Darkest Night - Smoke And Mirrors Part 28

"You didn't cover his mouth," Peter observed as Mouse hauled Hartley upright and slung him over his shoulder, duct tape creaking ominously.

"Nose is plugged."

"And you're afraid he'll suffocate?"

"Let him," Kate muttered as Mouse grunted an a.s.sent.

"All right. That is it from you!" Tina blew her nose and turned on the younger woman, her words emerging with the kind of distinct enunciation achieved only by nuns and senior NCOs. "I am sick and tired of your att.i.tude, young lady.

From now on, you will either have something constructive to say or you will keep your mouth shut. Am I understood?"

Even the house seemed to be waiting for Kate's answer.

Tony had gone to a Catholic elementary school and lessons learned under the steely-eyed glare of the older nuns lingered. Apparently, Kate had also had involuntary responses installed by the Sister Mary Magdalenes of the world.

"Yes, ma'am." Strangely, she looked almost peaceful as she turned to follow Tina into the hall.

She knows who's in charge, Tony realized, stepping out of Mouse's way. He picked up the two candles, his and Hartley's, and waited for Peter, who held the lantern, to leave the room.

But the director stood staring down at the dark puddle on the floor, apparently unaware that the others had left. He moved the light back and forth, mesmerized by the reflection of the flame. After a long moment, he sighed. "That's way too much blood, people. Let's try and keep it realistic."

"Peter?"

"You may know what's happening, but you're not responsible for any of this, Tony." His voice was low, too low to be overheard by anyone more than an arm's length away. "I am. That's why I get the big bucks."

Peter, as much as Tina, was the voice of reason. She couldn't hold them in place alone. He couldn't slip.

Tony snorted. "CB pays big bucks?"

The older man started, stared at him for a moment, then he snorted in turn. "Relatively speaking. Come on, they'll need the light."

They left Hartley lying inside the circle of salt staring sullenly at the ceiling. The pair of candles lit so Peter could carry the lantern into the dining room were left burning, the second lantern blown out so as not to waste the kerosene, and everyone followed Brenda's body into the drawing room.

They set her down next to Tom. Lee's hands were visibly shaking as he released her shoulders and straightened.

Although Adam moved to join the others, he remained standing over her, facing away from the group, the back of his dress s.h.i.+rt a brilliant white like a beacon reflecting the lantern light.

I should go to him. He needs . . . Except that Tony had no idea what he needed.

It was Mason who finally broke the tableau. Mason, who had made vested self-interest a cornerstone of his personality, stepped forward until he stood shoulder to shoulder with Lee and offered him a cigarette.

Lee looked down at Mason's hand, up at his face, and almost smiled. "No thanks, I don't smoke."

"Good." He slipped the cigarette back into his jacket pocket. "Because it's my last one."

Almost became actually and Lee's teeth flashed as he shook his head. "Jacka.s.s."

"And I thought you gay guys were supposed to be the sensitive ones," Amy muttered, so close to his ear her breath lapped warm against his skin.

He'd have suggested she bite him, but given the distance . . .

As Lee turned, he almost seemed to be searching for something. Someone. His eyes locked on Tony's face just for an instant and, for that instant, flashed . . . relief? Tony was too distracted by the dark stain dimming the brightness of his s.h.i.+rtfront to be sure. By the time he looked up again, Lee was moving away from the body and Amy was moving toward it and Zev's hand was around his arm. A quick squeeze. And gone.

"Is anyone going to say words over the body," Amy asked as she worked off her two remaining rings.

"No one said anything over Tom," Adam pointed out.

"Yeah, well, Tom took us by surprise."

"And we expected this?"

Amy's arched brow was answer enough. She waited. "Fine. I'll do it." A deep breath. A glance down at the bodies, the rings jingling in one hand. "To the living, death sucks. But to the dead, it's just another stop on the journey. Have a nice trip."

"That was . . ." Tina began.

". . . stupid," Ashley finished. "Because they're not going anywhere, they're just trapped in the house like all the other dead people."

"You think you can do it better?"

"I never said that."

"Then shut up."

"You shut up."

"Girls . . ." Tina's voice held obvious warning. The phrase "clear and present danger" chased itself around Tony's head.

Amy rolled her eyes and dropped to one knee, lifting the edge of Lee's jacket off Brenda's face with one hand and dropping her rings on the dead woman's eyes with the other. "Anyone else goes," she murmured, "and we're going to have to hope silver plating works as well."

Foreshadowing, Tony thought. And he could see the word on a couple of other faces. Just what we need. Movement at the far end of the room caught his eye, and he turned, expecting to see Ca.s.sie and Stephen but instead seeing only the faint gray outline of the mirror. He'd managed to be elsewhere when Peter had ordered the hair spray cleaned off after finis.h.i.+ng the c.o.c.ktail party scene. Given the length of the room, he was surprised that the lantern light reached that far.

On second thought, he wasn't sure that it did.

