Smoke and Shadows (8 page)

“A host? What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. The shadows are his spies, his advance scouts. They're simple creations at first, but he uses the information they bring him to make each successive sending more complex. Nikki Waugh's death will allow him to tailor a very complex shadow indeed.”

Tony's brow furrowed. “He can make a shadow that can take over a person?”

“Yes.”

“A person here?”

“Yes. Here is where the gate is and these shadows—unlike the simpler versions—can't travel far.”

“Close the gate permanently.”

“Research seems to indicate that the gate can only be manipulated from the originating world.”

“Research seems to indicate?” he repeated incredulously.

Fair enough, that
had
sounded a bit pompous. “It was one of the few things my order discovered that they were certain of,” she clarified.

“All right. Fine. If you can't close the gate, then stop the shadow!”

Arra sighed. She lifted her head, met his gaze squarely, and, although it would weaken what she hoped to accomplish here, lied. “I can't.”

“You can't?”

“The Shadowlord was not affected by anything we threw at him.” And back to the truth. Such a small lie, like a single dropped stitch, could hopefully be ignored. Not that hope was something she had in great supply of late. The important thing was that all of Tony Foster's questions be answered. That his curiosity be satisfied.

“I have to do something.”

“I'm getting that impression.” The pencil lines were gone and nothing remained on the paper but a little pile of eraser leavings, dark with lifted graphite.

“I'm
going
to do something!” Pivoting on one rubber heel, he stomped back toward the stairs—young, defiant, and dead sooner rather than later if he interfered.

At least that was the reason she gave herself as she carefully lifted the sketch pad toward her mouth. And paused.

There was always the chance that his friend, the Nightwalker, would notice her work. Although it was coming to an end, she liked the life she'd built for herself here in this new world and the last thing she wanted was to be noticed by those who lived in Mystery.

Well, actually not the
last
thing she wanted . . .

One step from the top of the basement stairs, as his hand reached out for the door handle, Arra murmured, “Forget,” and blew the top sheet of paper clean.

Tony stood by the basement door and realized he felt a lot better about things. The questions that had been gnawing at him seemed to have lost their teeth. Nikki Waugh was still dead and that truly sucked, but there was nothing he could do to bring her back so maybe, just maybe, he should let her go.

“Hey!”

He let Amy's beckoning finger pull him across the office.

“What were you doing downstairs?”

“Downstairs?”

She rolled her eyes. “In the basement. The dungeon. The wizard's workshop.”

“Wizard?” Something waved from the edge of memory; gone when he tried to work out exactly what it was.

“Duh. CB's own special effects wizard. Arra. Short old broad who blows things up.” Artificially dark brows drew in. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. I'm . . .”

The shrill demand of the phone cut him off. “Don't go anywhere,” Amy ordered as she lifted the receiver. “We're not done. CB Productions.” Her voice dropped nearly an octave. “Where the hell are you? It
does
matter, Gerald, because you were supposed to deliver that replacement coffin pillow today!”

Shaking his head, Tony propped a hip on her desk. Welcome to the macabre world of vampire television.

He jumped as Adam's voice blared from his ear jack and bounced around his skull a couple of times. Cheeks flushed—he hadn't overreacted like that since his first week on the job—he reached for his radio muttering, “The volume control on this thing is totally fucked,” just in case Amy or anyone else in the office had seen. Then, dropping his mouth to the microphone: “Go ahead, Adam.”

“
If Lee's up to it, we're ready for him on the set.”

Tony glanced at his watch. Nikki's body had been out of the building for just over an hour. An hour? That seemed . . .

“Yeah. Sorry. Uh, what if Lee's not up to it?”

The 1AD snorted.
“Peter says you're to get him up to it but I'm not touching that. Just do what you can to get him back out here. Losing a day won't bring Nikki back.”

“The show must go on?”

Death came, death went, and it was amazing how fast everything got back to normal. He waved a hand in front of Amy's face and pointed toward the exit.

She nodded. “No, we don't need it immediately, but that's not the point . . .”

Shadow following, Tony headed for the dressing rooms.

For all his bulk, Chester Bane knew how to remain unnoticed. If being Chester Bane meant bluster, then a lack of bluster meant a lack of Chester Bane. He stood silently just inside his open door and watched the door leading out of the production office swing closed.

