Smoke and Mirrors (34 page)

Although a kettle steamed on the stove—had apparently been steaming while that killer tea was being served in the drawing room—the kitchen was deserted and the back door closed. Apparently closed. And apparently closed doors hadn't stopped him before. All he had to do was . . .

Problem.

Cassie had said that Henry would leave the laptop on the bucket the butts had been in, but that would mean he had to get a horizontal laptop through a vertical opening barely five centimeters wider than the laptop was deep. Someone had to hold the laptop up on its side, facing the opening.

Pity he hadn't thought of that while Cassie and Stephen were still around.

“Henry! Henry, can you hear me?”

If Graham could communicate with the ghosts of his cousins because of a blood tie, he should be able to communicate with Henry. Blood had tied them for years.

“Hen . . .”

Darkness.

And Karl.

“. . . ry!”

No answer. Or not one he could hear anyway. After all, Henry was the metaphysical being—Vampire, Nightwalker, Bloodsucking Undead—he was just a production assistant helping to put together a second-rate show at a third-rate studio. Reaching out, he trailed his fingertips over the wall, touched the edge of the doorframe, and couldn't go any farther. He leaned his weight against the barrier and almost felt the power gathering to stop him. It felt substantial.

And the vaunted wizard power of copping a feel off the thing in the basement was no friggin' help at all. Fortunately, there was another way. An already proven way.

“Cassie! Stephen! I need you in the kitchen!”

“What's wrong?”

Not the ghosts. No mistaking that brushed velvet voice. Although the lantern light throwing Lee's shadow against the door pretty much made identification a gimmie.

“The door's only open this much.” Tony held his hands about five centimeters apart as he turned. “Laptop's this wide.” His hands separated. “It's got to be up on its side or I can't get it through the space.”

“And why do you need the ghosts?”

“They can talk to the caretaker.”

“You can't talk to Henry?”

“Can't seem to.”

The borrowed T-shirt was tight. He'd seen Lee in tight T-shirts before but never in
his
tight T-shirt. It made an interesting difference where interesting referred to interest being taken independently by parts of Tony's anatomy. Dark strands of hair fell down in front of the actor's face, free of the product Everett had used to slick it back. Tony had a vague sensory memory of gripping a handful of hair as an invading tongue probed for his tonsils.

Lee's gaze bounced around the room like his eyes had been replaced by a pair of green-and-white super balls—stove, window, door, wall, cabinet, sink, floor, ceiling—alighting everywhere but on Tony's face. “Look, about what happened; I uh . . . I mean it was . . . There was just . . . Brenda . . .”

And then he stopped.

And by the way,
Brenda?
Thanks for bringing her up. Nothing like being the substitute for a dead wardrobe assistant.

Tony was half inclined to let Lee sweat. Fortunately, his better half won—but only because the part of his brain connected to his dick thought that a sweaty Lee Nicholas was a good idea and he was trying to discourage it. “You were freaked. I get it. It's cool.” Rush to finish before Lee could protest. Or agree. Or say anything else at all. “But if we
have
to figure out what was going on . . .” With luck, his tone made his preference clear. The last thing he wanted to do was sit down with Lee and discuss
feelings
. “. . . can it wait until after we get out of this house?”

Maybe relief. “And until then what? Denial?”

“Hey, we're guys—we're all about denial.”

Definitely relief. And most of a smile.

So Tony smiled back.

“I said; what do you want?”

Startled, he stepped back and brushed against Stephen's arm. The sudden cold took care of any residual “interest” and snapped his attention back to the problem at hand. “Sorry. I was . . . uh . . .”

Stephen rolled his eyes. “Don't tell me. I don't want to know.” His voice rose. “Cassie, back off! We don't want it to know we're moving around!”

“It doesn't know?” Tony asked as Cassie reluctantly lowered her hand and drifted around to check Lee out from the rear. Cassie was distracted, but Stephen sounded nervous. No, more than nervous. Afraid.

“It doesn't seem to.” He patted the front sweep of his hair with the heel of one hand. “As long as we do nothing to attract attention to ourselves, things should be okay. But it's safest in the bathroom.”

“Safest?”

“That's our place. Until Graham came, that's where we stayed. But it was asleep when we started being us again, and now it isn't.” The other hand patted down the other side of his hair. “And it's more awake now than it was. So . . .” He half shrugged, the motion not quite enough to dislodge his head. “It's already keeping us here—we can leave the bathroom, but we can't leave the house. And, you know, we keep dying. We don't want to know what else it can do.”

Made sense. “So, what attracts its attention?”

Arms folded, Stephen nodded toward his sister. “Stuff that uses energy. Anything physical, like the paint, or making it so others can see us like we did this morning.”

“Contacting your cousin?”

“No. That doesn't pull any energy from
it,
” Cassie explained finally joining them at the door. “It pulls it from Graham.”

From what Tony could remember of the caretaker, he didn't seem to have much energy to spare.

