Darkest Night - Smoke And Ashes Part 18

"You are not the average employee," Jack pointed out.

"I am," Zev broke in before Amy could respond. He shuffled forward to the edge of the couch cushion. "I vote we finish the season."

Jack stared at the music director for a long moment. "Why are you even here?" he asked.

A nod toward Amy. "I came in with her."

"That's not helping your case, you know that, right?"

"Yes, but..." He winced and fell silent as Amy smacked him on the arm.

"And," Jack continued, "as I understand things, neither of you spend much time out on the soundstage where the demons are going to be."

"I do." Lee rose slowly off his end of the couch and moved until he stood face-to-face with Jack. "And I say we don't close the studio."

Tony had a feeling that, right at that moment, Lee would say black if Jack said white. He cleared his throat and was more or less gratified when it drew everyone's attention back to him. "Look, I'm going to be here anyway..." He tried to sit forward like Zev had, found he didn't have the energy, figured screw it as he fell back, sagging slightly into the warmth Lee had left. "... and it would be a lot easier on me if I didn't have to waste time and energy..." A short rest for emphasis before he finished. "... keeping friends and coworkers from being eaten while I deal."

"Eaten?" Amy and Zev together. Lee came in a little late.

"We've got a dead guy without an arm in the morgue. Killed by a demon who ate the arm." Jack folded his arms triumphantly.

He didn't know the arm hadn't been eaten, and since he was helping Tony make his point, Tony wasn't planning on mentioning it.

"So..." CB steepled his fingers and peered over the mahogany triangle at his TAD. "You think I should close the studio."

"No." Leah jumped in before Tony could get his mouth open. "I don't think you should close the studio." She stood and spread her hands, looking earnest. "We don't know how long the Demonic Convergence will last." Tossing her hair back over her shoulders, she adjusted her posture subtly. "There's no reason to risk putting so many people out of work. Tony will be here. I've taught him everything he needs to know." The simple statement sounded p.o.r.nographic.

Lee, who was closest to her, made a sound low in his throat. CB and Jack leaned in.

Ryne Cyratane flexed translucent muscles and ran his hands down Leah's arms.

"Then it's settled." CB's voice slipped past Barry White and headed toward registering on the Richter scale. "We'll keep the studio open."

Jack nodded, absently drying his palms on his thighs. "That sounds reasonable."

"Nothing about this sounds reasonable," Danvers muttered. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about, Jack?"

"She's the demonic consultant." A nod and an appreciative smile toward Leah. "We're out of our depth-we should listen to her."

"You're out of your mind."

Charms chimed as Amy waved. "I'd like to second that, except I want the studio open, so I won't."

All right. Enough was enough. If Leah didn't want her secrets told to all and sundry, she needed to lay off taking advantage of all and sundry. Tony frowned at Lee. Especially this particular sundry. "She's using demonic s.e.x appeal to convince you."

Leah's dark eyes widened, and her lower lip went out. "Tony!"

"Do you have proof of this accusation, Mr. Foster?"

"No, but..."

"Then don't make it."

"h.e.l.lo! Wizard!" He tried to stand and fell back onto the couch. His second attempt was more successful but only because Zev helped. "Okay. Wizard. Let's a.s.sume I know more about what's going on here than..." The room shifted out of focus and back in again. "... than not-wizards, okay? And let's a.s.sume that I can..." Whoa. His head felt like a raw egg balanced on a strand of cooked spaghetti. "... I can..."

"You can barely stand, Tony." Lee didn't sound particularly sympathetic, but then Lee was as enthralled by Leah as Jack and CB.

Okay, forget the room. Focus on Lee's face. You're good at that. He was. But it had never been so hard before. His brain attempted to toss in a s.m.u.tty innuendo but didn't quite manage it. "Behind her... there's a big... a big naked..."

On naked, Lee turned his attention back to Leah.

c.r.a.p.

Tony's knees gave out, and Zev was a second late keeping his head from bouncing off the floor of CB's office.

"That sounded like it hurt." Amy frowned down at him.

Way to state the obvious.

"He needs to see a doctor."

Constable Danvers was rapidly becoming one of Tony's favorite people.

"No, he just needs rest. A Powershot uses a lot of personal energy, and that's not something a doctor can fix. No wonder he's babbling." Leah sounded convincing. Tony would have been more convinced if when his head fell to one side, he hadn't been looking through a bare foot. An enormous bare foot.

"What happens if another demon attacks before he recovers?" Jack demanded.

"We're screwed."

Tony wondered if he was the only one who heard, You're screwed.

"I can shoot it."

"That's sweet, but bullets will only slow it down. All you can do is hope Tony recovers and that from now on, he does things my way."

Tony was starting to think Leah had some serious control issues. He closed his fingers around Zev's wrist. "All... about... s.e.x."

As darkness claimed him, he heard CB snort. "Welcome to the wonderful world of television, Mr. Foster."

He came to, stretched out on the couch in CB's office, all his attention on the vegetable soup in a Styrofoam bowl steaming on the coffee table beside him. Ignoring the spoon, he grabbed it with shaking hands and downed it in four swallows. Or, more accurately, three since a good portion of the fourth he coughed out his nose.

A familiar hand pa.s.sed over a wad of paper napkins.

"Where's everyone gone?" he asked when he could talk.

