Smoke and Mirrors (41 page)

Passing the lantern to Tony, Zev dropped to his knees and gathered Brianna into his arms. “You're safe!”

“I was dancing.”
And this bozo dragged me away!
was clearly audible in her tone.
My father is going to fire his ass
was evident in her body language.

“You can dance later. When we're out of here,” Zev amended hastily, tightening his hold. “The important thing right now is that you're safe!”

“I'm safe, too.”

He looked up and smiled, and Tony couldn't remember a good reason why they broke up.

“Were you looking for us?”

“No.”

The pause as he straightened and took Brianna's hand went on just a little too long.

“What?”

“Lee's missing.”

Frankly, Tony didn't have the words.

Brianna did.

“What's he missing? Because if you started doing something without me, I'm telling!”

“HOW THE HELL
could you just let him walk out?” Tony demanded of the room at large. “You knew the thing in the basement was getting to him!”

“We didn't
let
him do anything!” Peter snapped, dabbing at a bit of blood running from the corner of his mouth. “Kate managed to grab a brass candlestick out of that lower cabinet, coldcocked Saleen—he probably has a concussion, thank you for asking—kicked Pavin in the nuts, and charged the door. Thank God, Mouse wrapped himself around her leg screaming
Don't go!,
or we wouldn't have been able to subdue her.”

Gray, duct tape shackles wrapped around Kate's wrists and ankles, and she glared up at him over the linen napkin they'd used as a gag. From the way her jaw kept working, Tony suspected she was chewing her way free.

“So what you're saying is, you traded Lee for Kate.”

“What?”

Good question. While his brain wondered if he wanted to get fired, his mouth rephrased and repeated. “You saved Kate and just let Lee waltz out of here.”

“Wasn't a waltz,” Mason said thoughtfully while Peter looked stunned. “I could show you a waltz that would make you weep. I'm exceptionally graceful. I could have been a professional dancer.”

Ah the hell with it; he'd survived without a job before. His head snapped around and he glared at Mason. “No one cares.”

“Tony . . .”

“Shut up, Zev.”

Tony had shoved Brianna at Zev and raced back to the ballroom the moment he'd heard Lee was missing. He'd run on instinct through the pitch-black mess, bounced off at least one wall, may have kicked through something numbingly cold. Arriving seconds before the ballroom's replay, he'd placed himself in front of the barred doors. He wouldn't be able to see Lee, but he'd be able to grab him if he tried to push by.

He hadn't. Although Tony could feel the dead brushing up against the door at his back . . . Heard his name whispered, called, caroled, sung, and rapped with a painful lack of skill. Rap that bad
had
to have been Tom. Heard nothing that gave any indication things in the ballroom had changed during the replay. That Lee had reached the doors before him.

Or used one of the other two.

The door into the garden required leaving the house, so it was off limits. Obviously. The door the servants used that led into a hall off the kitchen, however . . .

When the replay'd ended, Zev had been there with the lantern and a worried frown—the worry obviously for him, the immediate cause of the frown a little less obvious. He'd followed as Tony raced around to the servants' door. Padlocked.

The replay was over and Lee wasn't in the ballroom.

Which was of dubious comfort since he wasn't in the butler's pantry either.

Mouse cowering, Mason dancing, Kate taped—no Lee.

“Did you just tell me to shut up?” Zev.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Adam.

“Jesus, Tony, chill.” Amy.

“Me, I never trust him.” Sorge.

“Now, let's all just calm down.” Tina.

All five simultaneously.

Pavin was moaning about his balls. Saleen sat quietly, holding his head. He could hear Ashley and Brianna talking but lost content in the mix.

Peter held up a hand and the babble dimmed. Ginger brows dipped as he fixed Tony with a basilisk stare. “I'll make some allowance for the situation, Mr. Foster . . .” Mr. Foster. CB talk. Peter used it when he was emphasizing he was the boss under the boss. “. . . but I will not be accused of trading my costar for a number two camera. And
you
should try to remember you're a
production assistant.
” Emphasis suggested he might not be for much longer.

