Smoke and Shadows (28 page)

“I don't know. If he knew he was opening the same gate she did, he had to know she'd be here somewhere. But I got the impression he didn't expect her to stay around the gate.”

“Maybe you should ask her why she did?”

Red-gold brows rose. “Me?”

“Why not you?”

“I don't think she likes me much.”

“Vampire, remember?” He dragged the sleeve of his jacket across the glass lens. “You could make her like you.”

“You know it doesn't work like that.”

Tony discarded half a dozen responses. Some of them were even true. Finally, he sighed and nodded. “Yeah. I know.” Bending to resecure the brakes, he had to catch himself on a cross brace, sucking air in through his teeth.

Henry didn't say anything until he straightened.

“You're hurt.”

“It's just bruises.”

“There's blood.”

Right. Tony picked at the bits of gravel embedded in his other hand. “I'll heal.”

When he looked up, he knew that Henry'd heard the subtext. Another night, he might have said something. Tonight, he was allowing the illusion of boundaries.

The lighting crew had merely moved the lamp out of the way without unhooking it from the board. Since this wasn't going to end tonight, since another night they might not be so lucky, he studied the setup, noting where everything was plugged in.

Which reminded him . . .

“Henry, when the gate opens, you should go stand by the circuit board. It blew last night, remember?”

“Yes.”

An interesting tone to that single syllable. Tony sighed and turned, not quite meeting dark eyes. “What?”

“You seem very calm.” The long pause echoed with a shouted
MINE
. “All things considered.”

“Hey, have I ever done the hysteria thing? I mean baby-eating ancient Egyptian wizards and ghosts screaming for vengeance aside?”

After a heartbeat, Henry smiled. “No, you haven't.”

“Well, then.” He folded his arms, trying to move as though muscles weren't shrieking at him, carefully missing what bruises he could. “I was thinking—we have to wait until the gate opens and the shadow separates before the light works, right?”

“Yes.”

“So the Shadowlord'll still be able to sense that his guys are continuing to die on his doorstep.”

Henry glanced up toward the ceiling. “Yes.”

“What do you think he'll do?”

“I think,” Henry said slowly, “at some point, he'll send something through that can't be killed by light. Something physical.”

“You sound upsettingly happy about that.”

The mask slipped. “If it has flesh and blood, I can deal with it.”

Tony's blood agreed.

S
ATURDAY morning found Tony standing in the fourth floor hall outside Arra's apartment. She opened the door before he knocked. Standing there, one hand raised, he had a strong suspicion he looked like he'd just seen Siegfried and/or Roy get up close and magical with a white tiger. Arra's expression confirmed it.

Shaking her head, she stepped back out of the way. “It's a front apartment, Tony. I was removing Zazu from the dieffenbachia and saw you coming up the walk. Even Raymond Dark—hampered as he is by writers with but a single brain cell between them—could have figured that one out. Wipe your feet and hang your jacket to drip over the mat.”

He did as he was told, then followed her into the kitchen, nearly tripping over the orange and white cat.

“That's Whitby. Ignore him, he's eaten.”

“Does that mean don't feed him or don't worry, he won't go for my throat?”

“Bit of both.” The wizard studied him for a long moment while he pretended he was paying attention to the cat. “You look like shit,” she said at last. Turning, she took a big blue mug from the cupboard and filled it from an opaque thermal carafe. “This should help.”

“What is it?” His tongue was still fuzzy from the aftereffects of the potion and his sense of smell was dicey at best. The frozen spring roll he'd heated up for breakfast had smelled strongly of acrylic paint—which, granted, might have been the spring roll since it was a month or two past its best-before date.

“It's coffee; organic, free-traded Mexican, picked by barefoot, sloe-eyed virgins.”

“Really?”

“I couldn't swear to the virgins. There's cream in the fridge and sugar in that bunny bowl on the counter.” She shoved Whitby out of the way with the side of her foot and headed out of the kitchen.

Tony hurriedly splashed some cream in his coffee—wondered briefly about a bloody plate of liver a little too
interestingly
arranged to be food—and followed. He found the wizard at her computers, both screens showing games of spider solitaire.

“Mouse is fine,” she told him, laying a jack of hearts on its queen. “Where fine means he has a broken jaw and an extraordinarily pissed-off wife. I told the hospital I found him wandering around disoriented and he passed out once I got him into the car.” She shuffled two columns, finished the run of hearts, and moved to the other game as the cards flipped down to the bottom of the screen. “They bought it.” Eight of clubs on a nine of spades, six of diamonds on the seven of spades, and the eight of clubs moved again to the proper nine now uncovered. “How are you?”

His lip hurt, both palms were scabby, his torso was coloring up nicely, but he wasn't pissing blood so, all good. “I'm fine.”

“All right. What happened at the gate?”

“Nothing.”

“Where nothing means . . . ?”

Tony forced his attention away from the hypnotic movement of the cards. “Nothing . . .”

