Smoke and Shadows (20 page)

Tony wanted to tell him that it was none of those. It wasn't MS, it wasn't ADSS; it wasn't any of a dozen neurological disorders that would destroy his career then finally take his life. Unfortunately, it was something worse. Worse numerically anyhow, since an invasion by the Shadowlord would also destroy his career and take his life—along with countless other lives.

“Tony.”

About to fall into step beside the actor, he glanced over at Adam.

“The moment Lee's in CB's office, you head right back.”

He felt his cheeks flush. “Sure.” Skip out early once and never hear the end of it.

Lee was half a dozen steps in front of him now, the set of his shoulders announcing that he neither needed nor wanted company. Too bad. As Tony hurried to catch up, he checked out the spot where Arra had been standing and wasn't surprised to find her gone. He hadn't actually expected her to stay around and do something useful. Something wizardy.

The red light came on seconds after they closed the door.

The show going on.

Stepping into the cleared area in front of the washroom, for the first time walking side by side, a shadow skittered across their path. They jerked back. Lee caught a kind of moan in his throat and held it there.

“Just this coat,” Tony said, grabbing a fistful of fabric and yanking the coat still. “It sort of moved out in front of the light.”

Lee had shoved his way through the costumes with enough force to set the racks swaying and, in turn, the costumes. He looked at the coat, then turned just far enough to stare at Tony; kept staring long enough so Tony was sure he was going to demand an explanation.

Or perhaps a little more twenty-first Century.
“What the hell is up with these shadows?”

Lee's eyes narrowed. Then, without a word, he stomped the last three meters to his dressing room, entered, and slammed the door.

“Yeah.” Tony leaned on the scuffed drywall between Lee's dressing room and makeup. “I'll just wait out here.”

“. . . go through thousands of bottles of water every week and so crushing them before they go into the recycling bin is crucial or they're just not going to fit.” Amy speared a piece of spiral pasta and frowned into its pattern. “Not to mention that whole wind catching them when they're dumped and bouncing them over hell's half acre thing.” Looking up, her frown deepened. “Tony? Are you even listening to me?”

He tore his gaze away from a patch of shadow climbing the soundstage wall. “Yeah. Crushing plastic water bottles. I heard you. Amy, can I tell you something a little . . . weird?”

“About Lee?'

Lee was the principal topic of a hundred lunch discussions. “Sort of.”

“Good thing Mason wasn't on the set,” she snorted, picking through her chicken fettuccini. “He hates it when Lee gets more attention than he does.” The office staff had their own kitchen and their own caterer, but every one of them believed that the food on the soundstage was better. When the show was shooting on set, they ran a lottery to see who'd get to eat with the cast and crew. Amy won fairly often and when the inevitable protests arose, she reminded her coworkers that eventually someone would complain and the odds were good she'd be the one catching the shit. So far, no one had. Since there was always enough food for a dozen extra people and Mason usually ate in his dressing room, it was unlikely anyone ever would. She looked up, caught sight of Tony's face, and stilled. “This is serious.” When he nodded, she put down her fork. “Go ahead.”

Where to start? “There's a gate to another world, like a metaphysical gate, in the soundstage.”

When he paused, unsure, she nodded. “Go on.”

“Shadows come through it controlled by an evil wizard they call Shadowlord.”

“He controls the gate or the shadows?”

“Both.”

“And the shadows call him Shadowlord?”

“No. The people of that world.” He slipped his hands under the table and wiped sweaty palms against his thighs. This was going better than he'd hoped. “The other world.”

“Right.”

“These shadows are like his spies and they're coming through to find out about this world so that he can invade and conquer it.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why invade and conquer? What's his motivation?”

“I don't know; invading and conquering, I guess. What difference does it make?”

“You have to know his motivation, Tony.”

“It doesn't matter!” As heads turned he lowered his voice. “The point is; these shadows can kill, have already killed, and now there's at least four more.”

“So how do you stop them?”

“I don't know.”

“You need a hero.”

“Tell me about it. Although I'm not sure a hero would solve the problem. Arra's a wizard . . .”

“So she's working on this, too?”

“Not really. She doesn't want to get involved. I think she's afraid.”

“Of what, bad writing?” Amy snorted. “Because if she is, she's working on the wrong show.”

“Of the Shadowlord!”

“Well, he doesn't sound very scary. But let me take a look at the script; you never know.”

“Script?”

“Yeah, for your show about the Shadowlord.” Her brows drew in as she reached for her butter tart. “Or was it an episode of
this
show? You weren't exactly clear on that.”

“It's not a script! It's . . .” About to say it was real, Tony paused, looked, really looked into Amy's face, and realized he'd never convince her. She had nothing to anchor this kind of a situation on. She'd never faced the possibility of a demon's name written in blood across her city, never seen an ancient Egyptian wizard kill with a glance, never felt sharp teeth bite through the skin of her wrist, never heard the soft sounds of her lover feeding. Well, maybe the latter, but . . . never mind. The point was; if he tried to convince her, she'd think he was either yanking her chain or losing his mind. “It's not a script,” he repeated. “It's just an idea.” He shoved back his chair and stood. “I need to go talk to Arra.”

