Darkest Night - Smoke And Mirrors Part 50

"That's not French," Saleen muttered as he set the can of paint on the counter and turned to follow Sorge and the sound tech out of the room.

"Me, I'm a man of many talents," the DP said as the door closed.

Tony drained the last of the sugar water and slid off the counter. "Okay. Open the paint can and then put it outside the door in the kitchen. Amy, wait by the can. When the guys get back with the cleaner, Zev and Adam and Mouse get ready to meet me by the bas.e.m.e.nt door. Wait until you hear me coming down the back stairs and then move. Delays will be . .

." He could feel sweat dribbling down his sides. ". . . not good. Make sure the spray bottle is on a tight, hard spray- all we have to do is cut through the blood pattern, break it up. We don't have to completely erase it. The rest of you . . . If this goes completely to h.e.l.l, the pattern on the floor will keep anything from coming in; you'll have the laptop and the candles for light and all you have to do is stick it out until morning."

"What if Caulfield sucks you in?" Amy asked.

"You die and I spend eternity as part of a three for one that even our writers would consider over the top, where the other two parts are a hundred-year-old naked h.o.m.ophobe and evil waxy buildup."

Amy's smile came nowhere near her eyes. "Dead sounds better."

"Yeah, no s.h.i.t."

Tony went upstairs while Lucy Lewis killed her coworker and waited by the second-floor bathroom while she hanged herself. When the only light on the floor came from the lantern in his hand and Karl started crying again, he went into the room.

"Ca.s.sie? Stephen?"

He didn't know where they'd been for the last-impossible to tell exactly how long since he'd seen them, without a watch and only the very subjective replays to determine the pa.s.sage of time, but it had been a while.

"Guys? I need to talk to you. It's important."

Nothing. Big white empty bathroom.

He sighed and crossed to the mirror. Not so empty anymore. Not so white. The mirror showed Ca.s.sie and Stephen sitting on the edge of the tub and the walls covered in splashes and sprays and dribbles of blood. Too much blood for a double murder? Even considering that head wounds bled like crazy? Maybe every replay left its mark. And wasn't that depressing.

"Guys, I can see your reflection. I know you're there."

They were looking at him. But only in the mirror. Ca.s.sie looked sad. Stephen stubborn.

Fine.

"The thing in the bas.e.m.e.nt wants me to join it, and it's holding Lee hostage to make me. I think we can beat it if one of you two helps me to save Lee."

Ca.s.sie glanced away. Stephen lifted his sister's hand off his leg and wound their fingers together. He couldn't have said "Mine." more obviously if he'd said it out loud.

Tony counted time by his heartbeat. He had to convince them before the next replay started. Before their replay started.

"If I can't save Lee . . ." Try again. "If Lee dies, I die with him. You guys are dead. You have to admit that alive is better. Together and alive. Because, him and me, we won't be together if we're dead." Yeah. That was articulate-not!

Entirely possible all that sugar water had been a bad idea as he couldn't seem to maintain a coherent thought. Time to pull the big guns. Time to use the magic word . . .

"Please."

"If we help you, it'll know we have more than the existence it allows us."

He turned. Ca.s.sie sat alone on the tub, the fingers of her right hand, the fingers wrapped around her brother's hand, fading into nothing. Her single eye locked on his face, willing him to understand.

"If it knows we're awake and aware . . ."

"It'll kill us again." Stephen was there now. "It'll take away the little bit of life we have. Is that what you want?

Because we're dead, we don't count for as much as the living?"

Yes.

No.

d.a.m.n.

"If you're dead, then what you have isn't life, is it?"

Stephen's eyes narrowed and when he rose, he looked menacing for the first time that night. "Get out."

Remembering what a glancing touch against his shoulder had felt like, Tony backed toward the door both hands raised. "I'm sorry!" "Not good enough." Then he jerked to a stop, his head dislodging.

Ca.s.sie stood, still holding her brother's hand, his arm stretched tautly between them. "He's right, Stephen. What we have isn't life."

"All right, not life." He settled his head. "But we have each other and we can't risk losing that. I can't risk losing that!

Can you?"

"We don't know that we will. But if we don't help, we know that Lee will die?"

She'd made it a question. Tony answered with a nod. "It hasn't noticed you yet, right?"

"Because we've been staying in our place." Stephen spat the words at him. "Here. Together."

"You were walking around earlier and it didn't notice you."

"Before it was awake!"

