Darkest Night - Smoke And Mirrors Part 12

"Then one of them blew open and the storm took the power out."

"Power in this house sucks." Given content, probably the electrician.

"The power in this house is ga . . . Ow! Zev! What was that for?" Definitely Amy. "All I was going to say was that the power was gathering!"

"She's right." Ca.s.sie joined her brother. "She's guessing, but she's right."

Zev's voice sounded like it was coming through clenched teeth. "Let's try not to scare the G. I. R. L. S."

"We're not deaf." Ashley. No mistaking the nearly teenage snort.

"And we can spell." Brianna sounded better than she had, but her hand remained in Tony's. "And our father's not going to like this!"

No one argued.

"And," she declared triumphantly, "I can hear that baby again."

So could Tony; not screaming this time, but crying. A thin, sad, barely audible sound that drifted down from the upper hall.

Both ghosts turned toward the stairs.

"Karl," said Ca.s.sie.

"He's just getting warmed up," Stephen added. Then he glanced at Tony and grinned. "Get it? Warmed up?"

Impossible not to snicker.

"Something funny, Mr. Foster?"

Peter knows my snicker? Now that was disturbing. "Uh, no."

"Too bad, I'm sure we could all use a chuckle. Adam, try to raise Hartley."

"Can't. My battery's dead."

"I thought you just changed it."

"I did."

"They'll be all right," Ca.s.sie murmured rea.s.suringly. "As long as they go straight to the kitchen and straight back. It's still early."

"And later?" Tony asked, pitching his voice under the argument going on at the stairs.

"Later . . ."

She paused for long enough that her brother answered. "Later, no one's going to be all right."

"Well, thanks a whole f.u.c.king lot for that observation."

Brianna's fingers tightened around Tony's hand, and her small body b.u.mped hard against his hip. "Thanks a whole f.u.c.king lot for what observation?"

"Brianna!" Ashley's protest gave Tony a short reprieve. "I'm telling Mom you said f.u.c.king!"

"So did you!"

"Did not!"

"Just did, Zitface!"

Other conversations were beginning to quiet as the girls' volume rose. Any minute now Peter was going to demand to know what was going on and Brianna would tell him and then Tony would have to explain why he'd said what he'd said and to who. To whom? Oh, yeah, grammar and the dead. Let's make sure we get that right. . . . He could almost hear Peter gathering up his authority. And then he saw salvation: "There's a light in the dinning room!"

Tina's flashlight.

Hartley emerged out of the darkness carrying a full box of white emergency candles. "I got no way to light them," he said as he reached the hall. "I stopped smoking five years ago now."

Kate hadn't smoked for two, Mouse for almost seven, and Adam for going on six months.

"Oh, for crying out loud." Mason's distinctive tones. He came the rest of the way down the stairs and thrust his hand, holding his lighter, into the narrow cone of illumination. His fingers gripped the blue translucent plastic in a way that dared his audience to comment. No one took the dare. Right at the moment, no one cared if Mason smoked and lied about it. Right at the moment, no one would have cared if Mason set fire to bus shelters and lied about that.

They lit six of the twenty-four candles. Six created a large enough circle of light for comfort but not enough flame to be a fire hazard.

"A fire hazard?" Mason snorted. "It's a twenty-foot ceiling, Peter. What the h.e.l.l are we going to ignite?"

"This place is rented, and we're going to be careful." The director shut the box on the remaining candles and tucked it under one arm, so pointedly not mentioning the possibility of needing the other eighteen later that everyone heard it.

"Be careful, girls." Brenda motioned Ashley back as she moved in toward a candle. "Keep your clothes away from the flame; we can't afford to replace them."

"Not to mention," Sorge pointed out dryly, "it is a bad thing to have children catch on fire."

Brenda shot him a look that might have done damage given enough light for him to catch the full impact. "That's what I meant."

"I never doubted it."

The baby, Karl, continued crying. Tony glanced up the stairs, wondering if the sound had gotten louder, and realized that Lee was watching him, frowning slightly. Their eyes met and just for an instant, Tony thought he saw . . .

"Everett's lying down!"

And whatever it was, it was gone. He spun around. Brianna pulled down the blackout curtain and was s.h.i.+ning Tina's flashlight between the doors. The beam showed Everett lying on his back, head canted up against the baseboard on the west wall, left arm stretched out, right hand clutching his golf s.h.i.+rt right over the little polo player. "Oh, great! He's had a f.u.c.king heart attack!"

"You said f.u.c.king."

The door was still jammed shut. "Yeah, get over it."

"Stay back; none of you can help!" Peter's voice stopped the rush. "Tony, is he dead?"

"No," Ca.s.sie answered before Tony could.

He turned and gave a little shriek to see her three quarters of a profile also peering through the door about four inches from his shoulder.

"Tony?" Zev. And he sounded concerned.

