Page 32 of OctoBEARfest

Bill, having three younger brothers and a whole load of younger cousins, knew organized chaos when he saw it, but the Sixty Pix had it down to an art form. Tall slender Myles and the square-jawed pianist, Gemma, were apparently the sound and tech people for the band. They worked together with blazing efficiency to roll out cables, test speakers, and to set up the unbelievably cool 'glass paper' screens. Two went up at opposite ends of the beer garden, along with speaker sets that any audiophile would envy. Bill wasn't the only one who drifted up to the screens, peering at them from a couple feet away like they were afraid they'd break them, even though they'd watched Gemma and Myles manhandle the things to get them into place.

In daylight, the big screens were basically transparent. At night, the darkness would provide enough of a backdrop to make anything displayed on them easily visible, although when one suddenly lit up in a test run, Bill realized it was bright and high-res enough to be seen in everything but the very strongest sunlight. Laurie, standing at his side, whispered, "Cool," like he was about eight, and Bill had to agree.

The other screens went up around the parking lot, twenty feet in the air on well-braced stands that were obviously designed to hold them. By then, Torbens were being recruited to help, although Bill stayed on the ground to watch. Myles slithered down the rigging to stand next to him for a minute, studying the screen above them critically. "Not bad. Crowd will love 'em."

"I love them," Bill said honestly. "What do you do when it's windy?"

The bassist smirked. "Mostly don't put 'em up. The bases are wide enough to give 'em stability, and they're hung to turn on an axis if the wind picks up that much. The only thing we can do at that point is take 'em down, but the key is that they're designed tonotfall over and crush people in a stiff breeze. I checked the weather forecast. Wind's supposed to be low the next few days. Should be fine." He left Bill standing there, and went back to work.

They were set up and doing both video and audio tests on all the screens by about four in the afternoon, by which time Penny had somehow found crowd control barriers and was making Torbens arrange them in the parking lot. Bill, vaguely, said, "This might be illegal," and Penny, walking by, gave him a positively wolfish grin.

"I checked the town public gathering laws. There are house party limitations, but no block party or outdoors gathering size limits here. I'm betting there might be after this, but as of right now, this basically falls under the same laws as your Renaissance Faire thing, which means we could theoretically have about five thousand people show up before they could start throwing the book at us."

Bill gaped, and Penny grinned sharply again. "Don't worry, we're not expecting that many. But basically we can have as many people standing around a parking lot as we want, as longas there are clearly defined exit-ways and plenty of accessibility support. We've got two areas blockaded for people with mobility and other accessibility difficulties out here, and a space set aside up front inside."

"Wow. You're good at this, aren't you?"

"Baby, I'mgreat." Penny strode off again, leaving Bill to stare after her for a moment. She was incredibly fierce and he wouldn't have been surprised to get a shifter scent off her, but she seemed to just be a really strong-willed person. It was almost too bad. She'd make a great predator shifter.

His bear sniffed.Doesn't smell like a threat.

A predator and a threat aren't necessarily the same thing.Bill thought of house cats chasing black bears up trees, and grinned.

His bear sniffed again, with great offense this time.Nothingattacksbears,it said.Not first. A bear is wise to retreat from something that attacks unprovoked.

"You know what, I've watched angry cats going at veterinarians, and you're right. Nobody wants to fight a cat. Not even a bear." He went back into the pub, where half a dozen cousins and brothers were standing around, heads lowered together as they gossiped. Bill lumbered up and Ashley made room for him, elbowing Jon to the side, and all of them looked at Bill like they expected some kind of profound statement. "Don't ask me," he told them at large. "I have no idea what I've gotten us into here."

"I looked at the ticket sales," Jon said, "and then I called three people who were supposed to have the weekend off and offered them overtime to come work tonight and tomorrow. That's what you've gotten us into."

"Really? Thanks for doing that."

"Ashley made me."

Bill dropped his chin to his chest and chuckled. "Of course she did. Thanks, Ash."

"That redhead, Penny," Ashley said, sounding a bit smitten. "She went and laid out a plan for reducing crowding at the actual bar. She's got somebody picking up thingies. You know. Like in airport security lines. To cordon off the bar and have entrance and exit points. I've never seen anybody so organized." Shedefinitelysounded smitten, and Bill couldn't help grinning.

"And she's a drummer in a rock and roll band. You should ask her out."

"Right. Because she has time to date when she's organizing a sell-out concert. There are forty people out there in high-vis vests, Bill. They're volunteer security to direct traffic and do crowd control. She's got them in a chat group so they can communicate during the concert. What is goingonhere? I don't mean any offense to Gwendolyn Brooker, but I don't think they'd be beating down the doors to see her and her jazz quartet tonight, and with this woman…" Ashley gestured broadly at the band's setup, the parking lot, the whole of it all. "It's like a flash mob concert. Who the hellisshe?"

Emma Hart,Bill thought, but that really wasn't the answer, and he knew it. "She's Gwen Booker," he responded with a smile. "I talked to Mike Piccolo over at the Harlequin for a while last night and he said she'd walked away from a studio deal when she was young and was going it on her own. It just turns out that she and her band are really good at 'on their own,' I guess."

"I can't imagine what they'd do with a label," his cousin Luke said. "If they're doing this with five of them and a bunch of volunteers, they'd be selling out stadiums with a dedicated team."

"That's what Mike said. How are Mom and Dad taking it?" Bill raised his head, looking for his parents, who were nowhere to be found.

"They went out for an early dinner to 'get out of the young peoples' way,'" Laurie said. "They said they'd be back for the concert. Concert?"

"I think at this point it's a full-on concert, yeah," Bill said. "I'm beginning to think we should have sold gold-circle tickets for the inside and cheap seats for outdoors."

"Well, now you know for next year," Jon said brightly. Bill stared at him, and he said, "What? Don't tell me you're not booking her again next year! I mean, she's gonna be—" He broke off, obviously remembering Bill hadn't told anybody else that Gwen was his mate, yet, and after a moment of flailing, redirected to, "—crazy popular, so why not take advantage of it?"

"Yeah, I think we've got a lot of things to talk about before that," Bill said. "But look, people are starting to show up already to make sure they get the good seats, so let's…woo." He exhaled. "Let's reserve some of them, all right? We've got a lot of long-time customers who bought tickets early for what was supposed to be Gwendolyn Brooker, so if they want premium seating for the Sixty Pix, they deserve that. How many peopledidcancel?"

"About forty percent of the tickets across tonight and tomorrow. But we resold them all, and then some," Jon said. "And it wasn't sold out for Ms Brooker anyway, so if we reserve maybe half the seats and tables…?"

Bill nodded. "Yeah. That sounds good. And Mike Piccolo wanted a good seat, so we need to save one for him, too. Thanks, Jon."

---