Smoke and Mirrors (35 page)

“It doesn't have to be a fucking rumba. Just type, okay?”

Brianna poked Zev. “What's a record?”

“It's like a great big CD.”

She snorted. “No one cool uses CDs anymore.”

“They're like from another time,” Ashley agreed with a disappointed look up through her lashes at Mason.

Tony let the argument about music downloads wash over him—on one level grateful the others were distracted. The less time they spent chewing at their situation the better, especially since they seemed to invariably end up chewing on him. Meanwhile, Ashley had given him an idea.

Time.

The replays were like pieces of time trapped by the malevolence. Mosquitoes in amber if
Jurassic Park
could be trusted. He had a certain amount of confidence about the science in one, very little in two, and none at all in three—even with the return of Sam Neil.

Time had its own folder on the laptop.

Time, Determining.

Look at watch,
he snorted and scrolled down.

Time, Keeping Track of Passage.

Time, Finding More.

Time, Traveling Through.

That might do it.
If he'd had a little more time, he could have learned more spells and been better prepared.
Ah, who am I kidding; if I'd had more time, I'd have gone clubbing.
He double-clicked and found himself staring at a single word on the screen.

Oh, ha ha.
Back a screen.

Time, in a Bottle.

Time, Speaking Through.

There were two subfolders. Speaking with the past. Speaking with the future.

He double clicked the first option.

So much for that idea.

“Okay, I found something under Elementals. Apparently, they're kind of spirits that are always around and there's a way to contact them.” He felt like a total idiot talking about this, but they'd all insisted on knowing what he was about to do.

“Secrets get people killed,”
Kate had snarled.

Even Zev had nodded.

“So I have to go to the back stairs where Lucy Lewis is in order to cast the spell.” There, he'd said it:
spell
. Could he sound any geekier? “Because I got her name from Cassie and Stephen, it should be easy enough to manage.” Where easy was a distinctly relative term. Easier than trying it without her name, one hell of a lot harder than snatching illicit snack food from Mason. “At first I thought I was going to have to work with a banishing demons spell, but . . .” Oh, crap. Did he say that out loud? Apparently, yes. “What?”

“There is a spell to banish demons on that thing?” Sorge asked, nodding toward the laptop.

“Yeah.”

“Then why haven't you banished it?”

“Banish Lucy's ghost?”

The DP rolled his eyes, hands curling into fists as he visibly searched for the English words. “Banish the thing in the basement!”

“Oh.” Good question. He only wished his answer didn't sound so much like he was scared shitless. Which he was—but the actual reason was equally valid. “Because I don't know that the thing in the basement is a demon, and if I go down there and I try to banish it and the spell doesn't work, then it knows we're on to it and we've blown our one shot. I need more information before I face the big bad. I need to know what's in Caulfield's journal.”

“Ghosts aren't elementals,” Peter informed him.

Obvious much? “I know, but . . .”

“You're using a spell for an elemental on a ghost.”

“Yeah, but I know her name, so if I slot that into the spell, it should take me to her, and if it doesn't work, there's nothing Lucy can do to me. She's just a captured image.” Totally ignoring any indication Stephen or Cassie had given to the contrary because, well, why the hell not. “If I try something in the basement and it doesn't work, I've just poked the big bad with a stick.”

“So?” Peter spread his hands like he'd be the one throwing magical energies around. “Worth trying. We're already up shit creek.”

And, hey, heads were nodding again.

They just weren't getting it.

“All right . . .” Tony reached for an explanation from their world. “. . . let's say the thing in the basement is CB in his office. His power extends through the soundstage and out onto location; he's sitting there quietly running our lives. Now, suppose someone who knows nothing about him goes into his office and pokes him with a big fucking stick! What happens to that person?”

“Is this a real stick or a metaphorical stick?” Adam asked before anyone could answer Tony's question.

“Pick one.”

“I was just wondering because if it was a real stick, it'd likely end up shoved where the sun don't shine, and if it was a metaphorical stick . . . What?” Adam glared around the circle. “Okay, if it was a metaphorical stick, it'd have the same result, only metaphorically.”

“I think he just likes saying the word,” Tina sighed.

“So,” Peter broke into the murmured round of agreement, “if you try this banishing thing on the thing in the basement and it doesn't work because you don't have the particulars, you could end up dead.”

“Yes.”

“For crying out loud, Tony, why didn't you just say so?”

He shrugged. “I didn't want to give Kate any ideas.” It sounded stupid saying it out loud and he braced himself for Kate's reaction.

To his surprise, she merely scowled and stomped across the circle to sit on the floor by Mouse, snarling, “I hate ballroom dancing.”

Under the circumstances, he couldn't blame her. “Because I've got to put myself on an elemental plane to do this . . .”

“Put yourself on a jet plane. Just stop talking about it and do it,” Mason muttered.

