"You do understand that I've got to investigate any threats," Elizabeth said over Fionna's head to him. "I'm just here to do a job, same as you."
The man growled. "I know about you. I can do all the protecting she needs. Go home."
"That isn't possible," Elizabeth said. She cleared her throat and pitched her voice higher. "I will be riding with Fionna and you in your car to the hotel."
"Not a chance, sunshine," Preston said flatly.
Elizabeth fixed him with the stare that she had perfected in years of cadet service to teachers and school librarians.
"I know who you are," she said with great confidence, although all she had to go on was the information she had gleaned from reading the glossies. "You've been with Fionna for two years now. It's been... rewarding, hasn't it? If something happens to her, that'll be the end of it for you, won't it? You can't guard her against supernatural attacks."
"And you can?" Preston regarded her with suspicion and dislike. The feeling was mutual. Elizabeth knew his type. He was the kind of big brute who got loud and dangerous in pubs, and waited for his mates to quiet him down so the police wouldn't have to come in and arrest him when he beat someone bloody. The short, dark-haired woman with the peculiar eyeglass frames standing with the roadies was keeping a close, anxious eye on them, and looked as if she was going to rush in at any moment. The good-looking, brown-haired man at her side put a hand on her arm. They must be familiar with Preston's blustering.
"Come on, children!" the manager said, clapping his hands together to break them up. "We're all tired. Here are the cars. Fionna, Lloyd, and myself in the first car..."
"And me," Elizabeth said.
"And who the hell are you, duckie?" the manager said, wheeling on her. He was a dark-haired, well-built man with a clipped beard. He looked about twenty-eight, except for the fine creases in his skin next to his eyes and mouth, which suggested he was actually in his middle forties.
Elizabeth pulled him away to a handy overhead streetlight, and showed him her badge from OOPSI.
"Ah," the manager said, his eyebrows climbing high on his forehead. "I'm one of those people who doesn't need to be hit on the head with a brick, love. I believe. I absolutely believe. Of course you'll join us. I'm Nigel Peters, ringmaster of this circus. Glad to have you here." He clapped his hands again. "Everybody! The band in car two. Everyone else in car three. Anybody else will have to cab it, I'm afraid. I think these bloody hearses only seat sixteen."
There was a strained guffaw from a couple of the roadies, each of whom had charge of what looked like a container-load of baggage. Elizabeth hadn't properly appreciated how much of an entourage or how much equipment a musical group needed on tour. She suddenly realized that every luggage cart on the pavement belonged to Fionna's group. The manager snapped his fingers, and the porters started loading the parcels and cases into the boots of the limousines. With little shooing motions, he steered each person toward his or her assigned car.
Elizabeth had much to think about as the limos arrived, each stretching on and on like a clown car at the circus. My heaven, but American cars are BIG, she thought. With the hall-monitor training foremost, she managed to help shift everyone in the parties into the cars, got Fionna, her bodyguard, the manager, the publicist, and herself into the first, and away they went. As soon as the car was moving, Fionna slumped into the corner of the plushy seat, and reached out a languid hand. Lloyd Preston automatically dug into his jacket pocket and brought out a cigarette and a fancy gold lighter.
"Thanks, dearie," Fionna said. Elizabeth studied her.
Well, well, Fee Kendale. She and Elizabeth hadn't seen much of one another since coming down from St. Hilda's College, Oxford. They'd been friends then, but had lost touch immediately after graduation. Her family said she had gone abroad. How interesting that it had turned out to be true, although she wasn't as far away as her father had made it sound. What's more, it easily explained what must look to an outsider like a coincidence. Lord Kendale knew Elizabeth was in the Secret Service; he even knew which branch. She ran into him occasionally in the corridors of power, and he always remembered to have his secretary send her a card on Christmas and her birthday. She only hoped that he hadn't exaggerated the nature of the threat just to get an agent on the case whom he knew he could trust. And he'd known perfectly well where Phoebe had been all these years she was supposed to have been "abroad." Elizabeth wondered how many of Fionna's entourage knew that their rebel star was really a British debutante of the most drearily respectable antecedents. Well, mostly respectable. They had been up at St. Hilda's. Elizabeth grinned.
Phoebe had been intractable even as a child, always going her own way no matter how much her father pleaded with her. It was going to be hellish keeping Fee from slipping away from scrutiny when it became onerous, but now Elizabeth had a weapon she might be able to use over her to keep her in order: her deeply dark, secret past.
As the airport disappeared from view, Elizabeth realized with a shock that she had forgotten to look for her U.S. counterpart. After the Phoebe/Fionna bombshell, it was small wonder, but the omission was devastatingly unprofessional of her. Still, no one had attempted to contact her. Oh, well, too late to go back now. Her connection would have to catch up with them at the hotel.
Chapter 5
"Will you stay off me bleedin' heels?" said the slim, green-haired woman, rounding drunkenly on the blonde woman in the crumpled suit behind her.
A big, dark-haired man wearing a white linen sports jacket over an immaculate T-shirt and jeans cut between the two of them and put an arm around the tall woman, who was recognizable anywhere as Fionna Kenmare, the acid folk rock star. The blonde woman, shorter by several inches, had a good, strong chin and steady, gray eyes. She looked as if she could put up a good fight but was choosing not to.
Beauray Boudreau watched them make their way from the file of limousines that had pulled into the underground garage of the Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon Street. Fionna Kenmare staggered over the threshold into the hotel, and the large man steadied her. Behind her, the woman in the suit maintained a calm expression, but her eyes sparked to show that she was fuming mad. Boudreau followed them inside, past the uniformed doorman, who stared with open admiration at Fionna Kenmare all the way up the stairs to the lobby. The star tottered toward the deep armchairs upholstered in cherry pink. She flung herself into one and stretched out a languid hand to the dark-haired man in the expensive suit.
"Nigel, be a dear, sweet man, and check me in, will you?"
"Of course, Fee, darling," Nigel said, with nannylike solicitness. He asked the woman on the other side of the desk. "Sweetheart, can someone get my friend there a drink? And one for me, too. It's so bloody hot here we're evaporating."
"I'll have a waiter come by right away, sir," the young, black woman said, smiling.
It took Elizabeth a moment to sift the hotel clerk's words into a sentence she could understand. The honey-sweet, slurred accent was no easier to understand than broad Irish. The clerk behind the dark-stained wooden desk picked up a phone and tucked it into the angle of her neck and shoulder while she flicked through the sheaf of reservation slips Nigel Peters handed to her.
Yawning into her hand, Elizabeth stood back a little ways to keep an eye on Fionna while the group checked in. She'd get a room, take a quick shower to sluice off the grime of travel and wake herself up, then call in to HQ. It'd be nearly four A.M. at home. No one would be there, but the switchboard operator could take her message. She cringed at the notion of stepping back out into the saunalike atmosphere, but she needed to connect with solid earth. Now that she was back on the ground she needed to recharge her magical batteries. It would take special intervention to keep from falling asleep while she set up security for Fionna/Phoebe's room. A handsome porter in green livery and a white stock at his neck came over to smile and gesture toward her small suitcase.