Darkest Night - Smoke And Mirrors Part 40

Amy shrugged. "Maybe the thing in the bas.e.m.e.nt is hoping we'll burn ourselves down."

"Nice," Zev snorted, smacking her shoulder.

Amy smacked him back. "She asked." And to Tony. "Bet you're wishing you'd learned that Wizard's Lamp now."

"He can make light?" Tina folded her arms. "Then why isn't he?"

"Because I can't," Tony told her, wondering just who exactly she'd been asking. "There's a spell in the computer, but.

"You learned the talk-to-Lucy spell," Amy reminded him.

"No, I didn't learn it, I just performed it. Half of it." He held up his shirt, so the others could see the burn.

Tina's expression softened. "Does it hurt?"

Only when I slam an eight year old into it. "Yes."

Zev acknowledged the burn and moved on. "But what harm could making light do?"

"Well . . ." Stretching the fabric out a careful distance from blistered skin, he pulled down his T-shirt. ". . . the first attempt at a spell's always tricky, so I could blind myself." Okay, that received more in the way of thoughtful consideration than sympathy. "Or I could blind everyone still alive in the house."

"The amount of light may be moot," Peter announced suddenly, hands shoved deep in his pockets, weight back on his heels. "I'm not sure we should go looking for Lee. Remember what happened when Brenda found Hartley," he continued when all eyes turned to him. "Lee's safer if no one finds him. Remember, it's murder and then suicide." He stressed the second word. "No murder; no suicide. And we're all still alive." Met Tony's gaze. "Oh, wait, you have powers that will protect us from Lee, don't you?"

He could lie. He wanted to lie. He was a good liar.

"No. But there's safety in numbers. We'll search for him in groups."

Peter nodded toward the lantern. "Group. Except you probably have a plan to retrieve the lantern you left behind."

Because he was the wizard who was going to save their a.s.ses. He sighed. That had to have been the world's shortest coup. "Look, I'm sorry. You know, Lee . . . Brianna . . ." Except he had saved Brianna; that should count for something.

"Anyway . . ."He punctuated the truncated apology with a shrug.

Peter's eyes narrowed. "So you don't have a plan."

Oh, for . . .

"No, I don't have a freakin' plan, all right? The lantern's in the ballroom and at the speed the replays are happening, I don't want to open the ballroom door and risk being caught with it still open when its turn comes around again."

"I think I have a solution to that." Amy crossed the room and pointedly took the journal back. Tony suspected there'd be an apology in her future as well. "There are these symbols that keep the thing in the bas.e.m.e.nt's power contained.

They're all over the house, probably all that's kept it from murder/suiciding its way across the lower mainland." She flipped the book open to a page of what looked like random squiggles she'd marked with a doubled-over piece of tape.

"If you copy this symbol here from wall to wall across the threshold of the ballroom like a barricade, then those dead dancing fools-since they're part of the thing's power-they won't be able to cross."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, absolutely. Mostly. Caulfield's notes are a little . . . undetailed."

Brianna pulled a water bottle away from her mouth with a pop of releasing suction. "Why don't you draw the symbol thingie in front of the hand?"

"What hand?"

She pointed with the bottle. "That one."

It had come through the door as far as the wrist, gray and translucent fingers combing the air.

"It's come to take me dancing," Mason announced over the perfectly understandable screaming. He jumped to his feet and would have run to meet it except Mouse's sudden hysterics knocked him over backward, slamming them both onto the chair he'd been sitting on and crushing it. Kicking himself free of the wreckage, he dove onto the wildly thrashing cameraman, fists and feet flailing into flesh as he accused the other man of never taking him dancing.

"Well, that settles that," Zev muttered. "Mason's reality has left the building." The arm was through the door to the elbow. Barely an inch or two of hacked bicep remained outside the room.

As the others dove to break up the battle-Mouse having found a direction for his hysteria in violence-Tony grabbed Amy's arm. "What symbol exactly?"

A black-tipped nail tapped what looked like a three-dimensional sketch of a croissant. "This one."

Given her previous answer, it seemed pointless to ask again if she was sure. Besides, it looked a lot like the mark the bas.e.m.e.nt door had left on his hand. And like the mark he thought he'd seen as he closed the ballroom doors. Maybe all the doors had them.

All the doors but the two leading into the butler's pantry.

Great choice of room, guys.

He didn't have a pen.

The arm scuttled toward Ashley, who drew her bare feet up under the edge of her pinafore and screamed. The sound was piercing, echoing around the enclosed s.p.a.ce like shards of gla.s.s. Even the arm paused.

He didn't have time to find a pen. Using the tip of his tongue, he licked the pattern onto the palm of his left hand and made a grab for the stump end of the arm.

The cold burned, but he could feel resistance under his fingers, so he tightened his grip and whipped it back out through the door.

"Here!" Amy shoved a small plastic tube into his other hand. "Mark the threshold before it comes back."

"And that'll help how?" he demanded, staring down at the lipstick. "It's a ghost hand; it can go through the wall!"

"No, it can't or the ballroom doors wouldn't keep the dead contained!"

That actually made sense. Mostly.

Dropping to his knees, he twisted up half an inch of magenta cream. "Hold the book where I can see it."

