Smoke and Mirrors (49 page)

The box was by the other door.
Sugar rush,
he thought as she raced toward it.
Use it wisely.

“So he's like physically stuck to the wall?” Amy wondered as Brianna raced back with a double handful of packages.

“No. It's more like he took himself down to his component atoms and mixed them with the power he'd already trapped on the wall.”

“Component atoms?” Peter looked hopeful. “So there's a scientific explanation for all this?”

Pouring more sugar into the water, Tony wondered what explanation Peter had been listening to. “Not a chance. Caulfield was a wizard, although he doesn't like the word. Instead of an Arra, he found the wrong book.”

“If there's a book, then there must have been other wizards.”

“Yeah, I'm not unique. It sucks to be me.” He took a swallow of the sugar water, made a face, and took another. “The way I see it, I have two options. I join with Caulfield to save you all, hoping that something outside the house will be able to stop our combined power before it destroys the mainland and kills everyone living on it.” And everyone unliving on it. Caulfield didn't know about Henry now, but he would the moment Tony joined up. “Everyone means you lot as well,” he added.

“So if you go join up now,” Tina said thoughtfully, “you're not really saving us, just delaying the inevitable.”

“Yeah.” He took another swallow. “Sucks to be you, too.”

“And the second option?” Zev prodded.

“We destroy Caulfield. We remove the writing on the wall. We disperse the power.”

Amy closed the journal. “You mean destroy the power.”

“I mean disperse. You can't destroy energy, you can only change it.” He glanced around the room. There were half a dozen degrees in here; one of them had to have been in something useful. “Right?”

“He's right,” Saleen answered. Pavin nodded agreement.

“Great. So how do you destroy Caulfield?” Amy asked. “Snatch him away from the power?”

“He's not in this reality anymore. I can't touch him.”

“Use the flypaper on your hand to grab him.”

“Flypaper?”

She shrugged. “Roach motel, flypaper; amounts to the same thing.”

Tony glanced down at the mark and thought of how much it would hurt to snatch up a handful of Creighton Caulfield. Good thing his pants were already wet. “I can't. If I get too close, he'll pull me in.”

“So you need something out of this reality that can destroy him from a distance?” When he nodded, Amy snorted. “Good luck.”

“You have an idea,” Zev said softly, eyes locked on Tony's face. “But you don't like it much.”

Flexing his left hand, Tony grinned at his ex. “I don't like it at all. But I think it'll work.”

“All right.” Peter's tone suggested he was bringing up a point that they'd all missed. “How do you destroy Caulfield without him hurting Lee?”

“I'm going to need a little help with that.”

“We're here for you,” Amy declared. Most heads nodded.

“Not from you guys,” he said as the drawing room replay began and he was alone in the pantry with that damned plate of tea cakes. “I'm playing a wild card.” Because they could still hear him, he explained.

“. . . the paint's buried in our gear in the library,” he finished as the lantern light came up again. “So it's going to have to be dug out.”

“Saleen, Pavin . . .” Peter jerked his head toward the door. “Take the other lantern, get the paint.”

“On it!”

“They'll need to pull energy from something,” Tony said as the door closed. “Someone.”

Amy raised her hand and waved it. “I volunteer!”

No one looked surprised.

“It might be dangerous.”

“Please.” Her grin widened. “Danger is my middle name.”

“I thought your middle name was . . .”

“And unless you want your e-mail address written on the wall of every virtual truck stop on the Web, you'll hold that thought.”

“What's your plan for removing the writing on the wall?” Tina asked before Tony'd entirely decided that would be a bad thing.

“Don't have one exactly.” He shrugged. “But there's a lot of water down there.”

“No.” Tina shook her head. “Water won't work. Not on ancient bloodstains. Trust me on this; I have two sons who grew up playing rugby.”

“The cleaner.” All eyes turned to Sorge. “The cleaner we use to clean off the blood on the walls in the upstairs bathroom. During the scenes the girls do!” he expanded when no one seemed to get it. “We splash the walls with the fake blood, but we have to clean it off again. The cleaner, she is guarantee to cut through anything. Old. New. Fake. Real. There are six different warning on the label about the contents.”

“And you sprayed that around the girls?” Zev asked him, visibly appalled.

Sorge looked affronted. “Not me. I don't clean locations, I design fantastic scenes that are ignored during award times. But there is a spray bottle also with the gear in the library.”

“Sounds like it'll work. Thanks, Bri.” Tony accepted another bottle of sugared water from the girl and frowned. “Crap. I won't be able to spray the wall.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “And why not?”

“He's not sure he'll survive destroying Caulfield.”

Attention flicked from Zev—who stood arms folded—to Tony, who was looking pretty much anywhere but at Zev.

“Is that true?” Peter asked him.

“I should survive.” Another long swallow helped him ignore Zev's expression. “I just won't be in any condition to do much else, so someone needs to be available to haul my ass out of the water.”

“Me.”

Surprised, Tony glanced over at Mouse. Thought of the last time the big man's hands had been on him. Banished the thought. “You sure you're okay?”

The cameraman shot a wary glance at the journal and nodded. “And Lee?”

“Yeah, he'll likely need to be hauled as well.”

Adam stepped forward. “That'll be me, then.”

“Good. Okay, now for the spray . . .”

“Hello!” Amy waved her hand.