Movement in the mirror had nothing to do with movement in the room. Shapes offered other shapes something.

Tea. Little cakes. Faces, made indistinct by distance, formed and re-formed as cups rose and fell and dropped to the carpet when the convulsions started.

"Is that how we left him?" Amy's question snapped his head back around so quickly he nearly kinked his neck. Tom's left hand lay by his side, the fingers curled up so that chewed fingernails pointed toward the ceiling. His right rested palm down on his thigh.

Under the tarp, his head flopped a little to one side. Tony couldn't remember how they'd left him.

"Who looked that closely?" Adam muttered, more or less voicing Tony's thought.

"I think it would be cool if he walked around," Brianna sighed. "You guys never did zombies yet."

"Episode after next," Amy said without looking up.

"Seriously?" Mason didn't sound thrilled. Tony couldn't blame him. The whole walking undead thing was just too easy to parody. Once Sara Polley took up arms against an army of animated corpses, zombies were done to death-at least on the Canadian side of the border.

"Writers were finis.h.i.+ng the final draft when I left the office."

"Peter . . ."

"Not now, Mason."

Amy nodded, having come to a decision. "Of course that's how he was. I'm sure."

She almost sounded sure.

That would have to be good enough.

"You have a safe trip, too." She lightly touched Tom's shoulder before she stood, then tugged her h.e.l.lo Kitty T-s.h.i.+rt down and headed for the door. "Let's get back into the circle and this time, let's all stay there."

"Brianna, Ashley, come on." Zev tugged the girls into motion and everyone else followed behind; walking slowly like mourners leaving a funeral. Which, Tony supposed, was what they were. Amy was right, Tom had taken them by surprise and they hadn't so much mourned him as feared for themselves. Brenda, they grieved for.

He watched Lee's bowed shoulders, found himself wondering just how much the other man grieved, and almost hated himself for it.

"Tony?"

"Right. Sorry." He hurried to catch up to Peter and Adam.

"Isn't this great," the 1AD muttered. "We have our own morgue. It's like we're being punished for inflicting yet another gumshoe with fangs on the viewing public."

"This seems a little extreme for bad television," Peter sighed.

"Episode nine."

"Even for that."

The silence waiting for them in the hall seemed weighted. The people waiting, numbed. Amy knelt by Hartley, everyone else stood around the outside edge of the circle.

Peter pushed past. "What is it?"

Amy's voice had lost most of its highs and lows. "He's dead. It looks like he puked and choked on it."

"You're sure?"

"I watched a lot of Da Vinci's Inquest." Her lip curled. "And besides, it's pretty obvious."

"Eww, puke." But even Brianna seemed to have lost her interest in the ghoulish.

"Right. All right." Peter visibly pulled fraying bits back together. "Saleen, Pavin, carry him into the drawing room beside the others. Don't even start with me," he continued as the sound tech opened his mouth to protest. "Half the time it's like you two aren't even here. Amy . . ."

"Earrings." Her hands rose to the first of four silver hoops in her right ear. "I'm on it."

Sorge led the way with the lantern, then Amy, then the body. No one said anything. No one followed.

"At least it was his own vomit," Adam observed thoughtfully as the body pa.s.sed.

Tony would have laughed, wouldn't have been able to stop himself from laughing, except that the lights came up and Karl started shrieking as he burned.

Some of the moisture beading Graham's forehead was rain. Most of it wasn't. Breathing heavily, he sat back on his heels and shook his head. "Still nothing. They're there. I can feel them, eh, but it's like they don't know where I am."

"The house." CB made it an accusation, not a question.

"Yeah, sure, probably. So what? There's nothing I can do. I need a beer." He started to stand but Henry's hand came down on his shoulder and held him in place.

"When we're done, you can drink yourself into a stupor if you need to." Henry reached past the medium with his other hand. "Try again while I'm in contact with the house."

"And that'll do what?"

"Like calls to like."

"Yeah. Okay." Graham watched the pale fingers approach the closest point the house allowed. "It'll just throw you off."

Hazel eyes darkened. "Let it try."

"At least Karl doesn't take too long." Ca.s.sie rubbed her arms, hands ghosting over the rivulets of blood without disturbing them. "I need to get out of this bathroom."

Stephen snorted. "It's not Karl that takes the time, it's his mother. And what a way to go; poking her eyes out with knitting needles might not have even killed her."

"I think it made sure she was dead."

"Well, yeah." He sat down on the edge of the tub, the blood splatters from their deaths evident on porcelain and paint.

"Did it seem faster this time?"

"Karl?"

"The time between us and Karl."

"I don't know." Ca.s.sie reached out and lightly touched her reflection in the mirror. Her face was whole and she never tired of looking at it.

"It seemed faster to me. I think it's speeding things up, putting more pressure on them now that they've started to crack. I mean, we barely pulled ourselves back together after dying when we were back in here again. And there's two more dead."

"I know." Her eyes were . . . were . . . "Stephen, what color were my eyes?"