Darkest Night - Smoke And Mirrors Part 23

"Why do you ask?"

"Last spring Mouse and Kate and Hartley all had lapses of memory, somewhat like mine. I had an . . . incident on the set. So did you. I thought it might be connected."

"I guess it might be." That seemed safe enough.

"I'm pretty sure Mason is hearing things, too. Remember that friend of his that showed up on the set just before the gas leak?"

They'd gone with the traditional explanation for a group of disoriented people whose memories had just been magically wiped. Had to have been a gas leak. Also the traditional explanation for a ballroom of dead people as it turned out.

"His name was Michael Swan," Lee continued, before Tony could answer. "I asked Mason about him, and he had no idea who I was talking about. Everyone else remembered him, though."

Mason had been shadow-held at the time. Of course he wouldn't remember.

Just like Lee didn't remember the actual weird s.h.i.t-a shadow from another world in his body, the Shadowlord after his body-only the stuff around the weird. Unfortunately, he seemed to have gathered enough pieces to start trying to put two and two together. Fortunately, since two and two made five in this instance, it was unlikely he'd come up with the actual answer.

Suddenly realizing he was about to step out of the circle of lantern light, Tony stopped and turned. Lee was standing about five paces back, watching him. "What?"

"You changed since all that happened."

"Changed?"

"You're more confident. You're interacting with CB. And you don't . . ." He paused and brushed his hair back off his face, almost as though he wasn't sure he wanted to continue. ". . . you don't watch me like you used to."

"What?"

"You used to . . . there was this expression . . . I mean, every time I turned around you were . . ." He shrugged. "I guess I got used to it."

"Sorry." Tony had no idea what he was apologizing for, but it was all he could think of.

"Yeah. We should get back."

"Sure."

Four or five steps in an uncomfortable silence, then, "Did I mention everyone's a little p.i.s.sed at you because you broke through the circle?"

"No."

"Well, they are."

A little p.i.s.sed was a bit of an understatement. Kate was ready to throw him to the wolves and nothing said seemed to calm her down.

"He's putting us all in danger! We need to get rid of him!"

"And how do you suggest we do that, eh?"

Shut up, Sorge. You're not helping. Tony shot a whose-side-are-you-on glance at the DP, who answered with a Gallic and totally noncommittal shrug.

"We lock him away somewhere safe," Kate insisted. "Where he can't hurt us."

"He hasn't done anything to hurt us!" Amy snapped.

"Oh, yeah? How do you know? How do you know he didn't arrange all this? He sees things we don't. We only have his word for what's going on."

"She's right!"

Brenda. Big surprise. Tony shuffled a little closer to Lee. While Brenda hadn't been shadow-held, she was more than keeping up in the freaking-out department. Plus, lately, it seemed that she didn't much like him although he didn't . . .

Right. I'm an idiot. He would have shuffled away again, but Lee grabbed his arm. Comfort? Restraint? Tony had no idea.

He misses the way I used to look at him? What the h.e.l.l's up with that?

"Maybe Tony woke the house! On purpose! Have any of you morons even considered that?" Kate swept a narrowed gaze around the circle and Tony realized that more than one of their companions was thinking of it. Lee's grip tightened slightly. "Tony broke the circle," she continued, volume rising with every word. "He wants one of us to go crazy and kill the rest. That way we won't think it's his fault!" She lunged at him, but Adam caught her.

"I like Tony!" Brianna declared as Kate struggled to free herself from Adam's grip. She took two steps forward and pinched a fold of Kate's stomach.

"OW!".

"She pinches with her fingernails," Ashley commented from her place inside the curve of Mason's arm.

"You little b.i.t.c.h!" The fury of Kate's attack dragged one arm free of Adam's hold.

Brianna ducked under the swing and wrapped herself around Kate's lower leg.

"OW!".

"And she bites."

Zev took a blow that knocked his yarmulke half off his head, but he managed to get his hands under Brianna's arms and drag her away.

Eyes narrowed, managing to look dangerous in spite of age, size, a turn-of-the-century pinafore, and the fact she was essentially dangling from Zev's hands, Brianna jabbed a finger toward Kate and snarled, "You say one more mean thing about Tony and my dad will fire your a.s.s!"

"He can't fire me if we're all dead!"

"Wanna bet! My dad fires dead people all the time!"

News to Tony but, given CB, not completely unbelievable.

"Does not!"

"Does, too!"

"Does not!"

"Does, too, infinity!"

"Does . . ."

"Hey!" Ashley moved away from Mason-who looked astonished at being left-to stand with her sister. "She said infinity!"

Kate glared at the two girls for a moment, then turned and growled, "You're hurting my arm."

Adam smiled tightly. "Seemed preferable to the alternative. Have you calmed down?"

"I'm fine!"

Oh, yeah. And we all believe you, too.