“No. Mouse and Adam can charge in after the fact, but whoever is spraying is going to have to be with me. Close to the thing. If we don't do this at the same time, I'm not positive that one half of that thing can't heal the other. Besides, you've already got something to do.”

Her lower lip went out. “Well, yeah, but I'll be done by then.”

“You might also be unconscious.”

She perked up at the thought. “There is that.”

“Me.”

“You're . . .”

Peter folded his arms. “In charge. I'm there to see that the thing keeps its half of the bargain and lets my costar go.”

“I don't know . . .”

“I do.” Zev moved closer to Tony. “It should be me.”

“Zev, Peter's plan might . . .”

“We have history. I've come with you to say good-bye. Caulfield's a product of his time as well as his ambition; first of all, two men are going to throw him off and second, he's not going to consider another fag to be a danger to him. You're going to need all the edge you can get.”

“Actually, yeah.” He sighed. Did it make him a bad person if he'd rather have Peter in danger than Zev or just a good friend? “We could throw Caulfield a bit off his game. But the bottle . . .”

“Will be duct taped to his back.” Mason included them all in his smile. “Episode eight. That asshole who tried to stake me in my own office had the stake duct taped to his back.”

“Oh, for the love of God, Mason . . .” Peter paused, reconsidered, and started again. “Mason, that didn't work.”

“Because I saw the reflection of the stake in the mirror. There are no mirrors in the basement and that thing sure as hell isn't Raymond Dark.”

All Zev would have to do was walk across the basement by his side. He wouldn't have to turn. He wouldn't ever expose his back. Tony swallowed more sugar water. “Damn. That might just work.”

“Don't tell the writers,” Peter muttered. Tina snickered, then stroked Ashley's hair as she stirred.

“One problem.” Mouse scowled at no one in particular. “No duct tape.”

No duct tape? Well, that was practically unCanadian. “The electrical . . .”

“No.” Sorge shook his head. “If we wrap electrical tape so it holds a bottle, Zev won't be able to get it off.”

“You need duct tape? Why don't you use some of mine?”

Positions shifted until everyone could stare down at Kate sitting propped and taped against a lower cabinet.

“You chewed through another gag?” Amy sounded impressed.

“Please.” She spit a bit of damp fabric to one side.

“My boyfriend is a terrible cook; I've eaten worse and smiled while I did it.”

Two napkins down, Tony had no doubt that she'd eaten anything set in front of her. The smiling part was giving him a little trouble, though. “Used duct tape . . .”

Kate snorted. “Will work fine. It'll peel off itself just like it does off the roll. You'll lose the layer that's against me, but that's all. And stop bloody worrying,” she snapped as no one stepped forward. “Sitting around with our thumbs up our collective butts while people get possessed and other people die makes me kind of cranky, but I'm fine now. We have a plan.”

“You still sound cranky,” Tina pointed out.

“Always sounds cranky,” Mouse grunted.

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered as he pulled open his pocketknife and knelt by her feet. “Bite me, you big rodent. One more thing, though. The tape's not going to stick to fabric. It'll have to be attached to . . .”

Mouse pulled the final layer of tape off skin.

“. . . son of a fucking bitch! . . . Zev.”

Zev looked understandably less than thrilled. “If it's under my shirt, how will I reach it?”

“We'll have to cut the back of your shirt away. Tina . . .”

Tina pulled a pair of nail scissors out of her purse and handed them up to Amy who advanced on the music director's shirt with a gleam in her eyes.

“And then we'll tape down the edges of your shirt so it doesn't flap and then we tape the bottle to you.”

“Is a big bottle,” Sorge observed with a grin. “Why don't you just stuff the bottom down the back of his pants?”

Amy paused in her advance, glared at the DP, and handed Tina back the scissors. “Well, aren't you just a big bunch of no fun at all.”

The door leading to the dining room opened. Saleen came in first carrying the paint followed by Pavin with the lantern. “We got it.”

“Great.” Peter smiled approvingly at them. “Set it down and go back for a spray bottle of cleaner.”

“We didn't see any spray bottles.”

“It's in there.” Sorge walked the length of the butler's pantry and paused with his hand on the door. “Come. I'll go with you.”

Pavin held out the lantern. “Why don't you go by yourself?”

“I don't want to. Come on. Varamous.”

“That's not French,” Saleen muttered as he set the can of paint on the counter and turned to follow Sorge and the sound tech out of the room.

“Me, I'm a man of many talents,” the DP said as the door closed.

Tony drained the last of the sugar water and slid off the counter. “Okay. Open the paint can and then put it outside the door in the kitchen. Amy, wait by the can. When the guys get back with the cleaner, Zev and Adam and Mouse get ready to meet me by the basement door. Wait until you hear me coming down the back stairs and then move. Delays will be . . .” He could feel sweat dribbling down his sides. “. . . not good. Make sure the spray bottle is on a tight, hard spray—all we have to do is cut through the blood pattern, break it up. We don't have to completely erase it. The rest of you . . . If this goes completely to hell, the pattern on the floor will keep anything from coming in; you'll have the laptop and the candles for light and all you have to do is stick it out until morning.”

“What if Caulfield sucks you in?” Amy asked.

“You die and I spend eternity as part of a three for one that even our writers would consider over the top, where the other two parts are a hundred-year-old naked homophobe and evil waxy buildup.”

Amy's smile came nowhere near her eyes. “Dead sounds better.”

“Yeah, no shit.”