Smoke and Ashes

by Tanya Huff

  “He still knows what happened,” he said, nodding past her to Kevin who was hoisting his backpack up over one shoulder and looking a little happier himself.

  Leah glanced over her shoulder and looked smug. “He knows what I told him.”

  “And you told him it was special effects.” Tony waited until Kevin had crossed the parking lot, anticipating what was about to happen with a certain amount of petty glee. “So, Kevin, what did you think about those special effects? Not Leah’s special effects,” he clarified hurriedly, “before that, in the parking lot.”

  The reporter shrugged and, at Tony’s gesture, blushed and zipped up. “It was a demon.”

  Tony leaned against the building where he was out of the rain and less likely to fall over. “He has a power,” he explained before the astounded immortal Demongate found her voice. “He knows the truth.”

  Leah frowned at him. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  Turned and frowned at Kevin. “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  Back to Tony; still frowning. “So, what? You got yourself a sidekick?”

  Wizardman and Reporterboy!

  That was wrong on so many levels.

  The glee evaporated as he looked up and realized the shooting light was on and they were stuck outside. Only a few meters to the back door and warmth and coffee and it might as well be in Alberta. “No,” he told her flatly, “I got myself someone who may know how long the Demonic Convergence is going to last.”

  “Wait a minute, the Western Star.” Leah’s fingers closed around Kevin’s wrist and she hauled him around to face her. “You know someone’s lying and you still print crap like ’I was impregnated by a Sasquatch’?”

  He chewed on a corner of his lower lip. “Who says that was a lie?”

  “And you’re going to report on all this?”

  “I don’t…” More chewing. Tony thought he seemed torn. He was inside the story now, he’d had a look at what Tony could do, and had to believe Tony’s threat about stuffing him back outside with his nose pressed against the glass. But demons, actual demons and wizards, that was a byline on the front page. “I mean, if someone noticed…”

  “No one noticed,” Tony assured him. “And if anyone did, they’ll think it was a special effect. Even without Leah’s…reinforcement.”

  Kevin stared at him like he had oatmeal coming out his ears. “They’d think a charging demon disappearing in a flash of lime-green light was a special effect?”

  “You should see what the guys at Bridge get up to in their parking lot,” Tony snorted as he pushed off the wall. The demon had obviously rattled him more than he’d thought. The craft services truck was parked no more than three meters from the back door—he didn’t have to go inside for sustenance, he could go to the source. He paused on the metal stairs that led into the back of the truck and glanced down at the other two who were watching him like he might do something interesting. Like blow something up. Or fall over. Or fall over while blowing something up.

  “You guys want a coffee?”

  “Are you sure you should be touching stimulants?” Leah asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then. Double cream, no sugar.”

  “Kevin?”

  “I’m good.”

  Tony didn’t quite hear what Leah muttered as he went inside and he was just as happy not to given that, when he came out holding the two coffees with a muffin in his pocket, Kevin was still blushing.

  “All right,” he said, pushing back in under the scant overhang. “When we go in, you guys go straight through to CB’s office. Leah, tell him what happened. Kevin.” He held up a hand for emphasis. “Don’t talk to anyone in the soundsta…What?”

  Kevin pointed to the rune on his palm with a shaking finger. “The demon had one of those. I saw it when it was charging at you!”

  “Like this one?” Tony demanded, turning his hand so he could see the rune.

  “How should I know?”

  “Right. Sorry.” He pointed the rune at Kevin again, who ducked. “Relax, it’s for making energies solid enough to hold.”

  “Yeah, well, she has them, too. All over her…um…her…”

  “Stomach? Jesus, Kevin, you just had sex with her in the back of a van. You ought to be able to name body parts.”

  “I don’t do that.” The reporter looked seriously freaked, like reality had finally caught up and smacked him on the back of the head. “I don’t have sex with women I don’t know. My God! We didn’t use protection! Do you know what the STD statistics are in this city? I could have caught somethi…OW!”

  “You were hysterical,” Leah explained, picking her coffee up again.