“Can I have your Nanaimo bar?”

He found a smile from somewhere, probably the same place Lee'd found his earlier. “Sure.”

“Work on the hero. The whole thing falls apart without one.”

The magic on the basement stairs tried once again to turn him back. Tony gritted his teeth and ignored it. It wasn't real. Or it wasn't any more real than anything thing else she did for
Darkest Night
. It was all smoke and mirrors. Or maybe smoke and shadows . . .

Arra was at her desk, back toward him as he crossed the shadowless room. All but one of her monitors showed solitaire games. On the final monitor she seemed to be combining a graphics program with data entry. Equations scrolled up around a complex spiral made up of strange symbols rather than a solid line. As Tony closed the final distance, the last equation reached the center and disappeared. Arra right clicked her mouse and the spiral flared . . . he had no idea what color that was although watering eyes insisted purple came closest. The light lasted for less than a second, then vanished, and the monitor screen was blank.

About to ask her what she was doing, Tony suddenly realized he didn't have to.

“You're going to gate out. That was a computer mock-up of a new gate!”

“A computer mock-up of a metaphysical construct?” Arra spun around to face him, eyes rolling. “You know that's impossible, right?”

“There are more or less sentient shadows falling through a hole in the air and killing people!” He was shouting. He didn't care. The situation certainly called for shouting and he had no idea how he'd resisted to this point. “I think you'll find that the bar for impossible has been set pretty damned high!”

“Don't you mean low?”

“I have no fucking idea!”

“You tried to tell someone, didn't you?”

“What?”

She jerked her head back toward the solitaire games. “Sixes blocked on all of them. A romantic idea of responsibility and justice; you tried to warn people, to raise the alarm.” Her tone softened slightly as she met his eyes again. “The trouble is no one will believe you. You're talking about things that ninety-nine percent of the people of this world refuse to see.”

“Yeah. I get that.” He'd dialed down the volume, but the anger was still very much there. “They'd believe you.”

“Me?”

“You could make them believe you. You could prove that it's real.”

“How? With magic? I should show them walking corpses or turn a sofa into a flock of geese? Tony, I do that every day and all they see is a special effect. They've seen wizards fly and petrify their friends and strike down their enemies from across the room. They
know
it's a trick. Nothing I can do will convince the ninety and nine otherwise.”

“Fine! What about the one percent?”

“Well . . .” Arra sighed and spread her hands. “. . . that would be you.”

“You can't make this whole thing my responsibility!”

“I'm not.”

She sounded so calm and matter-of-fact, it drove the volume right back up again. He wanted to wrap his hands around her throat and shake her until she took him seriously; until she agreed to help; until she destroyed the shadows—unfortunately, he could only shout. “You can't just fucking run away from this!”

“Yes, I can.”

“But it's
your
fault! You opened the gate to this world! You gave him a way to get here!” A small voice in the back of Tony's head seemed to be suggesting that pissing off a wizard was less than smart. Tony ignored it. “If you run, eventually he'll find that gate, too and he'll think, ‘oh good idea, another world to conquer' and you'll have to run again. And again. You're thinking of no one but yourself!”

Her lip curled. “And who do you suggest I take through the gate with me? Who chooses who lives and who dies? Do I take you and leave the rest?”

“That's not what I fucking meant! How many worlds are you going to leave in ruins behind you?”

“Do you think I wanted it to turn out this way?” She surged up out of the chair with enough force to slam it back against the desk and shake the monitors.

“I think you don't care that it has.”

“Caring means
nothing
!” Loud enough to echo, the word circled around them for a moment. When it faded, she took a deep breath and continued, back in control. “It didn't then, it won't now. It won't ever! If I could have saved my world, I would have! If I could save this world, I would. But I couldn't and I can't, and if all I can save is myself, then I'm not going to sit around here and die! Tell the world if you want to. Give a news conference. Maybe someone in that one percent is a person in power and, convinced, will face the Shadowlord with soldiers and weapons. It still won't matter. It didn't and it won't. He can't be stopped. And if you need to hear it, I'm sorry. But that doesn't matter either. He's barely begun and the end is already in the can. You can't stop it.”

“I have to try.”

Her snort spoke volumes. “If you go down fighting, you're just as dead as if you lived out your final days happily ignoring the inevitable. I can make you forget again.”

“And that worked so well last time,” he sneered. “In fact, now that I think of it, your previous work was not exactly inspiring. We don't even know if your potion did anything but drop Lee drunk on his ass. You said that sometimes the shadows have no effect. This could have been one of those times. So you know what? I'm going to take out those four new shadows my . . .”