don't tell me how to do mine. A panic demon is easy to control and can't hurt me.”
“I don't do magic, and if I did, I'd sure as hell leave demons out of it,” she snapped back.
“This is not the time!” Maryann interrupted. “So, it can't really hurt us too bad?”
“Well, let's just say this isn't the first time I've had to chase Asaph down.”
“Oh, is anyone really surprised by that?” Nora said with venom.
“Not now!” Maryann said. “Let's go find that thing before someone gets seriously hurt.”
Maryann finished casting her spells and they exited they RV and spread out to find it. They stayed within shouting distance of each other. The demon was not easy to find although its path was easy to follow. Maryann caught up to it first.
It had frightened people away from their campfire and it was chowing down on the hastily abandoned smores.
Maryann got as close as she dared and then lunged for the demon. It saw her and dashed towards the vendors. She crashed to the ground as it darted off. She stood up and dusted off her legs. “Go to the vendors!” she shouted.
They changed direction and pushed against the crowd of panicked people.
Leah spotted it on top of a hot dog cart greedily stuffing hot dogs down its throat. She pulled out her crucifix. “In the name of Christ, get thee behind me!” she said in Spanish.
The demon nearly choked on the hot dogs, started twitching madly but not running, and fell off the cart out of Leah's line of sight. When she got closer, she could see it had recovered and run off again.
“I told you he was trouble,” Nora said, catching up to Leah.
“Well, it doesn't do any good to tell Maryann these things,” she said.
Isabella and Alex both honed in on the demon. But it spotted both of them and after sticking its tongue out at Alex, disappeared behind some more food carts. “We've got to catch it before it gets to the stages. People could get really hurt running around there,” she said.
“Hey, I'm all for catching it,” Alex agreed.
Maryann caught up to it again as it struggled to open a bottle of water someone had dropped.
It caught sight of her too late. It tried to jump away but she managed to grab both of its spindly legs.
“Isabella!” she yelled.
Asaph yowled and screeched and gibbered in a strange language. It clawed madly at the ground to try to get away and actually started dragging Maryann across the dirt and sent the crowd in front of it running away in fear.
“Guys!” she yelled again, as the demon actually picked up speed.
Leah pushed against the tide of people and got to Maryann first. “Not dangerous, huh?” she thought, and dived for the demon. She landed solidly on top of, trying to keep the flailing claws away from her face. It was still trying to escape was jerking both her and Maryann across the rocky ground.
Maryann let go of its legs and then jumped on top of Leah.
“Isabella!” they yelled in unison as the demon thrashed beneath them.
Isabella and Nora broke through the ring of panicked people.
“You need to pick better guys,” Leah muttered.
“This isn't my fault!”
“You're right. Clearly somewhere my life took a turn for the weird.”
Isabella pulled a paper charm out of her pocket and stuck it on the demon's forehead. The Japanese kanji on the charm transliterated to “be gone evil spirit.” While it was not a strong enough banishing charm to actually send the demon back to whatever Hell it had come from, it was strong enough to freeze it in place. “I got it.”
Maryann slowly got off of Leah's back, and Leah slowly got off the demon's back. Maryann's legs were badly scratched and bleeding.
It was splayed out on its belly with its eyes wide and glassy.
“Can you actually banish this damn thing?” Nora asked.
Isabella and Maryann shook their heads.
“Sorry. There's just so much I don't know about it and the bond Alex shares with it to try something like that,” Maryann answered.
Alex finally caught up with them. “Hey, what's that on his forehead?”
“Don't touch it!” Isabella said. “The charm will keep it immobilized as long as it stays stuck to its forehead.”
“Fine. Fine.” He walked over to the demon and picked it up. “Oh, hey, is that kanji? That's cool. Asaph, you've had a busy day.”
“You didn't tell us that thing was so strong,” Leah said angrily.
“Oh, yeah, well usually it's nothing I can't handle.” He noticed a burn mark on the demon's back and looked at Leah's crucifix necklace. “Oh, that's the problem. You burned Asaph and scared it. No wonder it was fighting so hard. Luckily panic demons don't really fight; they just try to get away, like anyone else who's panicked.”
