Darkest Night - Smoke And Mirrors Part 7

"Yes."

"You might get hit every time you cross the street. Do you spend the rest of your life standing on the sidewalk?"

"Well, no, but. . ."

"I've paid for the use of this house until the end of the week. If you have nothing substantial to base your fears on . . ."

CB waited pointedly until Tony shook his head. ". . . I will not disrupt my shooting schedule because you have a bad feeling and dead people are hanging about the set."

Was the man listening to himself? "Having dead people hanging about the set isn't normal!"

"Normal?" His lip curled. "Being beaten in the ratings by half a dozen so-called real people eating earthworms isn't normal, Mr. Foster. And dead people have got to be less trouble than one of Mason's ridiculous fan clubs."

Tony had to admit that was valid. One last card to play. "Your daughters . . ."

"Are looking forward to this and I will not disappoint them. They've spoken of nothing else for the last ten days."

"But . . ."

"I will not disappoint them. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal." He'd rather risk his daughters' lives than their wrath. Or at least he'd rather risk his daughters being stroked with paint than their wrath and Tony had to admit he could understand where the boss was coming from with that. Maybe he had overreacted.

Once you turn to the weird side, forever will it dominate your destiny.

So the house is haunted. If I'm the only one who knows, does it matter?

"Is there anything else, Mr. Foster?"

Apparently not. "No, sir. I'll just get the girls."

The girls were standing by the front door, eyes wide and locked on Amy. Who was on the phone. Nothing unusual about that.

"Why don't you two wait for me by my car; I'll be right out."

They nodded and ran.

"What did you do to them?" he demanded as Amy hung up. "And can you teach it to me."

"I merely looked at them like this . . ."

"That's pretty d.a.m.ned scary on its own."

". . . and told them if they didn't get their grubby hands off my phone I'd put a spell on them so that they'd wet the bed at every sleepover they went on for the rest of their lives."

Checking for eavesdroppers, Tony leaned closer. "Can you really do that?"

Amy sighed. "I'm not surprised Zev dumped you. You are such a geek sometimes."

Right. Of course she couldn't. He couldn't and he was the wizard. In training. In a not-very-enthusiastic-about-the-whole-thing kind of way. Although if it meant easier handling of CB's daughters, it might not hurt to check the more advanced lessons on the laptop.

"Tony?"

"Sorry. Ghosts, girls, I'm just a little freaked. Can you call Peter and give him a heads up?"

"Oh. My. G.o.d. He doesn't know?"

Before Tony could answer, a familiar horn sounded in the parking lot. And kept sounding. Throwing a terse, "He doesn't know!" over his shoulder, Tony started to run. How the h.e.l.l were they hitting the horn? His car had been locked.

Chapter Four.

WITH THE PRETEEN flavor of the month pounding out of his speakers, and a vaguely familiar blue sedan in his parking spot, Tony pulled in at the end of the line of cars and shut off the engine. "All right, we're walking from here."

Ashley, who'd grabbed the front seat by ignoring screams of wrath and shoving her younger and smaller sister into the back, opened her door, stared down at the ground, and closed her door again. "It's muddy."

"Yeah, so?" Hands braced on either side of the doorframe, Tony leaned back into the car reminding himself that these were his boss' daughters and the level of profanity had to stay low. Given the delay at the office and an unavoidable side trip for ice cream on the way back to the location-unavoidable if he'd wanted to retain even minimal hearing-they were running embarra.s.singly late. "It's stopped raining."

"You can't make me walk in the mud. I'll tell my dad. Drive me right to the house."

"I can't."

"Ashes is afraid she'll get all dirty and then Mason'll see she's really a pig," Brianna scoffed from the back. "Oink, oink, oink, oink, oink."

"Drop dead, Cheese!"

"Make me, Zitface!"

"Look, walk in the mud, then blame me when you get dirty," Tony broke in before the insults could escalate. Again.

"Mason doesn't much like me anyway, and it'll give you two something to talk about."

Ashley stared at him for a long moment, brown eyes narrowed. "Fine."

"Fine," Brianna echoed mockingly.

With the dignity of eleven years, Ashley ignored her, scooped up her backpack, and got out of the car.

As Tony locked up, Brianna bounded down the road to the path.

"Are you just going to let her do that?" Ashley demanded. "She could get lost!"

"The ruts to the house are a foot deep. I doubt it."

"You have a stupid car." He shortened his stride as she fell into step beside him. "My mom has a better car. My mom's new boyfriend has three better cars. Your car looks like something puked on it."

"Something did." When she turned a disbelieving face toward him, he added, "Old drunk guy outside my building last night. Most of it washed off in the rain."

"Eww! That is like totally the grossest thing I've ever heard."

Tony felt kind of smug about that until he remembered he wasn't twelve. "Hey, I hate to ask, but why do you call your sister Cheese?"

"Dun. Brianna. Bri. Cheese." She shot him a disapproving glare that made her look disconcertingly like her father. "I thought gay guys knew all about cheese."

"I must've missed that part in the manual."

"You got a manual?"

A shriek from Brianna kept him from having to answer. Memo to self: facetious comments bad idea. He jogged ahead to find the younger girl balanced on one foot, her other foot bare, the sandal nowhere to be seen.

