Darkest Night - Smoke and Shadows Part 52

"You shouldn't be so close."

He struggled back into what was more or less a vertical position. "I need to see this."

As darkness roiled down from an empty place by the ceiling-the Shadowlord's reinforcements coming without being called-Arra lifted both arms over her head and rapidly sketched another pattern in the air. She looked like she always did, but she looked like a wizard, too. Acceptance, Tony realized suddenly. She looked like she'd accepted what she was and what that meant.

Pattern complete, she pushed it forward. There was a sizzle and flash when it hit the darkness. A hiss and a flash as it hit the gate. A distant scream as it disappeared and there was a flashback through the gate so bright Henry threw both arms in front of his eyes. Tony sagged back against CB's momentarily comforting bulk.

He felt the gate snap closed. Arra was still standing there. He must have tensed because CB murmured, "She'll go another time. There are things here that need taking care of."

Right. Of course. "The cats."

"Also the cats." Chester Bane looked out over the sound-stage and realized he had been a part of something remarkable. The defeat of an invading evil. The more significant defeat of personal demons. The discovery of a hero in an unlikely place. And the whole d.a.m.ned thing had put them seriously behind schedule. Still, he allowed reluctantly, it could have been worse. They could also be over budget. "Mr. Fitzroy, if you could a.s.sist me with ..."

The bodies, Tony filled in silently.

Blinking away what must have been painful afterimages, Henry nodded at CB and turned again to Tony. "Will you be all right?"

Tony slid sideways until his weight was against the lid of Raymond Dark's coffin. "I'll be fine."

Eventually.

As the two men moved away, another moved in.

Cradling his left arm against his body, Lee stared at Tony for a long moment. Did people always do this much staring or am I just noticing it now? He blinked, then asked himself, "Why not?" and stared back.

"That was ..." The actor's brows nearly met over his nose. "There were . . ."He swallowed and, looking as though he was maybe thirty seconds from a total meltdown, jerked his head toward the place where the gate had been. "There was light. What the h.e.l.l was that?"

"This is television." Tony swept his arm around in a gesture expansive enough to take in both cameras still pointed toward the center of the set. "It was a special effect."

"Bulls.h.i.t. I'm not stupid, Tony. Or blind. What's going on." He took a step closer, well within Tony's personal s.p.a.ce. "Talk to me."

"All right." He raised a hand to cut off any immediate questions. "But not tonight." He touched his throat. "Hurts. We'll talk tomorrow."

Green eyes narrowed. Wrong color but otherwise a dead man's expression. "Promise me."

"I promise."

An easy promise to make since Arra was already erasing the chalk memories drawn on the floor.

"No, CB says Mason's fine."

Arra snorted as they crossed the soundstage. "I can't say that I'm really surprised. If anyone had ego enough to cope with being shadow-held for so long, it would be Mason Reed." She nodded toward the stepladder. "It's almost time. If there's anything you want to know ..."

She wanted him to ask about meaning-of-life stuff. She'd been rediscovering her wizard roots over the last three days and wanted him in on it. Tony started to shrug but cut the motion off short as Whitby protested the movement. Both cats had been protesting the indignity of the cat carriers since they'd left the co-op.

"Anything at all," she insisted.

Fine. Tony sorted through unanswered questions searching for one he wouldn't mind having an answer to. There were a lot more of the other kind. "If the Shadowlord had no power here, how did he hold CB?"

"I'm about to leave this world forever and that's it?"

"Yeah. Why? Don't you know?"

Arra snorted and turned toward him at the base of the ladder. "Probably a minor binding spell. The close confines of the coffin helped hold it and hitting the floor broke it. Don't forget to get the gas gauge on the car fixed.""I won't."

"I've left my laptop down in the workshop."

"It's still working?"

"Apparently it landed on Everett and bounced. But that's beside the point; it has some things on it you might be able to use."

"I'm not a wizard."

She snorted again. "d.a.m.ned right you're not. Here." She handed him the second cat carrier. "Hold Zazu until I'm up the ladder." First step. Second step.

Not very interesting to look at actually. "It would look a lot more wizardy if you levitated or something."