After a long moment, Peter nodded and Adam released her.

Okay, some of us believe you. "We're in this together," Peter reminded them as Kate rubbed her arm and scowled. "Lynching Tony . . ."

Kate perked up.

". . . metaphorically speaking," Peter sighed, "just because he knows things strikes me as cutting off our noses to spite our face." He frowned. "Faces. I don't believe he's lying to us and I consider myself an excellent judge of character. Shut up Sorge."

The DP's mouth closed with an audible snap.

"But since you brought it up . . ." He turned to Kate. "The house, the thing in the house . . ."

"In the bas.e.m.e.nt," Amy added.

"Right, the thing in the bas.e.m.e.nt wants us dead so that it can feed off us . . ."

"According to Tony," Kate sneered.

"Granted. But why do you think Tony would want one of us to go crazy and kill the rest?"

Nostrils flared, she tossed her head. "Because."

"Oh, yeah, that's a good reason."

Mason's dust-dry delivery set off a wave of laughter. It sounded more relieved than amused, but Mason preened at the attention and it was almost back to business as usual.

"He's always going off on his own!" Kate insisted, trying to reclaim her audience.

"And he shouldn't be," Peter agreed. "None of us should. If we leave the circle-once Amy has resealed the circle,"

he added pointedly, "we go in pairs. At least in pairs."

"Not going anywhere," Mouse muttered.

Kate ignored him, jerking her chin toward Tony. "Who's going to want to go with him?"

"I will."

"Oh, yeah." She curled her lip in Lee's direction. "Big surprise, you've been running around with him all night." Her observation dripped innuendo.

Heads turned. Eyebrows rose.

Tony-and, from the look on her face, Brenda-waited for Lee to release his arm and leap away but the actor only said, "Then he's hardly been going off on his own, has he?"

"That's not . . ."

Lee shook his head, a lock of dark hair sweeping across his forehead. "I can hear the baby, Kate, and the music-and so can you and . . ."

"So can I!" Mason announced.

Heads turned again.

Mason's chin rose and his face stiffened into what Amy had once referred to as his patently portentous expression.

After Tony'd looked it up, he'd agreed with the description. "I've always heard the baby," he said, Raymond Dark's fangs adding a surreal touch. "But I felt I should remain as neutral in this situation as possible."

Amy snorted and asked what they were all wondering. "Why?"

"Because you thought we'd laugh at you!" Brianna kicked him in the shin.

"Don't you touch him!" Ashley launched herself at her sister just as Karl stopped crying.

Tony froze as the lights came up-gas this time, not electric-and he was standing alone in the entrance hall. He could feel a kind of pressure that had to be Lee's hand on his arm. What would happen if he pulled away? Would Lee hold on? Would he have to let go? Tony didn't want to know the answer enough to try it. The house was absolutely silent and then, very faintly, he heard a series of thuds, some panicked profanity, and one final crash. Then, more silence.

Help, I've fallen and I'm not getting up again.

Educated guess, where educated meant "let's attach the sound to the worst case scenario": someone had been pushed down the kitchen stairs and had landed without Lee Nicholas to cushion the impact. Broken neck, temple slammed down on the corner of the kitchen table, impalement on a rack of salad forks-it didn't much matter; he was more concerned with what was going on with the live people in the house during his absence.

The replay continued to run, but death number two seemed to be happening quietly. And slowly. Tony ran through video production specs as he waited. SD video is transmitted at SDI rates of 270, 360, or 540 Mbps; HD video is transmitted at the SDI rate of. . . of. . . c.r.a.p. He hadn't remembered on his final exam either. When reviewing Wizardry 101 got him no farther than: In the manipulating of energies the price of intent is often greater than the price of manipulation.-which had made no sense the first time around either-he settled on counting backward from one hundred in French.

At quarante-deux, the lights went out. Lee was still beside him but standing now with his arms folded as he, and everyone else, listened to Peter who was clearly coming to the end of some lengthy direction. Kate was scowling, Brianna was sulking, Ashley looked triumphant, and every other face Tony could see wore the default expression common to those who worked in television production and spent most of their professional careers waiting for a thousand and one details to line up so they could do their jobs. No one seemed to have noticed he was gone.

"Does everyone understand me, then?" Peter raised a finger. "We're in this together. I don't want to hear accusations and no one wants to hear how certain people used to have a starring role in a network police drama."

Mason opened his mouth and closed it again as the finger jabbed toward him.

"Good." A second finger rose. "Most importantly, no one goes anywhere alone. Not Tony. Not me. No one." He looked around, gauging reaction, and frowned. "Where's Hartley?"

Chapter Nine.

"LOOK, NO ONE'S more in favor of all this cultural c.r.a.p than me, eh, but I thought you wanted to save your friend."

"The Lambert Theatre is haunted."