Darkest Night - Smoke And Mirrors Part 16

"The G . . . H . . . O . . . S . . . T . . . S."

Brianna rolled her eyes and ducked out of the circle of Brenda's arms. "I got an A in spelling. She wants to know if he's gonna come back as a ghost."

Good question. "I don't know."

"But you knew he was going to die!" Brenda's eyes showed white all the way around and, without Brianna to hold onto, she seemed to be having difficulty holding onto herself.

"I didn't . . ."

The finger she pointed at him was shaking. "You tried to stop him!"

"Yeah, because everything else that hit that window broke." It had seemed like a logical a.s.sumption. Well, maybe under the circ.u.mstances logical was the wrong word, but experience had taught him that the metaphysical followed rules just like everything else.

"All right. Fine. What do we do now?"

She looked a bit maniacal in the candlelight. At least Tony hoped it was the candlelight. Before he could come up with a less inflammatory way of saying I have no f.u.c.king idea, Amy said, "Silver."

"Hi ho," Mason muttered.

"On his eyes!" Amy handed her candle to Zev and pulled off one of her rings. "We lay silver on Tom's eyes," she announced, twirling it so that it caught the light, "and his spirit won't rise."

Were the shadows gathering around the circle of candlelight growing darker?

"What a crock."

Amy's chin rose and pointed belligerently toward Mason. "So let's hear your plan?"

Had Karl's crying grown louder? Shriller?

"You mean something I didn't learn watching DVDs of the X-Files?"

"Bite me! Chris Carter was a surfer boy with delusions and this is valid old world ritual." She removed a second ring and knelt beside the tarp. "Right, Tony?"

Were those footsteps in the library?

"Tony?"

He jumped as Lee touched his arm. Shouldn't he be back behind me a few more feet?

He moved, you idiot.

And everyone was looking at him again. Great.

Across the body, Zev frowned. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Just. . ." Just never mind. Things were bad enough without him adding another two cents' worth. "I think it's a good idea. The silver. Amy knows about s.h.i.t like this. That. You know."

Mason's turn to roll his eyes. "How articulate."

"You're not helping," Peter told him quietly. "Amy, go ahead."

"You know what would be cool?" Ashley said as Amy's hand closed around the edge of the tarp. "If, when she opened that up, if Tom opened his eyes. Really wide."

Amy froze. Everyone in the room considered it.

The silence grew weighted with the possibility.

The hair on the back of Tony's neck lifted as the build of emotion began to escalate into something else. Something they probably wouldn't want to spend the night locked in With. Or more accurately, something else they wouldn't want to spend the night locked in with.

"Didn't we do the eyes thing in episode six?" he asked, his voice awkwardly loud. "And again in episode eleven?"

"Cliche," Sorge agreed. "I say so then."

"It was a perfectly valid way to up the emotional stakes," Peter protested in the weary tone of one who had protested before.

The cinematographer dug his thumbnail into the soft wax at the top of his candle. "Maybe the first time."

"The second time, it didn't really happen," Peter reminded him. "It was all in Lee's head. In James Taylor Grant's head, anyway."

"And we were there-why?"

"We were where-why?" And in the same breath. "Brianna, stop poking the body!"

"Why in James Taylor Grant's head?"

"You know why; because he was imagining things!"

"No." Sorge shook his head. "Still doesn't work for me." "It was six episodes ago!"

"Also eleven episodes ago."

"So you've had time to get over it."

"Still. . ."

"Oh, for crying out loud." Amy flipped back a corner of the tarp and quickly laid a ring on each of Tom's closed eyes.

Tony released a breath he couldn't remember holding as she covered the body again. A small sound by his right side.

He turned his head just far enough to see Lee give him a quick thumbs-up, understanding that nothing defused tensions like rehashing creative differences for the seven thousandth time.

Then Lee's gesture continued until both his hands were clapped over his ears. Mouse grunted. Kate swore. Tony fought the urge to do all three and settled on gritting his teeth as every muscle in his body tensed. The lights came up and Karl's screams-which he realized now had stopped for a few moments, leaving the background under Sorge and Peter's argument empty of sound-became shrieks of panic and pain.

Fortunately, it had been a large fire and a small baby.

The faint, distant sound of a woman's voice singing nursery rhymes grew more distinct as the shrieking stopped, but he seemed to be the only one who could hear her and even he lost the thread of the song under Brianna's shrill demands to be let go.

"I want to go see the baby!"

She fought against Zev's grip, driving her fists into his shoulders, but he had her held too closely for her to put much force behind the blows. And too closely for her to use her feet, Tony noted. Smart guy, given that he was on his knees.

Tony doubted he had a cup on under his jeans. At least he never had while they were dating.

"Let go! Let go! Let go!"

Zev murmured something against her hair that Tony didn't catch.

"Cause Tony said it was way gross and I want to see!"

Both brows rose, but he quickly schooled his expression and brought her face around until he could stare deep into her eyes, his tone calm and rea.s.suring. "It's not real, you know. It's just bits left over from a long time ago."

