"My super told me not to attract any attention!" Liz said.

"He's not here; how will he know?"

"They have cameras!" Liz said. "Our images will be on the evening news all around the world... never mind."

Boo seemed utterly unconcerned about security. He was even enjoying the attentions of the press. He waved to an attractive, blonde woman holding out a microphone. She shouted something at him, but he held his hand behind his ear, pretending he couldn't hear her. With a sigh Liz reached into her pocket for the strands of yarn she carried there, and twisted them together. The cantrip should fuzz her image sufficiently so it would be difficult to identify her. Ringwall still wouldn't be happy, but at least the damage was under control. Now to see what had caused all the to-do. She grabbed Boo's arm to turn him.

The steel-and-glass doors were pinned wide by dumpsters rolled up from the nearby loading dock. Boo hopped over lengths of hose flung everywhere in the corridor. Liz followed him, wishing she had worn lower-heeled shoes. A couple of people hung out of the dressing room doors, gawking at the two agents as they ran by. Everyone was yelling over the alarms, sirens, and crackling radios.

"Where'd it happen?" Liz called to Boo. He skipped nimbly over a twisting section of hose fifty feet ahead of her. Watching him, she stumbled on the same length and cursed her high-heeled shoes.

"Just follow the trail, I'd say," Boo said, stopping to wait for her. He grabbed her arm, and pointed ahead toward the double stage doors, braced open with crates. Half a dozen firefighters in yellow rubber coats, shouting to each other, rushed past them with extinguishers and axes. The two agents ran to catch up.

When she reached the stage, Liz stopped beside Boo to stare.

"What happened?" she asked. "With all the equipment they've brought in I thought the entire Superdome was coming down!"

After the round-shouldered cramping of the hotel and the restaurant in the Quarter, the chamber before Liz was vast. It engulfed the forty people on the raised stage at its heart like gnats in a multicolored bathtub. Yellow-skinned insects dragged long strands of hose behind them here and there through glistening puddles and heaps of overturned equipment. A bright yellow fire engine a third the size of the ones on the street sat beside the stage, its emergency lights rotating while men in coats and boots scrambled all over it. At the center of all the hubbub stood a single, tiny, forlorn, dripping figure. Two of the firefighters dragged a still writhing hose away from him. It was Thomas Fitzgibbon, the costumer, drenched to the skin. He saw the two agents and waved a hand weakly toward them, dribbling a stream of water from his sleeve.

"I can't explain it," the costumer said, when they reached him. He moved locks of his curly hair out of his eyes, and plucked at his wet shirt. He looked close to tears as he held out a scorched wisp of green cloth. "I brought Fee's dress out here on stage to see how it looked under the lights. The sleeves are gauze, like dragonfly wings. They would be so beautiful. Then suddenly, poof! Flames everywhere! It happened so quickly I didn't have time to move. I thought I'd be burned to death." The thin man's eyes were huge with fear, but he appeared to be uninjured. "And then someone pulled the fire alarm."

"Was anyone hurt?" Boo asked, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and offering it to the man. Fitzgibbon looked at the grimy square and shuddered.

"No, but the dress is ruined. I can't stand it." He turned woefully to face Patrick Jones, the publicist, who was jogging toward them up the main aisle of the theater. Fionna, dogged by a grim Preston, strode behind him. Jones started to speak, but Preston pushed by him and shook a fist in Liz's face.

"What I want to know is, you think you call this taking care of the problem?"

"Shush, Lloyd," said Jones, patiently. "Can anyone tell us what happened? You, sir?" He snagged the arm of a passing firefighter, dressed in rubber coat and boots. "Are we in any more danger? Can we stay here?"

"The fire seemed to be localized right here," the man said. His dark-skinned face gleamed with sweat, and Liz empathized with him for having to wear a heavy costume like that in the middle of the hellish heat of the city, let alone a conflagration. "We're examining the rest of the scene right now."

"Well, can't you speed it up?" Jones asked. He looked peeved, but was trying to remain reasonable. "We've got a show to do."

"Sorry, sir. These things have got to be done in the right order," the firefighter said, patiently. "You don't want hot spots to break out. Burn the place right down."

"Oh, marvelous," Jones said, throwing his hands in the air. The fireman walked in an ever-increasing circle around the center of the stage, studying the floor, and occasionally stooping to touch the wooden boards. Jones watched him go with an expression of worry. Liz felt sorry for him. This would be a very public public-relations nightmare.

Other firefighters searched around in the outer reaches of the Superdome, clambering up into the tiers of multicolored seats. Liz spotted the ant-sized figures in their yellow protective gear, and marveled at how large the arena was. Without figures to compare for scale, it seemed no larger than a circus tent, but it was fully as big as a football stadium. Which, she recalled wryly, it was.

A few of the band members and some of the security staff were following the firefighters around, asking questions. The rest were frozen in a huddle on one side of the stage, staring at the sodden costumer.

Liz surveyed the scene, puzzled by the lack of evidence. When the accident, or attack, or whatever it was had occurred, there had been a blast of some kind. Fitzgibbon stood in the center of a ring of ash. It was marked by footprints of every size, left by firefighters, the members of the band, and now her and Boo. The pattern radiated outward from the costume itself in a complete circle, interrupted only where the costumer's body had blocked the burst. But it must have been a remarkably mild explosion. Fitzgibbon was unhurt, though badly frightened, and she couldn't say she blamed him.

"Who was near you when it caught fire?" Liz asked.

"No one!" Fitzgibbon exclaimed. He was still clutching the soggy remains of the dress. "I was standing here, holding up the gown for the lights. Robbie can back me up on that. Can't you, sweetheart?" he called to the special effects coordinator, who was sitting on a folding chair at the stage rim with her hands and knees together and ankles apart like a little girl.

The special effects coordinator nodded her head solemnly. She looked puzzled and worried.

"Take me through it," Liz said briskly to Fitzgibbon. "Just what happened?"

The costumer threw up his hands. "Nothing! I came out of the dressing room with the green number for the ballad at the end of the first set. The crew can tell you. Some of the spotlights were moving up and down, and I saw some laser lights flashing. Fionna's key light was pointed down onto the center of the stage. I went into the beam to see how her costume would look. That's all. Then, whoosh! Look at it! Those perfect, filmy sleeves, reduced to ashes. I don't want everyone blaming me. I didn't do anything!" His eyes filled with tears. "It was supposed to match her hair."

"Now, now," Boo-Boo said soothingly, patting the costumer on the back. "No one's callin' you names. Could anyone have booby-trapped that dress?"

Fitzgibbon looked indignant. "Certainly not. I had just finished tacking the hem. I had the whole thing inside out on my cutting table. If there had been any... infernal devices, I would have seen them. There was nothing there!"

"I told you all this was real," Fionna spat, striding up with Nigel Peters trotting behind her. She glared at the publicist. "Now do you fokkin' believe me?" Jones held up his hands to fend off her fury. "Things like this have been goin' on again and again. I'm at me wits' end!" Fionna turned to Liz and Boo-Boo. "Yer supposed to prevent this, right? Why didn't yer fancy machines tell you this was happenin'? Didn't you bug everythin' I own in the world?"