Smoke and Mirrors (44 page)

“Hey! I had nothing to do with that decision. It was all CB and Arra!”

Her eyes narrowed and her upper lip curled. “We only have your word for that.”

“So we keep him tied?”

Peter shrugged. “I'd feel safer.”

Oh, for . . . Tony bounced his head on the floor a couple of times.

“What about the second lantern?” Peter asked. Sweat beaded the five o'clock shadow on his upper lip. He wasn't as calm as he sounded.

“We could go get it,” Adam suggested. “We only have his word that the ballroom's dangerous.”

Oh, man. Tony lifted his head again. “Brianna, what's in the ballroom?”

“Dancing dead people. And a really gross band.” She thoughtfully scratched the back of her right leg with the toes of her left foot. “And Brenda. She danced with me.”

“That's it. Untie me immediately. What kind of place is this where a wardrobe assistant can go dancing but not a star!”

Peter hurriedly shifted over so that he was in the actor's line of sight. “Mason, we just need to work out a few parts of the shot with the vampire hunters.”

“But . . .”

“You know how your fan mail increases when we tie you up.”

“Right.”

It did, too. Tony couldn't see why. Mason tied up did nothing for
him,
but forty-year-old straight women were into the damnedest things. Shifting position, he discovered that the tape around his wrists might have stretched just a little. Rolling his wrists together, he kept working at it.

“All right.” Peter squared his shoulders. “I think we should leave the lantern in the ballroom and go looking for Lee.” He didn't sound completely convinced, but it was a start.

“It's a big house,” Tony reminded him. “You'll need . . .”

“You'll need to be quiet.” The director waved a napkin at him. Kate had recently been regagged with another in the set. The abusive profanity had nearly drowned out Tony's story. “Adam, Zev, you're with me. Amy, light a couple of candles after we're gone and work on the journal.”

“What about the gardener's arm?”

“I think we can handle one ghostly arm.”

“Tony had to handle it the last time.”

“And we haven't seen it since, have we?”

“Peter . . .”

“No, Mr. Foster.” Peter's smile was tight and uncompromising. “I think we'll manage to save our own. . . .”

Asses,
Tony finished silently as the lights came up and Cassie and Stephen's father started swinging his ax.

When the lights went out, Zev was cutting the tape around his ankles with the knife attached to his key chain.

“Lee's in the basement.”

“How do you know?”

“The door was open.”

“Open!”

“It's all right, it's closed now. The gardener's hand closed it. But not before we heard Lee calling for you.”

“For me?” Why was Zev rolling his eyes?

“He sounded . . .” Adam paused to search for a description clearly not in his vocabulary. “Well, he didn't sound happy,” he finished at last.

“I told him he was no hero,” Mason sniffed.

“When?” One question, multiple voices.

“Just before he left. He said he was going off to be a hero. I said he was only a costar. He told me to fuck myself. And then he left. Rude bastard.”

Peter ran both hands back through his hair, exhaling as he brought them down, and clasped them together. “Why didn't you mention that before?” he asked wearily.

Mason rolled his eyes. “Well, it's not about me, is it?”

“WHY WOULD LEE
go down in the basement?” Tony demanded, ripping the severed pieces of electrical tape off his wrists.

Amy snorted. “Because he's possessed by an evil house?”

“Yeah, that was a gimme.” Throwing the tape aside, he stood. Now he knew where Lee was, he wanted nothing more than to go charging off to the rescue. Challenge the thing in the basement to single combat for the hand of the fair . . . okay, not fair . . . and not a maiden either, but the challenge to single combat stuff still stood. Except, he wasn't the hero. Hell, he wasn't even the costar. He'd survived on the streets by brokering information, and—although he hated taking the time because of the whole Lee-very-likely-in-mortal-danger thing—there was just too much information here he didn't have. “What does the
house
want Lee to do down in the basement?”

“To get beer out of the fridge?” Adam shrugged as attention turned to him. “What? It's why I go to the basement.”

“And very not relevant in this case,” Peter snapped.

“Well, excuse me for trying to help.”

Tony wanted to pace, but there wasn't enough room. “It can't want his energy, that's what the ballroom's for.”

Brianna looked up from searching through Zev's backpack and blew a raspberry. “The ballroom's stupid.”

“If the thing in the basement set up the ballroom as the big bad, it's not that impressive,” Zev agreed, taking his earphones out of her hand before she could completely unspool them. “You two got out really easy.”

“It wasn't
that
easy,” Tony protested.

“You're a production assistant who knows one spell; you're not exactly . . .”

“Raymond Dark,” Mason muttered.

Mason had a point. Raymond Dark always won through no matter how great the odds stacked against him because if he lost, there wouldn't be a show. But no one was writing a script filled with coincidence and handy FX for Tony.

“Who told you the ballroom was the big bad?” Amy asked, her brow furrowed.

“Stephen and Cassie.”

“The dead-as-doorknobs duo.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Ignoring the whole dead-people-maybe-not-a-reliable-source, maybe the ballroom is bad for them
because
they're dead. Brianna says it sucked in Brenda . . .”

“And Tom and Hartley,” Tony added, remembering. “And Stephen said something about it almost getting Cassie once.”

“It's like the ballroom is a big tornado.” She sketched spiraling visual aids in the air. “And all the replays are little tornados and the big tornado, just because of its size, keeps trying to suck the little ones into it. Although not actively
trying
as such.”

“That makes sense.” And that was almost the scariest thing Tony'd run into all night.

“So it's bad for the ghosts, not so bad for the living.”

“And if the door is open?”

