Darkest Night - Smoke And Mirrors Part 27

Very faintly, from nowhere in particular, they heard a terrified, "Lee!"

"Brenda!" He paced the edge of the curve. "Where the h.e.l.l is she?"

"She's not upstairs."

"No s.h.i.t!"

Mason shrugged and lit another cigarette. "Fine. So you don't need my help."

Pivoting on one heel, Lee recrossed the circle. He looked, Tony thought, like he was trying to catch her scent. Or I've just spent way too much time with Henry.

"Brenda!" And across again. "I'm going after her."

"You don't even know where she is," Pavin muttered.

"And you're not taking the lantern." Mason hooked his foot around the base and slid it closer to his chair.

"Fine." Lee dropped to one knee by the box of candles. "I don't need the d.a.m.ned lantern, but I am going after her."

"No one's going anywhere," Peter began, his hands spread and his voice reasonable.

"She's in trouble."

"You don't know that." Reason began shading toward annoyance, but Peter managed to pull it back. "She just went off to use the bathroom."

"Yeah, and since she's calling for me, I suspect she's not using it now!" He s.n.a.t.c.hed the lighter from Mason's hand and lit the candle. "I'm going to go . . . uh . . ." The candlelight threw his puzzled expression into sharp relief.

Tony understood his hesitation. The house had stretched and twisted Brenda's voice so that it could have come from anywhere.

Gla.s.s broke.

"Dining room!"

"Step over the salt! Over it! Ah, Jesus, right through it. . ."

s.n.a.t.c.hing up a candle, Tony followed.

She thought the light was from the hall, but it was a candle, on the floor and shielded so that had she come out of the butler's pantry at any other angle she wouldn't have seen it.

Light glinted off gla.s.s.

"Hartley?"

Sitting on the floor by an open cabinet-one door hanging at a crazy angle-the boom operator straightened and lowered the now empty bottle.

The rush of relief was so great she had to grab the back of one of the dining room chairs. Trust Hartley to find the booze in an empty house. "I'm so glad to see you," she murmured as he stood, still holding the bottle loosely in one hand. "I thought I was following Lee's voice, but I guess I wasn't."

"Leesh not here." He staggered toward her and, although it was hard to tell for sure because his eyes were just at the edge of the small circle of light, he didn't seem to be focusing very well.

"Are you drunk? Because you know what CB said . . ."

The bottle smashing against the edge of the table cut oft her comment.

"Brenda!"

"Lee?" She pivoted around her grip on the chair . . .

It was so dark in the dining room it looked as though Hartley had drawn a line of shadow across Brenda's throat. Tony didn't exactly find lines of shadow comforting, but they were infinitely preferable to the way the candlelight reflected off the liquid that flowed glistening down over the wardrobe a.s.sistant's chest.

Brenda's eyes widened. Her hand came up to clutch her throat. She gasped. Gurgled. Crumpled.

Lee surged forward, the movement blowing out his candle, and caught her before she hit the floor.

Tony stared past the two of them at Hartley who was turning the broken bottle so that the dark stain gleamed in the flickering flame of the candle melted onto the floor.

Murder.

Suicide . . .

c.r.a.p!

This wasn't a replay. This was real life. Real death. Really happening.

Lee was yelling. Voices out in the hall were answering.

Tony somehow managed to get to Hartley's side without his candle blowing out.

The boom operator looked over at him, blinked, and stammered, "Hate that d . . . d . . . d.a.m.ned music." Then he tossed the broken gla.s.s aside and bent to pull another bottle from the cabinet.

Jamming his candle into one arm of the candelabra on the sideboard, Tony launched himself onto the older man's back. The rush of air blew both candles out.

Graham sat back on his heels and swiped at the beads of sweat on his forehead. "They're not answering."

"Keep calling. They might just be distracted. We have no idea what's happening in there." Henry frowned down at the medium's expression. "Do we?"

"Know someone named Brenda Turpin?"

Old wood shuddered as CB stepped up on the small porch. "She works for me."

"Worked for you," Graham corrected matter-of-factly. "She's dead."

"Trapped?" Henry asked. "Like the others?"

"Well, I didn't feel her leave . . ."

"But you felt her die?"

He nodded. "And it wasn't pretty."

"It never is."

Chapter Ten.

TONY WAS JUST as glad that Hartley's howling protests were drowning out most of the noises Lee was making.