"The stupid mud ate my shoe!" she announced, grabbing a handful of his T-shirt. "You've got to carry me."

He grabbed her backpack before it could hit the ground and settled it back onto her shoulder. "Walk barefoot."

"Mom says you catch stuff when you walk barefoot."

"Yeah, on sidewalks. Not here. This is a park."

"It's a driveway!" For an eight year old, she excelled at implying you moron with tone of voice.

"We don't have time for this!" Unfortunately, Amy's expression didn't seem to work when it wasn't on Amy's face.

"Fine. I'll carry you." If CB wanted the girls to finish up in one afternoon-and given his personal feelings on the matter, Tony was willing to bet that everyone else involved wanted the same thing-they had to haul a.s.s. He moved around in front of her and squatted slightly. "Climb on my back."

For a skinny kid, she wasn't light. He hooked his hands under her bare knees and straightened.

"You better find my sandal. My dad will fire you if you lose my sandal."

"No, he won't." "Wanna bet?"

Not really. "Ashley, could you . . ."

"Bite me. I'm so not digging in mud for . . . oh, here it is." To his surprise, she shoved one finger under the strap and dragged it out of the thick, black dirt. "You owe me. You owe me big."

"Fine. I owe you." Hiding a shudder at the thought of what she might demand to even the odds, he jerked his head toward the house. "Now can we walk?"

With Brianna bouncing on his kidneys and Ashley keeping up a running commentary of his shortcomings, the lane into the house seemed a lot longer than it had at 7:30. As they finally drew even with the last of the trucks, two familiar figures stepped out into their path.

"Well, well, Mr. Foster." RCMP Constable Jack Elson smiled and waved a set of sides in a sarcastic salute. "Small world, isn't it?"

Elson and his partner, RCMP Special Constable Geetha Danvers, had been the investigating officers during the series of suspicious deaths that had occurred at CB Productions back in the spring. Although natural causes with a heavy subtext of unlucky coincidence made up the official conclusion, Jack Elson had been convinced there was something else going on and he'd been determined to get to the bottom of things. Unfortunately, since the something else had involved homicidal shadows from another reality, he'd been destined to disappointment.

Because Tony had been instrumental in defeating the Shadowlord, he'd been at the center of the RCMP's investigation. With no one to blame for the nagging sense of justice not quite done, Constable Elson had made his presence felt at CB Productions whenever time allowed-with Tony at the top of his s.h.i.t list closely followed by CB himself, and then the rest of his employees in no particular order.

Constable Danvers, who'd been considerably more sanguine about the case from the beginning, accompanied her partner to the studio wearing an expression that clearly said, "I'm only indulging you in this because hanging around a television show is kind of cool."

"So we saw the cars out on the road and wandered down to see if the paperwork was in order." During his too jovial explanation, Elson didn't do anything as obvious as block Tony's path but he stood in such a way that it would be difficult to get around him. Especially carrying an eight year old. Tony waited silently. First rule of dealing with a suspicious cop-give them nothing new to work with. "And who are these young ladies?"

Second rule-answer questions promptly and politely. And the corollary-lie if necessary. "They're the boss'

daughters."

"Visiting the set?" Danvers asked, looking honestly interested.

"We're not visiting," Ashley informed her disdainfully. "We're ghosts."

"Really?" Elson smiled down at Tony in a way that made him think of handcuffs. And not in a fun way either. "You wouldn't be contravening child labor laws would you?"

Before Tony could answer, Brianna lifted her chin out of the indentation she'd dug in his right shoulder, pointed a skinny arm toward Burnaby's finest, and declared, "I can see a booger in your nose."

"Why don't you two go find Peter?" Tony suggested easing Brianna to the ground.

Shrieking "Peter! Peter! Peter!" she shoved her foot into her muddy sandal and raced after her sister who'd gotten a three Peter head start.

As the director's name died down in the distance, Tony had a strong suspicion it was a suggestion that would come back to haunt him. And speaking of haunting . . .

The police had access to information the general public did not. Information-finding it, having it, pa.s.sing it along in the way that would do him the most good-had always been Tony's preferred coin. Given that he'd survived everything an increasingly skewed world had thrown at him . . .

"Brianna! No!" Tina's distant protest had a hint of homicide in it.

. . . so far, maybe it wouldn't hurt to do a bit of digging now.

"Great house, eh?" He fixed both officers with his best "fine, you want to stand there, then I'm going to talk"

expression. "I guess you guys are on top of that whole double murder suicide thing."

"In the house? This house?"

He let himself look smug as he repeated what Amy had told him.

Constable Elson rolled his eyes. "A little before our time."

Memory took him to the top of the stairs and a baby crying. "So nothing more recent?" He snapped back to himself in time to see them both staring.

Constable Danvers raised a questioning brow. "Recent?"

"Maybe he's been hearing things." When Tony scowled, Elson broke out laughing. "Maybe he thinks it's haunted."

Waving his hands in the accepted gesture for ooooooo, spooky he headed for the road. "Come on, Dee. I'm so scared.

Let's get out of here in case Raymond what's-his-fang has called up more of his dark brethren."