“Tornado spreads throughout the house and again, all the little ones are sucked in. But it only works one way because Brenda and Hartley and Tom got in through a closed door. It wants the energy of the living—that's why it's calling—but it can't suck it up unless it can keep them in there dancing until they die.”

“Please tell me you're not working on a script,” Peter muttered.

Amy ignored him. “So it's not the ballroom we should be worrying about. It's the basement. It always was.”

“So you could have stopped him if you'd gone to the basement door instead of the ballroom.”

Tony glared over at Mason, still taped but now propped up against the lower cupboards.

The actor shrugged. “I'm just saying.”

“We need the other lantern back,” Tina announced in a tone that offered no room for argument. “Tony can't go down in the basement with our only reliable source of light.”

“Because he might not be coming back,” Peter agreed.

“Because the thing in the basement wants Tony specifically.”

“Say what?”

Zev sighed. “Lee was calling for you, remember. It's just using Lee as bait. As soon as it had full possession of him, it took him away. It didn't use him to strangle Tina.”

“Why me?” Tina wondered, fixing him with a worried stare as she leaned away.

“Nothing personal. You were just closest.”

“If you're having a problem with me, Zev, we should talk about it.”

“There's no problem.” He made soothing gestures with his hands. “It didn't use Lee to strangle Peter or Sorge either.”

Or Mason, who, in Tony's opinion, had to be the odds-on favorite. Although, since Mason was also at least partially possessed, he was probably safe. “But why would the thing in the basement want me?”

“I don't know,” the music director sighed. “Could it be because you're a wizard?”
You moron
rang out so clearly it was more text than subtext. “If it can take you out, we're sitting ducks.”

“There's three dead with his help,” Adam muttered. “How much worse can it get without him?”

“Look around. You do the math.”

“Doesn't matter.” Tony had all the information he needed. Lee as bait was a different matter than Lee possessed. As long as no one made themselves available as the murder half of the murder/suicide, a possessed Lee was safe. As bait, the danger he was in would escalate until Tony arrived to save the day. Night. Whatever. Point was, Lee needed him.

Amy grabbed his arm and hauled him away from the door into the kitchen. “And what'll you do when you get to the basement?” she demanded.

“Call Lee into my hand and get the hell out. It'll work!” he added as her brows disappeared under the fringe of magenta hair. “It's how I got Brianna out of the ballroom.”

“Point one . . .” The first finger of her free hand flicked into the air. “. . . does this spell have a weight limit? Because Brianna's eight and Lee, as you very well know, is not.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means Lee isn't eight,” Zev snapped. “Lay off the defensive crap—we all know how you feel . . .”

Heads nodded. “You should, like, get a room,” Ashley muttered.

“. . . even the thing in the basement knows how you feel.”

“You're like a puppy when he so much as talks to you,” Tina told him.

Sorge nodded. “If you have a tail, you wag it.”

Puppy feelings? “I do not.”

Zev rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you do. Now answer the question.”

Question?

Oh, yeah; weight limit.

“I don't know. Brianna was the heaviest I've ever moved.”

“Cool.” Brianna bent Zev's sunglasses case open until the hinges started to crack.

“And was it easy?” Amy demanded.

“Sure.”

She smacked him hard on the back of the head. “No. Not really.”

“So you don't know that you could move Lee.” Zev pried his case out of Brianna's fingers.

“And I'm not going to find out standing here.” He was bigger than Amy, not by a lot but bigger. Adam stepped between him and the door. Okay, not bigger than Adam. “Get out of my way. Lee needs me!”

“He needs you thinking with your head,” Amy told him hauling him away from the door. “Not your . . .”

“Amy!” Tina's gesture took in both girls.

“Weiner,” Brianna offered calmly.

“It's called a penis.” Ashley sneered at her sister. “Only babies say . . .”

The lights came up and Karl started to scream.

“I'm going for the other lantern,” Tony told the now empty pantry. There was resistance as he started to turn. “Amy, let go of me. You're right, it won't help Lee if I go charging to the rescue unprepared, but I can't be a part of any plans right now and it'd be stupid to waste the light.” After a moment, the resistance disappeared. “This isn't a long replay,” he said as he walked to the other door, sliding his feet along the floor lest he step on someone. “I promise I'll come right back with the lantern.”

And the moment we're out of this
, he promised himself silently as he closed the pantry door behind him and started to run.
I'm learning shield spells and lightning bolts. Maybe fireballs. Don't wizards always use fireballs?

He couldn't believe his feelings for Lee were that obvious.

Had Lee noticed?

Learning the mess-with-the-memory spell was looking better and better.

He didn't need both of the ballroom doors open, so he whipped out Amy's lipstick and began to block the right side. Fortunately, he could open his left hand almost all the way; a raised ridge of skin gave him the necessary symbol etched in white across the flesh of his palm. Finishing the last curve and dot required the final bit of color gouged out of the tube on his little finger. Although his left hand continued to ache, he found he could hold the lipstick against the pressure and the return of manual dexterity banished a fear he hadn't acknowledged.

Karl stopped screaming just as he opened the blocked half of the ballroom door.

His experience with this sort of thing was limited, but the tiny orange speck of light over by the bandstand probably meant the lamp was nearly out of fuel.

“
Tony . . .”

He had a feeling he should be a little more distracted by ghosts of workmates calling his name while “Night and Day” played in the background. Hand outstretched. First three words of the incantation . . .

“Tony!”

Lee's voice. Distant. Desperate. Afraid. It wrapped around Tony's heart and squeezed.

Now that was a definite distraction.

Brenda slamming up against an invisible barrier and screaming jealous curses no more than four inches from his face—that was almost expected.

“I had him!” she shrieked, the wound gaping in the translucent ruin of her throat.