hung up the phone. She smiled up at him as she blew out a plume of smoke. He was so good to her.

“They're stopping for dinner, love,” Lloyd said. “Mr. High-and-Michael wants you there for the evening run-through even if you're on your death bed.”

Fee shuddered and let her head drop back against the cushy damask of the armchair. “I wish he wouldn't put it like that!”

She was too agitated to chant any of her spells of protection. How did she know they would do any good, anyhow? She had no way to tell. The books she'd bought from the occult antiquarian might be phonies. She hadn't read Latin at school, and had to rely on the translations. Liz seemed to be another deep believer, though, and she'd nosed around in the suite. Fee ought to be safe here. She wished she felt that way.

When the knock came at the door, Fee was unaware how long she'd been sitting and staring up at the ceiling. She shot a nervous look at Lloyd, who got up from the table where he'd been reading a book. He returned with a couple of large paper bags in his arms, and Robbie Unterburger trailing behind him.

“Hi, Fionna,” Robbie said, timidly. Fee only raised an eyebrow at her.

“She brought us some dinner. Thank you, love. It was really thoughtful of you.”

Robbie simpered as Lloyd set the bags down on the table and began to take clear plastic containers out of it. Something crisp-fried. Something stewed—two stewed somethings. A chunk of bread in a waxed paper bag. A mass of slightly wilted salad. The unfamiliar yet savory smells wafted toward Fee's nose, but couldn't work their magic on her. She was too tense to enjoy them. Unable to bear the sight of food, or Robbie, Fee looked away and stared at the curtains, conscious that the girl was staring at her.

“Thanks,” she said. After a time, she heard the shuffle of footsteps. The girl was going away. Thank heaven.

Lloyd muttered something, and the hall door snicked shut. He came around Fee's chair and stared down at her.

“What's the matter with you? She just did you a favor!”

“I'm sorry,” Fee said, with sincere contrition. “I'm just too worried.”

“You could have sounded like you meant it when you said thanks,” Lloyd said, his dark brows lowering to his nose.

“The girl's such a nosebleed,” Fee said, more snappishly than she meant. “She's talented, but her personality . . .”

“She's nice enough,” Lloyd said.

Fionna eyed him. “She'd be yours if you let her,” she said, shrewdly.

Lloyd, just as shrewd, knew better than to walk into that kind of emotional mine field. He shrugged noncommitally. “Who, her? You're worth fifty of her.”

Fionna hugged herself. Though it was good to have Lloyd say so, she felt uncertain whether she was worth all the trouble and the compliments. She had used to be so confident, back when she and Liz Mayfield were at school. She was a superstar now. She ought to feel on top of the world. What had happened to her?

Lloyd was about to administer another scolding, when they heard a gentle rap on the door. Fee looked at the clock on the mantlepiece.

“Oh, that's me appointment, darlin'. Will you let her in?”

The thin woman with a face like old, wrinkled leather in the hallway raised a bone rattle and shook it under Lloyd's face. She waited until he stepped aside to cross the threshold, then shook it all around the perimeter of the door. Fee stood up and watched her with fascination and alarm, as the woman rattled in every corner of the room. She stopped, and suddenly pointed at the containers on the table.

“Did you eat any of that?” she demanded.

“No!” Fee said, alarmed.

“Good,” said the shamaness. “Fried food is bad for your aura.” She turned to eye Lloyd up and down. “You can eat it. Won't do you no harm, and the donor is favorably disposed to you anyhow.”

Fee smiled. The old woman had his number. She was the real thing, just as Fee had been promised. There seemed to be nothing special about the healing priestess's outward appearance. Her yellow dress looked just like those of the other ladies out in the street. Hanging over her left wrist was an ordinary-looking leather handbag with a gold clasp. “What should I be eating?”

“When is your birthday?”

“January. January twenty-seventh.”

“Fresh fruit and vegetables. Greens and bacon for security. Okra and black-eyed peas for luck. Alligator.”

“Alligator?” Fee asked. “For courage?”

“No'm,” said the shamaness, with a sly, dark-eyed look. “Tastes good. A little fatty, but you need some meat on them long bones of yours. Y'ought to try some jambalaya. Not that stuff,” she said, with a dismissive wave at the table. “There's better in the Quarter. Ask Willie downstairs. He'll steer you to the good places.”

Fee cleared her throat. “I didn't ask you here for restaurant reviews, er, Madam Charmay.”

“I know,” the old woman said. “This curse. It's still troubling you?” Fee nodded. “Whole cure takes maybe eight, maybe nine days. I've got to find me a black rooster and some other things. Won't cost you too much for the components, but you ought to be generous to the spirits all the same. You're lucky the full moon is coming, day after tomorrow. Otherwise it'd take a month and a week.”

“I don't have eight or nine days! I've got to give a concert tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Madam Charmay said, cocking her head. “Then, you need the quick cure. All right. Stand you there. In the precise center. That's it.”

