Smoke and Mirrors (7 page)

The run-through necessitated a few adjustments in the crowd and their reactions.

“What the hell was that?”

“Astonishment?” the party-goer offered, cheeks flushed.

“Are you asking me?” Peter sighed. “Because if you are, I'd have to say it looked more like indigestion. Gear it down.”

The girl divided her attention between the room in general and Lee, smiling in his direction like she knew a secret.

“Let's roll tape on this one.” Peter disappeared behind the monitor and Adam moved out onto the floor.

“Quiet, please! Let's settle, people!” He glanced over the crowd and, when he was satisfied, yelled, “Rolling!”

Tony, along with nearly everyone else in a headset, repeated the word. It sounded in the hall outside the drawing room, at the craft services table in the kitchen, maybe even out at the trailers. Then Kate—because CB's budgets never quite extended as far as
second
assistant camera—stepped forward and called the slate.

“Scene three, take one! Mark!”

The boy standing next to the girl who'd been talking to Lee jumped at the crack.

Tony frowned. And he
was
a boy, too. Although his evening clothes fit him like they'd been made for him, he had to be at least ten years younger than anyone else in the room. Well, it wouldn't be the first time someone on the crew had snuck a relative or two in. As long as they behaved themselves, CB was all in favor of extras he didn't have to pay. It wasn't that these two weren't behaving themselves, it was just . . . Actually, Tony had no idea what it was about them that kept drawing his attention. Except maybe that Lee had been paying attention to them.

Lee and Mason had barely reached the fireplace when Peter broke off a quiet discussion with Sorge and yelled cut.

“It's no good.” Coming out from behind the monitors, he pulled off his headset. “The mirror over the fireplace is flaring out. Sharyl!”

“Yeah?”

“We're going to need to use some hair spray. Tony, take care of it. Meanwhile, Mason, as you come in . . .”

The end of the suggestion was lost as Tony moved away from the director. He reached Sharyl just ahead of a mascara failure and a lipstick problem.

“I swear it's so hot under those lights, it's melting right off my lashes.”

“It's actually comfortable where I am, but I can't help chewing my lips while we wait.”

Lipstick Problem had been standing near the girl-who'd-been-talking-to-Lee and the boy-who-was-younger.

And why do I care?
Tony wondered as he took the offered hair spray with a nod of thanks. He could reach the bottom half of the mirror from the hearth, but the whole area was so supersized he'd need a little help for the rest. The ladders that had been used to set the lights were out in the hall, but maneuvering one through a crowded drawing room would be time consuming. Figuring Peter would appreciate him thinking of and then saving production time, he snagged the director's chair on the way past and set it on the hearth.

The trick was to spray on a nice even coat. Enough to cut the glare but not so much that the audience wondered what the hell was on the glass. And he should probably move the chair in order to safely reach the other end of the mirror.

Plastic bottle of hair spray in his right hand, thumb on the pump, left hand gripping the mantel, he leaned way out and just for an instant dropped his gaze below the line of application.

There.

In the reflection of the far side of the room.

The boy-who-was-younger was in a loose white shirt. Well, white except for the splashes of what had to be blood—had to be because a huge triangular cut in the right side of his neck looked as though it just missed decapitating him. The girl-who'd-been-talking-to-Lee was wearing a summer dress, one strap torn free, the whole fitted bodice as well as her bare shoulders stained a deep crimson. She was also short the top left quarter of her head—her face missing along the nose and out one cheekbone, her left eye completely gone.

He twisted around.

Now that he'd seen them, the glamour—or whatever the nonwizard, dead-people equivalent was called—no longer worked.

Nearly headless. Chunk of face missing.

Their eyes—all three of them—widened as they somehow realized he could see them as they were, not as they appeared. Actually, he kind of suspected his expression was giving the whole thing away.

The vanishing . . . not entirely unexpected.

The chair tipping sideways, as gravity won out and he headed for the floor . . . he had to admit he'd been kind of expecting that, too.

Then a strong hand closed around his arm and yanked him back onto his feet. He fought to find his balance, won the fight, and turned to look down into a pair of concerned green eyes.

“Are you all right, Tony?” Lee asked, one hand still loosely clasped around Tony's bicep. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“TONY! THE
mirror!”

Right, the mirror. The mirror where he'd just seen the dead up and animate—or as animate as any extras ever were between shots. Oh, fuck . . . the extras! If that feeling wasn't his blood actually running cold, it was pretty damned close—kind of a sick feeling in his stomach that moved out to his extremities so quickly he thought he might hurl. Traditionally, the presence of extras right before disaster meant a high body count and dead people in the drawing room certainly seemed like an accurate harbinger of disaster to Tony.

He stared at their reflections in the small part of the mirror still clear of hair spray. They all seemed oblivious to their fate.
Might as well dress them in red shirts now and get it over with!

“Tony!”

He twisted around to see the first assistant director staring up at him in annoyance.

“Finish spraying the damned mirror!”

It might be damned, he supposed. Damned could explain why it showed dead people. . . .

“Tony?”

Tony looked down into Lee's concerned face and forced his brain to start working again. It wasn't as if these were the first ghosts he'd ever seen. Okay, technically, he hadn't seen the last set—he'd only heard them screaming—but he
was
used to metaphysical pop-ups. Hell, he used to sleep with one. “Can I talk to you for a minute? I mean . . .” A gesture took in the chair, the mirror, and the plastic bottle of hair spray. “. . . when I'm done.”

Dark brows drew in, and Lee glanced back at Peter still talking to Mason. “Sure.”

Directing Mason—or rather, Mason's ego—took time.