  He rubbed his cheek. “I was not! I was reacting in a perfectly…A cult!”

  Tony blinked at him over the edge of his cup. “A what?”

  “You belong to a cult! You and her, and that’s why you’ve got those things and that’s why the demon did, too. You’re both mixed up in something that’s out of your control!”

  “It’s not a cult.” Tony waited for Kevin to realize the truth of that and carefully said nothing about things being out of his control. Although, technically, they’d never been in his control. “The Demonic Convergence brought us together, and now, with or without your help, we have to save the world.”

  Kevin straightened, grabbing his backpack just before it hit the ground. “You don’t scare me.”

  “He should,” Leah snorted. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Making it up as he goes along. Wild cannon. Could go off at any moment. And speaking of going off at any moment…”

  “Don’t,” Tony told her. This was not the time to hit back at the reporter for that STD comment. To his surprise, she didn’t. “Was this the rune on the demon’s hand?” he asked Kevin again.

  He shook his head. “No. It was more…squiggly. And fresher.”

  “Fresher?”

  “Not a scar, a wound. And not burned, cut.”

  Tony finished his coffee and started on his muffin while staring down at his palm. If the demons were coming from Ryne Cyratane, why would he be marking them? “He’s marking them so they can hurt you,” he said at last. “Slipping them between the runes in the existing spell.”

  “Yeah.” Leah brushed crumbs off her sleeve. “I got that.” She grabbed a double handful of the track top and the shirt under it and pulled them up. Her track pants were riding low on her hips and most of the tattoo was exposed. “Did it look like one of these?”

  Kevin stared. And blinked a couple of times, overcome by memory. “I…uh…I…that’s not…I don’t…”

  “Would you concentrate?”

  “No.”

  “No you won’t concentrate, or no it wasn’t one of these runes?”

  “Forget that for now,” Tony sighed as the red light over the door finally went out. What had they been shooting in there? Raymond Dark meets The Fellowship of the Ring? “Show him again in CB’s office when you’ve got a chaperone. Right now, let’s move before we’re stuck out here for The Two Towers.”

  “What?”

  “Just move.”

  He got them most of the way across the soundstage before anyone noticed, and by then they were close enough to the other exit that he gave them a shove and turned to face the approaching first assistant director.

  “Was that who I think it was?” Adam demanded as Tony moved to block his line of sight.

  “The stuntwoman we used the other night? Yeah. That was her.”

  “Not her. The guy. That was that reporter that’s been hanging around. Graves.”

  “Groves.”

  “Right.”

  “Mason called him in to brag about the deranged fan.” As the star of the show, Mason was pretty much untouchable. Made him handy to blame things on. “I saw him hanging around out back and had Leah take him in to see CB.”

  Adam had no special lie detecting powers, but he was responsible for seeing that actors and crew managed t
o get their collective shit together long enough to produce a weekly show. He didn’t need to know the truth as much as he needed to know what would get the job done. “Mason needs his goddamned ego examined. Why is the stuntie hanging around?”

  “She’s with me.”

  Dark brows rose. Adam had been on the haunted location shoot and on the soundstage when the demon attacked—even if he hadn’t been part of the battle or its aftermath. He knew…things. Maybe not specifics but definitely things. Arms folded across a barrel chest, he frowned at Tony for a long moment, but all he said was, “Good enough.” Then his eyes unfocused.

  Recognizing the expression, Tony reached for the volume on his radio, remembered he wasn’t wearing one, and waited, growing increasingly twitchy. It was one thing to be momentarily aware of his place in the universe and another entirely to be on the soundstage unplugged. He hated not knowing what was happening.

  “It’s the same goddamned coffin lining we’ve used since the beginning, Sorge,” Adam barked into his microphone. “Why is it making Mason look ruddy now? No, I don’t know. Hey! Don’t be calling me names in French; you want to call me names, you do it in English. Or Greek. Fine. I’ll be right there.” He pivoted on one heel, paused, and turned back. “Get your ass back to work as soon as humanly possible.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  The set under the gate had been cleaned. The broken wall had been cleared away and, from the rhythmic spit of nail guns in the distance, was being repaired. The painted plywood floor had been swept. Tony dropped to one knee and dragged a damp fingertip over the floor where the demon’s ashes had been. Nothing.