"And after."

"We were lucky. We can feel it. We can tell that it's awake. It has to be able to do the same."

"Why?"

Stephen frowned. "What?"

"Why does it have to be able to do what you can do? It can't move around, you can. It can't communicate without possessing someone's a.s.s, you can."

"How does it communicate with someone's a.s.s?"

Tony's turn to frown. "That's not what I meant, I meant. . ."

"What do you want us to do?" Ca.s.sie interrupted.

Free hand holding his head in place, Stephen whirled to face her. "Ca.s.sie!"

She shrugged, broken sundress strap swaying with the motion. "I'm just asking."

"I need you to draw this symbol. . ." Tony held up his left hand, palm out, and both ghosts leaned away. "Oh, s.h.i.t, you can't, can you?"

"I don't think . . ." Her single brow drew in. "It pushes at us. What is it?"

"It's complicated. It's kind of a protection. A protection against the thing's power, but you're a part of that power."

"Only while we're dying." She studied the symbol. "But this it would definitely notice. And if we had anything to do with it, it would notice us."

"Told you," Stephen grunted.

Ca.s.sie glanced over at him, her expression unreadable, then turned back to Tony. "The symbol would protect Lee from the thing? Keep it from hurting him?"

"It should."

"Should?"

"Should. No chance of a rehearsal. We have to go live and hope it works, but that doesn't matter because you can't."

He slammed his fist into his thigh. "s.h.i.t! f.u.c.k! d.a.m.n it!"

"You want this done with the paint, like before? Right?" When Tony nodded, the sudden rush of hope making it impossible to speak, Ca.s.sie nodded with him. "I like Lee. He's cute."

"It's dangerous." Stephen almost wailed the word, and the skin on Tony's arms pebbled into goose b.u.mps.

"It's a little paint," Ca.s.sie argued. "It's no more than what I did this morning. Where is Lee?"

"In the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Are you insane!"

"The door will be open," he told them quickly before Stephen could continue. "So you'll be able to go downstairs.

There's an open can of paint in the kitchen and you can suck energy out of Amy to use it. You don't need much right?

Just for a little symbol like this. She says it's okay. Actually, she's looking forward to it." He was almost babbling but couldn't seem to stop. "And the s.h.i.t won't hit the fan until the next replay after yours, so first you get the paint then you wait until Karl stops crying then you flick the symbol onto Lee just before Karl starts screaming and then, as Karl's replay starts, you get sucked back here . . ." He tapped the wall. ". . . to safety."

"No." Releasing Ca.s.sie's hand, Stephen folded his arms. "Not in the bas.e.m.e.nt. No way."

"But . . ."

"I said, no!"

"Tony . . ."

He looked past Stephen to Ca.s.sie.

". . . go away. I need to talk to my brother."

Yeah. That would work. Ca.s.sie wanted to help, he could see that, and Ca.s.sie was the only person, living or dead, Stephen would be willing to listen to. Except . . . He paused in the doorway. "How will I know?"

Her expression said, trust me. The shrug that went with it, not so confident.

"Stephen . . ."

"No."

"If we don't help, Lee will die."

"And if we do help, what happens to us?"

"If we each stroke on half of the symbol, maybe nothing. But maybe something. And that's good because nothing has happened to us since we died. We're as trapped now as we were before Graham woke us. Except now we know it."

"But . . ."He started to shake his head, remembered, and caught her hands in his instead. "I can't lose you. I can't."

When she sat back on the edge of the tub, he sank to the floor and buried his face in her skirt. "I can't. I won't. And there's more!"

She freed a hand and stroked his cheek. "More?"

"Have you thought of what happens to us if Tony destroys it? What happens to us if we're not trapped here anymore?"

"We move on."

He lifted his head then. "Where? Because, you know, there was sinning."

The corners of her mouth trembled up into a smile. "I remember."

"So, I'm thinking we're better off here." His smile suggested he'd found definitive reasoning.

"Maybe if we save Lee, the sinning won't count for as much. And if we don't save him . . ." Her fingers remembered the soft silk of Stephen's hair. "If we don't save him and Tony still destroys the malevolence, well, that won't look good for us if we move on. Given the sinning and all."

"No."

She sighed. Or she thought she sighed; her fingers, it seemed, had a better memory than her lungs. "I'm going to help Tony. So if we do move on . . ."

"No."

But that "no" was less definite. And he'd stopped smiling.