Face flushed with embarra.s.sment-it had been a distinctly girly shriek-Tony kept his eyes locked on the makeup artist and waved a hand in the general direction of the people behind him. "He's unconscious, but he's not dead."

"How can you tell?"

"I can see him breathing."

"His lips are kind of blue." Brianna flicked the flashlight beam down the length of Everett's p.r.o.ne body. "I like his sandals."

Tony was just beginning to consider stepping away and trying to call the door to him when Mouse's large hand closed over his shoulder and pulled him back. "Move. You too, kid."

She shone the flashlight at the cameraman. The beam gleamed along the length of the light stand he was holding. "Are you gonna break the gla.s.s?"

"Yes."

"Cool."

"I wouldn't," Stephen muttered.

Great. With no time to be subtle, Tony grabbed Mouse's wrist. The big man glared down at him. "What about broken gla.s.s? You know, shards of it sticking into Everett?"

"Risk," Mouse acknowledged. "But he needs help." He shook off Tony's grip and swung the stand, the heavy base slamming down toward the inner window.

From where he was standing, Tony wasn't even sure it hit the gla.s.s although the sound of an impact echoed through the hall. There was a flash of red and another impact as Mouse landed on his a.s.s six feet from the door, the stand bouncing across the hardwood to clang up against the far wall.

"The house won't let you damage it," Stephen told him under the rising babble of voices.

"You couldn't have said that?"

"Would they have believed you?"

Point to the dead guy.

"All right, all right! Just calm down." With everyone used to following Peter's direction, the noise level dropped.

"I'm sure we'll be able to get to Everett in a couple of minutes. The guys outside at the trucks are probably working on getting the doors open right now."

The silence that fell was so complete the soft pad pad of Ashley s.h.i.+fting her weight from one bare foot to the other was the only sound in the hall.

Then Tina took her flashlight back and snapped it off. "Shouldn't we be able to hear them?" she asked.

"All right; on three."

Chris and Ujjal, the genny op, s.h.i.+fted their grips on four-foot lengths of steel scaffolding pipe.

"One." Karen wiped rain off her face and moved a little to the right where she had a better line of sight on the kitchen door. "Two. Three."

Impact. A flare of red light and both men were flung away from the house. Karen ducked as a pipe cartwheeled over her head to crash against the side of the truck.

"Told you it wouldn't work." Graham Brummel's voice sounded over the fading reverberation of steel on steel.

"House is closed up tight. Won't be opening till dawn and there's nothing you can do from out here to change that. You might as well just do what I said and head home like the rest of the crew."

"f.u.c.k you," Chris snarled as he got to his feet. "I'm not listening to you; you're in on this. I'm calling the cops."

"And why would you need to call the police, Mr. Robinson?"

Chris, Karen, and Ujjal turned. Graham Brummel stepped back into the shadows as Chester Bane moved out into the spill of light falling from the spotlight mounted on the side of the truck. He stood, dry under the circle of his umbrella, and listened impa.s.sively as his three employees, growing wetter and wetter, attempted to explain. Finally, he raised a ma.s.sive hand. "You can't get into the house."

It wasn't a question, but Chris answered it anyway. "No, sir."

"You can't even touch the house."

"No, sir." "You can't contact the people inside the house, but you believe that they are unable to leave."

"No, sir." He frowned as Karen drove her elbow into his side. "Yes, sir?"

"My daughters are still in there."

Propelled by a hindbrain response to danger, all three of them took an involuntary step back. Karen elbowed Chris again, and he coughed out another, "Yes, sir."

"And the caretaker knows what's going on."

"Yes, sir." In unison this time, powered by relief.

"Where is he?"

"He's. . ." Chris turned, realized Graham Brummel was no longer standing by the front of the truck and frowned.

Before he could continue, the sound of a door slamming over by the garage answered the question.

CB made a sound, half speculation, half growl. His employees parted as he strode forward, walked around the truck, and crossed the small courtyard to the garage, the wet gravel grinding under each deliberate step. At the door leading to the caretaker's apartment, he furled his umbrella and handed it back, fully confident there'd be someone there to take it.

The door was locked.

He rattled the bra.s.s k.n.o.b for a moment, noting the amount of play in the movement of the door. Then he took four long steps back into the courtyard. Ujjal scrambled to get out of his way.

"Should I call the police?" Karen asked him as he stood, staring at the door.

"Not yet." A sledgehammer wrapped in an eight-hundred-and-fifty-dollar London Fog trench coat would have made much the same sound as his shoulder did hitting the painted wood.

Wood cracked.

"A lock," he said, forcing the bra.s.s tongue through the splintered casing and opening the door, "is only as good as the wood around it. Find someplace dry to wait where you can see the house. Come and get me if anything changes."

"Shouldn't we . . ." Chris began and stopped as CB paused, one foot over the threshold. "Never mind. We'll find someplace dry to wait and watch the house."

Two more steps inside, and CB paused again. "Is Tony Foster trapped inside?" he asked without turning.