Smoke and Mirrors (32 page)

“We'll be in the craft services truck if you need us, Boss.” And much more quietly as they moved away, voice barely touching innuendo, “You think they want to be alone?”

CB, Henry realized as the other man shifted beneath him, hadn't heard. Probably for the best. He was comfortable, recovering in this position that parodied passion, and had no wish to be tossed aside as smart-ass employees were summarily dealt with.

“Old Arogoth,” he said after a moment, “is really starting to annoy me.”

“You've felt its power. Can Tony defeat it?”

Henry could lie and make CB believe him, but they'd moved past that back in the spring. “I hope so.”

“If he gets my daughters out . . .”

Carefully pulling himself up into a sitting position, Henry watched the other man's face as he stared up into the night sky, rain beading against mahogany skin. Conscious of the scrutiny, the ex-linebacker lowered his head and met the vampire's gaze. Henry could read no promises in his dark eyes, none of the futile bargains with death he'd heard made a thousand times.

“If he gets your daughters out?” he asked softly. Curious.

Broad shoulders shrugged. “I'll thank him.”

“Okay . . .”

Both men turned toward the caretaker, the contact between them stretching to fill the new space.

“. . . Cassie and Stephen'll tell your friend Tony to come to the door and get his laptop, but they won't be able to do it right away. They got dragged back to the bathroom and they'll have to wait until the replay is over.”

“Replay?” Henry asked as he got carefully to his feet. When he swayed, a warm hand closed around his elbow and steadied him.

Graham shrugged. “Yeah, well, replay's what Tony calls it. The deaths the house has collected are running over and over—they're powering the malevolence . . .”

“Arogoth.”

“Yeah, whoever.” Another shrug. “These replays, they're throwing off enough dark energy to drive even the most stable person nuts. It's how the malevolence does it; throws all kinds of dark and spooky crap at you until you break. Just, usually, it does it slower because it has more time.”

“And my girls are in the midst of that?” CB's grip tightened. Had Henry been a mortal man, it would have done damage. “Of violent death replaying over and over?”

“Kind of. But not really. So far, only Tony is experiencing it.”

“So far?”

Sitting splay-legged on the porch, sagging back against the lower part of the railing, Graham shrugged a third and final time.

When Tony opened his eyes, he could still see Charles' broken body superimposed over Zev. He reached out and gently tugged the music director a little to the left.

“What?”

“You don't want to know.”

Zev thought about it for a moment then nodded. “All right.”

Things had settled after Hartley's body had been taken away. Tina had split up the basket of food she'd brought down from Mason's dressing room after the bathroom break and everyone sat quietly eating. With everyone holding tightly to the normalcy of food, Tony doubted they'd even noticed he'd been gone.

“Tony! You have to go to the back door!”

He jumped as Stephen and Cassie appeared directly in front of him. Jumped again as Cassie grabbed for his arm and the cold raised gooseflesh from the edge of his T-shirt to his wrist. As they began to talk, overlapping each other's sentences, it spread.

“. . . and if Lucy read the journal, she might be able to tell you how to deal with the malevolence.”

The lights came up with a scream, and from the conservatory came the wet crunch of limbs being hacked off.

Tony wrapped his arms around his torso, shivered, and waited. And waited.

As he recalled, the old woman did a thorough job. Dismembered. Buried. Was that the sound of a shovel? Finally, rat poison.

This time, when the entryway reappeared, lantern lit and smelling ever so faintly of sweat and vomit, Amy's hand came out of nowhere and impacted with his face.

“Ow!”

“Sorry.” Except she didn't look sorry; she looked disturbingly disappointed that she wasn't going to be able to hit him again. At least the numbness she'd been wrapped in since Hartley's death had disappeared. “We thought you'd been possessed.”

His cheek throbbed. “I was waiting out another replay!”

“Well, yeah. We know that now.”

“I mentioned it at the time,” Zev pointed out.

“I wanted to stick you with pins.” Brianna smiled at him over the edge of her muffin. “But Zev said no. The poopy head.”

Just Zev? Given the evening so far, stupid question.

“Well, what did they say?”

“Say?” If the second replay was identical to the first, the gardener had been quickly unconscious and the old woman had said nothing as she methodically hacked him to pieces.

Amy rolled her eyes and her arm twitched. “The ghosts you were obviously listening to before you went away.”

“Oh, them!”

“Oh, them,” she repeated sarcastically. “Messages from beyond the grave should never be taken lightly! Share!”

“I need to go to the back door.”

Kate snorted. “The hell you do.”

“A friend of mine—Henry,” he added to Zev who nodded, “has my laptop there.”

Kate snorted again, this time adding a sneer. “And this is exactly the situation that needs a game of spider solitaire.”

Arra used to tell the future with spider solitaire. This didn't seem to be the time to bring that up.