Unable to see anything in the pitch-black dining room, he fought to hold down the struggling boom operator.

"What is going on in here?"

As Tina's irritated question followed the light from the second lantern into the room, Tony shifted back and pinned Hartley's arms with his knees. The howling stopped and Lee's cries faded to pained gasping for breath. It might have been Lee . . .

It might have been Brenda.

"Holy c.r.a.p." Amy's quiet observation held horror enough that Tony managed to twist around to see the women grouped in the doorway staring down at Lee holding Brenda crumpled across his lap. Tony could only see the curve of his back and Brenda's legs, but Lee looked broken and Brenda far too still.

"Lots of blood!" Brianna pushed between Amy's and Tina's hips. "Is she dead?"

"I don't . . . she isn't . . . I can't . . ." Lee shook his head, hair flicking back and forth with the violence of his denial, then he curled even more tightly around the body.

Not Brenda.

The body.

Amy stepped forward as Peter, Zev, and Adam pushed in from the hall. Zev took one look at the tableau and grabbed the girls, pulling them back out of the dining room.

"I already saw!" Brianna protested.

"Then you can get out of the way," Zev told her calmly. "Ashley, Mason stayed in the circle; maybe you should go sit with him so he's not alone."

"Her heart's not beating," Amy murmured over the sound of Ashley leaving. "It was fast, Lee, there was nothing you could do. The carotid artery was cut. Wound like this, you bleed out in less than three minutes."

"How do you know?"

Tony could hear hope in Lee's question and maybe, just maybe, a slight relaxing together of all the bits and pieces he'd become.

"I saw it on a television show." Amy sat back on her heels, and Tony could just see her face over the black line of Lee's shoulder. Somehow the magenta hair and heavily mascaraed eyes lent weight to her explanation. This was death.

Goth girls knew about death. Right?

"It was the same situation," she continued solemnly, "except it was a gunshot and not a wardrobe a.s.sistant, but the same wound. Bled out in less than three. There was . . ." She gripped his shoulder, the black tips on magenta nails disappearing against his jacket. ". . . nothing you could do."

"Why was there nothing Tony could do, then?" Kate drawled. "He's supposed to be on top of all this."

She's right. I know what's happening. I'm the one talking to the ghosts. I'm the one with the metaphysical powers. I should have gone after Hartley.

"h.e.l.lo." Amy ground out the word through clenched teeth. "He's sitting on the perp."

"Too little, too late. And I think . . ."

"No one gives a flying f.u.c.k what you think!" Without rising or releasing her hold on Lee's shoulder, she swiveled around. "Peter!"

Given the director's reaction, Tony could imagine Amy's expression.

"Yeah. Right. Uh, Kate, be quiet, you're not helping. Lee, let Brenda go, and we'll carry her in and lay her beside Tom."

"What do we do with Hartley?"

And once again, Tony found himself at the center of attention.

Hartley, his right cheek flattened against the floor, glared up at him with one bloodshot eye.

"Duct tape."

"Kate, that's not . . ." Peter paused and Tony all but heard everyone considering it. "Actually, that's a good idea."

Once Mouse arrived in the dining room, Hartley stopped struggling. Given their relative sizes, there wasn't much point and Hartley was generally not an aggressive drunk. Tony slipped back and let the larger man flip Hartley over and effortlessly coc.o.o.n his arms to his sides.

"Why'd you do it? Why'd you do it?" Mouse moaned the words over and over as he moved down Hartley's body and began to tape his legs together. No longer needed, Tony stood and backed away. He didn't understand the look Mouse shot him. He wasn't sure he wanted to. The cameraman had been double shadow-held. If Mouse snaps, we're f.u.c.king doomed.

"Why did he do it?" Tina wiped tears off her cheeks with the flat of her hand, unaware she was repeating Mouse's quiet mantra. "I can't remember Brenda ever saying more than two words to him."

"It wasn't him," Tony reminded her wearily. He stepped back as Adam and Lee lifted Brenda-Amy covering her face and the ruin of her throat with Lee's tuxedo jacket. "It was the house. Nothing that's happened here tonight is anyone's fault. The thing in the bas.e.m.e.nt is using us. Manipulating us."

"And there's nothing we can do?"

"Survive until morning." He wasn't aware he was clutching his throat until he saw the direction of Kate's scowl.

Forced his hand back to his side. Put them both in his pockets just in case.