  Crap.

  “You look disappointed.”

  He looked up. Lee wore a pale khaki golf shirt tucked into darker khaki Dockers under a black leather jacket, over black ankle boots. James Taylor Grant was supposed to look preppie-tough; today, they’d gotten it right. Other days…well, no one looked tough in tennis whites. Except maybe Serena Williams. “I wanted to look at the ash.” No need to lie to Lee; he knew as much as any of them. Besides, there were enough lies between them already. And cue the world’s smallest violin…

  “The demon ash? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I thought maybe it could tell me something.”

  “Because you’re working for CSI: Second Circle of Hell?”

  Tony snickered and stood. “You want to bet they pitched that?”

  “No bet. Tony, you…” Lee frowned, his gaze tracking up from the damp spot Tony’s knee had left on the floor. “You’re wet.”

  “Yeah.” Reaching back, he yanked the cheap polyester pants away from his body. “I’m just glad I’m not wearing underwear.”

  Green eyes gleamed.

  Had he said that out loud? Crap again. “Sorry. TMI.”

  “A little. Maybe.” The actor shifted his weight as Tony wondered what he meant by maybe. “So, uh, your friend is…attractive.”

  “My friend?” He ran over the friends he had that Lee knew. “Jack? For the last fucking time, man, he’s straight.”

  “I meant Leah.” The asshole was silent but understood.

  “Oh. Right.” Duh. Attractive to Lee.

  “She’s got a certain…I mean, you can’t help but react to her.”

  That almost sounded like an apology. Tony rubbed his temples and tried to figure out what Lee was apologizing for. Demons were fairly straightforward compared to most conversations he and Lee had these days.

  “And I saw you with Kevin Groves.”

  Half a smile. “He’s straight. too.”

  Half a smile back. “You sure?”

  “Well, he’s never had his tongue down my throat.”

  Unlike you.

  The actor’s expression suggested the subtext came through a bit louder than Tony intended.

  “I didn’t mean…Look, I wasn’t…”

  “It’s okay. It’s not like I thought you were hitting on me or something.” Lee tried to make it a joke, but neither tone nor grin matched the way he shoved his hands in his pockets, looking suddenly young and unsure.

  Which was weird because Lee wasn’t young, he was—Tony frowned as he did the math, Lee’s birth date being all over the Internet. Only a year older? It was just he was always so self-assured and Tony always seemed to be scrambling to survive that the gap seemed a lot larger most of the time.

  Not this time.

  In fact, there wasn’t much of a gap at all.

  Between them.

  No gap.

  Which one of them had moved? Tony didn’t remember moving.

  “Jesus, Tony. You’re bleeding again.”

  “I was.” He could feel the heat of Lee’s fingers through the shirt. “It stopped.”

  “Hey!”

  Lee jumped back, his ears crimson. It was the most awkward movement Tony had ever seen him make.

  Adam scowled at them both from the edge of the set. “You,” he said, pointing at Raymond Dark’s mortal sidekick, “are needed, and you…” His finger moved to Tony. “Peter wants to know if you’ll ever be doing any actual work again any day soon.”

  “I have to talk to CB.”

  “Whatever. By the coffin, Lee.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be right there.” When Adam was gone, he said, “Someday, you’re going to tell me what’s going on, right?”

  “You know…”

  “I meant all of it. Details.”

  “What, you didn’t like Leah’s explanation? Kind of looked like you did.”

  Long pause. Probably not as long as it seemed. Time slows when you have both feet in your mouth.

  “Just let me know if I can help, okay?”

  Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt. And since Tony knew from sad experience how the conversation would go if he said no, he decided to take the path of not having yet another argument with Lee. “Sure,” he lied.

