Smoke and Shadows (52 page)

“Sorry.”

Less caffeine might have been a good idea.

Tony had the cab let him off at the corner of Ogden and Maple, which put him west of the museum and shortened his walk out onto the point. He hoped like hell he didn't have to search the whole beach. It was a big damned beach and even given the crappy weather lately, it was still pretty busy. Not so crowded as it would be in high summer when an oiled sun worshiper couldn't change position without flipping the whole row, but there were bodies on the sand, at least one volleyball game that he could see, and, if he listened carefully, he could hear the grunts of the body builders heading for hernias. Squinting into the sun, he could see heads bobbing in the choppy water like sea otters. Oh, wait. Those were sea otters.

He had sand in his shoes, the late afternoon light bouncing off the bay was making his eyes water even behind his sunglasses, and he was in a significantly bad mood by the time he was out on the point.

No Arra.

“God fucking damn it!” He dropped down cross-legged and stared west. Since he was here, maybe he should take a moment to think quietly. To try and put all the pieces together. Yanking his phone out of his pocket, he punched in the personal and very private number CB'd given him.

“I won't. I swear.”

“Profanity will not be necessary.”
Tony'd stared at him in confusion.
“That was a joke, Mr. Foster.”

CB answered on the second ring. “Where are you?” he demanded.

Tony swallowed, trying to force his heart down out of his throat. “How did you . . . ?”

“Call display.”

Right. Idiot. “I'm at Kits Beach. On the point.”

“Why?”

“Arra apparently liked it here.”

“I see. And is she there?”

His mouth open to form the negative, Tony paused. Frowned. Changed his response for no reason he could have given except that he suddenly wasn't . . .
sure
. “I don't know yet. Is Mason . . . ?”

“Mason has been taken care of. I rescheduled the interview and arranged to shoot a new pitch piece to take down into the American markets.”

“Mason would give his right nut to have the show picked up by a big station.”

“Indeed. There's also a photographer coming in to take shots for magazine ads.”

“You're doing magazine ads?” The studio had never been willing to spend the money on the glossies before.

“No.”

It was amazing how much CB managed to cram into two letters. A negative. A warning of lines about to be crossed. Impatience that Tony had no answers yet. A willingness to take matters into his own hands if it came down to it.

It might.

Tony supposed he should be happy he wasn't about to die alone. Except that he really didn't want to die at all. And CB would likely end up shadow-held not dead—lots more shadow effective to take over the guys in charge. Unless . . . He chewed at his lower lip. Unless the personalities of the people in charge were strong enough to be a threat.
Fuck, I'd hate to be the shadow trying to hold Chester Bane.

“Mr. Foster.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Looked like he wasn't going to be dying alone after all.

“I suspect that many of the people here are no longer in my employ. When Mr. Swan . . .”

It took Tony a moment to remember who Mr. Swan was.

“. . . wants to know something, the answers he gets are detailed. Fawning. When he makes a suggestion, it is followed.”

Peter, Adam, Tina . . .

“Lee?”

“I don't know. As far as I can tell, he seems to be concerning himself mainly with the crew—Mason excepted, of course. He's fascinated with television, how it works, what it can do, and has every intention of going with Mason to the interview tomorrow.”

“Then maybe you should have rescheduled it for a little further away!” Tony yelped, his voice shrill enough to garner a response from a passing gull.

“That would have made Mason very suspicious. We stop this tonight. Before he leaves the studio. Find Arra. Bring her here.”

Only Chester Bane could cut a connection quite so definitively.

“Oh, yeah, like that's the easy part,” he muttered at the phone before slipping it back into his pocket.

Unwilling to leave—not sure why but trusting his instincts—Tony swept his gaze over the beach, north then south. If asked, he'd probably say he was waiting. Actually, since he didn't know anyone in the immediate area, if asked, he'd probably tell the nosy bastard to fuck off.

What was he waiting for?

“Who the hell knows.”

The otters were gone and the water offered no immediate answers. He shimmied himself into a more comfortable position. Seemed like he was going to be here for a while. The sand was dry and warm and Tony scooped up a handful, pouring it slowly into his other palm; then back again, and again, the action mesmerizing. He'd never really watched the way sand moved before; all the tiny pieces falling . . .

. . . into . . .

. . . place.

Amy'd asked the right question. What's his motivation?

“Not conquest—not until I gave him that new and exciting tailor-made for a Shadowlord way to use television to reach the masses. No, if all he wanted was to conquer and destroy and enslave, he could have done that any time to any world the moment he worked out the gates and he hasn't.” The shadow had been fairly clear on the whole searching thing. “He's been searching seven years for this particular world. For the wizard who got away.”

A young gull, its feathers still mottled brown stared at him curiously, decided the noise didn't involve eating, and moved on.

“And while he's definitely—as Arra pointed out—a vindictive bastard, he's not just tying up loose ends. He's put way too much effort into this for that. It took him seven years to piece together the bits of information she left behind. Getting what information he could from those last two . . .” Tony swallowed, seeing them again, seeing them like he saw them every time he closed his eyes. “A guy like that—a guy who can do something like that—doesn't put this kind of work into a project without a bigger payoff than dotting the i's and crossing the t's. He has a gradational scale of minions, for God's sake, he's very much the center of his own universe! For all this, he has to believe she's a danger to him.”

Tony tossed aside the old handful of sand—it had lost that silky, sun-warmed feel—watched the pattern the wind made as it caught the grains, and scooped up a new one.

“He came himself. He didn't trust this to minions. You know something, Arra. Something that can hurt him. Big magic's complicated, it's all math and patterns and you have to write it down to work it out. Big magic like the gate. Big magic like whatever's written on a blackboard he hasn't erased for seven years.”

