Smoke and Shadows (18 page)

Both actors turned to look at the far dressing room.

“Because of . . . her?” Frank asked.

“Nikki Waugh.”

“Right.” He stepped far enough away from the dressing rooms to get a better look. “That's where it happened, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“She didn't die of anything catching, did she?”

“No. Nothing catching.”

“I heard she was all twisted up.” Laura moved out to stand beside her temporary matrimonial partner. “Heart attack, my ass.”

“I heard it was drugs.”

Tony checked his watch. Fifteen minutes until he had to get them to the set. No way he could take fifteen minutes of lurid speculation. Not when he knew. Hell, not even if he hadn't known. “Excuse me. I have an errand I have to run; I'll be back for you.”

“Don't worry about it, Tommy . . .”

“Tony.”

“Of course.” Laura cocked her head toward the sound of Sorge's voice, his unmistakable hybrid of French and English loud enough to echo against the distant ceiling. “I think we can find our way.”

“It's all part of the service.” He found a smile from somewhere and managed to keep it in place as he hurried for the exit. Behind him, Mom and Dad—Laura and Frank—settled down for a good gossip, script changes forgotten in their need to visit rumor and innuendo.

Nothing like human nature to make incoming Shad-owlords look good.
Keeping an eye out for Lee, he pushed his way back through the costumes, out into the production office, and down to the basement when Amy's back was turned.

He didn't want to go down to the basement.

There was no reason for him to go down to the basement.

If he needed to talk to Arra, it would be a lot more efficient if he just called her and had her come up to the soundstage.

Tony stopped about halfway down the stairs. He turned, raised his foot to start back up again, and stopped.

He
did
want to go down to the basement.

And he had a damned good reason for going.

Two steps farther down and he began to feel slightly nauseous.

Who knew what chemicals she was using down there. Half of them would probably blow up if looked at the wrong way and the other half were likely toxic. Better he just go back upstairs and call her.

He was three steps up before he stopped himself.

Four steps from the bottom, the hair lifting off the back of his neck, sweat running down his sides, he said a silent,
Screw it!
and jumped.

He felt better the moment he landed.

Wiping his palms against his jeans, he came out from behind a set of shelves and face-to-face with a rotting corpse standing and swaying in the middle of the room.

Sagging gray flesh had ripped open under its own weight and well-fed maggots squirmed out of the rents. A hand with bones protruding through three fingertips reached out for him while white rheumy eyes tried to focus on his face. Dark, withered lips parted and a voice said, “It takes a lot to discourage you, doesn't it? All right, fine. As long as you're here, you can tell me if the maggots are too much.”

“Th . . . th . . . th . . .” It felt as though all connections between his mouth and his brain had been severed.

“The maggots, Tony. Are they over the top? I think they give a corpse a nice lived-in look, but they're not for everyone.”

“Arra?”

The corpse sighed and was suddenly the much shorter, older wizard—the maggots nowhere in sight. “It's just a glamour,” she said, checking her fingertips. “Raymond Dark'll be stopping the villain du jour from raising the dead in a couple of weeks and I need to work out the details. It's not as easy as it looks maintaining three separate glamours over moving actors. Good thing CB's too cheap to hire more than three corpses. So . . .” An eyebrow rose. “. . . what can I do for you?”

“That was . . .” He waved a hand. “Fuck. I mean . . .”

“Thank you. Always nice to have an appreciative audience. I take it Mr. Nicholas is functional this morning?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Good.” She waited, then folded her arms and sighed again. “Since you managed to get down here in spite of wards set to prevent that very thing, I assume you want something. What?”

“Right.” Tony glanced down at his watch. Seven minutes before he had to get Laura and Frank to the set. “The gate. We're shooting right under it.”

“So?”

“I don't think we'll be done by 11:15.”

“I repeat, so?”

“You have to be there. You should be there. Just in case.”

“As I believe I mentioned last night, there's no just in case.”

“But I . . .”

“Yes. I got your message. You used a really bright light on the shadow leaving Mr. Nicholas and you think you destroyed it, but you're not one hundred percent positive.” She folded her arms. Tony had read somewhere that people folded their arms as a protective gesture. Arra didn't so much look like she was protecting herself as putting up battlements, raising the moat bridge, and hanging out no trespassing signs. “The shadow could have returned unaffected,” she continued, “and therefore the shadows that would have been sent today still will be sent. It could have been injured but not destroyed in which case shadows will come through to find and remove the threat. It could have been destroyed and so nothing went back through the gate at all in which case shadows will come through to find out why.

“The Shadowlord will continue to send his shadows through. You might as well just live your life while you can because there's nothing you can do about it.”

“Hey, I have access to a 6,000 watt carbon arc lamp!”

