Smoke and Shadows (7 page)

. . . that they threw no shadows.

One hand still on the banister, Tony glanced down at the floor, twisted and looked over his right shoulder, examined the nearest walls.
No
shadows. He had the strangest feeling that if he turned around, he'd see his shadow waiting for him at the top of the stairs, unable to come any farther.

After a moment's reflection, he decided not to look.

Arra's desk was in the far left corner of the room. He couldn't see her behind the bank of multiple monitors, but he could hear the shuff-click of her mouse.

What was he doing down here again?

He couldn't remember even speaking to Arra during all the months he'd been with CB Productions. Even when called in to do second unit work, he did his job and she did hers and long conversations over the state of the industry or what gunpowder makes the prettiest boom never happened. Was he actually going to walk up to her and say,
“I think you know what's going on.”

Considering he was halfway across the room and still moving, it certainly seemed as though he was going to say
something.

She didn't acknowledge him in any way as he came around the monitors although she had to know he was there. Right hand on her mouse, left hand on the keyboard, her eyes remained locked on the half-dozen screens of various sizes and resolutions—every one of them showing a different game of solitaire. Two were the original game, two spider solitaire single suit, one spider double suit and one the highest level, all four suits.

She lost that one as he watched.

Dragging her mouse hand up through short gray hair, Arra sighed without turning. “I've been expecting you.”

Not good. In Tony's experience, when slightly scary people said they were expecting you, things were about to go south in a big freakin' way.

“You have seen things,” she continued, quickly placing three cards. “You are not certain what you have seen, but neither are you willing to disregard the evidence of your own eyes merely because it does not fit with a contemporary worldview. This leads me to believe that you have seen things on other occasions.”

And worse. It was
always
bad news when people started talking without using contractions. Since she seemed to be waiting for a reply, Tony pointed toward the far left monitor, an old VGA with a distinct flicker. “You can move that black jack.”

“I know. I'm just not sure I want to.” Kicking away from the desk, she swung her chair around and stared up at him. “So, Tony Foster, tell me what you've seen.”

And closely following that thought,
Of course she knows your name, you idiot, you work together. Sort of. More or less. In a way.

He could still walk away. Shrug and lie and leave. Not get mixed up in whatever the hell was going on. If he answered her question, which wasn't so much a question as an expectation of an answer, he'd pass the point of no return. Putting it into words would make the whole thing real.

“I've seen shadows acting like shadows don't. Don't act,” he added when Arra's brows rose. He'd never noticed before that her eyes and her hair were the exact same shade of gray. “And that's not all. I've heard a voice on my radio.”

“Isn't that what it's for?”

“Yeah and that'd be funnier if someone wasn't dead.”

“You're right. I apologize.” She looked down at the front of her
Darkest Night
sweatshirt and brushed a bit of imaginary fluff off Raymond Dark's profile.

Tony waited. He knew how to wait.

Eventually, she looked up again. “Why have you come to me?”

“Because you've seen things, too.”

“I saw your friend last night. On location. He walks in shadow.”

“Different shadows.”

“True.”

“You know what's happening.”

“I have my suspicions, yes.”

“You know what killed Nikki.”

“If you believe this, why not go to the police?”

“Some things, the cops can't deal with.” Before she could speak again, he held up one hand. “Look, this dialogue is heavier than even the guys upstairs would write; can we just cut to the chase and leave this crap to those who get paid to say it?”

Arra blinked, snorted, and grinned. “Why not.”

“Good.” He wiped damp palms on the front of his thighs. “What the hell is going on around here?”

“Do you have time for a story?”

“Tony!”
He jerked as Adam's voice jabbed into his left ear with all the finesse of an ice pick.
“Where the hell are you? The cops left fifteen minutes ago!”

Apparently not. “I'm sorry. I have to go.”

“Wait. Give me your radio.” When he hesitated, she frowned. “I don't care what he wants you for. This is more important.”

He unholstered the unit and passed it over, carefully stepping back out of her personal space.

Arra looked distastefully at the ear jack and left it lying on her shoulder as she raised the microphone to her mouth. “Peter, it's Arra. I've stolen your PA for a while.”

The director's voice sounded tinny but unimpressed.
“What for?”

“Do you care?”

“No, thank you. Tony will do.”

As she handed the radio back to him, he realized two things. He shouldn't have been able to hear Peter's reply—not from a meter and a half away—and she hadn't changed the frequency. She shouldn't have been able to reach Peter on that frequency.

“So, it seems you have time for a story after all.”

It seemed he did.

“I
T'S A FAIRLY long story.” Arra nodded toward an old wooden chair nearly buried under a stack of paper—mostly technical diagrams and the mathematical notations necessary for pyrotechnics. “You'd better sit down.”

The time it took him to clear the chair gave her a bit of a breathing space, a chance to collect her thoughts.

Tony Foster had seen the shadows. More importantly, he had
seen
her.

He wanted to know what he had seen.

Fair enough.

Curiosity had been the driving force behind the rise—and fall—of innumerable civilizations. It prodded creation and destruction equally. And once let off the leash, there was no catching it again until it was satiated. This left Arra only one option.

Well, actually, two options; although the odds of her taking the second were so infinitesimally small she felt it could safely be ignored.

As he settled himself, she leaned back, crossed her legs, and steepled her fingers. When those pale blue eyes—eyes with the rare ability to see the world as it was without the usual filters of disbelief and denial—fastened on her face, she began. “I came to this world from another seven years ago.”

Fingers stopped worrying at a faded patch of denim. “From another world?”