The sand wasn't enough now. The pieces coming together were bigger. Tony tossed his second handful after the first, then started sifting stones out of the beach and piling them one on top of the other. “What did you call it that day in the car? The light of Your-a-manatu or something? You woke up and yelled it out like it was important. Like it was a eureka moment. You wizards, that order of yours, worked out something you thought could stop him. But you did that crystal ball thing and saw that it didn't work.” A hand against his pocket. The letter crinkled. “You saw him win and you believed what you saw and you ran. The last two wizards weren't enough. Self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The stone on top of the pile was about as big around as a twonie and maybe twice as thick.

“Just . . .”

The stone felt good in his hand.

“. . . like . . .”

Tony drew back his arm.

“. . . this . . .”

And threw the stone as hard as he could off to his left toward the water. Off the way the wind had been blowing the sand.

“. . . TIME!”

“OW!” Rubbing her shoulder, a hummock of beach became a wizard who turned and glared at him. “I didn't decide to gate until after I cast the stones and saw him win countless times.”

“I think that deep down you decided to bail when your eldest got flamed.” He picked up another stone. “I think you'd been second to him for a whole lot of years, got used to thinking that he was the better wizard, the best even, and when he was taken out, it all came down on you. They wanted
you
to save them now and you cracked under the pressure. That's what I think.”

Arra clutched at her laptop case so tightly her knuckles whitened. “You don't know what you're talking about!”

“Yeah?” The beach had gone quiet. Even the waves were whispering against the shore. Tony stood, walked across the sand, and dropped to one knee so his eyes and Arra's were level. “You know how I survived on the street for five years? I heard all the bits and pieces that everyone else heard, but
I
put them together.
I
figured out what they meant. You tell me one thing I've gotten wrong. One thing.”

The silence continued.

Then a gull screamed and noise rushed back in to fill the spaces.

“It's the Light of
Yeramathia!
” Arra snapped. “Not Your-a-manatu.”

“Fine.” He sat down, yanked some room into his jeans, and crossed his legs. “One
other
thing.”

“This time isn't at all like that time. This time there's only one wizard, not three. Or two.”

Tony shrugged. “He thinks there's a chance you can beat him or he wouldn't have put this much work into finding you. Besides, new world—new rules.”

“What are you talking about? He's evil; he doesn't follow rules!”

“Not those kind of rules.” He had to believe she was being deliberately obtuse. “You told me it takes time to learn to manipulate the energy of a new world. You've had the time; you've had seven whole years that he hasn't. All he has are shadows.”

“All he has?” Arra snorted.

“Yeah, and if we don't stop him by tomorrow evening, he'll control everyone who watches
Live at Five.
”

“What?”

The expression on her face was everything he could have hoped for. “It's a two-for-one deal—double your pleasure, double your fun. It's a search for you and it's a conquest. Hell, for all I know it could also be a dessert topping.”

“Tony!”

“He'll probably do the people who produce
Live,
too, come to think of it—that'll give him access to their studio, the morning show, the noon show, the news, and a whole lot more people.”

“Tony, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Television.” He buried his fingers in the sand. “Shadows made of light. Your Shadowlord's going to use it to create enough shadow-held to find you, help destroy you, and then take over the world. Henry said it way back in your apartment: evil is never content with what it has. It has to keep moving, keep acquiring.”

“He doesn't know anything about television!”

“He knows what I know. And he's a smart guy with access to everyone in the studio; he's figuring it out.”

Her eyes widened. “He's in the studio? He's here?”

It was Tony's turn to stare for that long moment. Arra seemed to be doing her best to make him believe that she wouldn't be sitting here if she'd only known it had gotten that bad. Just another lie to make it easier to live with herself. With what she'd done.
Lie to yourself if you have to, but leave me out of it.
“Don't give me that crap. You had to have felt him come through the gate this morning. You couldn't have missed that kind of an energy . . .” There was a word. He couldn't think of it. “. . . thing. You had to have known he was here while you were moping around getting sand in your knickers.” And drawing gate patterns with a stick, he realized suddenly. Reaching out in front of her, he rubbed them out with the side of his hand. “What you might
not
know is that the moment you open the gate, he'll know where you are and he'll be on you like a dirty shirt.”

“And you know so much, Mr. Smart-ass!” She shook her head, looking old as the burst of anger faded. “As it happens, you're right; he'll know, but he won't be able to manipulate enough energy to jump here.”

“He doesn't have to.” Tony pointed at a gull's shadow skimming over the beach. “He controls shadows.”

“Not the ones he hasn't touched.”

The shadow of Tony's arm lying on the sand, waved. Tony stopped waving as Arra got the point. “He's touched me. A couple of times. Touched me; touched my shadow. That's why he let me leave, knowing what I know about him. Because of what he knows about me. Why should he exert himself to find you when I will? Especially since
when
I find you, he has a weapon handy.”

Arra's pale eyes narrowed as she stared at a darker patch of sand. “So you're a threat to me. I could remove that threat.”

“I don't think he'll do anything until you try to gate,” Tony told her hurriedly. This was the weak point in his presentation. She could take him out and open the gate and leave this world. Except that running was one thing. Killing a friend . . . ally . . . coworker, at the very least . . . first was something else again. He hoped. Apparently, the Shadowlord thought so. Or at least he thought Arra thought so because evidence suggested he was definitely the kind of guy who'd cheerfully skin a friend, ally, or coworker alive. “If you'd gone before I found you, you'd have probably been fine.”