Smoke and Mirrors (22 page)

A third voice.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Heart in his throat, Tony whirled around, stumbling into Lee who reached out blindly, caught his arm, and steadied him. Cassie looked as sheepish as possible, given she was barely a pale gray sketch on the air. Stephen, equally translucent, shrugged not at all apologetically. “You followed us!”

“We came with you,” Stephen amended.

“There's no point in staying with the others,” Cassie said reasonably. “They can't see or hear us and they're boring.”

Which was when Tony realized she wasn't looking at him but staring at Lee with the kind of besotted expression he was only too familiar with—except it usually came with two eyes and an entire head.

“They followed us?” Lee repeated.

“They did.”

“The ghosts?”

“Yeah. They think the others are boring. They say there're lanterns and matches in the conservatory.”

Stephen nodded and adjusted his head. “Graham found them one day when he was snooping around.”

“Caretaking,” Cassie corrected archly.

“Yes, well, he found them. He left them there.”

“Then all we have to do is find the conservatory,” Lee said before Tony could ask just what exactly Graham had been snooping around for, had he found it, and was it likely to now bite them on the ass.

“I'll take you!” Cassie wafted past.

“Only Tony can see you,” Stephen muttered as he followed. “She thinks he's cute,” he added as he drew even with Tony's ear. “She's the one who painted his butt.”

“I figured. You okay with that?” A jealous brother would be such fun under the circumstances. Particularly given how close the siblings were—had been.

“Why should I care?”

Tony decided not to mention the whole lack of pants thing. He ran his hand down Lee's arm, found his hand—
I'm at the end of his arm? What else was I expecting to find?
—and tucked it into the crock of his elbow. “All I can see is the ghosts, but I'm assuming they can see the house, so I'll follow them and you stick with me.”

Lee's fingers tightened, just for an instant, then loosened to minimal contact he no doubt felt was required when a straight man touched a gay man.

He didn't need the house to drive him crazy, he was doing a fine job all on his own. With any luck, mass murder wasn't next after inappropriate sexual fantasies and self-chastisement. Verbal self-chastisement. Not the physical kind.

If his sense of distance had seemed off before, it was totally screwed now as he followed the pair of pale forms through total darkness. His feet never entirely left the floor, the soles of his running shoes sliding over the hardwood with a series of soft squeaks as treads scraped urethane. Lee's dress shoes made an answering shush-shush that seemed to indicate he also intended to remain grounded. Given the total lack of light and their lack of planning in not being in contact with a wall when the light went out, the floor underfoot was all they had to be sure of.

Tony was beginning to think that they should have arrived
somewhere
and was beginning to worry that they hadn't when the hard/soft crash of body slamming into an opened door derailed his train of thought. The impact jerked Lee's hand off his arm.

“Son of a fucking . . .”

“Lee?” He grabbed for the other man. As his fingers closed around familiar fabric, he started breathing again.

“I seem to have found the kitchen.” The wet velvet voice sounded rougher than usual. “Or at least the kitchen door.”

“Is he hurt?” Cassie drifted in close and stared up at where Lee had to be.

Stephen shot his sister an exasperated eye roll. “Don't worry, he's fine.”

Yeah, dead guys walking around were great judges of
fine
. “Are you okay?”

“I think so. Although if I've given myself a black eye, tomorrow's shoot will be interesting.”

Tomorrow's shoot.
He thinks we'll get out of this.

Maintaining his grip on Lee's jacket, Tony reached out with his other hand and defined the rest of the kitchen door. “If we turn left here, the conservatory's about seven or eight meters straight ahead. If I keep my hand on the wall, we'll know when we arrive and avoid falling down those three steps.”

“I'd have told you about the steps,” Cassie murmured. “And we're sorry about the door.”

“Why was that our fault?” Stephen demanded.

And that was the peanut gallery heard from. “Lee?”

The arm inside Lee's jacket had no give to it, the muscles tensed, the joints locked. “Tony, I don't hear the baby anymore.”

Now it had been brought to his attention, he couldn't remember having heard Karl the entire time they'd been standing in the kitchen doorway.

The lights came up and Tony was all alone. He moved his hand before he thought to wonder if he was still in real-world contact with Lee.
Stupid, fucking . . .
“Lee, I know you can hear me—I'm in another replay. I've got lights now, so I'll walk to the conservatory and the cupboard and wait there until the replay stops. Stephen and Cassie are stuck in the bathroom for the duration and you can't see me to follow, so stay right where you are. Don't move. I'll come back with the lanterns as fast as I can.” He tried to sound reassuring, but the scream from the conservatory distracted him a bit.

By the time he covered the seven meters, the gardener—he assumed it was the gardener given the location and the overalls—was lying on his back on an old wooden bench while an elderly woman in a dark brown dress and sensible shoes sawed off his right leg. From the way he was twitching, Tony didn't think he was dead. When she got through to the bone, she switched to a hatchet.

Good solid swing considering her age.

Right leg. Left leg. Left arm. Each piece—thankfully—removed much faster than in real time. As she hacked through each bone in turn, the sound was a lot less brittle than Tony had expected. He made a mental note to mention it to the sound guys. CB didn't want to pay for his own Foley studio, so they usually bought what they needed from independent artists. None of them had quite gotten the wet crunch right.

The extended dismemberment should have upset him more than it did. Maybe he'd become desensitized by the parade of axes and burning babies and antlers. Maybe the past had lost its ability to affect him, given that in the present a person he actually knew was dead and he and another seventeen were in danger of dying. Maybe the whole old lady sawing and hacking thing was just so over the top, he found it difficult to believe it was real and, frankly, he'd seen blood done better. Spurting arteries were unfortunately forever tied to Monty Python marathons on Comedy Central. Whatever the reason, he found he was standing, arms crossed, drumming his fingers on his elbow and wishing she'd hurry the hell up.

