Smoke and Mirrors (48 page)

“Yes.”

He snorted. “Like I can trust you.”

“As a gesture of good faith, I no longer possess the other actor or the two who use the camera. And besides . . .” Lee spread his hands and mirrored the smile that appeared briefly at the surface of the darkness. “. . . when you become a part of us, there is a chance you will be able to influence our actions.” And his hands crossed over his chest. “It is the only way for you to save him.”

“Yeah. I got that a while ago.” Tony fought the urge to scratch at his blisters. “So why does freedom ring after I join in? What difference will I make?”

“Unfortunately, I made a slight miscalculation and did not have substance enough on my own to give Arogoth existence independent of this house. Together, we will.”

“You're sure of that? Because a hundred years stuck to a basement wall—not appealing.”

Lee's smile twisted into a darker curve. “It had its moments. The taste of death is sweet as you will learn. If you'd die to preserve this man, think how much better to live forever.”

“Forever?”

“Yes. As Arogoth, immortal devourer of death!” Not even the use of Lee's talent could pull that line back from the brink, and Caulfield seemed to realize it. His eyes closed briefly before disappearing into the churning mix of features. Obviously trying to save face, Lee scowled and pointed. “Choose.”

“What choice?” The pain in his arm was constant enough to almost ignore as he reached for the lantern. “I have to tell the others what I'm doing or they'll be down here trying to pull off some half-assed rescue attempt.”

“That is . . .” Lee paused and Tony got the impression that Caulfield was shuffling through what he knew about the people who put together
Darkest Night
. Without perspective, they seemed like an insane bunch—twelve-to-seventeen-hour days making a vampire detective believable . . . at least for forty-three minutes at a time. “Fine. Tell them.”

“They'll try and talk me out of it.” He carefully bent his fingers around the handle and then more carefully still lifted the lantern from the nail. “They'll try and convince me there's a way we can beat you.”

“Convince them there isn't.”

“Easy for you to say.” His gesture with the lantern made shadows dance, made it seem as though the whole basement was roiling. Roiling. He just couldn't get enough of that word. “Well, come on, then.”

“Come . . . ? Ah.” Lee leaned back against the wall. Not the piece of wall where Arogoth was contained and Caulfield's features continued to surface but a section of fieldstone empty of everything but a little mold and mildew. “I don't think so. This one stays with us while you are gone.”

Tony froze. “No,” he snarled. “He goes with me.”

“He stays.”

“The hell he does.”

“Exactly.”

Bugger. “If he stays, how can I be sure you aren't hurting him?”

“You can't. And I can hurt him while he is with you—or have you forgotten already?”

Not something he was likely to forget in a hurry. “But if he's with me, I'll know you're hurting him and I'll know you're a lying sack of shit. I want him with me.”

“You don't always get what you want.” There was nothing of Lee in that smile at all. “Best hurry back.”

“I don't . . .”

“Have much time.” No mistaking the threat.

“Lee, if you can hear me, I'll be back for you.” Without waiting for a response, Tony spun on one heel and splashed toward the stairs. Although he hated leaving Lee in Caulfield's control, hated leaving him in the dark, his protests had more to do with convincing Caulfield to keep his hostage in the basement. Had he not protested, the—well,
thing
still seemed to apply—the thing would have grown suspicious about why he didn't want Lee upstairs. Didn't want Lee in a position to be Caulfield's eyes and ears.

When the splashing wasn't quite enough, Tony matched his breathing to the rhythm of the other man's lungs so that he couldn't hear him receding farther and farther away. Shoes and socks squelching, he climbed to the kitchen just in time for Karl to stop crying and the ballroom's replay to begin.

Just for a moment, he missed the quiet of the basement. If he never heard “Night and Day” again, it would be way too soon.

“Give me a break.” Spinning on his heel, spraying dirty water as he turned, he stuck his head back into the stairwell. “Hey, you want to tell your ghostly minions that the plan's changed. Because the name calling is really fucking annoying!”

“Oh, right. I forgot.” Caulfield was just a little too distracted during replays to respond. Where distracted meant getting his metaphysical rocks off. Pot, kettle, black on that whole unnatural lust thing. Eyes rolling, Tony headed for the kitchen sink. He couldn't connect with anyone alive during the replay anyhow and he
really
had to take a leak.

The door to the butler's pantry opened as Tony reached for it. They'd clearly been waiting for him. All eyes were locked on his face as they shuffled back to give him room to enter.

“You're wet,” Mason pointed out, moving fastidiously farther away.

“Basement's flooded.”

“Chest high?”

“There was a bit of sitting,” he admitted, sagged against the counter and twisted the top off a bottle of water.

“Where's Lee?” Peter demanded.

“In the basement, still possessed.” A long swallow. “Creighton Caulfield is a part of the thing.”

“So it worked.”

He turned to stare at Amy in confusion. “What worked?”

Mouse shuffled back against the far wall as Amy waved the open journal. “The last entry.” She glanced down and read: “
I go to become great. I go to become immortal. I go to become . . .
the name you won't let me say.”

“Well, he hasn't quite
become,
” Tony snorted. “Not yet anyway. He wants me to join him—them—and finish the project, or he'll kill Lee. If I join him, you all go free.”

“Including Lee?”

“So says the thing in the basement.” He waited while everyone in the room thought about how easy production assistants were to replace.

