Smoke and Shadows (43 page)

“I'm sorry to hear that.” And he was. In a profession with more than its fair share of insecure nut jobs and delusional divas, Alan Wu had been dependable. He sat, indicated that the police officers should sit, and he waited.

Constable Elson made an obvious and obviously unnecessary show of checking his notes. “Alan Wu is the second of your employees to die in less than a week.”

Less than a week.
Now, it seemed, in less than a week she'd made a friend.

“Alan Wu was not my employee. He was an actor who I regularly employed.”

“Tony Foster was with him when he died. He told us he'd been driving around with another of your employees, an Arra Pelindrake. They do both work for you?”

“They do.”

“Good. And that's not all.”

He locked his gaze on the younger man's face. “Go on.”

It got more interesting by the moment.

One of his cameramen had been dumped in emergency at Burnaby General with a broken jaw. No record of who left him there. An electrician and one of the caterers both reported missing by their spouses, gone for forty-eight hours only to turn up Sunday night with no memories and their cars missing.

“I flagged anything that mentioned your company and pulled this together from a number of sources.”

“You've been busy.”

“I got curious. I don't much believe in coincidence, Mr. Bane. A number of very different roads all seem to lead right back here, and that tells me that there's something going on.”

No doubt.

“Tony!”

Tina's voice froze him in place. Tina was the last person he wanted to deal with this morning. He'd already seen Kate standing by the camera smiling at nothing, right thumb rubbing over her left wrist. Praying that he'd never looked quite so dopey, he'd tugged his jacket cuff halfway over his hand and taken the scenic route around to the coffee maker.

“When sex isn't actually occurring,
I
am not always thinking of sex when I feed.”

And now, looking at Tina approach, all he could think of was her and Henry humping like naked monkeys. The visuals were seriously disturbing.

“Tony, don't forget that the
Darkest Night
fan club will be showing up in about half an hour. They'll watch us shoot, Lee and Mason will pose for a couple of pictures, and then they'll . . .”

“. . . have some lunch. Tony, are you listening to me?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” He forced himself to concentrate.

“After lunch, give them each one of the old scripts and get them the hell out of here before we start . . .” She paused, eyes narrowed. “Is there something on my face?”

“What?”

“You're staring at me.”

“Sorry.” His life was just too weird.

“Stop apologizing and pay attention. You know how Peter feels about fans in the studio, so this has to go smoothly or we're all in for an unpleasant afternoon.”

“Uh, Arra needs me to do some stuff for her this morning.”

“I heard. Just don't leave the fan club unattended. I can't think of anything worse than another fan getting locked in Mason's coffin.”

Unfortunately, Tony could.

Three of the games had been stopped by fours.
Fixed opinions will hinder your process.
What was she missing? What was she fixating on? On the other screen, two black jacks prevented her from making the last move that would finish the game.

“This is ridiculous!” Arra shoved her chair out from the desk hard enough to roll her halfway across the workshop. “I might as well try to divine the future from a bowl of instant oatmeal.”

Her stomach growled. Desperately trying to discover the source of her unease—although unease was far too mild a word for the feelings of doom filling her head like toxic smoke—she'd skipped breakfast. It was possible that hunger was distracting her just enough to keep her from making sense of the cards.

Possible. But not likely.

She'd been able to cast auguries right until the end, unheeding of the destruction raining down around her. She'd seen the fate of the city and of the wizards. She'd known there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Nothing.

But here and now they hadn't reached
nothing
—although they would.

Here and now, she needed to identify just what was going wrong.

If memory served, the Rice-Krispie square she'd grabbed from the craft services table last week should still be in her desk drawer. It wasn't exactly food, but it was as close as she could get without going upstairs.

Slowly chewing the first bite—slowly because the square had solidified into a substance that defied speed, Arra cleared all screens but one. Maybe if she concentrated on a single game . . .

Two black jacks.

And again.

Sucking the last bit of marshmallow off a corner of the plastic wrap, she scowled down at the clock on the corner of the screen. 11:02 A.M. The gate would open soon and the last shadow would make a move for home. The light would destroy it. It knew it was the last on this world, but would
he
know as he . . .

Plastic hanging limply from a corner of her mouth, Arra stared at the monitor.

Two
black jacks.

There were two shadows left on this world.

Not one.

Two.

Somehow, one of them had escaped her spell. Exactly how wasn't important right now, she had to warn Tony.

But the gate was about to open.

If both shadows were there . . .

If he needed help stopping them . . .

If she went to the gate . . .

But if she didn't . . .

Using power with the gate open would be like sending up a flare.

A hundred thousand voices cried out for her to save them. Clutched at her. Dragged her down under the weight of their need.
The Shadowlord comes; you are our last and only hope.

Tony fought without her. When he reached for her, it was to ask her to fight at his side, not to fight for him. He stubbornly held to hope even as she denied it.

Pushing her chair away from the desk, she spun it around and scanned the workshop shelves. There had to be something . . . Yes! One of the baseball bats they'd blown up in Raymond Dark's hands during the batting cage scene in episode three. The hands had, of course, been Daniel's and the ad lib about switching to aluminum, Lee's—although Mason had claimed it the second time they'd shot Lee pulling the bloody shard of wood from Raymond Dark's shoulder. With CB complaining about the expense, she'd bought six bats, practiced on three, blown two for the camera, and tucked the last one away figuring that sooner or later she'd find a use for it.

Stopping the shadow-held from reaching the gate would also stop the shadow.

With half his attention on the time, half worrying at the hundred and one things likely to go wrong as he attempted to stop a shadow from returning to another world while surrounded by people who wouldn't believe that's what he was doing if it came with a director's commentary, and trying to keep seventeen members of the
Darkest Night
fan club out of trouble, Tony was feeling a little overwhelmed.

And the thought of Arra sitting safely in her basement while he was up here saving the world was pissing him off.
She doesn't need to go near the fucking gate
, he growled silently as he counted the fans.
She could just take a moment and turn this lot into . . .

One short.

Three guesses where the runaway had gotten to and the first two didn't count.

“Excuse me, but this set's off limits.”

The fan froze, one leg hooked over the side of the coffin. “I was just . . .”

“Yeah. I know.” Tony jerked his head toward the high-pitched squeals coming from the other side of the soundstage. “I think Mason just appeared.”

He got out of the way barely in time to avoid being run over.

Emerging out beside the monitors, he could only assume from the sounds of adoration that Mason was on the other side of the group of hysterically bobbing and weaving bodies.

“Great. Just great.” Headphones down around his neck, Peter sounded ready to chew scenery. “I am never going to get him onto the set now.”

“Sorry.”

The director snorted. “You think you could have prevented that? You are suffering from serious delusions of grandeur, Mr. Foster. You should know by now that nothing comes between Mason and his adoring fans. Particularly when they're carrying cameras.” Eyes narrowed as he watched the ebb and flow of the crowd. “At least if he's out where we can see him, we have a chance of avoiding lawsuits.”

“Do you want me to tell him you're ready to shoot?”

“He knows. That's why he finally emerged from his dressing room. One of the reasons. And obviously not the most important. You try to remove him from that little love fest there, and he'll treat the world to a scene where you're cast as the villain and he's just trying to give a little back to the people who make the show possible. Forgetting, of course, that there won't be a show if we don't get it shot.”

“Could we do my reaction shots first?”

Both Tony and the director turned.

“Lee, I didn't see you there.”

Lee smiled. “It seemed safer to stay out of the way.”

Tony opened his mouth to ask him how he felt and then closed it again. Not his place. It wasn't like they were . . . friends.