Smoke and Mirrors (54 page)

“And Karl's still crying. I can hear him.”

As Brianna pressed up against Tony's side, he felt something crumple in his pocket. The photograph of Karl and his mother. “I can hear him, too.” He pulled the photo out and handed it to Amy. Multiple dunkings in icy water hadn't improved its condition any, but it was still painfully obvious who it . . . they were.

“So we have to free the ghosts.” Amy left the
duh
silent but obvious as she passed the picture to Peter.

He studied it for a moment, looked up, realized everyone was waiting on his word, and sighed again. “Fine. We free the ghosts.” His gaze locked on Tony's. “What do we do?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?” Peter repeated and threw up his hands. “Great. Does
anyone
know?”

No one seemed to.

Tony glanced down at the top of Brianna's head, and frowned. “According to the journal, Caulfield used his son, Richard, to connect with the power and Richard is haunting the master suite bathroom.”

“Are you going somewhere with this, Tony,” Amy asked, peering into his face, “or are you just reiterating random bits of information?”

“He doesn't replay. All the other ghosts replay,” he continued as the expressions he could see ranged the short distance from puzzled to confused. “Even Stephen and Cassie keep getting sucked back into the loop of their death although they're aware the rest of the time. Richard doesn't. And he's always there. Even Mason was aware of him.”

“Hey.” The qualifier got the actor's attention. “What do you mean,
even
Mason?”

“He means you're generally considered too smart to get mixed up in any supernatural nonsense,” Peter interjected smoothly.

“Oh.”

Amy reached out and poked him in the leg. “Get to the point, Tony.”

“Richard Caulfield is the key.”

A moment of contemplative silence.

Then Adam asked what they were all wondering. “The key to what?”

“To freeing the ghosts, starving the thing, and getting us the hell out of Dodge.”

Peter took the photograph from Amy. The way he was staring at it made Tony realize he probably had kids of his own. For a long moment, the distant sobs of a dead baby were the only sounds in the butler's pantry. Finally, Peter shoved the photograph into Tony's hand and jerked his head toward the door. “So, what are you waiting for? Go turn your key.”

Right. Because, of course, it was his job to be the hero. They'd already established that. His left hand and everything attached to it was pretty much unusable with only minimal movement in the fingers
and
his entire arm felt as though someone had peeled all the skin off before seasoning it liberally with chopped jalapeños, but, wizard or not, he was just a PA and crap jobs landed like sediment down there at the bottom of the totem pole. Standing hurt. Hell, breathing hurt. He was working his way up to feeling really remarkably sorry for himself when a high-pitched voice slammed the door on his pity party.

“I'm coming with you.”

“Bri.”

She looked up at him and said very slowly and very pointedly, “He's not scared of
me
.”

But he'd been terrified of his father and Tony was a man. Younger, thinner, and with more piercings, but still . . .

“Okay. Sure.” He expected Tina to protest, but she was still too busy mothering Lee to even notice. “Can you carry the lantern?”

“She can, but she probably shouldn't.” Zev picked the lantern up off the counter just before Brianna's hand connected. “I'll come along, too.”

“So will I.”

“No.” Peter physically put himself in Amy's path. “Caulfield might be gone, but this house remains dangerous. The fewer people we have wandering around, the better.”

Amy jabbed a finger toward Brianna. “No fair! She's the boss' daughter and you're letting her wander around!” Her mouth closed with a sudden snap. “That sounded about six, didn't it?”

Tony and Zev nodded in unison.

“Brianna's going because the boy isn't afraid of her. Tony's going because this is his show . . .”

Oh. Well, that sounded significantly better than
Tony's going because we don't want to endanger anyone more significant
.

Stop being such a whiny ass,
he told himself.

“. . . and Zev's going because Tony looks like shit and I'm not sure he can make it up the stairs without help,” Peter continued. “You . . .” He jabbed a finger toward Amy. “. . . are not going. We're all going to sit here and stay out of Tony's way. The last thing he needs on his plate right now is another rescue.”

Shoulders slumped, Amy shoved her hands into her pants pockets. “Fine. Whatever.”

“So, go!” Peter waved at the door and Tony, who'd been staring at him in astonishment, shuffled forward, feeling good about being appreciated. Feeling good being a relative term and nothing twelve hours of sleep and a kilo of painkillers couldn't fix.

Cassie and Stephen were waiting in the dining room, held out of the butler's pantry by the line of lipstick symbols on the floor. As Zev pulled the door closed, they rushed forward looking . . . looking as happy as Tony'd ever seen dead people look. Well, except for Henry who was really more undead than dead.

“It worked!” Stephen spun around them faster than mortally possible. “I wrote half and Cassie wrote half. We put it up between his shoulders and it worked!”

Tony hid a smile. Stephen sounded as though the plan had been his idea from the start.
Teenagers
. He thanked them after he explained to Zev and Brianna that they were there. No more talking to empty air. “You saved Lee. I'm sure of it.”

“No problem. And the thing is gone. There's a whole different feeling in the house now. Different even from when it was asleep. It's still . . . I mean there's still
something,
but it isn't aware anymore. We're more aware than it is. And we're still us.” He took hold of his sister's hands and spun her around. Stopped, settled his head, and grinned. At her. As though she was the only person in his world—which, technically, Tony supposed she was. “We're still here. Together. Only the bad stuff has changed. And you look awful.”

“Yeah. You should see it from this side.”

Cassie seemed happy, laughed with her brother, allowed him to spin her around, but, for the first time, seemed the more reserved of the two.

“You're still replaying,” Tony reminded him as they left the dining room.

