Smoke and Mirrors (53 page)

“Know?”

“I'm betting that Tony Foster is in the thick of it.”

“Of what, Jack?”

“Yeah, that's the question.” He sighed, unfolded his arms, and folded them again the other way. “I hate it when I know there's
something
and I don't know what it is.”

She turned and stared at the three silhouettes on the path. “Bet you we could find something if we ran Graham Brummel.”

“Sucker bet.”

“A few misdemeanors, that's all. Nothing big. Oh, and a fraud charge down in Seattle that got tossed.” Graham exhaled loudly. “Never take financial tips from a dead guy.” A quick glance at Henry. “No offense.”

“As, technically, I'm not dead; none taken.”

“What? You're not dead? I thought you guys, you know . . .” He stuck out his tongue and let his head fall to one side. Before Henry could respond to an image unlike that of any unanimated death he'd ever seen, Graham jerked his head upright and said, “Wait, I should've tried this before. I just look at you on the spirit level . . .” His eyes unfocused. “Holy shit.” Skin blanched gray, he snapped back to the here and now. “You're . . .”

Henry smiled.

“Mr. Fitzroy is not our problem,” CB growled. Graham started at the sound and stuffed trembling hands deep into his overall pockets. “Our two overly diligent police officers are.” His attention landed on Henry. “Can you take their memories?”

“Wipe them out like Arra did?” Henry shook his head. “No. Even . . .” He shot a glance at the caretaker. “. . . fucked up as I am, I could make them forget me, but they'd remember terror and darkness and the night and given that they're police officers and trained to both notice and investigate things like that and because they're already looking beyond the obvious—which is rare even for the police—I can't guarantee it would hold. Unless I took them both to bed—which I suspect would cause Constable Elson more trouble than anything else he might discover.”

“Together or separately?”

A slow pivot on one heel. “Pardon?”

Graham shrugged, clearly wishing he'd kept his mouth shut and just as clearly unable to stop himself. “Would you take them to bed . . . you know, together or separately.”

“Now, I'm offended.”

“Sorry.”

“When that door opens,” CB said pointedly, “there will be at least one body, maybe more. There will be an investigation. Can Tony use Arra's information to erase the memories of the people inside the house?”

“I very much doubt it.” Since, as far as Henry knew, Tony's one sure spell involved retrieving snack food without rising from the couch, erasing multiple memories would very likely be beyond him.

“So they'll know about his abilities and during the investigation . . .”

Henry nodded. “It'll come up. Especially if it's his abilities that get them out of the house.”

“He'll either be the next amazing fucking Kreskin,” Graham sighed, “and his life'll be hell, or he'll be stuffed in a loony bin. Trust me on this,” he added when Henry and CB turned, frowning. “The world's not kind to the psychically abled. They tend to read the psychic as psycho, if you know what I mean.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Fortunately, yes,” Henry corrected deliberately. “I think we're looking at this the wrong way.” He waved the other two quiet and began to build the ending as though he were building the final chapter in one of his books. “When the doors open—at sunrise, if not before—your people will come out of the house claiming it's haunted. That they saw ghosts. That they were under an attack by a malevolent thing in the basement. They won't be able to prove any of it, though, and the general public will think they're nuts. And given that they're television people, they won't get the benefit of the doubt. Everyone knows television people are slightly crazy.”

“Is this true?” CB wondered.

Graham nodded. “Common knowledge around Hollywood North, that's for damned sure.”

“Now then, put hallucinating television people in a house with a history of gas leaks and what do you have?”

“Probable cause of crazy. What?” Graham demanded as eyebrows raised. “I watch a lot of
Law and Order
.”

“Who doesn't?” CB wearily asked the night. “Suppose my people say nothing at all about hauntings or ghosts or things in the basement? Suppose they collectively agree on a more plausible story?”

“It won't matter; even if they could agree on a story—and most groups that size can't agree on where to have lunch—there's no way they'll all be able to maintain it throughout a police investigation.”

“The truth will out?”

“And not be believed.”

His next question was less rhetorical. “Did we not use a gas leak to explain what happened at the studio last spring?”

“There's a reason it's a classic,” Henry reminded him. “And I'm guessing—given that the police know the other deaths in this house were murder/suicides—that the actual cause of your wardrobe assistant's death will be obvious. People were trapped in a house. They all went a little crazy. Someone went a lot crazy and killed someone else.”

“And that someone is probably dead, too,” Graham added. “If the house stays to the same MO.”

“So the actual crime committed becomes an open and shut case. Why did they go crazy?” Henry spread his hands. “Not our problem. What exactly caused the doors to jam shut? Also not our problem. One of the people trapped did amazing magical things? But we've already established that they all went a little crazy, so no one can be considered a reliable witness.”

“But these two . . .” Graham nodded toward the driveway. “. . . think something is up.”