Wiping sweat off his forehead, Graham sat back on his heels and sucked in long, slow lungfuls of humid air. “This Tony kid,” he said after a moment, “he needs you to turn the laptop on its side or it won't fit through the door.”

Henry flipped the computer up on one edge. “Like this?”

“Yeah and line it up like the door was open this much.” He held his thumb and forefinger apart, both of them shaking.

“Like this.”

“Like that. Okay . . .” Wrapping one hand around the porch rail, he hauled himself up onto his feet. Henry could hear his heart racing. “I need a beer.”

“When we're done.”

“Done what? Done this? Done the next thing? Guy could die of thirst around you,” he muttered, then added quickly, his heart beating faster still. “Not that I want you to think about being thirsty.”

“You're right. You don't.”

“It's just you might be a little more sympathetic because you're still not looking a hundred percent after having been knocked on your ass and . . .”

“Shut up.” Tony was just inside the door. Less than a body length away and he might as well have been on the other side of the world. So close, the song of his blood should have been an invitation. But Henry sensed nothing but the power keeping them apart.

The power that had, as the caretaker so elegantly put it, knocked him on his ass.

The computer case creaked in his grip. It took an effort to let go and a greater effort to stop the growl rising in his throat.

When the laptop quivered, he loosened his hold further so that it barely rested against his fingers. It inched forward, stopped on the edge of the bucket, and then disappeared. Mortal eyes couldn't have seen it move, and Henry barely made out a silver blur disappearing through what seemed a solid door. His fingertips were warm and so was the galvanized metal.

After a moment, Graham sagged against the rail and started to cough. “It's like yelling across the friggin' Strait of Juan de friggin' Fuca, but I think he's got it.”

“You think?” Not quite a snarl.

“Okay, okay, he's got it.”

“Good.” Rising, Henry dusted off his knees and then moved down off the flagstone slab, moved in such a way it would be obvious to anyone watching that the power wrapped around the house gave him no trouble at all. Didn't make him want to tear through it and yank Tony free. Didn't remind him of pain.

“So.” Arms folded, feet planted shoulder-width apart in the damp gravel, CB scowled at the door. “We have done all we can.”

“You know,” Graham snorted, pivoting shakily toward the driveway, “when you make pronouncements like that, there's bugger all anyone else can say.”

“Good.”

“I can't find anything about talking to the dead.”

“How about conversing with ghosts?” When Tony glanced up, Amy shrugged. “Hey, it's all about what you punch into the search engine. Also, try necromancy.”

He frowned. “How do you spell that?”

He wasn't surprised she knew. Sitting cross-legged, the laptop on the floor in front of him, Amy on the other side of the laptop, he typed in the word.

No results.

Nothing for connecting with the dead.

Nor connecting with the spirit realm.

“I don't think there's anything in here.”

“Try spirits all by itself. Broaden your search parameters,” she added impatiently, reaching for the computer. “Give it to me, I'll do it.”

“Don't . . .”

Too late. She jerked it out from under his hands and spun it around. “Tony! You're playing spider solitaire!”

“It's a glamour!” he snapped spinning it back. “It makes you believe . . .”

“I know what a glamour is,” she told him, emphasis adding volume. “I have a complete set of
Charmed
on DVD!”

The silence that followed accompanied raised brows and general expressions of disbelief.

Amy flashed a sneer around the circle. “Hello. Vampire detective? It's not like we can claim the creative high ground here!”

Tony glanced up in time to see Mason open his mouth, but before any sound emerged, the lights came up and all he could hear was Stephen and Cassie dying while the band in the ballroom played a waltz.

“That was ‘Night and Day',” Peter told him when the house returned to lamplight and Karl. “Cole Porter wrote it for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in
The Gay Divorcee.
We all heard it this time. Well, all of us except Amy, Zev, and Ashley. Why not those three?”

“They're not Fred and Ginger fans?”

“Hey, Fred's brilliant during that number. ‘Night And Day' is one of his choreographic peaks.”

“Not the point, Zev.” Arms folded, Peter glared down at Tony. “Try again. Why not those three?”

“How would I know?” Tony was afraid the question sounded more than a little defensive. Still, a little defensive was better than the can of worms he'd open with
“Because they were never shadow-held.”

“You'd know because you know lots of things, don't you, Tony?” Kate shoved Pavin away from her with enough force that he slammed into Sorge and the two of them nearly went over. “Lots of things you never thought to tell us before people started dying.”

“I couldn't have stopped it. Any of it.”

Her lip curled. “But you're a wizard.” Bent fingers tapped out patterns in the air. “Oooo!”

“At least
he's
more than a pain in the ass,” Amy spat as she stood.

“Put another record on,” Mason drawled, shaking free of Ashley's grip. “Bitch, bitch, bitch, yap, yap, yap. Who the hell cares what he knows as long as he gets us the hell out of here before I end up spending eternity doing an undead rumba!”

“I haven't heard a . . .” Tony began, but Mason cut him off.