"Back to work." Ryne Cyratane had vanished and Leah looked no more than normally attractive. "Your friends on the force have reports to file and a nonexistent drugged fan to pretend to track down. Your coworkers are finishing the day's pages-well, except for Mason Reed who leaked news of the incident to the press and is now giving interviews."

Tony snorted out an alphabet noodle; an F or maybe an E deformed by its pa.s.sage through his sinuses. "The studio's staying open."

"Yes."

"The demons will come here."

"Yes."

"Because the gate is putting out the kind of residual power that attracts them more powerfully than you do."

"Yes."

"If there're people in the studio, the demon won't just check out the gate, realize it's not you, and go hunting as instructed by its boss. It'll try for a snack and make itself obvious. If it's distracted by a meal, it'll be easier for me to send it home." His subconscious had put the pieces together while he'd been out. "You're setting up the people here as bait."

She stared at him for a moment, then she smiled. "Only during business hours. Your vampire can still deal with it after dark. More soup?"

"Sure." Tony drank, slower this time, and considered his options. His brain felt like it was wrapped in barbed wire. It hurt to think and, as far as he could tell, he didn't actually seem to have any options. Sucked to be him. "I could tell them."

"About what?"

"About them being bait. About you being a Demongate. About the Demonlord's plan to kill you and take over the world. I could tell them everything."

"And that would accomplish what?" she asked reasonably, crossing the office and perching on the edge of the coffee table so she could stare earnestly into his face. "CB has very good reasons for not shutting the studio down. I agreed with him, so I helped him convince your friend Jack. Yes, your crew will be in a bit of danger, but if you get your head out of your b.u.t.t and learn how to deal with the demons, it's all incidental anyway. You'll send them back before they do any damage."

"Yeah, tell that to Ritz."

"Who?"

"The gaffer." He waved at his nose.

"Your gaffer's name is Ritz?"

"Probably not, but that's what he goes by."

"Right." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "If you'd been here, instead of at my place..."

"I was protecting you!"

Leah ignored him. "... Ritz wouldn't have gotten hurt."

"So what happened was my fault?"

"It was no one's fault." Leaning forward, she patted his knee. "Tony, this is working out perfectly. The gate obviously has a more powerful signature than I do or that demon wouldn't have come here first."

First. He frowned. First? "That wasn't the first demon."

Leah wrapped a curl around a finger. "Well, no, but..."

"And the first demon didn't come here first."

"Ah!" She held up a cautioning finger. "We don't know that."

"It killed a guy, ripped off his arm, and then came after you."

"It probably came to the studio at night when there was no one here, then it found my scent at the stunt site where it killed the construction worker. It was the next day before it found me. If there'd been a wizard in the studio prepared to send it back..." Her voice trailed off dramatically.

"I'm seeing a problem with that."

"I'm not saying it was your fault that man died."

"Yeah. Bite me. Let's consider the word 'probably.' "

She frowned as she went back over what she'd said. Then she rolled her eyes. "Fine. But the second demon definitely came here first-even though we drove right by it-so the odds are certainly in favor of the first demon having done the same thing. Demons at this level aren't known for independent thought. They're just big scary, scaly killing machines. Fortunately, this lot has been given a mission, so there's less random killing."

"That's comforting." Tony's head hurt, his shoulder was throbbing, the soup had barely taken the edge off his hunger, and at some point while he was in la-la land, his torn and b.l.o.o.d.y clothes had been replaced by geek wear off the costume rack. He couldn't decide if he was p.i.s.sed off, resigned, or just hungry, and he was doing it all while wearing polyester. "So I'll be sitting under the gate, 24/7 until the convergence is over."

"You'll have breaks between demons. It takes time to divert enough convergent energy to get a demon through even a thinned barrier, and I can't imagine that my lord will be able to pop them out any closer together."

"He's not still your lord! He's trying to kill you!"

"Sure, now, but he's been my lord for thirty-five hundred years. It's not going to be an easy habit to break."

"And you like using his power."

"Well, duh."

Kind of a hard response to argue with. Tony wasn't sure if he admired her honesty or was appalled by it. Bit of both, probably. He dropped his head into his hands and scrubbed at his face. "I took out demon-with-the-arm last night and red-and-toothy this morning, that's barely twelve hours apart."

"No, it's closer to twenty-four. Demon-with-the-arm acquired the arm the night before he attacked us," she reminded him. "And look at the bright side, when you're not sending demons back to h.e.l.l, you can do your job and, more importantly, collect a paycheck. You couldn't work or get paid if you were still following me around."

He didn't really have an argument for that either. "My laundry is at your place."

Sensing the win, she smiled. "I'll deal with your laundry."

"Yeah." The edge of the Styrofoam cup flaked apart under his fingernails. "Look, the only way I can see ruling out that probably- as in probably the demons will come here first-is if you're here with me. Then the demons will definitely come here first."

Her hand dropped to her side, and the smile disappeared. "Tony, I bled."

"So?" When he moved, the adhesive tape holding the gauze pad over the hole in his shoulder pulled at sensitive skin.

"The demons can hurt me."

"Yeah, well, big scary killing machines, remember? You got off easy." There were three deep scratches under his polyester pant leg. "We both did."

Leah's eyes narrowed. "Are you being deliberately stupid, or did you hit your head harder than I thought? They're the only thing in the world that can hurt me!"

Ah. "So, given the chance, you'd rather they weren't given the chance?"

"And a second brain cell comes online!"

He supposed he could understand her reaction. Except...