  Lee looked surprised. “With the…” He gestured at the floor. “You know.”

  “Yeah.”

  Wizardman and Actorboy.

  Nope. Not going there either.

  “Tony! Why is Kevin Groves in CB’s office?”

  Tony glanced down at the hand holding his arm. Specifically at the large black spider that covered the back of it. “New tat?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Amy sneered. “A new tat would still be all red and puffy and gross. Now, answer the question; has CB agreed to give that creep an interview?”

  “No.”

  Her grip tightened. “Stop being coy.”

  “He…Kevin…saw something, in the parking lot.”

  Brown eyes rolled between the double fringe of thickly mascaraed lashes. “Saw what?”

  Tony jerked his head toward the door to the bull pen, currently open a suspicious six inches. “The walls have ears.”

  “Yeah? Well, they also have the coffeemaker from the office kitchen.” Amy’s voice rose to don’t fuck with me levels. “So unless they want me to take it back…”

  The door slammed closed with near panicked speed.

  “Start talking,” she continued, “before my phone…” Her phone rang. “Bugger. Talk fast.”

  “Amy…” She’d filed points onto her fingernails and those points were now dimpling the sleeve of his borrowed shirt. Considering how much his amazing new healing ability hurt, it didn’t seem smart to just jerk his arm free.

  “Faster than that.”

  Talking seemed to be his only route to freedom. “Groves saw me vanquish a demon in our parking lot. I thought CB’d be the best guy to deal with it.”

  “Vanquish?”

  “Amy!” Rachel Chou stuck her head out of the finance office. “Are you going to get that?”

  Not really a question.

  She let go of Tony and snatched up the phone. “CB Productions! Our mailing address? Okay, but I’m warning you right now that we use unsolicited scripts in the porta john on location shoots. Yeah, exactly for what you think. Hello? Ha!” The receiver went back into
the cradle with a triumphant clatter. “Tony!”

  He’d have been safely inside CB’s office if he hadn’t stopped to knock. Knocking seemed like a good idea given that Leah was behind closed doors with two men. Although the thought of CB and Kevin Groves as two parts of a threesome made him want to scrub his brain out with bleach. Since no one had commanded/invited him in, he turned to see Amy standing by her desk, hands on her hips. Even the PowerPuff Girls on her T-shirt looked annoyed.

  “Vanquish?” she repeated, pointedly.

  “I sent it home.”

  “Leah’s way or BOOM! SIZZLE! ASH!” Her hands flicked open on each of the last three words.

  “Sort of Leah’s way.” He shrugged. “Sort of not.”

  “Can it come back?”

  “It’s not dead, so I guess it can.” Just in time he remembered Amy knew the Reader’s Digest version and stopped himself from saying, It’ll come back if Ryne Cyratane sends it back.

  “I want to help.”

  Thanks to Lee, he knew how to cut this off. “Sure.”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” she snorted. “I mean it.”

  “I know.” Tony tried to sound like he’d meant it, too, even though they both knew he hadn’t.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Well?”

  Odds were good she wasn’t going to take I’ll get back to you on that for an answer. What did it mean that he could lie to Lee but not to Amy? Was it some sort of weird psychological thing or was it just because Amy was scarier? A memory poked at him. Jack had shot the red demon, at least twice. “Bullets can hurt them. Can you find us a gun?”

  “Are you insane?”

  A good question and one he’d been considering himself lately. “Just for backup. In case I fall over again.”

  “Are you likely to?” she demanded as the door opened behind him.

  Odds were good. Whatever he’d done in the parking lot had healed his physical injuries but had left him feeling weirdly fragile. Not tired, exactly. He reached out with his round peg, looking for the round hole in the universe….

  “Tony?”

  Okay. Definitely way past time to ditch that analogy.

  “Tony!”

  Leah this time, not Amy. She grabbed his arm, dragged him into the office, and closed the door while he tried to decide if she looked any more disheveled than she had. He decided she didn’t but only because the alternative was too disturbing.