“True. But we're used to that.” Stephen dismissed his reoccurring death with a jaunty smack on his sister's ass. She shot him a look Tony couldn't translate. “Once you're gone and there's no people in the house, it'll happen less and less and then what remains of the thing will probably go to sleep again and we'll be left alone. Not completely alone, because Graham will be here, but left alone. No one bothering us.”

“You don't mind being dead?”

“Hey, I guess I'm used to that, too.”

“Where are you three going?” Cassie asked as they reached the stairs. And the way she asked told Tony why she hadn't joined her brother's slightly manic celebration. She knew it wasn't over.

“To talk to Creighton Caulfield's son. Cassie wants to know where we're going,” he explained to Zev, grabbing the back of Brianna's pinafore with his good hand. “We're staying together,” he told her as she glared up at him. “That means no running off.”

“So walk faster!”

The ghosts floated backward in front of them, up the stairs.

Stephen snorted. “Why do you want to talk to Richard? He's not exactly a sparkling conversationalist.”

“Creighton Caulfield was a part of the thing in the basement.” Tony's arm hurt all the way down to his legs. Both legs. And his feet. And all ten toes. “Caulfield's dead.”

“Yeah, we know. We helped, remember. So you're what, off to offer Richard your condolences?”

The stairs were killing him. “No.”

“Then why?” Stephen demanded, impatient with anything getting in the way of his good mood.

Cassie smoothed down her skirt, her fingers carefully arranging each gather. “He's why we're here.” She seemed to be confirming something she'd known for a while even if she'd only just realized she'd known it.

One hand holding his head in place, Stephen spun around toward her. “What are you talking about?”

“Creighton Caulfield's son, Richard, is why we're still here. They . . .” A chill breeze as she gestured. “. . . are going to talk to him about us—about all of us—moving on.”

“NO!”

Tony froze. Zev and Brianna went up one more step, half turned, and stopped as well. They might have started back toward him, Tony wasn't sure. His eyes were locked on the ghost. “Stephen . . .”

“We helped you!”

It was like the scene in Scrooge's rooms in
A Christmas Carol
when Marley's ghost shrieked, and suddenly the slightly comical dead guy looked a lot more dangerous.

“We risked everything to help you and now you're doing this? I knew it! You're trying to destroy us!” Hands outstretched, fingers crooking into translucent claws, Stephen dove toward him.

Tony didn't know if he was going for his throat or about to drive his hands into his chest and squeeze his heart—both classic ghost-goes-in-for-the-kill possibilities—but he did discover that under the right conditions— like, oh, threat of imminent death by severely pissed ghost—his left arm moved. Hurt like hell, but it moved. He smacked his branded palm into the side of Stephen's head, flinging him across the entrance hall. Tried to blink away the fireworks exploding inside his own skull, then positioned himself in front of the other two as Stephen came shrieking back.

Cassie was there first.

“It's over,” she said softly. “We had each other for so much longer than we should have, but it's over.”

“NO!” When he tried to go around, she blocked him again.

She glanced back at Tony over her shoulder, her face at such an angle that she looked whole and beautiful. “Go on. I won't let him stop you.”

“What's happening?” Brianna demanded.

“Stephen's pissed. Cassie's keeping him from hurting us.” Tony grabbed Brianna's free hand and motioned for Zev to start moving again. “We have to get there before the next replay,” he explained as they half dragged her up the stairs between them. “The sooner we finish this the better.”

“But it's you and me against everyone else!” Stephen's protests followed them up to the second floor—lost, disbelieving, and painfully young. “You and me, Cass! It
can't
be over! We did what he wanted! Why is he doing this to us?”

“He's doing this for us. It's time to move on to someplace better.”

“You don't know what you're talking about! Get out of my way, I have to stop . . .”

As the door to Mason's dressing room closed and cut off the argument, Tony hoped Cassie was right. He could be sending them to hell for all he knew. Did he have the right to choose for them?

“They chose when they agreed to help in the basement,” Zev said quietly. “They decided to risk moving on no matter what might happen to them.”

“How did you . . .”

He smiled and shook his head. “When you feel something strongly—like, say, guilt—it's all over your face.”

Brianna nodded agreement.

“Not just when I'm thinking about Lee?”

“All the time.”

“Well, that's . . . embarrassing.”

Zev nodded. “Most of the time, yeah. Come on.” He held the lantern up and led the way to the bathroom, pausing on the threshold to let Brianna push past.

Tony stopped beside him and peered into the small room. “Where is he?” He squinted along the line of Brianna's pointing finger. There was something . . . something too big for the space between the toilet and the corner shower unit. A shape. A shadow. No. Gone.

“You really can't see him?” Zev murmured.

“I really can't.” Then, “Can you see him?”

“No. It's just that Brianna can and you can see everything else, so . . .” The music director shrugged. “Seems strange.”

“As compared to what?”

“Good point.”

He could hear a snuffling sound, but he couldn't see . . .

“Stop seeing the bathroom.”

“What?”

Squatting by the shower in the boneless way of small children and elderly Asian men, Brianna rolled her eyes. “Stop seeing the bathroom,” she repeated.

He took a step into the room. “How do I do that?”

The look she shot him suggested he was stupider than she'd ever suspected. “Pretend it's not there.”

Right. Sure. He could play let's pretend. Let's pretend he didn't still wake up aching for the feel of teeth meeting through his skin. Let's pretend Lee had kissed him in the butler's pantry because he'd wanted to, not because of some weird mix of guilt and being possessed. Let's pretend that the something between the toilet and the tub had plenty of room because neither toilet nor tub were there.

Actually, he sucked at let's pretend.

“Tony?”

And he didn't want to know what was showing on his face. A raised hand to answer Zev's question and another step into the room. No toilet. No shower. Focus on the something between them. Just the something.