"Beauray! Hey, man, what happened?"

"Oh, just a little thing, Samson. Whatcha doin' hangin' out in this neighborhood?" Boo asked. "Gets kinda dangerous in the evenin' around here."

Samson and his companion looked sheepishly at their feet. "Sorry, man. Din't know it was you. Sorry, ma'am. If you're a friend of Boo's, we're pleased to meet you. I'm Samson. This is Tiger."

"Eliz—er, Liz," she said, holding out her hand to them. Her fingers were swallowed up in their vast handshakes.

"You gonna tell me why you're standin' on street corners scarin' strangers?" Boo-Boo asked, in his easy way, but there was steel in his bright blue eyes.

"They hired us," Tiger said, in a basso growl. "Said there was some bad-ass who needed a little kickin' around. Thought it was a good cause. We had no idea they were puttin' a mark on you. I woulda known better than to try. You want us to mess 'em up a little?"

"No, thanks. I'd rather talk to 'em," Boo-Boo said. "I need to know why they hired you." But when he turned to the others to undo his whammy they shied away from his moving hands. Before he or Liz could do anything, they ran away down the street, shrieking as if the fiends of hell were after them, which, for all he knew, they might be. "Left it a little too long," he said apologetically to Liz. The spell would work itself out in a few hours. "You fellas have any idea what was goin' on?"

"Not a clue," Samson said apologetically. "They're from out of town, that's all we knew. We thought there was some big problem they needed help with. They sounded like nice fellas. They had some money. We had some spare time. We sure are sorry, ma'am. Can we do anything to help?"

The sudden surge of courtesy did little to calm Liz's temper. So much time had been wasted! She produced the picture of Robbie she had taken from Nigel Peters.

"We're looking for this young woman. We were in pursuit of her from the Superdome when you interfered with us. Any assistance you can offer would be greatly appreciated." She knew her voice sounded cold, but the men didn't seem to mind. They looked at one another, and nodded.

"This girl's not much to look at," Tiger said. "But we'll keep an eye out. If she comes into the bar tonight, I'll let you know."

"I'm on night shift," Samson said. "If she comes through Jackson Square, I'll see her."

"Don't make a fuss," Boo said, genially. "We just want to know who she's drinkin' with. We feel kinda protective of her, you understand?"

And the men seemed to.

"We'll spread the word," Samson promised. "You can count on that."

"Thanks," Boo said. He felt around in his coat pockets for a grubby notebook and pencil, tore out a page and handed half to each man. "Here's my cell phone number. And if you see those guys again..."

"You want us to mess 'em up a little?" Tiger asked, hopefully.

"Not right away," Boo said. "We need to know who hired 'em."

Tiger crossed his huge arms. "We'll find out for you. Least we can do."

"In the meanwhile," Liz said, "we'd better resume our search for Robbie. Time is running out."

Chapter 15

Ken Lewis followed the pointing fork attached to the top of his direction finder as he trudged slowly along Bourbon Street. This stupid city smelled. He was tired of the pervading odors of mold and spice and old paint. The river behind him was a power presence in its own right he couldn't ignore, and far too big for him to deal with. His feet were so hot and sore he wanted to go soak them in the Mississippi and tell Mr. Kingston to hell with him and his project. Trouble was, he knew it would be to Hell with him if he failed. Kingston wasn't the only person who had a vested interest in its success. Ken was part of only a distant outer circle of the Council, but he, too, had hopes of ascendance one day. If he didn't make this work, he was cooked.

He'd run up and down half the crumbling streets in that section of the French Quarter, only to find every track he followed belonged to a total stranger, and some pretty weird strangers at that. Who the hell knew there were so many people in this city giving off magical vibes? Voodoo priests, shamans, witches, clairvoyants—the place was full of practitioners and talents. Why did he have to lose a sensitive in the middle of all this? Why couldn't Green Fire have had its all-important concert in, say, Cleveland, Ohio?

He'd had a heck of a time extracting himself from the last place, the sitting room in a private home on a little side street. The green-robed woman with the long henna-dyed hair had closed her door behind him and didn't want him to go. Only by promising to come back after dark did he persuade her to open the door. He had no intention of keeping that promise. If he managed to pull this job out of the toilet, he intended to spend the hours after midnight getting very drunk in a hotel room. He was still sneezing sandalwood incense out of his nostrils.

This Halloween town had some advantages. The sight of a man walking down the street with a dowsing rod should have had people following him, or calling the cops. Here, nobody stopped him or asked what he was doing. That one big, old, black man in the pressed shirt and trousers back there around the corner had shown some knowledge, and wanted to talk about the device. Ken put him off, too. He ought to send his father down here for a vacation. These were his kind of people: total weirdos.

He turned off the main street just west of the river and headed inland again towards Bourbon Street. It was a long shot, trying an area so far from the Superdome, but he'd covered nearly every street from Poydras to the Quarter without finding a trace of Robbie. He had no choice but to keep trying. She was the linchpin in the whole system. He couldn't run it without her. How he'd get her into the Superdome again later was a problem he'd figure out when he had her back.

The little hazel fork rotated on its spindle and pointed toward the storefronts on his right. By the strength of the reaction, Ken was pretty sure he had found the right trace at last. It took a little backtracking to figure out which doorway was the right one. He was in luck. It was a bar. He'd found her.

He peered into the dim room, lit only by a television set and some track lights over the mirror behind the varnished serving counter. Sure enough, the slender figure of the special effects engineer was hunched up on a stool with her elbows on the bar all the way in the back.

Ken switched off the electronic dowser and put it into his pocket. It had worked like a charm. Well, the rest of his act had better work, or he might be finished. He sidled up and sat down next to his quarry.

She'd been drowning her troubles. Pretty understandable, considering she'd been humiliated in front of everyone in the building. A tall, stemmed glass stood in front of her, half-emptied, but it couldn't have been the first one. Drying rings of neon-colored liquid glistened on the honey-colored wood in the muted light.

"Hi, Robbie," he said, gently. The television audio warred with some good jazz music coming from an overhead speaker. "Where'd you go so suddenly?"

Robbie Unterburger started, but she didn't look at him right away. The bartender, a white woman in her early fifties, appeared only a few feet away. She gave him a wary glance. Ken guessed she wondered if he was the cause of her customer's misery, and if she'd have to throw him out. He smiled at her, and she returned it, friendly but businesslike. Carefully, but not ostentatiously, she drew a Louisville slugger baseball bat out from underneath the bar so he could see it, nodded meaningfully at him, then put it back again. Ken gulped. Message received.