"Here," Boo-Boo said, handing Nigel a string of garish, metallic blue beads, which the manager accepted with a nervous laugh. "This one's for you."

"A little bright, isn't it?"

"The more garish the better," Boo-Boo pointed out, "to scare away bad spirits, y'know."

As the members of the company filed sleepily into the bar on the way to the dining room, Boo-Boo stepped forward to loop a necklace over each of their heads. Liz handed him fresh ones as each new person arrived.

"Souvenir of N'Awlins," he said, pleasantly. "What we call a lagniappe, a little somethin' extra. Enjoy."

"Hey, thanks, man," most of them said.

"Is this extra special?" Laura Manning asked, with a wicked glint at Boo-Boo as he placed a bright gold necklace around her neck that went well with her dark skin.

He grinned at her. "Y'all might say so." She leaned over and kissed him.

Liz had an armload of protective necklaces in every color imaginable for Fionna to wear with every outfit. When the star finally arrived, Boo-Boo lavished amulets on her until the exhausted star looked like a carnival float. Liz held back a couple of the leftovers to take home to HQ for analysis. It never hurt to have more examples of protective magic in the grimoire.

"You're all safe now," Liz assured Nigel.

"At least from an attack like that one," Boo-Boo said, genially. Nigel didn't look reassured by Boo-Boo's qualified promise.

"But how did Lewis get a nice girl like Robbie to work for him?" he asked.

Liz looked grim. "She believed that Ken was doing magical work on her behalf, ostensibly to help her gain Lloyd's love. She didn't catch on as to why she wasn't winning her man. She put it down to Fionna's stronger magic. Frustration was why her power levels could build so high."

"That wasn't all her, y'know," Boo-Boo pointed out. "She was gettin' a power feed from somewhere else. An untrained practitioner like herself couldn't generate that much without bein' detected. That was why it took us so long to figure out it was her. Now, she'll just have to work out her love troubles in some other way. She might still be jealous of Ms. Fionna, but she won't be wired into a negative-energy pool any more by an unscrupulous bastard like him, y'all will excuse the language."

"Poor kid," Nigel said. "But what was it all for?"

"Power," Liz said. "Eighty thousand bodies' worth. When you have that many like-minded people in a room, they generate psychic energy that can be tapped by someone who knows what he's doing."

"Like radiation?"

"Sort of," said Boo-Boo. "Ken had a hookup to a satellite receiver feedin' into the control room, wired to Robbie's chair. Since the energy had touched her once, it would continue to have an effect on her. It was attached to the transmission lines in the press room, right next to the control room. We were in there, and never connected what was happenin' to what we were lookin' at."

"This is still too fantastic for me," Nigel said, shaking his head. "Dark sorcery, beamed here via modern technology. And we'll never know who was behind all this, huh?"

Liz held her tongue. Boo-Boo had kindly shared with her the early-morning report of the very bizarre destruction of a television station in the northwestern United States. The agent, a stringer named Ed Cielinski, reported that some new equipment installed at SATN-TV that gave off evil vibrations had been acting oddly over the last few days. Some time after he'd gone off duty the night before, the whole place was trashed, like a rock group's hotel room. His employer was discovered sitting on the floor in the middle of the ruins muttering to himself. So far as he knew no one had been hurt, but the place was a mess. The department was investigating, and would share its results with OOPSI.

"I'm afraid not," Liz said at last.

"I had no idea we were harboring a dangerous criminal," Nigel Peters said, shaking his head. "We were lucky he didn't turn up for the concert itself."

"He did almost as much damage by remote control as he would have if he was right there," Boo-Boo said.

"You can say that again!" said Gary Lowe, coming over to hand Nigel a drink. "We had everything planned to work without Robbie's effects, and he went and bollixed it all up by vanishing. It's a good thing I know how to run a light board, or the whole thing would have come off in darkness."

"In more ways than one," Boo-Boo said.

Gary Lowe gave him a puzzled frown. "Well, it made my job twice as hard, doing that along with overseeing everything else."

"The concert was wonderful," Liz assured him.

"Thanks. One vote of confidence, anyhow."

"Well, I've fired Lewis in absentia," Nigel Peters said. "He'll never work in the industry again."

"You can't really tell future employers why," Liz said. "This matter is now covered by the Official Secrets Act."

Nigel gave her his nervous smile. "In this biz, honey, all I have to do is say he's too weird. I don't have to explain myself."

"That's mighty convenient," Boo-Boo said. "Weirdness covers a wide range of sins, don't it?" He felt through his pockets and came up with a grubby square of pasteboard. "If he does turn up at all while you're in the United States, call my department."

Nigel took it with gingerly fingers. Liz produced a card of her own, pristine white and snapped it into the manager's palm. "The same goes for our territories and the EU," she said. "He's a wanted man, now. On both sides of the ocean."

The others in the bar were discussing the concert, sharing their impressions of how things had gone. Instead of being frightened from having been in the presence of incomprehensible magic, the roadies and members of the band had taken it all in their stride. Some of them seemed honored that it had happened to them, their band. Liz marveled at the elasticity of human nature. Of course, Boo-Boo had had a lot to do with it. He'd jumped right into the thick of the conversation, making jokes.

"I wish it would happen all over again," one of the stagehands exclaimed.

He was shouted down by his fellows. "Oh, no, you don't!" Robbie Unterburger insisted.

The special effects technician had come out of her experience feeling as though she'd had her aura washed. Refreshed after a night's sleep and a good detoxification treatment by Liz and Boo-Boo, she looked prettier and happier than Liz had yet seen her. She was transformed, laughing and joking with her peers.

"Oh, you were a lot of help, taking off like that," the others teased her. Nigel had been purposely vague in describing Robbie's part in the magical attack to the others. "You didn't see what happened."

"There's seven cities left on the tour," Robbie said, defending herself. "I dreamed up some new effects that will knock your socks off."

"We're not so sure we want to hear about your dreams," Hugh Banks said. "We've seen what your nightmares look like."

"So that's that, now," Fionna said, appearing at Liz's shoulder. Fee had deep circles under her eyes carefully covered by concealer stick. The green in her close-clipped hair had been freshly touched up to enhance the vivid makeup job on her face. Liz wondered if Laura Manning had gotten any sleep at all.

"Yes," Liz said, turning to her familiarly. "I'm glad we could help."

"Thank the good Lord it's all over," Fee said, gulping a drink that Lloyd brought to her. "Well, you'll be going now. No need for you to stay."

"That's right," Liz said. "Straight back to London. My orders came this morning. My employer is pleased that we were able to isolate the threat so quickly."

"After all, you were just doing your job," Fionna said.

Liz schooled her face not to show her astonishment. The ungrateful wretch couldn't bring herself to say thank you. That was the least she could do. Liz guessed she was still embarrassed that Daddy had called in her old school chum to pull her very public fat out of a particularly strange fire.