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

Tony stretched out his hand, said the incantation, and the Caulfield journal slipped out of Amy's fingers, across five feet of crowded pantry, and slapped into his palm. “Until we're out of this house, I'm the wizard who's trying to save everyone's ass.”

Silence. Even Kate stopped gnawing and muttering.

Peter glanced from Amy's hands to Tony's, his eyes tracking the trajectory of the book. Everyone else merely stared. Sure, he'd moved Mason's lighter way back when, but that was small stuff. A book looked impressive. It was the most impressive magic any of them had seen him do. Even Amy had only seen him talking to empty air and then convulsing. Hell, back when he'd been shooting up, he used to do that all the time.

“And after?” Peter asked at last.

“After?” Tony's shoulder's sagged; he was tired and Lee was gone. “Fuck, can we just worry about during?”

The director nodded. Once. “Sure.”

He'd probably never work in this town again. Hard to get worked up about it at the moment, but he had a strong feeling he'd regret that whole mouth first, brain second thing later. “All right. Lee. If he didn't answer the call to the ballroom, where did he go?”

“He didn't go in to see Brenda. I stuck my head in the drawing room before I met up with you,” Zev expanded when the mention of Brenda brought puzzled frowns.

Amy wiped the hand that had been holding the journal on her pants and folded her arms. “He's not in the kitchen. He went out the door that leads that way, so I used the monitor and just kind of looked without leaving the pantry. I leaned.” She tilted a little, illustrating. “If he's been, you know, possessed, I don't want to end up dead. Like Brenda.”

Tony couldn't think of another reason why Lee'd leave the others and go wandering around in the dark. Especially when he considered the way he'd been acting. What with the kissing and all.

“So he could be in the conservatory, the library, or up on the second floor.” In a house this size that was a lot of territory to cover. “We've got one lantern, a computer monitor, and candles that blow out the moment we open the pantry doors.”

“Why not while they're lit in the pantry?” Tina wondered.

Amy shrugged. “Maybe the thing in the basement is hoping we'll burn ourselves down.”

“Nice,” Zev snorted, smacking her shoulder.

Amy smacked him back. “She asked.” And to Tony. “Bet you're wishing you'd learned that Wizard's Lamp now.”

“He can make light?” Tina folded her arms. “Then why isn't he?”

“Because I can't,” Tony told her, wondering just who exactly she'd been asking. “There's a spell in the computer, but . . .”

“You learned the talk-to-Lucy spell,” Amy reminded him.

“No, I didn't learn it, I just performed it. Half of it.” He held up his shirt, so the others could see the burn.

Tina's expression softened. “Does it hurt?”

Only when I slam an eight-year-old into it.
“Yes.”

Zev acknowledged the burn and moved on. “But what harm could making light do?”

“Well . . .” Stretching the fabric out a careful distance from blistered skin, he pulled down his T-shirt. “. . . the first attempt at a spell's always tricky, so I could blind myself.” Okay, that received more in the way of thoughtful consideration than sympathy. “Or I could blind everyone still alive in the house.”

“The amount of light may be moot,” Peter announced suddenly, hands shoved deep in his pockets, weight back on his heels. “I'm not sure we should go looking for Lee. Remember what happened when Brenda found Hartley,” he continued when all eyes turned to him. “Lee's safer if no one finds him. Remember, it's murder and then suicide.” He stressed the second word. “No murder; no suicide. And we're
all
still alive.” Met Tony's gaze. “Oh, wait, you have powers that will protect us from Lee, don't you?”

He could lie. He wanted to lie. He was a
good
liar.

“No. But there's safety in numbers. We'll search for him in groups.”

Peter nodded toward the lantern. “Group. Except you probably have a plan to retrieve the lantern you left behind.”

