Smoke and Mirrors (19 page)

The chair had the same effect on the window the candy dish had—none at all. The window had the same effect on the chair except that the pieces were larger and flew farther from the point of impact.

“Son of a fucking bitch!” Mouse yanked the splinter from his arm and tossed it to one side.

Tony watched it tumble through the air, saw the blood glistening on the wood, and knew he wouldn't reach it in time. Call him paranoid, but giving more blood to the house seemed like a very bad idea. Panic spat out the seven words in one long string of sibilants and vowels and the splinter smacked into his hand. He shoved it in his pocket, wiped his hand on his jeans, and realized that everyone had been too concerned with Mouse and/or the impregnability of the window to notice.

“What was that you just said?”

Fuck! Almost everyone! Heart in his throat, he spun around to find Lee staring at him speculatively. There were days he'd give his right nut to have Lee stare at him speculatively. This was not one of them.

“Just, you know, swearing.”

“Yeah?” A dark brow rose. “In what language?”

He didn't know. Arra had written the words of the spells out phonetically. She hadn't mentioned the name of the language. Which, as it happened, wasn't the point. And Lee was waiting for an answer.

And waiting.

And . . .

“This is nuts!”

And Tony was saved by the breakdown. As half a dozen other conversations went quiet, Tony turned to see Tom, the electrician standing alone, his chest rising and falling in a jerky, staccato rhythm.

“This is totally fucking CRAZY!”

“Calm down, Tom.” Adam moved toward him, one hand outstretched. “We'll get through this.”

“No, we won't! We'll die!” Tom batted Adam's hand away and turned wild eyes toward Tony. “He says we're all going to die!”

Heads pivoted to follow the accusation.

Great. “I said the house was going to try and kill us. Not the same thing.”

The same heads pivoted back again to catch the electrician's response.

“Damn right it's not. Because it's not going to kill me.” Tom slammed his fist against his sternum. The room had gone so quiet that the hollow thud of impact sounded unnaturally loud. “Me, I'm leaving!” Before anyone could remind him they'd been locked in, he ran for the window.

“Stop him!” Rubber soles squealing against the polished wood, Tony raced to intercept knowing even as he moved he didn't have a hope in hell of getting there in time.

Easily avoiding Adam's grab, Tom shoved Kate hard into Mouse rather than go around her. He was running full out when he hit the window.

He didn't thud at the moment of impact.

He crunched.

Tony skidded to a stop beside the body.

“But . . . I thought I heard the window break,” said Amy's voice in the background as he dropped to one knee and felt for a pulse.

“It wasn't the window.” Zev's voice.

No pulse. No surprise considering the weird angles and the places the bones had come through the skin . . .

Fuck!

“Mouse! Lift him off the floor!”

“Wha . . .”

“Do it!” When Peter added his support, Tony started breathing again. Peter would remember about the blood. Directors saw the big picture. “Tina! Sorge! Get that drop sheet off the gear in the library!”

Then Peter's hand was around his arm, pulling him to his feet and out of the way as Tina and Sorge raced back with the drop sheet and Mouse laid the body on the plastic tarp and folded the edges up over it.

Then they all stared as the smudges of blood disappeared into the floor.

“Is that bad?” Peter murmured.

“Probably not good,” Tony acknowledged.

“Still, the whatever is
already
awake.”

“Yeah, but I don't think we should encourage it.” Brianna poked the side of the tarp with one bare foot. “Is he dead?”

“Yes, honey.” Brenda dropped to her knees and put her arms around the girl, forcing comfort out past what looked to be imminent hysterics. “He's dead.”

“Really dead?”

“Really most sincerely dead,” Mason told her with exaggerated cheer. “He's the inconsequential character who dies in the first act so we all know the situation is serious.”

“That's not funny,” snarled one of the grips. Tony thought his name was Saleen but he wasn't sure; the man had only been with CB Productions a few weeks.

Mason snorted. His candle flame flickered. “I wasn't joking.”

“And it's not even original!”

Fangs showed below Mason's curled lip.

Brianna poked the body again. “So he's not going to get up?”

“No, honey. He's . . .” Brenda paused. Frowned. Paled. Looked up at Tony.

Who didn't understand the question. “What?”

“The g . . . h . . . o . . . s . . . t . . . s.”

Brianna rolled her eyes and ducked out of the circle of Brenda's arms. “I got an A in spelling. She wants to know if he's gonna come back as a ghost.”

Good question. “I don't know.”

“But you knew he was going to die!” Brenda's eyes showed white all the way around and, without Brianna to hold onto, she seemed to be having difficulty holding onto herself.

“I didn't . . .”

The finger she pointed at him was shaking. “You tried to stop him!”

“Yeah, because everything else that hit that window broke.” It had seemed like a logical assumption. Well, maybe under the circumstances
logical
was the wrong word, but experience had taught him that the metaphysical followed rules just like everything else.

“All right. Fine. What do we do now?”

She looked a bit maniacal in the candlelight. At least Tony hoped it was the candlelight. Before he could come up with a less inflammatory way of saying
I have no fucking idea,
Amy said, “Silver.”

“Hi ho,” Mason muttered.

“On his eyes!” Amy handed her candle to Zev and pulled off one of her rings. “We lay silver on Tom's eyes,” she announced, twirling it so that it caught the light, “and his spirit won't rise.”

Were the shadows gathering around the circle of candlelight growing darker?

“What a crock.”

Amy's chin rose and pointed belligerently toward Mason. “So let's hear your plan?”

Had Karl's crying grown louder? Shriller?

“You mean something I didn't learn watching DVDs of
The X-Files
?”