Tony Foster had been in the basement.

The one good thing about finding a dead body was that the rest of the day, no matter how mired in suckage, could only get better. That was the theory anyway, but by quitting time, Tony figured no one could prove it by him. He had to talk to someone about this.

Someone.

Yeah. Right. There was only one person he
could
talk to about this.

Although he hadn't lived at the condo for almost eighteen months, he still had his keys. He'd tried to give them back, to cut the final tie but Henry, his eyes dark, had refused to take them.

The place was a little neater without him, but nothing else had changed since he'd left. “Henry?”

“Bedroom.”

Henry slept in the smallest of the three bedrooms, the easiest one to close off with painted plywood and heavy curtains against the day. He wasn't there now, so Tony continued down the hall. Henry
slept
in the smallest bedroom but he kept his clothes in the walk-in closet attached to the master suite. For a dead guy, Henry Fitzroy had a lot of clothes.

He paused in the doorway and watched the vampire preen in front of the mirror. Popular culture had gotten a few minor details wrong. Vampires had reflections and, if Henry was any indication, they spent a significant slice of eternity checking them out. “The pants are great, but strawberry blonds can't wear that shade of red. The shirt doesn't work.”

“You're sure?”

“Trust me. I'm gay.”

“You have a gold ring through your eyebrow.”

“And it clashes with nothing.”

“You're wearing plaid flannel.”

“I'm getting in touch with my inner lesbian.” Tony pointed toward the discarded clothing on the bed. “Try the blue.”

Henry stripped off the shirt, yanked a cream-colored sweater off the pile, and dragged it over his head.

“Or not.” Grinning, Tony backed away from the door so Henry could leave. Feeling better than he had in hours, he fell into step beside the shorter man. Feeling grounded. Which said something about the entertainment industry when he turned to a vampire for grounding. Or maybe it just said something about him.

“You sounded upset when you called.”

And the ground disappeared again. Once the show had stopped going on, once he was on his way home from the studio, he hadn't been able to stop thinking about what had happened. He'd found himself thumbing in Henry's number before he came to a conscious decision to pull out his phone.

“Someone died at work today.”

Henry paused at the end of the hall, turning to look at him. “The stuntman?”

What stuntman? It took Tony a moment to remember that Henry had been at the second unit shoot. “Daniel? No, those guys are hard to kill; knock them down and they just bounce back. Daniel's fine. It was the victim of the week. On the show,” he added hurriedly as Henry's eyes widened. “There's always a body; I mean there has to be, right? The show's about a vampire detective. But this was a real body.” He swallowed although his mouth had gone so dry it didn't help. “I sort of found it.”

“Sort of?”

“Mason Reed was with me. He yanked open her dressing room door and she fell out.” One hand dragged back through his hair. “Dead.”

Cool fingers on his elbow, Henry steered him over to the green leather sofa and gently pushed him into a sitting position before dropping down next to him. “You okay?”

“Yeah . . .”

“But you don't think you should be.”

“It's not that she's dead. That's bad, but it's not what's got me so . . . I don't know, freaked, I guess.” Resting his forearms on his thighs, hands dangling, Tony laced and unlaced his fingers, not really seeing the patterns they made. Trying not to see Nikki's face. “Just for a moment, before her head hit the floor, she looked terrified. You've seen a lot of bodies, Henry. Why would she look terrified? Never mind, don't answer that. Obviously something frightened her. But she was alone in the dressing room. I mean, of course she was alone; those things are so small most actors can barely fit their egos in with them, but she was alone . . .”

“I've left a lot of people alone in locked rooms.”

“Well, it wasn't you, so you're saying . . .” Twisting around, he raised a hand as Henry opened his mouth to reply. “Oh, don't give me that fucking ‘more things in heaven and Earth' quote. You're saying it was something like you. Something not of this world . . .” Not of this world. Not
this
world. Fuck! He almost had it.

“Tony?”

“I feel like I've put down the last bit of toast and now I can't find it. I know I haven't eaten it, but it's gone and that unfinished feeling is driving me bugfuck!” Unable to remain still, he leaped to his feet and walked over to the window. He laid one hand against the glass and stared out at the lights of Vancouver. “She shouldn't be dead.”

“People die, Tony. They die for a lot of reasons. Sometimes, it seems like they die for no reason at all.”