“Oh, yes, very lucky,” she said acidly.
“Well, I've got all the components to get it back in its jar. I'll be done in about an hour or so, assuming nothing else goes wrong,” he said.
“Everything has gone wrong!”
“It's not all my fault! But I'll put in some extra protections before I start the main spell. So, I'll catch up to later, maybe after your show?”
“Really, you don't have to,” Nora said.
“Fine, be all prejudiced like that,” he snapped, and stomped away holding the demon under his arm.
“I'm not sorry at all,” she said. “We still have our show tonight and we've wasted nearly all our rehearsal time.”
“I agree with you,” Leah said.
“Come on, ladies, let's try to get in some rehearsal time,” Isabella said, seeing that Maryann looked upset. “We'll salvage what we can. And Maryann, you need to take care of those scratches.”
Maryann got cleaned up. They rehearsed, got in costume, and made their way to the stage. The crowds had recovered from the scares earlier and seemed to be a good mood for a show. They were nearly done when Isabella noticed the stage manager trying to get her attention.
“What?” she asked, taking a minute between songs.
“I need you to keep playing,” the stage manager said.
“What? We're about to do our last song.”
“Yes, but the lead singer of the Widgets just lost his voice and the drummer seems to have gotten food poisoning or something. I don't have a back-up band because of the scheduling issues, so just keep playing until I give you the signal,” he explained hurriedly.
“Okay, sure, I guess we'll figure something out,” Isabella replied, flustered. She got back to the band. “We have to play more.”
“What? Why?” Nora asked.
“No time. Follow my cues and hopefully we'll get through this,” she said.
They managed to get through the extra sets with no mishaps, although their playing was a little sloppier than any of them were happy with.
“Good grief, how much longer did we play?” Maryann asked.
“No one says that,” Leah said. “Good grief, I mean. And I think it was another hour.”
“I really hope we get fans out of this,” Nora said.
“Hey, it's good practice for when we become super rock stars and have to do like five encores at our sold out shows,” Leah said.
“Wow, and you guys tell me I'm overly optimistic,” Maryann said.
“We also tell you that you're not good on picking up on sarcasm,” Nora replied dryly.
“The wind shifted again,” Isabella said as they packed up their gear.
“I really can't handle too much more chaos,” Leah sighed.
As they headed back to their trailer, a short in two of the generators caused the entire Anarchy stage to black out.
“Well, at least our show's done,” Nora said.
Then the rest of the stages blacked out.
“So, what was that?” Maryann said.
“I'm guessing that the loss of two generators caused a greater draw on the remaining gener
ators, which probably tripped some internal circuit breakers,” Leah said. “We should get back to the trailer before a hurricane or something hits us.”
“Please, don't temp fate or chaos or whatever's been messing with us all day,” Isabella said.
They returned to the trailer, put their gear away, got out of their stage costumes, and tried to relax in the still-baking heat.
“So, Alex?” Leah asked.
“Well, he is cute, and I'm sure he didn't mean to hurt anyone, and I'm sure all the crazy things that happened today weren't his fault. Except the demon thing, but it wasn't supposed to get out of the jar,” Maryann said.
“But he asked for just this kind of trouble,” Isabella said. “I mean, that's what being a chaos magician is, right?”
“Um, kind of. It's hard to explain.”
“He's trouble, like I said,” Nora said.
“Listen, can we just talk about something else?” she asked.
The band obligingly switched topics for her. They played cards, tried to cool off, and finally went to bed. Maryann chose to pitch a tent and sleep outside.
The next day the band dressed up in light versions of their stage costumes and joined the throngs of ordinary festival-goers. They watched some performance art, heard a few bands, ate some greasy food, and talked with people who had seen their unintentionally extra-long show from the night before. They did not, however, see Alex.
“Oh, go find him, Maryann,” Isabella finally said. “It's obvious you're miserable. Go hang out with him. You know when we're leaving.”
“Thanks guys,” she replied.
“Why are you encouraging her?” Leah asked when Maryann was out of earshot.
“Maryann is the kind of girl that finds a guy who's trouble even more attractive,” she answered.
“Yeah, I guess that's true,