Tony stepped to one side so that Amy no longer stood between him and the bulk of their companions. “Graham Brummel, the caretaker, is a medium.” When everyone accepted that without throwing things, he continued. “He told Cassie and Stephen that one of the ghosts who died while Creighton Caulfield was still alive may know how we can deal with the thing in the basement. I need my laptop so I can figure out how to talk to that ghost.”

“Why?” Peter asked, crossing his arms. “You've been talking to the brother and sister all along.”

“Because the caretaker is their cousin and he redefined them as individuals, pulled them away from . . . uh . . .”

“Death?” Amy offered.

“Yeah, death.”

“So your laptop came with software for talking to the dead.” Peter used the tone he saved for dealing with unfinished sets, unlearned lines, and extras in general. “You got lucky, Tony. All I got on mine was a copy of Jukebox.”

They were clearly not going to let him leave until he explained. No point in making a run for it since the light faded to total and complete darkness just past the curved line of salt. Granted, he could just wait for the next replay and move through the lit halls of that earlier time, but given the varying edges the group seemed balanced on, he couldn't guarantee he'd survive the experience. He really didn't want to be the headliner in the next murder/suicide.

On the other hand, the explanation wasn't likely to win him any friends.

“We're waiting, Tony.”

While only Kate looked actively hostile, even Amy, Zev, and Lee—the three who'd been on his side throughout—looked impatient. Well, mostly Lee still looked shattered, but the impatience was there as well.

He took a deep breath. Tom was dead and Brenda was dead and Hartley was dead, so in comparison . . . “Arra left me the laptop . . . her laptop. She left lessons on it. Lessons on how to be a wizard.”

“Say what?” Amy spoke first, but they all wore nearly identical expressions of incredulous disbelief.

“Arra was a wizard.” He had to take another deep breath before he could manage the corollary. “I'm a wizard.”

“Harry Potter,” Brianna announced.

“Gandalf,” her sister added.

“Fiction,” Mason snapped as Sorge muttered something in French that sounded distinctly uncomplimentary.

“That's not like some strange euphemism for gay, is it?” Adam demanded.

Tony's turn for incredulous disbelief. “For what?”

“Because we all
know
that.”

“No. Wizard. Like Harry Potter.” He gestured at Brianna. “And Gandalf.” And at Ashley. Finally at Mason. Seven words. Mason's lighter lifted off his thigh and slapped into Tony's hand. “And it's nonfiction.” He tossed the lighter back to Mason who instinctively caught it, then let it slide out of his hand onto the floor.
Yep, it's covered in wizard cooties.
“According to Arra, it's just a slightly left-of-center way to manipulate energies.”

Brianna dove for the lighter. “I want to manipulate energy!”

“It's not something everyone can do.”

“I'm not everyone!”

“Why doesn't Tony check you out later,” Zev suggested, pulling the lighter from her hand.

Amy's hands were on her hips. “So Arra was a wizard?”

“Yeah.”

“Did CB know?”

“Yeah.”

“And you're a wizard?”

“Sort of.”

“And does he know about you?”

“Yeah.”

She smacked him hard on the arm. “So why the hell didn't you tell me?”

“CB didn't want any of this to get out.” CB hadn't actually said Tony couldn't tell people. They'd been in full agreement on that. He glanced around the circle of staring faces. “You know how weird people can get about this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing?”

“You know, telling people you're a wizard.”

“He has a point,” Sorge murmured, nodding.

“His head points,” Amy snapped. “Hello! Haunted house! People dying! I think at that point CB might have let you mention . . .”

Dance music drowned out her last words.

The lights came up.

Great. The ballroom.

Before he could decide what to do—should he put himself physically in front of the doors in case Brianna slipped the leash again—he heard laughing from the drawing room.

That couldn't be good.

Brenda and Hartley danced out into the hall. Like Cassie and Stephen, Brenda remained drenched in blood. Hartley had lost the duct tape and was remarkably light on his feet. Tom shuffled gracelessly behind them; his broken bones an apparent handicap.

Both men shot him somewhat sheepish looks as they passed.

“Come and dance with us,” Brenda purred over Hartley's shoulder. “Just let the music pick you up and carry you along.”

“I don't think so,” Tony snarled.

“I'm not talking to you, asshole.”

He turned and could just barely make out the translucent forms of Kate and Mouse and Lee and Mason. The shadow-held. And Brianna—whose youth made her susceptible to the other side. Currently, the side he was standing on.

“Don't let anyone leave the circle.” Loud enough to be heard over the music. Loud enough to be heard over any shouting going on back in the real world. Loud enough to be heard across the divide. Loud enough they realized he was serious. “Sit on them if you have to!”

“Leeeeeee . . .” Brenda sang the vowels. “You want to be with me, don't you? You let me die. You owe me.”

“Cheap shot,” Tony growled, placing himself between her and the actor.

She smiled; her teeth red. “He's mine, not yours.”

“You'll have to go through me to get him.”

“Through you . . .”

He stood his ground as the ghosts danced closer.

“. . . all right.”