“And it's one thing to tell us what they think is going on and another thing entirely to put it in an official document. They're not stupid, they've proven that already. If they find out what actually happened, who can they tell? Not only is there no empirical proof, there's no way to get it.”

“Whoa. What about you? You're walking, talking, empirical proof, eh?”

“They don't know about me.”

Graham snorted. “You're standing right there.” As Henry's eyes darkened again, he backed up a step. “Oh. Right. They don't
know
about you. And no one who does is going to say anything. Not a word. Lips are sealed. Hey, I talk to the dead; who am I to point fingers, right?”

“Right.” The masks were back in place. The smile held only the faintest hint of warning. “Given that there's been a death, the sooner the police are involved, the better our people . . .” CB's people except for Tony. “. . . your people . . . look. And given that these particular police are already somewhat sympathetic to the situation . . .”

“Sympathetic?” CB growled.

“To the situation,” Henry repeated. “And if they do mention anything about hauntings, well, there's no faster way for anything else they say to lose credibility with the powers that be.” A quick glance at the house. “The judicial powers that be.”

“Yeah and what about the press?” Graham demanded. “Friggin' tabloids'll be all over something like this.”

Henry glanced up at CB, one eyebrow cocked. After a moment, CB smiled. “Of course. Given the right slant, this may even provide
Darkest Night
with a bonanza of free publicity. May even jump our ratings. If there's a chance that ghosts are real, why not vampires?”

“You might want to go easy with that.”

“Of course.”

TONY REGAINED
consciousness slowly, pulled out of a comforting darkness by the suspicion that while he was gone, people had been sticking red hot needles into the left side of his body. When he forced his eyes open, Brianna's face swam into focus.

“He's awake!” she yelled without turning her head.

Amy's face appeared almost immediately behind her. “You okay?”

“Maybe. You?”

“I didn't even go out.” She sounded disappointed. “I just got woozy. Define maybe.”

“Define okay.”

“Not about to kick it.”

Fair enough. “Not sure,” he told her in turn. “Help me sit up.”

Relying on Amy and Brianna's help, he ended up slumped against familiar lower cabinets. Still in the butler's pantry, then. Not good. Expressions on the half circle of faces staring down at him seemed to support that conclusion.

“The doors are still locked.” The voice of doom from above.

He blinked up at Peter. “It didn't work?”

“Worked,” Mouse told him before Peter could say anything more. “Caulfield's rotting. The wall's clean. Cleaner,” he amended, clearly remembering he was speaking of a fieldstone foundation.

Peter's lips were thin, white lines. “But the doors are still locked.”

“Okay.” Tony managed to raise his right hand. “Let me think about this. Caulfield's gone . . .”

Mouse shot a hard look at Peter and nodded.

“. . . the symbols that held the accumulated power to that specific spot on the basement wall are gone . . . Lee!”

“Lee's fine,” Zev told him, handing him a bottle of water. “All right, he's not exactly fine, but he's back. He's himself. Tina and Mason and Ashley are . . . dealing with him.”

Comforting. Zev had been going to say comforting, but changed it to dealing at the last moment. Tony could see another pair of legs in dark trousers tucked in behind Mason, but he couldn't see Lee. He wasn't sure he wanted to see Lee as long as he knew Lee was fine. Back. Himself.

“Lee is not your concern,” Peter interrupted his train of thought, looking thoroughly pissed. “Your job is to figure out why the hell the doors are still locked!”

“Right.” He could do that. It would keep him from thinking about Lee. Stalling for time while he got things straight in his head, he took a swallow of water and almost spat it out. Zev had dumped sugar into it. “Okay,” he muttered, shooting his ex a
thanks for the warning
glare. “The power was cohesive down there for a long time. Maybe it stayed together even without the symbols—maybe it chose to stay together. It was definitely a separate thing from Caulfield, so maybe it had a kind of consciousness. It could go wandering off through the city, but it's choosing to stay as a part of this house.”

“Why?”

The lights came up. The band played “Night and Day.” In the ballroom, the dead danced.

“Because the house is feeding it,” Tony sighed, knowing that although they couldn't see him, they could still hear him. “The ghosts are still trapped.”

“If it's not trying to add us to the collection anymore, then we just sit tight and wait it out.” Peter glared at Mason and Mouse who did their best to look sane. Kate glared back. “It can't be that long until sunrise.”

“Probably not.” Not knowing was making Tony a little edgy. Edgier. Was Henry still outside?

“They're not our responsibility; they've been dead for years.”

It took Tony a moment to realize just who
they
were and switch back over to the problems inside the house. After four-hundred-and-fifty-odd years—some of these later ones, very odd—Henry knew enough to get out of the sun. “Brenda and Hartley and Tom are trapped, too.”

“You know, we only have your word for that.”

“And mine.” Brianna folded her arms, every line of her body daring Peter to argue. “I danced with her.”

“Fine.” He sighed impatiently. “Brenda, Hartley, and Tom are trapped, too.”