For Fee to stand in the middle of the room, Lloyd had to move the table. Fee stared up at the ceiling as the old woman walked in ever-tightening circles until she could feel the slight heat of the other's body. All the time Madam Charmay was chanting quietly to herself. Occasionally the rattles punctuated a sentence with their exclamation points. Fee concentrated, wishing she could feel something, anything, to prove that she was connected to the great beyond. But nothing stirred the atmosphere except the freezing blast of the air conditioning. There was another rap at the door, this one businesslike.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, this is getting to be like a drawing room comedy,” Fee said, in exasperation. “Look, are you finished?”

“I am now, lady,” Madam Charmay said, putting her rattles into her purse. “I can come again.”

“Yes, please,” Fee said, grabbing her small purse, little more than a wallet on a string. She riffled through the wad of American notes that she'd been given by Nigel and came up with three twenties, which she held out to Madam Charmay. The old woman regarded the money with distaste.

“No, do not give it to me. Give it to charity. This night. Without fail.”

“I will,” Fee said in surprise, ashamed of herself for not asking about the protocol of paying healers for their services. “Thank you so much.”

“It is all in God's name,” Madam Charmay said, with dignity. “I will go now.”

* * *

Lloyd's face turned beet red when he opened the door and saw Liz and Boo-Boo in the hallway.

“May we see her?” Liz asked politely. She hadn't a hope of making this jealous man an ally, but at least she would keep from enraging him further. She had felt her ward alarms go off twice. There were, or had been, two strangers in the room. One of them was still there, yet Liz sensed no danger from the presence.

As if in answer to her unspoken question, a slender, little woman with a worn face and ineffable majesty was stepping daintily toward them. As she came through the door, she traded speaking looks with Boo-Boo. He raised his eyebrows, and the old woman shook her head very slightly. There was the ghost of magic in the room. Benevolent but very strong-minded. Concerned, Liz bustled toward Fionna, who was standing under the light fixture in the center of the room, eating jambalaya out of a carry-out container with a spoon.

“I don't care what the old darlin' said, this tastes wonderful,” Fionna said indistinctly, around a large mouthful. “Oh, there you are, you two! I can't believe how hungry I am, and all. Have some.” She held out the container. The food smelled good to Liz, but it looked awful. Thick pieces of sausage pushed up through the brownish gravy like monstrous fingers emerging from a swamp.

“Thank you, ma'am, but we've had our dinner,” Boo said. “We came to see if you'll be all right to come down for the late rehearsal. Your people are kind of countin' on it.”

“Oh, without a doubt!” Fee said, managing to trill the words without spraying food on anyone. She scooped up one last bite and held it up in the air before eating it. “We're going to do such a show tomorrow, me darlin's!” She licked the spoon tidily and set it into the empty lid. “Come on, then! Lloyd, me love, get us a taxi?” Liz noticed that she was already wearing her purse.

“Who was that woman we saw?” she asked Boo as they followed in Fionna's wake.

“Friend of mine from the Quarter, a Cajun healer. The real thing. Willie on the door told me Miss Fionna asked for a recommendation. I made sure they didn't send her no charlatans.”

“Did she cure Fionna?” Liz asked, with interest.

“Naw. I can tell. There hasn't been time to really get to the roots of what's goin' on. She did the stuff she does for visitors. A little chantin', rattlin' to drive away the bad spirits. Short-term fix, but you can see it's cheered her up a lot. Half of healin's mental, y'know.”

Liz sighed. “At least the show will go on.”

Boo tilted his head and gave her a little smile. “Don't worry, ma'am. We'll catch whoever's behind this.”

At 10:00 P.M., the SATN-TV host pointed into the camera lens.

“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you, yes, you! You
can keep your children from falling under the influence of wrong-thinking people like this woman and her ilk.” The camera pulled back from him to show the poster of Green Fire. In the amber spotlight, Fionna Kenmare's dark eye makeup looked sinister and terrifying, and the male musicians hovered like thugs. “Tonight we show you ways to combat the insidious influence of so-called white magic and rock music. We've got a lot of guests tonight I know you'll enjoy. Stay tuned!”

Augustus Kingston watched the screen with his eyes slitted like a pleased snake. This show was SATN's bread and butter. The average pollster from the FCC or either of the two big services would have been very surprised if they ever took a survey in this area of the country. Never mind your late night reruns of situation comedies. Never mind your home shopping networks. The big deal in this part of the woods was the Hate Your Neighbor show, hosted by Nick Trenton. In the last five years Trenton had shown a genius for raising hackles among his guests, half of whom had something to do with evildoing, and the other half who were the subject of their rants. It was a poor night when there wasn't one good fistfight. You could raise a contact high of black magic just sitting in the audience. The sponsors would see to it that it ran forever. They said that the evil that men did lived after them. Augustus Kingston could have thought of no better monument to himself than an everpouring fount of dark power that bore his name, although he intended to live a very long time and enjoy it.

That night's programming was setting up to be a good one. They had rounded up a handful of wiccans, a man and four women, and coaxed them to come on the show to promote their peaceful nature cult. They were on the set already, looking nervously at the black candles and the pig-shaped altar. What they didn't know was their fellow guests were unconstructed right-wing megaconservatives who didn't believe women should even be taught to read. Kingston turned down the audio monitor as he picked up the phone and punched the internal extension.