“Bite me! Chris Carter was a surfer boy with delusions and this is valid old world ritual.” She removed a second ring and knelt beside the tarp. “Right, Tony?”

Were those footsteps in the library?

“Tony?”

He jumped as Lee touched his arm.
Shouldn't he be back behind me a few more feet?

And everyone was looking at him again. Great.

Across the body, Zev frowned. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just . . .” Just never mind. Things were bad enough without him adding another two cents' worth. “I think it's a good idea. The silver. Amy knows about shit like this. That. You know.”

Mason's turn to roll his eyes. “How articulate.”

“You're not helping,” Peter told him quietly. “Amy, go ahead.”

“You know what would be cool?” Ashley said as Amy's hand closed around the edge of the tarp. “If, when she opened that up, if Tom opened his eyes. Really wide.”

Amy froze. Everyone in the room considered it.

The silence grew weighted with the possibility.

The hair on the back of Tony's neck lifted as the build of emotion began to escalate into something else. Something they probably wouldn't want to spend the night locked in with. Or more accurately, something
else
they wouldn't want to spend the night locked in with.

“Didn't we do the eyes thing in episode six?” he asked, his voice awkwardly loud. “And again in episode eleven?”

“Cliché,” Sorge agreed. “I say so then.”

“It was a perfectly valid way to up the emotional stakes,” Peter protested in the weary tone of one who had protested before.

The cinematographer dug his thumbnail into the soft wax at the top of his candle. “Maybe the first time.”

“The second time, it didn't really happen,” Peter reminded him. “It was all in Lee's head. In James Taylor Grant's head, anyway.”

“And we were there—why?”

“We were where—why?” And in the same breath. “Brianna, stop poking the body!”

“Why in James Taylor Grant's head?”

“You know why; because he was imagining things!”

“No.” Sorge shook his head. “Still doesn't work for me.”

“It was six episodes ago!”

“Also eleven episodes ago.”

“So you've had time to get over it.”

“Still . . .”

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Amy flipped back a corner of the tarp and quickly laid a ring on each of Tom's closed eyes.

Tony released a breath he couldn't remember holding as she covered the body again. A small sound by his right side. He turned his head just far enough to see Lee give him a quick thumbs-up, understanding that nothing defused tensions like rehashing creative differences for the seven thousandth time.

Then Lee's gesture continued until both his hands were clapped over his ears. Mouse grunted. Kate swore. Tony fought the urge to do all three and settled on gritting his teeth as every muscle in his body tensed. The lights came up and Karl's screams—which he realized now had stopped for a few moments, leaving the background under Sorge and Peter's argument empty of sound—became shrieks of panic and pain.

Fortunately, it had been a large fire and a small baby.

The faint, distant sound of a woman's voice singing nursery rhymes grew more distinct as the shrieking stopped, but he seemed to be the only one who could hear her and even he lost the thread of the song under Brianna's shrill demands to be let go.

“I want to go see the baby!”

She fought against Zev's grip, driving her fists into his shoulders, but he had her held too closely for her to put much force behind the blows. And too closely for her to use her feet, Tony noted. Smart guy, given that he was on his knees. Tony doubted he had a cup on under his jeans. At least he never had while they were dating.

“Let go! Let go! Let go!”

Zev murmured something against her hair that Tony didn't catch.

“ 'Cause Tony said it was way gross and I want to see!”

Both brows rose, but he quickly schooled his expression and brought her face around until he could stare deep into her eyes, his tone calm and reassuring. “It's not real, you know. It's just bits left over from a long time ago.”

She sniffed and stopped fighting him. “Like television?”

“Just like television. The house recorded what happened and now it's playing it back.”

“Trying to fool us and make us think it's real?”

“That's right.”

“But we know it's not real.”

“Yes, we do.”

Shoulders squared and chins lifted among the listening adults. Out of the mouths of babes—they
knew
it wasn't real.

“Stupid house.”

“No argument from me.” When she answered his smile with one of her own, Zev stood, scooping her up and settling her weight on one hip. “Let's get out of here.” For the benefit of the others in the room, his gaze flicked down to the body and back up again.

Tony's heart stopped at the sight of a red-brown streak across Zev's cheek and then started beating again when he realized it had been left by some of the fake blood still in Brianna's hair.
No way. We don't lose Zev. Or Amy. Or . . . fuck. Who says I get to choose?
And even thinking about choosing put him in a Meryl Streep space he'd just as soon not have visited.

“Leaving is a good idea.” Amy, now holding her candle and Zev's, started for the foyer.

How had the foyer become their safe place? Because they'd spent more time shooting in it and it had become familiar? Because it was a big empty space with fewer nooks and crannies for the weird to hide out in? Maybe because it was the last place things had been normal. Or what passed for normal during the long, overcaffeinated hours of television production.

“Mason?” Ashley tugged on the actor's tuxedo jacket. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. I'm fine. Just a headache.”

It had to be one hell of a headache, Tony conceded, because when Ashley took hold of his hand, Mason's fingers closed around hers almost gratefully.

“Our contract says no smoking in the house,” Peter told him as he followed the actor and the little girl out of the drawing room. “So if you feel the need to light up . . .”

“That's not it!”

It was something, though. Mason wasn't a good enough actor to entirely smooth out the ragged edges in his voice.

“Are we just going to leave him here?” Lee asked, pausing by the tarp and Tom's body.

Tony shrugged. “If he wants to join us, he knows the way.”

“That's . . . ghoulish.” One corner of Lee's mouth curled up. “This is me not laughing. Do you think he will?”

“No. If Amy's rings don't work, and if I actually understand what the fuck is going on, he should just keep running into the window over and over.”

“One show and then immediately into reruns.”