The band had left and Baz still hadn’t waked up. He normally looked pale. Now he looked like an albino in a dead faint.
A doctor had turned up out of the people packed around the back door. We let him in. He wasn’t much help.
“Drugs?” he guessed, although Baz’s pupils were still big. “Low blood pressure?” He wanted to administer nitroglycerine and I said no.
I sent him away with a hundred dollars and an autograph.
The club manager came in, looking worried. “Uh, Yoni, can you talk to somebody from the city?”
I looked up. “What?”
A big blonde woman pushed forward, flashing a badge. “Department of Consumer Services. Can you explain the disturbance in the street outside your concert, ma’am?”
I stood up. My joints creaked. I felt like I’d channeled the Niger River, and maybe the Mississippi and the Nile as well. “Why? What happened?”
“Please come outside.”
“Uh,” I said. I looked at David, my security guy.
“They’re mostly gone, Yoni,” David said.
I frowned. “In that case—”
The city lady said, “Please. Outside?”
I collected David and a couple of his burly guys, and we went to the front door, past the Cubby Bear’s cleanup crew. The floor tiles were all cracked, as if someone had dropped a dozen claw-foot bathtubs, repeatedly, everywhere.
Somebody was pushing a broom over the cracked tiles, moving a pile of red rose petals toward a much bigger pile of rose petals.
Uh-oh.
I glanced up at the ceiling. No gold rays on the ceiling. Whew.
On the street, four or five paddy wagons stood, all their blue-and-red flashers going. A dozen more squad cars sat idling. Their cop radios blared. People were being loaded into the cars and wagons in pairs, locked together as if they were cast in bronze, carved of marble, inseparable, oblivious, obsessed. Kissing, embracing, were they even fucking? They were holding too tight even for that.
I saw rose petals all over the street, too.
“Awesome,” I murmured weakly.
“You don’t have any idea where all this came from?” the city lady said. She stooped and scooped up a handful of rose petals, examined them, and stuffed them in her pocket. “Or why your audience went out of control?”
Well, of course I had an idea. I’d lost control. So they lost control. It was a clear-cut case of Yoni and Baz, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. I muttered some kind of weak denial, turned away, and ducked to the side of the door before somebody could spot me and take a picture.
Weirdly, no one was looking at me. Everyone who wasn’t loading the paddy wagons was locked in a clinch.
In another nine or ten months, I’d have a mini population explosion on my conscience, too.
I shut my eyes and reached for the edges of my energy field. It was out there—wow—way out there. Yards and yards. Maybe a few blocks. Wow. I stood in the doorway, eyes shut, and thought about pulling all that edge back in, pulling it toward me, making myself smaller.
As I pulled the edge toward me, I heard voices complaining. I opened my eyes. The couples being arrested were now parting, letting the cops separate them, climbing into custody one at a time. They didn’t seem any less obsessed with one another, but at least they weren’t glued together anymore.
I felt smaller now, but oh, so much fuller. I felt tight as a sausage with mana. I was afraid to breathe, afraid to look at anyone. I was too mentally exhausted to protect anyone, and I was so full of power I was afraid I might smash someone like a bug by accident.
I flicked a glance at the city lady. She was looking at the scene on the street.
“Uh, I don’t feel so good,” I murmured. Instantly, my guys ushered me back inside. They blocked the city lady from following.
David delayed her. “Thank you for taking time to check on us, Officer Heiss,” he said smoothly somewhere behind me. He would probably try to offer her money or tickets for tomorrow night’s show. She didn’t look bribable. I couldn’t care less.
I fled to the dressing room.
Baz was coming around.
“Out,” I said to the guys. They cleared the cleaning crew and the club manager and left me alone with my bad-boy rocker.