“Ed, how's that test running?”

“Pretty well, sir!” the engineer shouted over the noises in the control room. “I don't know what you've got at the other end, but the needles are showing almost fifteen percent feed coming in on the line. Wow, almost sixteen percent! . . . Sir, can I ask what kind of transmission this feed is?” he asked in a worried voice.

“No, Ed, I'd rather you didn't,” Kingston said, in a paternal voice. He pulled a Cuban cigar out of the walnut humidor on his desk.

“Well, sir, if it's radioactive . . . I don't want to make a fuss, but my wife and I want to have kids one day.”

“I promise you, son,” Kingston concentrated on getting the end clipped off to his satisfaction. “This is nothing that would ever show up on a Geiger counter. You still don't want to stick your fingers in it, though.”

“No, sir.”

“Good boy. You got that transmission going in to the special power storage like I told you?”

“Yes, sir,” Ed's voice said, resignedly.

“What's the reading?”

“Almost sixteen percent.”

“Very nice. I'm proud of you, son. Keep me posted.” Kingston glanced up at the clock as he depressed the plunger and dialed the operator. “Charlene, I'm expecting a long-distance call. Put it right through, won't you, honey? And don't listen in. If you do, you're fired.”

* * *

The watcher's call came through on schedule, at a quarter to the hour. Kingston had never met the man on the scene. He had been hired by the friend of a friend of a friend. At least it sounded like a man. It could have been a woman with a deep voice. It was hard to tell, because the voice was distorted by one of those gizmos that they used on crime shows. Kingston didn't care, as long as the person made the scheme work. Everything he was hoping for depended on it.

“Mr. Kingston?” the voice buzzed in his ear.

“That's me,” the station owner said. “How's it going at your end?”

“All the technology is in place. There was no problem hiding the mechanisms in among all the other electronics. What's two or three more boxes or cables?”

“Exactly,” Kingston said. He felt pretty pleased. This friend of a friend had picked a smart one. “You need a feed from us this evening?”

“A short one, just to test the mechanism again,” said the voice. “I need to rewire the transmission lines in the control room.”

“Don't they already go there?” Kingston asked impatiently.

“They go to the switcher,” the voice said. “I'm hooking it into my conduit's chair.”

“Ahh,” said Kingston. “I was wondering how you were making a direct connection. The Law of Contagion says they have to touch.”

“The first connection was too general. It blew out. This one will be a lot better. I'm waiting until full dress rehearsal tomorrow afternoon for a full test. By then, it will be too late for the concert to be cancelled. After that, you can let the full power transfer rip. I promise you you'll get a return feed beyond your wildest hopes.”

“Marvelous,” Kingston gloated, foreseeing his own power rising like the sun. “The pipeline will bring in clouds of evil that will feed our evil, and make us immortal! . . . Er, you didn't hear me say that.”

“No, sir.”

“How many people you say are coming to that concert?”

“A maximum of ninety thousand tickets. They're not all sold yet.”

“You know,” Kingston said, easing back in his chair, “I consider every one of those empty seats a lost opportunity. Now, you're sure your conduit doesn't know what it is we're doing?”

“Not a clue.” There was a hesitation. “Well, we've got one possible hiccup. There's a couple of government agents on the job. They actually suspect magic,” the voice dropped to a whisper, “and it looks like they know some, too.”

“Really.” Kingston's eyebrows went up, but he kept his voice from reflecting the dismay he felt. Chances were slim that these practitioners were his kind of people. “Don't worry. Give me a full description of them.”

The voice ticked off the physical details of a prim, blond Englishwoman in a two-piece suit and a Southerner who wore ratty clothes that were half hippie, half ex-GI. Kingston took notes.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” the owner said at last. “I'll take care of it. Get back to me tomorrow.” He hung up the phone and sauntered into the control room.

The Trenton show was well under way. The male wiccan was trying to defend his congregants from the leering megarightists. The women had a few things to say for themselves, but kept getting shouted down by the audience. One of the opposition was out of his chair, hefting the overstuffed piece of furniture as if judging whether he could actually throw it. It looked as though the first fight was about to break out, when Trenton signalled for a station break. Kingston grinned. That'd keep the television audience glued to their seats. They'd have to stay tuned to see if punches flew.

After the police had cleared the combatants off the set, Trenton stepped into the audience. Time for the night's rail against Fionna Kenmare.

“ . . . Do you really want a woman like this evil person influencing your children?” he asked them, his voice smooth and suave. He pointed at the poster of her on stage above the pig-shaped altar. In no time he had them worked into a frenzy. “She's horrible! She's a goody-goody! She believes in white magic!”

Some of the audience were out of their seats chanting, “No! No! No!” Kingston smiled.

The new transmitter-receiver near the switcher panel was sparking up. It looked like it had come straight out of Frankenstein's laboratory. The red digital indicator on the front read “16,” ticking occasionally to “17.” Kingston's mystery connection was right. The chosen conduit was one heck of a powerful transmitter. Good thing that neither the conduit or anyone else suspected what was going on. A lot of people's abilities were stifled when they became aware of what they were doing, or in this case, being led to do. It'd be one fine Saturday night.