“
If
the lamp destroyed the shadow, can you shine it on the gate every time it opens?”

“No, but you can . . .”

“I can what?”

“I don't know!” Everything he knew about wizards came from the movies and none of it was particularly helpful. “You could help!”

“I helped last night and unless my memory is faulty, which it isn't, I told you that I'm not going after the shadows. As you might say, been there, done that, got the scars.” Her arms still crossed, her right hand gripped her left sleeve with white-knuckled force.

“You fought before!”

“Older and wiser now. Didn't you have somewhere you need to be?”

He looked at his watch. Shit! “This isn't over.” Arra shrugged—although a certain twist to her mouth made the motion look more fatalistic than nonchalant. “That's what I keep telling you.”

“All right, let's get Mom's reaction shots.” Finding himself at the end of his tether, Peter yanked off his headphones and tossed them back to Tina before walking out onto the set. “Lee, if you don't mind . . . ?”

Cracking open a bottle of water, Lee indicated that he didn't.

There were stars, Mason Reed among them, who saw no reason they should have to reread their lines so that the cameras could catch the reactions of the secondary characters. On more than one occasion, Tony, as the least essential member of the crew, had found himself holding a script and trying not to sound like a complete idiot while reading Raymond Dark's dialogue. Given Raymond Dark's dialogue, that wasn't exactly a job for an amateur.

Unless Lee had another commitment, he always stayed. Tony felt this gave his scenes a depth that Mason's didn't have and that it could be at least part of the reason for the amount of fan mail Lee had started to receive—although he didn't kid himself that the larger reason involved the eyes, the smile, and the ass. It had taken
him
a couple of months to actually notice Lee's acting ability and he was a trained professional.

Under normal circumstances, Tony was all in favor of Lee's presence on the set. Today, he'd have been happier had Lee been out of the building. Hell, out of the country. If Arra was right and the next opening of the gate would release more shadows into the world, Lee needed to be as far from the gate as possible—not standing underneath it chatting to the boom operator while Peter went over the reactions he wanted with Laura.

If Arra was wrong . . . well, Tony would still have been happier with Lee anywhere but unavoidably in sight. He couldn't stop thinking about what had happened between them—between him and Lee's body at any rate—and it was distracting.

He jerked his head toward the microphone so quickly he nearly gave himself whiplash. “Yeah, Adam?”

And faintly from the background.
“It's not a comb over!”

Everett was in makeup with Mason Reed in the chair. Startled, Tony checked his sides. “Uh, Mr. Reed, you're not . . .”

“Promo shots,” the actor snapped. “For
The Georgia Straight
. Yet another article about my personal life—rich and single in Canada's hippest city.” His sigh was deep enough to waft a cotton ball off the counter. “They should be concentrating on my art; I don't know why they're so fascinated by what I do in my minimal amount of spare time.”

They're not fascinated, they're inundated—you won't shut up about it.
Flashing Mason the “sorry I'm interrupting but I'm carrying a message from someone much more important than me” smile he'd perfected after three days on the job, Tony turned to the other man, currently wiping lotion off his fingers. “Everett, you're needed on set.”

“He's not finished with me.”

“It's not a problem, Mason. We need a moment for that bronz . . . moisturizer,” Everett corrected quickly as Mason glared at him, “to set.”

“
Georgia Straight
interview my ass,” the makeup artist muttered a moment later as they made their way back to the soundstage. “They've never shot him in anything but black and white. I'm betting he has a hot date with one of his parasailing, snowboarding bimbos. Hard bodies young enough to be your daughter are seldom impressed by vampire pallor. Don't quote me on that, though.”

Tony winced. “Harsh.”

“I call them as I see them, kid. And I knew Frank's combover wouldn't be up to the overacting he was going to put it through. What happened to subtlety?” he demanded as they waited at the soundstage door for the red light to go off.

“It's a show about a vampire detective,” Tony reminded him, opening the door and motioning him through. “Subtle isn't exactly the selling point.”

“. . . which is when the police arrived.”

“Keep rolling,” Peter called as Laura allowed her shocked expression to fade. “Let's try it again with more sorrow less indignation. Lee . . .”

“Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Mackay, that was when Raymond Dark found your daughter. It was too late for him to do anything, too late for anyone to do anything, which is when the midget basketball team arrived.”

“Keep rolling. Do it again. A little
less
sorrow this time although the tear was terrific if you can work up another one. Lee, stop trying to make her laugh. We've got nine pages to get through today and you know how CB feels about overtime.”

Laura smiled across the set. “That's all right Peter; I don't find midget basketball funny.”

“Yak herders? Operatic mutes? The Vancouver Canucks?” Lee grinned at the older woman. “You've got to be able to laugh at the Canucks or you'll die of a broken heart.”