Third step. "And you'd block this area from the rest of the soundstage? Or maybe you'd rather tell a studio audience where I'm going." Fourth step.

"You didn't have to go through this morning. You could have gone through tonight."

Fifth step. Sixth. "I didn't feel like it. The police have finished with me, I'm out of here."

The RCMP investigation into the "special effect accident" that had killed Charlie Harris and Rahal Singh had been strangely vague considering that they were the third and fourth bodies connected to CB Productions in less than a month. In the end, no charges had been laid and the newspaper coverage had given the show a ratings b.u.mp. With any luck, Constables Elson and Danvers would get tired of dropping by before CB got tired of finding them in the building. Unfortunately, Arra's wizardry had had less effect on the insurance industry. CB's enraged commentary on the rise in his rates had probably been heard at the company's head office in Montreal-whole sentences were still echoing around the soundstage.

Tony handed the cat carriers up one at a time, the hand-shaped bruises on his waist reminding him of shadows as he stretched. Arra settled the first carrier on the top of the ladder and the second on the paint platform and looked down at him. No, stared down at him.

Great. More staring. He found a smile that was mostly sincere. "Thanks for the car. And the stuff. And the whole kicking Shadowlord a.s.s."

Arra nodded.

Tony waited.

The gate opened. Zazu went through first-he couldn't see her, but he recognized the yowl. It was slightly higher-pitched than Whitby's. The last he saw of Whitby was an orange and white paw poked through the bars of the crate.

Arra lifted one foot off the step and stopped. "It's going to be one h.e.l.l of a mess through there."

Yeah, there were wizards nailed to blackboards. He wondered if she could see them from where she was standing.

"Are you sure you don't want to come?"

"I'm sure."

She looked down at that, and finally smiled. "You could be great."

He shrugged. "I'm planning on it.""Great and modest. I'm out of here before the sap level rises any higher. Take care of yourself, kid."

"You, too."

Watching an old woman step off a ladder and disappear in midair was a definite anticlimax. Half decent CGI would have given the scene a lot more oomph.

"You're welcome," he muttered as he folded the ladder and moved it up against the wall. Yeah, getting the car was nice, but would it have killed her to thank him. Not for fighting the Shadowlord, that had nothing to do with her, but she could have thanked him for the backbone he found for her. Without him, she'd have been running until the guilt finally crushed her.

He'd been waiting for her to say something for the last three days, but every conversation they had seemed to end up with her trying to convince him to go with her through the gate.

"I could use the help of someone who does not run away from a fight. Of someone who will not let others run away."

Oh. Hang on.

He'd been a little distracted at the time.

Looking up toward the ceiling, he said, "You're welcome" again but this time he meant it.

"Quiet, please!"

As Peter's voice echoed through the soundstage, Tony crammed the jack back in his ear and turned up his radio.

"Let's settle, people!"

He reached the set in time to call, "Rolling!" with the rest and found a place behind the video village as the second a.s.sistant camera called the slate.

"Scene twenty-seven, take two."

Lee grinned as Mason settled his shoulders against the padded satin lining of the coffin and said something that caused the other actor to give a less than bloodsucking un- dead type snicker.

"Action!"

Left thumb rubbing the scar on his right wrist, Tony watched the monitors as the scene unfolded. Stretched out behind him on the concrete floor, his shadow reached out and held up two fingers behind the shadow of the director's head.

Although she left Nova Scotia at three, and has lived most of her life since in Ontario, TANYA HUFF still considers herself a Maritimer. On the way to the idyllic rural existence she shares with her partner Fiona Patton, six cats, and a Chihuahua, she acquired a degree in Radio and Television Arts from Ryerson Polytechnic-an education she was happy to finally use while writing SMOKE AND SHADOWS. Of her previous twenty-one books the five-BLOOD PRICE, BLOOD TRAIL, BLOOD LINES, BLOOD PACT, BLOOD DEBT- featuring Henry Fitzroy, b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of Henry VIII, romance writer, and vampire, are among the most popular. She's pleased to be returning to that world once again as Tony Foster, ex-street kid, and one of Henry's own, discovers that working in television has less to do with "reality" than he ever suspected.