He almost cheered as the head finally came off—but no, now she had to bury the pieces. One piece in each of the raised beds.

Damn. That extra
could
have felt fingers. Sure, there was no way that the actual hand remained buried in the dirt, but since metaphysical action was still going on . . .

And on.

He sighed and leaned against the cupboard.

Grunting a little with the effort, she dropped the gardener's head into the large urn in the middle of the room. Tony frowned at the muffled squelch. Hadn't he ended up with an extra background player when he'd done the final head count around that urn this morning? An extra head in the head count. Cute. A malevolent thing with a sense of humor—like that made it so much better.

Then the old woman was suddenly at the cupboard, reaching through him for the handle. He jerked to one side, far enough to get free of her arm but not so far he couldn't scan the shelves. No lanterns, not in this time, but that didn't matter as long as they were there when he got back to the present.

There was, however, a brand new box of rat poison.

She ripped open the little cardboard spout and tipped a generous portion into her mouth.

Modern rat poison contained warfarin—a blood thinner. The rats ate the bait, scuttled into the walls, and bled to death internally. It was a slow, painful, terrifying way to die. Emphasis on slow—which was why Tony even knew about it. The writers had wanted to use rat poison to deal with the crime
du jour
in episode eleven but had ditched the idea when they found out how long it would take. Pre-warfarin, the active ingredient depended on the brand of the rat poison but throughout most of rural Canada arsenic-of-lead predominated.

Eyes so wide bloodshot white showed all the way around pale brown irises, the old woman swallowed a second mouthful.

And then forced down a third.

Teeth clenched so tightly Tony could see a muscle jump in her jaw, she managed to keep all three down as she walked back to the bench and sat primly down on the blood-soaked wood, knees together, feet crossed at the ankles.

Tony had no way of telling how long after that the vomiting blood began, but once started, it continued for some time. Continued until the old lady was lying in a puddle of her blood and the gardener's combined, protruding tongue white, skin faintly blue. Her open eyes were staring directly at him and for a moment, just before she died, she frowned slightly—almost as if she could see him standing there.

And
that
was the most frightening thing he'd seen so far.

Then it was dark. Dark and completely silent. He couldn't hear the rain on the glass, but whether that was because it had stopped raining or the house prevented the sound from entering he had no idea. Half afraid he could still feel the old lady's eyes on him, he fumbled for the clasp of the cupboard as Karl started crying again.

How weird that the sound of a baby in a fire was comforting?

Pretty damned weird actually.

“Tony?”

Lee's voice much, much closer than the kitchen. He shrieked as fingers stubbed up against him.

“It was taking so long. I, uh . . . I got worried about you, so I followed the wall.” And except for the desperate way he clutched at Tony's arm, he'd have sold it. “Did I startle you?”

“Startle me? I almost fucking pissed myself!”

“Way too much information.” The chuckle was slightly strained but, still, an award-winning performance considering he was leaving bruises.

Tony was just as happy to have the contact maintained—and for a change the thought of Lee touching him in no way evoked a sexual response. Or at least not much of one. It was actually kind of encouraging that his dick was taking a mild interest since, mere moments before, terror had driven his balls up to sit on his shoulder.

Cupboard open, he found something that felt like he thought he remembered lanterns looked on the top shelf. Carefully holding the round middle section, he shook it gently. Liquid sloshed.

“Kerosene?” Lee asked.

“Let's hope so.”

His other hand finger-walked along the shelf until he touched a greasy box. It rattled when he nudged it. “I think I found the matches.”

He had a lantern in one hand. He had matches in the other. Time passed.

This chuckle sounded legitimate. “You have no idea of what to do, do you?”

“Yeah, well, lanterns—not so big in my life.”

“Never a Boy Scout?”

“No.” He tired to keep the disdain from sounding in his voice and didn't quite manage it. Back when he was on the street, he'd had a scoutmaster among his regulars. Every week, like clockwork, after his scout meeting . . .

“Lucky for you, I was. Don't move.” The grip on Tony's arm moved down to his hand and then up the lantern. Glass clinked against glass. “Chimney's got to come off.” Glass against wood as, still holding the lantern with one hand, Lee set the chimney in the cupboard with the other. “Wick has to be turned down into the kerosene.” His fingers brushed Tony's as he steadied the lantern. “You're holding the matches?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Bring that hand over . . . Got it.” It took a moment's fumbling to get the box open. “Do you have your eyes closed?”

“What?”

“It's so dark, I just wondered . . .”

“No.” When he closed his eyes, he could see the old lady staring at him as she died. “You?”

“No.”

Tony thought about asking what Lee saw on the inside of his lids. Decided against it. Had a feeling, considering what had gone down last spring, he knew what the answer would be.

“Okay, the wick's damp. Let's light this sucker.”

The first match fizzed weakly but didn't catch.

The second flared; a painfully bright, two-second orange-red point of light.

“Third time lucky.”

Since the only reply that occurred was
“Three men on a match,”
Tony kept his mouth shut.

The third match caught and held. Cupped in Lee's hand, it descended to a piece of cloth sticking up from the bottom of the lantern.

And then there was light.

He watched as Lee fiddled with a small metal wheel for a moment, put the top glass bit back on, and then he switched his grip to the wrapped wire handle. “All right, then.”

“Yeah.” Lee visibly relaxed as he slid the box of matches into his pocket. “There's a second lantern,” he said, lifting it out of the cupboard. “And a two-liter can of kerosene that's barely been touched.”