Smoke and Ashes (30 page)

“Not right now.” He dropped onto the end of the chaise. “And forget it.”

Jack made a noise Tony couldn't identify—although he was pretty sure it wasn't agreement—and said, “So, who's Arra?

“Arra?” He needed to find out how much Jack knew, then he could craft the lie. “How do you know about Arra?”

“You mentioned her last night.”

Crap.

“We were talking about the rope, the unnatural rope, and you said it was weird that Arra'd know it would work since she'd never faced demons here in this world. Then Leah said that if you'd never met her, you wouldn't be fighting demons today.”

“You remember all that?”

“It's part of my job to remember the details.”

That wasn't the part of his job Tony had trouble with. It was more the parts that involved the government and arresting people. And sure he'd been willing to falsify reports and get involved on his own time, but how long before the weird built up past the point he could justify not mentioning it. Justify not bringing out the big guns to try and stop it? And would that even be a problem? People had died? Tony stared at the toes of his Doc Martens. They were in the midst of a Demonic Convergence; odds were good that more people would die.

“You want me to take a guess?” Jack leaned forward, forearms balanced on his thighs. “I'm guessing she was the wizard who fingered you as a wizard and that she was from another world, like the demons are. I figure this happened back last spring when I got fed a bullshit line about what happened to Charlie Harris and Rahal Singh.”

He didn't need to be reminded of their names.

“I figure she either died then, too, or went home since she wasn't around this summer while you were talking to the dead and she isn't around now.”

Tony opened his mouth and closed it again when Jack kept talking.

“At first I thought you may have made some kind of mistake when this Arra was starting you out as a wizard and that's how those two men died—and that's what you've been hiding from me.”

He could feel Jack's gaze on the side of his face. He didn't turn. “It's not.”

“I know. Leah said something else last night.”

“Um…take me? Take me, I'm yours?” A weak attempt to lighten the mood but pretty much a gimme.

“She said that heroes rise when we need them.”

That forced the turn. “You think I'm a hero?”

Jack shrugged. “I did a background check on you,” he said matter-of-factly. “I know what battles you've already won.”

“Holy after-school special, Batman,” Tony muttered, cheeks flushed. He hadn't won any battles; he'd done what he'd had to in order to survive.

“So what happened last spring?” Still matter-of-fact.

Why not. “Arra and I fought off a guy called the Shadowlord invading from her world. After we won, she went home.” Cole's Notes version.

“The Shadowlord was responsible for the deaths?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to him?”

“He got eaten by the light.”

“Is that some kind of wizard metaphor?”

“Not really.”

“Here?” His gesture took in the immediate area.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Jack nodded. “Good,” he said again, sounding more satisfied the second time, as though he'd taken that moment to consider things and now was able to let it go.

They sat silently for a moment, Jack staring down into his loosely clasped hands. Voices across the soundstage sounded like they were coming from another world. Tony glanced up into the lighting grid and then back down at his shoes. “An old friend of mine says there's too often a difference between law and justice.”

“Would that old friend be Detective-Sergeant Mike Celluci?”

“Christ, no!”

Fortunately, any discussion that might bring up Vicki Nelson was cut off by the bell and calls of “Rolling!” from the permanent sets. It sounded like they were shooting by Mason's coffin—far enough away for quiet conversation but just as well Jack didn't know that. Tony did not want to talk about Vicki Nelson with Jack.

Talking about Vicki would only lead to more lying and basking in the warm glow of even a truncated confession. Tony didn't feel like lying. With any luck, the feeling wouldn't last, but for the moment he decided to go with it.

“Cut! Reset! We'll go again from the top.”

They heard the door open almost immediately after the light went out.

“Must be nice,” Constable Danvers muttered, stopping at the foot of the chaise, arms folded over her damp, brown corduroy jacket. “Sitting around, head up your butt, not actually accomplishing anything.”

“We had a demon last night,” Jack protested.

“Yeah? I had a six-year-old who disassembled the DVD player, an eight-year-old who wants a tattoo, and dog vomit all over the living room rug. Trade you.”

When she motioned for Tony to move over, he stood. “I'll get a chair.” No way he was sitting between two cops. That brought back bad memories.

“…good news is, no bodies,” she was saying as he returned. “No body parts either. We had Sammy Kline making his biweekly call about lights in the sky and, this time, he might actually be onto something since there was a slightly more credible report about a flash of light across the Arm from the airport.” She turned the page of her occurrence book and squinted at her notes. “Pilot saw it when he was circling for his final approach and thought it might be an explosion. Richmond detachment sent a car over, and it turned out to be some kind of gas leak and blow in a Goth coffee shop. Goth coffee shop,” she repeated with a snort. “That almost qualifies as weird shit on its own.”

“A demon knocked the door down.” Tony told her. He hid a grin as her head jerked up. “That flash by the airport was the weak spot opening.”

Her eyes narrowed and suddenly he didn't feel much like grinning. “Weak spot?” she demanded.

“Between here and the hells.”

“You were there?”

He shrugged. “I was trying to cut it off at the pass.”

“Great,” she smiled insincerely, the expression barely reaching her mouth let alone her eyes. “You're a cowboy now. So there was a demon at a Goth coffee shop? They must've been thrilled.”

“Not really. Not all of them,” he amended, remembering Amy.