“Yes.” She waited, but he only indicated she should continue, his expression suggesting he'd merely asked for clarification in case he'd misheard. “My people were about to lose a war they had been fighting for many years. The enemy was at the gate and the gate had fallen and hope was dead. As it happened, hope had been
dying
for days—the last battalions of the army had been destroyed and nothing remained of our defenses save terrified men and women fighting individual losing battles against the shadows. I stood on the city wall, I watched the darkness advance, and I realized it was over. Certain I was about to die, I retreated to my workroom. It would only be a matter of moments before the enemy found me. In desperation, I tried something believed impossible. I tried to open a gate between my world and . . . and any world. My order had long insisted that the number of worlds were as infinite as the possibilities, but all previous attempts to break the barriers between them had failed.

“I don't know why I succeeded that day. Perhaps because failure would not result in a scholar's footnote but rather a shallow grave. That kind of certainty tends to give one . . .” She could still feel the panic clawing at her; still taste the bile in the back of her throat. A drop of sweat rolled down her side, pebbling a line of flesh as she fought to keep her voice from trembling. “. . . encouragement. Perhaps I succeeded because for the first time a world—this world—was close enough to reach. I don't know. I'll probably never know. The gate opened up into an empty cardboard box factory just as Chester Bane was investigating its potential as a home for his production company.”

“So CB knows about . . . ?” A disapproving flick of pale fingers served to indicate the general situation.

“Not all of it. He hasn't seen the shadows.”

“Why haven't you told him?”

Easy to hear the subtext—
Why haven't you told him so he could've done something?

“There's nothing CB can do.” This was the absolute truth. If not all of it.

The boy seemed to consider that for a moment, brows drawn in, a fold of his lower lip caught up between his teeth, then: “So, in this other world, you were a scientist?”

“A what?” Arra hurriedly revisited everything she'd just said and snorted. “No, in this other world, I was a wizard.” She waited, but the comment about robes and pointy hats and Harry Potter never came. Upon reflection, hardly surprising. She very much doubted that Tony's friend the Nightwalker slept in a crypt on a layer of his native earth. Their relationship—whatever it was and she was certainly in no position to judge—would have dealt speedily with cliché or it wouldn't have lasted long enough to develop the bonds so obvious between them. “Our enemy was also a wizard. Naturally powerful, he had . . . It's difficult to describe exactly what he had and what he did without indulging in excessively purple description.”

“Yeah, well, too late.” From the sudden flush, it was obvious the comment had slipped out accidentally. Arra decided to ignore it—and not only because she had a strong suspicion it was accurate. The story was difficult to tell without falling into the cadences of home.

“Wizards, like most people, are neither good nor evil, they merely are. This wizard, the enemy wizard, made a conscious decision in his search for ever more power to turn to the darkness and, in return for that power, accept its mantle.”

“The mantle of darkness?”

“Yes. It sounds like the title of a bad fantasy novel, doesn't it?”

A sudden grin. “I didn't want to say . . .”

“He had a name once, but he came to be called the Shadowlord.”

The grin disappeared. “He's found the gate and he's followed you through.”

Arra blinked.
That
was unexpected. “Has anyone ever accused you of leaping to unwarranted conclusions?”

“Unwarranted?” Tony's eyes narrowed and Arra found herself surprised by the intensity of his emotion. She had expected astonishment, wonder, even, in spite of all he'd seen, disbelief. Perhaps fear when he finally realized what her story meant. But rage? No. She'd forgotten that anger was the first response of the young; the gods knew she'd seen the evidence of that often enough in the past. His left hand raised, one finger flicked up into the air. “You opened a gate from another world where . . .” A second finger. “. . . you were fighting an evil wizard called the Shadowlord and, hey . . .” A third and final finger. “. . . the shadows around here are suddenly Twilight Zoned!” All three fingers folded into a fist. Not threatening, but definitely challenging. “I'm right, aren't I?”

Was there any point in denying it? Maintaining a carefully neutral expression—her emotional responses were hers alone—she picked up a pad of drawing paper and pencil. “Not entirely, no. He hasn't
found
the gate. It only remained open for a brief time after I arrived. He's used the research I left behind to reopen it. And the Shadowlord himself hasn't dared to cross over. He's merely sent shadows—minions—through the gate to see what he might find on the other side.”

“Merely? There's no merely!” Anger pulled him up off the chair. “Nikki Waugh is dead!”

“And there's nothing you can do about it. Rage will not return the dead to life.” The pencil moved over the center of the page with enough pressure to indent the lines into the paper. “Neither will sorrow.” The lead broke and Arra laid the pencil down, exerting all her will to keep her hand from shaking. When she finally looked up, it was to see Tony staring down at her. “Neither will guilt,” she continued as though there'd been no pencil, no pause. “Trust me that I know this, Tony Foster.”

“All right. Fine. You know.” He whirled around, walked three steps away, whirled again, and walked two steps back, hands opening and closing by his sides. “What are you going to do to stop it from happening again?”

Ah, yes, the sixty-four thousand dollar question, unadjusted for inflation. “There's nothing I can do.”

“Why the fuck not? You're a
wizard
!”

He said the word like it was an answer. Or a weapon. Stretching out an arm, she scooped a square art eraser up out of the clutter in her desk drawer. “Weren't you listening? We lost. The Shadowlord cannot be defeated. Now he has tasted this world. The next shadow he sends will have more purpose.” The pattern she'd been doodling began to disappear. “It will find a host and use that host to gather specific information.”