"Why don't you . . ." She whistled softly as he raised his left hand. Fingers and thumb were curled in toward his palm-touching neither palm nor each other. Tendons stood out across the back in sharp relief. "Ow."

"Yeah."

It wasn't a particularly difficult symbol compared to some Arra had loaded onto the computer. Although as far as he knew, none of Arra's lessons involved precision copying while racing the return of a disembodied ghost arm. Trying to balance speed and accuracy, Tony laid out the pattern end to end on the floor in a slight curve from one side of the door to the other.

"So," Amy murmured by his ear, voice pitched to carry over the roaring and swearing and shrieking behind them.

"This is the arm the little old lady chopped off the gardener?"

"One of." A sharp impact against his shoulder spun him around in time to see Amy shove Adam back into the battle.

She apologized and adjusted the angle of the book.

"Kind of makes you wonder who the Addams family chopped Thing off of," she mused as he continued drawing.

"Hadn't occurred to me."

"Oh, please. You see a hand chugging around and you don't think Thing? I loved those movies."

"First one didn't suck. The second . . ."

"The second was brilliant. I mean it so speaks to all us outsiders who were told by brutal authority that sleeping in a cabin with gum chewers and gigglers was for our own good." When Tony shot her a look of blank incomprehension, she sighed. "You must've had some kind of a camp experience when you were a kid."

The lipstick left a ridge of color on the floor as he pressed just a little too hard. "I had a couple of friends who were drag queens."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know." He finished the last line of the last symbol, rocked back on his heels and up onto his feet. "I guess we'll know this works if the arm doesn't come back."

"What if it's heading for the other door?"

"Uh . . ."

Between them and the other door was a roiling ma.s.s of bodies. Brianna appeared momentarily above the mix of arms and legs and torsos wrapped around what-given the size and the work boot-could only be Mouse's foot. Tony half expected her to yell "Yee ha!" as she disappeared back into the fray.

". . . it doesn't move very fast."

"Good thing," Amy acknowledged philosophically. "What about your hand?" She lightly touched the pale skin. "It's freezing!"

"No s.h.i.t."

"Ghosts need energy to manifest, so the cold is indicative of them sucking power."

"Yeah, Stephen said something like that earlier."

"Stick it down the front of your pants."

"What?"

"Your hand-stick it down the front of your pants. It's the warmest place on your body."

Footwork Mason would have been proud of kept him from scuffing the pattern as he backed away. "Yeah, and I'd like it to stay that way." "Well, you're not sticking it down the front of my pants."

"d.a.m.n right, I'm not." He stuck it into his right armpit, sucked air through his teeth at the cold and watched as Amy darted forward and dragged Kate out from under Mouse's descending a.s.s just in the nick of time. Kate's snarl was incomprehensible, but the attempted kick in the head with her bound legs was fairly easy to understand.

Amy patted her shoulder. "You're wel . . ."

He lost the end of the word in the next replay. The good news: this time there'd been a little more time between the ballroom and the drawing room. The arm had to be using energy now that it was out of its piece of history so that could be why the replays were spreading out again. The bad news: well, actually that was more of a disturbing question. The gardener had been cut into six pieces. What else was out there moving around?

The plate of little cakes was back on the pantry counter. Last time he'd been here . . .

He couldn't believe he was just standing here when all he wanted to do was tear the house apart looking for Lee.

The good of the many outweighs the need of the one.

And thank you, Mr. Spock, for your two cents' worth. Stupid, G.o.dd.a.m.ned, sanctimonious Vulcan . . .

The familiar sound of duct tape being ripped from the roll accompanied his return to the present pantry and seemed to indicate that the battle was nearly over. The slightly less familiar sound of duct tape being ripped from Mouse's legs- with accompanying bellow-suggested there were still a few loose ends to tie up. And a lot less hair on Mouse's legs.

"Reste alonge!"

Light glinted off the ornate, bra.s.s candlestick as Sorge raised it above his head. It was on the way down before Tony realized where it was headed and it was close enough to part Mason's hair when he called it to his hand.

"Sorge! Sorge!"

The DP's eyes were wild as he glared first at Peter's hand on his arm and then up at Peter.

"Beating Mason to death is not the answer! Trust me, if it was, I'd have done it months ago!"

"Il reste toujours alonge de won't!"

"In English. Please."

"I say, he won't lie still!" He smacked his palm against Mason's chest. "I make him lie still!" He scanned the room and his eyes locked on the candlestick still in Tony's hand. "Give me that!"

"Sorge, look, the guys have got him taped."

"Taped?" His brows drew in and he shook his head. "No, we can't tape. The light, she is all wrong."

"No, no, duct tape."

His focus moved to the bands of gray around the cuffs of tuxedo pants and dress shirt. "Ah."

Mason craned his head up and stared at the tape as though he was seeing it for the first time. "You can't do this to me!

Don't you know who I am? It's all about me! I'm Raymond Dark! You have no show without me!"

"We have no show if you go for a wander and get killed," Peter told him, shaking out a match to the linen napkin gagging Kate.

"My agent is going to hear about this!"

He was sounding remarkably lucid. Apparently Peter thought so, too, because he paused and peered into Mason's face, napkin ready. "If you lie quietly, I won't gag you."

"And the tape?"

"The tape stays."