“You'd think that the sort of people who'd drink at a Goth coffee shop…What?” she demanded as Jack growled something under his breath. “I just like saying it. We, where we refers to the police in general as opposed to our detachment in particular, also received a number of calls about vandalized satellite dishes, a couple of downed power lines, a destroyed pigeon coop, and, not far from here, a balcony railing ripped right off the twelfth floor. No one saw anything, though.”

“It took the high ground between the coffee shop and here,” Tony realized. “That's why there were no casualties.”

“Not a lot of healthy pigeons left in that coop,” Constable Danvers pointed out dryly. “And when you say
it
, you're talking demon, right?”

“Right. They move really fast.”

“No shit.”

“Can you check for more flashes?”

She shook her head. “There was only the one reported last night.”

“Not just from last night,” Jack broke in. “Go back at least a week,” he told his partner, then turned to Tony. “You want to compare the flashes to the demons you dusted, get a count, and find out if there's any still hanging around.”

“It'll get us the timing, too. Unless the intervals are completely random, we'll know when to expect the next one.”

“You're smarter than you look.”

“I hate to put a damper on the mutual congratulations,” Danvers sighed. “But last night's report was a fluke. Pilot just happened to be passing over at the right time. No one else called it in.”

“There's not much around there.” It was on the edge of an industrial park, as far as Tony could remember and, that close to the airport, what locals there were would be used to blocking out lights and sound. The guests at the hotel down the street wouldn't know what passed for normal in that part of Vancouver and the staff would be too busy to care. “If a weak spot opened where there were more people, someone probably called the cops.”

Looking thoughtful, she snapped the occurrence book closed, slid it into an inside pocket, and pulled out her PDA. “Worth a try, I suppose. I can access the electronic files from here.”

“Not from here, you can't. You can't get an uplink any closer than the other side of the road,” he explained in answer to the questioning curl of her lip, impressed by the amount of information she could convey in a sneer.

“Fine.” She stood. “I'll check and then I'm gone. Some of us can't waste precious sick days saving the world. Oh, hell, I'm going to have to come back, aren't I? I can't just call you with the info.”

“Let's settle down, people!” Adam's voice, rising from around Raymond Dark's coffin, dampened the ambient noise. “Quiet on the set!”

Tony glanced over toward the door. The light was still off. “You won't get to come back if you don't go away.”

“You can talk after he says quiet?”

“Yeah, but you can't leave after the red light goes on.”

She took two steps toward the door and half turned, one hand rising to touch the loose knot of hair at the back of her neck. “Lee Nicholas?”

“Is in Chester Bane's office with the demonic consultant,” Jack told her. “I thought you didn't have time to hang around and save the world.”

“I may need to ask him a couple of questions about that deranged fan.” She flashed him a “two can play at this game” look and ran for the door.

“Lee's with Leah?” Tony asked when no one yelled rolling. He was aiming for nonchalant. He suspected he missed.

“That's where I left him. I took over out here, remember?” Leaning on the curve of the chaise, Jack raised an eyebrow. “You think he's in there shoring up his increasingly dubious heterosexuality?” He snickered as Tony shrugged, once again missing nonchalant. “Yeah, it's all right there on your face. Except the increasingly dubious bit. I added that myself.”

“So what's with the lights in the sky?”

Jack straightened, allowing the subject to be changed. “Sammy Kline's a janitor out at SFU. Every payday he goes on a bender and reports lights in the sky.” Pale brows drew in. “Any chance he could be right?”

Another shrug. “Beats me. I don't do aliens.”

“I can't work like this!” Mason's protest cut off whatever smart-ass response Jack was about to make. When he wanted to get his point, across the star of
Darkest Night
fell back on skills he'd learned doing summer theater unmiked in leaky tents situated by a major highway that was uphill—both ways—from his drafty and unheated garret room. No one had suffered for their art like Mason. “Look! Right there! There is a cherry in my coffin!”

“Mason…” Peter's voice faded just below where they could hear it.

Mason and a cherry; that was just too easy. Even across the soundstage, Tony could hear the snickers.

“I called quiet, people!” Adam had been around the business too long to allow any amusement to show in his voice. “Settle down! And rolling!”

“Rolling,” Tony repeated softly.

“Mark!”

They couldn't hear the scene called, but they heard the clapper.

“Action!”

“Action…” He wanted to be by the camera watching Mason overact, the only demons on the set the metaphorical demons in Raymond Dark's past. He wanted bad coffee and long hours and he very much didn't want to be tucked off to one side while he dealt with the weirdness du jour. He wanted his life back. There had to be a way he could deal with this shit instead of just reacting to it. Leah's original idea of preventing the demons from crossing over was a good one, but finding them by driving around the lower mainland was stupid and inefficient.

He had to stop thinking like a TAD and start thinking like a wizard if he ever wanted a chance to be a TAD again.

Yeah. That's it. Aim high.

“So this is the infamous game of spider solitaire.”

“Infamous?” Tony smacked Jack's hand away from the keyboard and winced as it returned to impact against the back of his head.

“The game that masks the wonders of wizardry.”

Tony shot him a sideways look as he scrolled down the index. “You've been talking to Amy.”

“No law against it.” He winked over the cardboard lip of his coffee cup. “And like I said, she's cute.”

“She's not your type.”