“What are you going to do?” Tina asked at last.

Tony took another mouthful of water, swallowed, and shrugged. “Save Lee. Save you guys. Save the day.”

Zev's hand closed around his arm. “You're going to join him?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“You have a plan.”

He smiled wearily at the music director. “I got nothing. Amy, he implied that the journal would explain all. What have you got?”

“Um, okay . . .” She turned a couple of pages. “He started out as a collector of the weird. Grave dirt, cat skulls, mummy bits . . . not really unusual for a man of his time.”

“How are you knowing that?” Sorge asked, his tone more intrigued than suspicious.

“Amy knows her mummy bits,” Tony told him. “Go on, Amy.”

“Anyway, later . . . Why are you squirming?”

Fabric squelched as he flexed his butt muscles against the edge of the counter. “Wet underwear.”

“Okay, didn't really want to know. The stuff Caulfield collected led to books to look the stuff up in, to verify it, and then he started collecting the books.
Then
he found a book that convinced him that . . .” She bent her head to read again.
“That there is a world beyond what fools admit. There is power for those who dare take it. There is power here.”

“What an idiot,” Mason muttered.

“Except he was right,” Tony said thoughtfully. “All that nasty shit he collected . . .”

“I'm guessing waxy buildup of evil,” Amy agreed. “And that's when he started calling in the mediums, trying to contact this power. You know he had a developmentally handicapped son, right?”

“He's in the bathroom,” Brianna added, crawling backward out of one of the lower cabinets clutching a silver salad fork.

“Well, one of the mediums—one of the ones who survived—thought that spirits were attracted to those kind of brain waves, so Caulfield started using his son.”

“Using?”

“That's all it says.”

“I think we can fill in the blanks,” Zev growled.

“He never hit him.” Brianna patted Zev on the arm. “But he was scary. Really, really scary. Except I wouldn't have been scared.”

“I don't doubt that for a moment,” Zev muttered, taking the salad fork away.

Tony frowned. “It likes fear, strong emotions.” There had to be a way he could use that.

“Looks like the fear was enough,” Amy continued, “because contact was made. Meanwhile, Caulfield had been using his books to research how to hold the power when he found it. Thus the pages of mystic symbols.”

Tony held up his left hand. His palm throbbed and the skin under the pattern itched like crazy. “This was what he used to hold the power here in the house.”

“Yeah, kind of like a roach motel. Nasty energy checks in, but it doesn't check out. He used a bunch of the other symbols to get it all gathered up in one place. He's not writing for the ages here, so he's kind of obscure, but I think he believed that the more of it he gathered in one place, the more real it would be.”

“Half an inch of water spread over an entire room is harmless,” Saleen announced unexpectedly. “Put that water in a bucket and you can drown someone.”

“Exactly!” Amy shot Saleen an approving smile. “Caulfield used his own blood to gather this thing up.
My heart pounding with anticipation, I opened a vein and dipped in the brush made to the specification in the ancient text. Chanting and breathing the fumes of . . .
”

“
Reader's Digest
version,” Tony interrupted. “I don't have a lot of time and there'll be another replay blowing through in a minute.”

“Okay, he burned some herbs, lifted some bad poetry out of an old book, painted on the basement wall in blood and all the power scooted there and what was abstract gained enough substance to become . . . stract. Defined. Sort of like catching a demon in a pentagram. Then his son died . . .”

“Of what.” It might be important.

“It doesn't say.”

“He was scared,” Brianna offered. “Really, really scared. He's still scared.”

“He died of fright?”

She shrugged, dismissing the concept. “He was too scared to go away. That's why he's there.”

“Without his son, Caulfield couldn't access the power he'd trapped in the basement, so he went looking for a way to draw it into himself. He figured he found one. And then . . .” Amy held the journal up again. “We're back at the last page.
I go to become . . .
”

“Except the stuff he wrote on the wall held him as well as the power and probably that's what kept them from completely merging as well. He thinks that with me added to the mix, we'll be strong enough to break the spell, merge and emerge, and become that name.”

Sorge rolled his eyes. “If it isn't that name yet, why can't we say it?”

“We don't want to lend it definition.”

“What the hell does that mean when it's home?” Adam demanded. Then he raised a hand as all eyes turned to him. “Never mind. Don't really care.”

“With you in the mix, what makes Caulfield think he'll be in charge?” Peter wondered.

“He's read the right books and he's had a hundred-odd years to work out what he'll do. I'm winging it. And I've used a lot of energy tonight already.”

Brianna poked him in the leg, then held out her other hand. “Sugar?” Her fingers peeled away from a damp, crumpled paper package.

“Where did you get that?” Zev asked plucking the package off her palm and examining it. Tony wondered what he thought it might be. What dangers it might contain.

“From the box with the salt.”

“You haven't been eating it, have you?”

“Duh.”

“Maybe that explains why Ashley's asleep . . .”

Covered with Mason's coat, her head on Tina's lap, Ashley murmured at the sound of her name but didn't rouse.

“. . . and this one's still bouncing off the walls.” He handed the sugar to Tony. “Will this help?”

“Can't hurt.” He ripped it open and poured the sugar into his water bottle. “Bri? Can you get the rest of the sugar out of the box?”

She drew herself up and saluted. “I'm on it!”