“It's about to open.”

Tony glanced over at Henry and wished he hadn't. The vampire's eyes were dark and his lips were pulled back off his teeth. Nothing he hadn't seen a hundred times before, but tonight the knowledge of his place in the Hunter/hunted scheme of things was just a little too close to the surface. Then he started to feel the buzz and Henry became of secondary importance.

As the vibrations grew stronger, he had a pretty good idea why Lee had reacted the way he had.

The last gate opening had been no more annoying than having a wasp caught in his skull. The potential for disaster was there, sure, but the actuality was pretty much all sound and fury. Tonight it was like having teeth drilled just as the Novocaine was wearing off. Not screaming pain, not yet, but every muscle tensed against the rising vibrations, anticipating the moment when the soft tissue would be hit.

“There's no one here. None of the other shadow-held have returned,” Henry clarified as Tony stared at him blankly.

“So what do we do?”

“Stop anything that comes through from the other side.”

“And did anything?”

“No.” Tony took a long swallow of coffee. “The gate stayed open for a couple of minutes and then it closed.”

“A couple of minutes?”

“Or less. Or more. When you're thinking about evil wizards and brain-sucking shadows, you don't really have a grip on time passing.”

“Next time check your watch. The interval might be important later.”

“What do you care? I thought you weren't helping.”

“And yet you keep showing up at my door.”

He wasn't sure that twice merited “keep showing up.” Setting his backpack on the floor, he sat down and almost instantly had a black and white cat on his lap.

“That's Zazu.” Brows drawn into a deep vee over her nose, Arra didn't look happy. Tony slowly moved both hands away from the cat. “She doesn't ever do that.”

“Do what?”

“Sit on strangers.”

“She's not exactly . . . OW . . . sitting.”

“She's just making your lap more comfortable.”

The cat's claws went once more through denim and into skin. “For who?” Tony yelped.

Arra's expression suggested the question was too stupid to answer. She went back to her games and Tony tried to hold perfectly still. God only knew what the cat would stick a claw into if she thought she was in danger of falling.

“I could feel it more this time,” he said after a moment when no further blood loss seemed imminent. “The gate, I mean.”

“It's because you were shadow-held.”

“Yeah, I figured. But it was more of a shadow-grab than a hold. I mean, shouldn't there be a time limit on
held
?”

Hand poised over the laptop's touch pad, Arra turned to face him, brows up. “Does humor help?”

He risked a shrug. Zazu rolled over on her back in the crease between his tightly clamped legs, all four feet in the air, her stomach a blaze of white. The fur looked soft. He tentatively reached out a finger.

“I wouldn't.”

And he snatched the finger back. The cat looked disappointed.

Arra snorted and turned back to the games. “So, as much as I'm thrilled to have the company, why are you here?”

“I brought back the thermoses.” About to bend over and open his backpack, he caught sight of the expression on Zazu's face and reconsidered. “We didn't use any more of the potion, but I wasn't sure how long it would last. You know; the sparkly part of it.”

“The potion part will last indefinitely but I will need to reactivate it before it'll do any good magically.” She turned up a king, moved queen to ace over, and waited while the line collapsed. “Now why are you really here?”

“The potion . . .”

“See that?”

He leaned forward. “The game?”

“Stalled on that seven. I had no way of knowing what was under the king, but it was my only option.” Swiveling her chair around, she lifted a limp Zazu off his lap. “Look beyond the obvious. Examine the truth behind your motives. Buy low, sell high.”

“What?”

She sighed as the cat leaped back onto Tony's lap. “Why are you really here?”

“I was thinking . . .” He paused, waiting for a smart-ass remark that didn't come. “. . . the construction crews are going to be in today building new sets. I might be able to hang around, but I'm not going to be able to move the lamp back into place and I sure as hell won't be able to turn it on.”

“Your point?”

His point seemed obvious but she was going to make him say it. “You have to be there.”

“No. I won't go near the gate while it's open.”

“You don't have to. You don't even have to leave the basement. You're my cover story—just send me upstairs with a light meter or something to take some readings.”

“The carpenters will still be working . . .”

“Yeah.” He snorted. “Like it's hard to get them to take a break.”

“They'll still be there, though. If one of the shadow-held does show up, how will you explain it?”

Greatly daring, he stroked the top of the cat's head. “I have no idea. Which is why I think we need to get the addresses of everyone who was on set yesterday. We need to find where the rest of the shadows are and take them out before they get back to the soundstage.”

“Take them out?”

He mimed shoving his hand in someone's chest. Zazu stretched out one paw and embedded the claws in his leg.

Ignoring his whimpers, Arra snorted. “So this whole ‘I'm your cover story' on the soundstage is just a . . . cover story? You want
me
to take the shadows out.”

“Two part plan!” Tony protested. “First the soundstage because we don't have time to get them all before the gate opens, and then we go after whoever doesn't show up away from the gate.”