She sniffed and stopped fighting him. "Like television?"

"Just like television. The house recorded what happened and now it's playing it back."

"Trying to fool us and make us think it's real?"

"That's right."

"But we know it's not real."

"Yes, we do."

Shoulders squared and chins-lifted among the listening adults. Out of the mouths of babes-they knew it wasn't real.

"Stupid house."

"No argument from me." When she answered his smile with one of her own, Zev stood, scooping her up and settling her weight on one hip. "Let's get out of here." For the benefit of the others in the room, his gaze flicked down to the body and back up again.

Tony's heart stopped at the sight of a red-brown streak across Zev's cheek and then started beating again when he realized it had been left by some of the fake blood still in Brianna's hair. No way. We don't lose Zev. Or Amy. Or . . .

f.u.c.k. Who says I get to choose. And even thinking about choosing put him in a Meryl Streep s.p.a.ce he'd just as soon not have visited.

"Leaving is a good idea." Amy, now holding her candle and Zev's, started for the foyer.

How had the foyer become their safe place? Because they'd spent more time shooting in it and it had become familiar? Because it was a big empty s.p.a.ce with fewer nooks and crannies for the weird to hide out in? Maybe because it was the last place things had been normal. Or what pa.s.sed for normal during the long, over caffeinated hours of television production.

"Mason?" Ashley tugged on the actor's tuxedo jacket. "Are you okay?"

"Fine. I'm fine. Just a headache."

It had to be one h.e.l.l of a headache, Tony conceded, because when Ashley took hold of his hand, Mason's fingers closed around hers almost gratefully.

"Our contract says no smoking in the house," Peter told him as he followed the actor and the little girl out of the drawing room. "So if you feel the need to light up . . ."

"That's not it!"

It was something, though. Mason wasn't a good enough actor to entirely smooth out the ragged edges in his voice.

"Are we just going to leave him here?" Lee asked, pausing by the tarp and Tom's body.

Tony shrugged. "If he wants to join us, he knows the way."

"That's . . . ghoulish." One corner of Lee's mouth curled up. "This is me not laughing. Do you think he will?"

"No. If Amy's rings don't work, and if I actually understand what the f.u.c.k is going on, he should just keep running into the window over and over."

"One show and then immediately into reruns."

"Yeah, doesn't take much to go into syndication around here." "Still not laughing." Although he sounded close.

"Me either." It felt so strangely right, standing there, together, staring down at the first casualty, making the kind of bad jokes that guys made when things got dangerously whacked, that Tony began to get just a little freaked. Fortunately, he had an easy out. "Brenda's waiting for you."

Brenda was standing by the door, doing a Lady Macbeth with her hands. Next to her stood Saleen who had the only candle still in the drawing room and was clearly waiting for the three stragglers to leave. Just as clearly as Brenda was waiting for Lee.

Lee said nothing for a long moment although Tony had the feeling things were being said just beyond the range of his hearing. Like Lee was talking at a level only dogs could hear. Or something. Then he snorted, sounding almost amused, and crossed to tuck Brenda up against his side. While she didn't exactly relax, the time frame extended on her obvious air of "I'm five minutes from a total breakdown."

"Move your a.s.s," Saleen snarled at Tony standing alone by the corpse.

Was it his imagination or had Karl's crying picked up a mocking undertone?

With half a dozen candles burning and light reflecting off the polished floor and the high gloss on the wood paneling, the hall was almost welcoming-where almost referred to it as good as it got while trapped inside a homicidal house.

Tina stood by the inside door, shining her flashlight beam down into the entry. "Everett's still breathing, but he doesn't look good."

"He's never looked that good to me," Mason muttered. "Oh, come off it," he continued over half a dozen protests. "It was the perfect straight line; everyone was thinking it."

Most of the men, and Amy, nodded.

"I don't like that he's been in there so long." Tina brought her left wrist up closer to her face and frowned. "d.a.m.n, my watch isn't working. What time is it?"

No one's watch was working-although the hands and numbers on Amy's were still glowing in the dark.

"What difference does that make if it's not telling time?" Adam asked her.

She shrugged. "It's comforting."

"So what do we do now, eh?" Hartley asked, shifting his height from heel to toe, arms wrapped around his torso.

"We survive until morning," Peter announced in the same no-nonsense tone he'd use to call for quiet on the set. "All of us."

"All the rest of us," someone said. Tony thought it might have been Pavin, the sound tech, but he wasn't sure.

"Yeah, and we stop listening to him!" That was definitely Kate. Arms folded in the more aggressive version of Hartley's position, she glared at Tony. "If it wasn't for his stupid idea of throwing stuff through those windows, Tom would still be alive!"

A little stunned by the accusation, it took Tony a moment to find the words. "I never said he should throw himself through!"

"Your idea to go into that room, so you put him in there. Your idea to throw stuff, so you planted the seed in a desperate man."