A moment later, Tony was back on the floor. “Those two kids you were talking to . . .” At Lee's suddenly closed expression, he paused. “It's okay, I'm not going to get them into trouble. I know they weren't supposed to be in the scene.” Hello, understatement. “I just wondered who they were.”

Lee considered it—considered Tony—for a moment then he shrugged. “They're Mr. Brummell's niece and nephew. Cassie, short for Cassandra, which she informed me was a stupid, old-fashioned name, and Stephen. They were . . . well,
she
was just so thrilled at being here that I didn't have the heart to turn them in. I warned them that they had to stay in the background, though.”

“Yeah, I saw you positioning them. You didn't notice anything strange?”

“Strange?”

“About the way they looked.”

“Only that they were younger than everyone else in the room. I'd say mid-to-late teens, no older.”

And not going to get any older either.
All right. We're shooting an episode
about
a haunted house
in
a haunted house and that sort of thing never ends well. Real dead people not so big on the happy ending. So what do I do? I get everyone
out
of the haunted house. And how do I do that?

Production assistants had about as much power as . . . well, bottom line, they didn't have any power. None. Nada. Zip. And zilch.

He had to call the boss. Since CB remembered the shadows and the Shadowlord, CB would believe him. Announcing to anyone else that he'd seen a ghost—two ghosts—would result in ridicule at best.
“A ghost?”
He could hear the broad sarcasm in Peter's voice.
“Why don't you go see if they'll work for scale; I'm sure CB would appreciate the savings.”

Come to think of it, CB
would
appreciate the savings. And he wouldn't be too happy about losing his chance to shoot in a house he'd already paid a week's rent on. Maybe he could get CB to agree to put the ghosts in the show. They clearly wanted to be involved; maybe official ghost status would be enough to placate them.

“You're going to exhaust the hamster.”

“What?”

Lee grinned. “The hamster running around on that wheel in your head. You're trying to figure out how to keep those kids out of trouble, aren't you?”

Close enough. “Yeah.”

“Don't worry about it. I'll put in a good word for them.
Darkest Night
isn't quite a solo act no matter what Mason seems to think.” They turned together to look at the clump of people grouped around the actor who was standing, arms crossed, glaring at Peter. “You might tell them to keep out of his way, though.”

Sure, I'll hold a séance and get right on that.
Even if he got hold of CB, how was he supposed to get hold of the ghosts? Glancing around the room, he doubted there was a medium among all the size twos.

“Want to share the joke?” Lee asked as Tony snickered.

He did. And as bad a joke as it was, he even thought that Lee would appreciate it—right up until the back story killed the laughs. As he hesitated, Lee's expression changed; closing in on itself until the open, curious, friendly expression was gone and all that remained was the same polite interest he showed the rest of the world.

“Never mind. I should get back to work before we end up keeping the extras over their four-hour minimum.”

Tony couldn't think of a thing to say as Lee flashed him the same smile he'd flashed a thousand cameras and walked away. An opportunity missed . . . An opportunity for what, he had no idea—but he couldn't shake the notion that he'd just dropped the ball in a big way.

A sudden soft pressure against his shins drew his gaze off Lee's tuxedo-clad back and toward the floor. The caretaker's black cat made another pass across his legs.

“Tony!” Ear jack dangling against his shoulder, Adam approached the fireplace. “You get that mirror done?”

He held up the plastic bottle. “It's covered.” “Good. Clean your grubby footprints off Peter's chair, put it back behind the monitors, and . . .” His head dropped forward and he stared at the cat now rubbing against his jeans. “Where the hell did this animal come from?”

“I think it belongs to Mr. Brummel, the caretaker; he was holding it earlier.”

“Then grab it and get it back to him. The last thing we need is an unattended animal running around.”

One of the extras shrieked with laughter. Both men turned in time to see Mason moving his mouth away from her throat.

“
Another
unattended animal,” Adam added wearily, shoving the ear jack back where it belonged. “He's got a bed in his dressing room, doesn't he?”

“It's a bedroom.”

“Right. Let's move it with the cat, then; we've got to do what we can to get these people out of here before he talks her into a nooner.”

Given that it was the woman who'd put the moves on him in the kitchen, Tony suspected “You want to?” would probably be conversation enough. He bent and wrapped his hands tentatively around the cat. It squeezed through his grip, skittered about six feet away, sat down, and licked its butt.

“Adam . . . ?” Peter's voice.

“Tony's got it.” Adam's answer.

A fine sentiment but less than truthful—every time he got close enough for another grab, the cat moved. Once or twice, his fingertips ghosted over soft fur, but that was it. As amber eyes glanced back mockingly and four legs performed a diagonal maneuver impossible on two, he had no doubt the cat was playing to its snickering audience. At least it seemed to be moving toward the small door in the back corner of the drawing room.

The library,
he thought, as the cat slipped through the half-open door and disappeared.
I'll just close the door and the cat'll be out of our hair.
A sudden burst of static clamped his left hand to his head.
Son of a bitch!

Yeah, well, nothing harder to get out than cat pisstnk on sffft. He sighed and kept going.

In spite of the rain, the two long windows to his left let in enough daylight for him to see the cat moving purposefully across the room toward the other door. He could understand why it didn't want to linger. The empty shelves didn't feel empty. They felt as though the books they'd held had left a dark imprint that lingered long after the books themselves were gone. The only piece of furniture in the room was a huge desk and a chair in the same red-brown wood. Tony had overheard Chris telling Adam that it had belonged to Creighton Caulfield himself. The fireplace shared a chimney with the drawing room and over the dark slab of mantel was a small, rectangular mirror framed in the same dark wood. Tony made a point of not looking in it. If there were ghosts in the library, he didn't want to know.