Because he was the wizard who was going to save their asses. He sighed. That had to have been the world's shortest coup. “Look, I'm sorry. You know, Lee . . . Brianna . . .” Except he
had
saved Brianna; that should count for something. “Anyway . . .” He punctuated the truncated apology with a shrug.

Peter's eyes narrowed. “So you don't have a plan.”

Oh, for . . .

“No, I don't have a freakin' plan, all right? The lantern's in the ballroom and at the speed the replays are happening, I don't want to open the ballroom door and risk being caught with it still open when its turn comes around again.”

“I think I have a solution to that.” Amy crossed the room and pointedly took the journal back. Tony suspected there'd be an apology in her future as well. “There are these symbols that keep the thing in the basement's power contained. They're all over the house, probably all that's kept it from murder/suiciding its way across the lower mainland.” She flipped the book open to a page of what looked like random squiggles she'd marked with a doubled-over piece of tape. “If you copy this symbol here from wall to wall across the threshold of the ballroom like a barricade, then those dead dancing fools—since they're part of the thing's power—they won't be able to cross.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, absolutely. Mostly. Caulfield's notes are a little . . . undetailed.”

Brianna pulled a water bottle away from her mouth with a pop of releasing suction. “Why don't you draw the symbol thingie in front of the hand?”

“What hand?”

She pointed with the bottle. “That one.”

It had come through the door as far as the wrist, gray and translucent fingers combing the air.

“It's come to take me dancing,” Mason announced over the perfectly understandable screaming. He jumped to his feet and would have run to meet it except Mouse's sudden hysterics knocked him over backward, slamming them both onto the chair he'd been sitting on and crushing it. Kicking himself free of the wreckage, he dove onto the wildly thrashing cameraman, fists and feet flailing into flesh as he accused the other man of never taking him dancing.

“Well, that settles that,” Zev muttered. “Mason's reality has left the building.”

The arm was through the door to the elbow. Barely an inch or two of hacked bicep remained outside the room.

As the others dove to break up the battle—Mouse having found a direction for his hysteria in violence—Tony grabbed Amy's arm. “What symbol exactly?”

A black-tipped nail tapped what looked like a three-dimensional sketch of a croissant. “This one.”

Given her previous answer, it seemed pointless to ask again if she was sure. Besides, it looked a lot like the mark the basement door had left on his hand. And like the mark he thought he'd seen as he closed the ballroom doors. Maybe all the doors had them.

All the doors but the two leading into the butler's pantry.

He didn't have a pen.

The arm scuttled toward Ashley, who drew her bare feet up under the edge of her pinafore and screamed. The sound was piercing, echoing around the enclosed space like shards of glass. Even the arm paused.

He didn't have time to find a pen. Using the tip of his tongue, he licked the pattern onto the palm of his left hand and made a grab for the stump end of the arm.

The cold burned, but he could feel resistance under his fingers, so he tightened his grip and whipped it back out through the door.

“Here!” Amy shoved a small plastic tube into his other hand. “Mark the threshold before it comes back.”

“And that'll help how?” he demanded, staring down at the lipstick. “It's a ghost hand; it can go through the wall!”

“No, it can't or the ballroom doors wouldn't keep the dead contained!”

That actually made sense. Mostly.

Dropping to his knees, he twisted up half an inch of magenta cream. “Hold the book where I can see it.”

“Why don't you . . .” She whistled softly as he raised his left hand. Fingers and thumb were curled in toward his palm—touching neither palm nor each other. Tendons stood out across the back in sharp relief. “Ow.”

“Yeah.”

It wasn't a particularly difficult symbol compared to some Arra had loaded onto the computer. Although as far as he knew, none of Arra's lessons involved precision copying while racing the return of a disembodied ghost arm. Trying to balance speed and accuracy, Tony laid out the pattern end to end on the floor in a slight curve from one side of the door to the other.