“. . . I need someone with me to anchor me and pull me back if I can't get back on my own.”

“Yank physically or metaphorically?”

“Adam!”

“Both.” He didn't look at Lee, but the rest of them did.

“No.” Lee shook his head, dark line of hair arcing across his face. “Not this time. I just . . . I mean . . .” Arms folded across the borrowed T-shirt, he stared down at the polished toes of his shoes. “Between the baby and the music, I can't . . . That is, I might . . .” The sound he made was far too dark to be called laughter. “I don't fucking know what I'm likely to do.”

And he, in turn, was so very definitively
not
looking at Tony that every head swiveled around like they were forcing a tennis match between two players who refused to step onto the court.

“What happened in the kitchen?” Peter asked suspiciously.

“Nothing!”

Pavin rolled his eyes. “Tony probably put some kind of faggot whammy on him.”

Zev handed Brianna over to Tina and stood. “Watch who you're calling a faggot.”

“Trust you guys to stick together!” The sound tech rolled his eyes. “You know why faggots stick together? Not using enough lube.”

It could have gone either way.

Tony could feel the darkness outside the circle of lamplight waiting. Waiting for anger. Waiting for pain.

Then Zev laughed. He glanced over at Tony, who had a sudden X-rated memory of a Sunday afternoon, a distinct lack of planning, and the less than adequate contents of his refrigerator.

It was fairly obvious what they were laughing about, at least in a general sense. First Amy, then Adam, then one after another the others joined in. Lee laughed last and when Tony caught a glimpse of his face, the word that came immediately to mind was,
“Actor.”

The laughter edged toward hysteria but never quite crossed the line.

“God, no wonder you two broke up,” Amy gasped at last. “You're too warped to sustain a relationship.”

“I don't get it,” Brianna complained.

And that set everyone off again.

At least Tony thought it did. Right about then, the lights came up.

The music from the ballroom didn't seem as loud, but that might have been wishful thinking. Entirely too clichéd for laughter to be the solution.

When he got back, Peter had come to a decision.

“Amy's going with you this time. The girls don't want Zev to leave . . .”

Whole conversations Tony was just as glad he wasn't around for in
that
statement.

“. . . and there's no one else . . .”

“Hey!”

“. . . except for Ashley, who has any kind of resistance to this place. We don't want to lose you.” One corner of Peter's mouth curled up as Kate growled the expected denial into the deliberate pause, then he continued, “Once you find out how we can fight the thing in the basement, get back here as quickly as you can. We're all getting just a little tired of this.”

“And bored!” Brianna added, rocking from side to side, arms rolled up in her pinafore. “Bored. Bored. Bored. The walls don't even bleed.”

“Hey,” Mason glared down at her. “How about you don't give this place any ideas.”

“Hey,” Zev repeated, glaring up at the actor. “How about you don't give
her
the idea that she can give this place ideas!”

Amy took hold of Tony's arm with one hand and waggled the second lantern with the other. “Hey, how about we get out of here.”

“Sounds good.”

They'd gone about five meters when Adam yelled, “Follow the yellow brick road! Ow! What? They're off to see the wizard.”

“They're off with the wizard, you moron.”

“Don't turn around,” Amy sighed as the girls began singing “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead.” “You'll only encourage them. Zev's got a good voice, though,” she added thoughtfully a moment later when Zev joined the song.

“Yeah,
that
I knew.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” The emphasis had tied the comment to a previous conversation with Lee. He'd expected Lee to be at his side. Sure, they'd been thrown together in more than an actor/production assistant kind of way by a homicidal piece of architecture, but they'd been connecting. Amy was a friend, but he'd still rather have had Lee. . . .

Oh, crap
.

Wizards affect the energies around them.
That was what Arra always said. Well, she'd said it once anyway. He was a wizard—since he was heading off to do wizardry, it seemed a little pointless to deny it—but he was untrained. Maybe he was affecting the energies around Lee without even realizing it. Warping reality to fit his own desires.

“You're thinking about Lee, aren't you?”

“You can tell?”

“Duh. You're wearing your patented ‘thinking about Lee' expression. One part panic, two parts horny. It's totally obvious.”

Great.

“I don't want to leave the bathroom.”

“What?” Cassie stared at her brother in disbelief. “One of the first things you said when Graham called us back to ourselves was that you hated this place.”

“That was then, Cass. That was before it was awake. I don't want it to notice us.”

“It can't . . .”

“It might.” He took her hands and led her over to the tub, pushing her gently until she sat down on the edge. Then he dropped to his knees and laid his head on her lap. “I know we're dead, but we're not like the rest—we're not just mindlessly haunting the place we died. We're aware. Of things. Of each other. If it found out, it could take that away. I don't want to risk that. I don't want to stop being.”