Smoke and Ashes

by Tanya Huff

  “That sounds like bad country music.”

  “You said you weren’t going to cower behind me.”

  “I’m not cowering,” she snapped. “But given what happened this afternoon, I think staying behind you might be my best option. You’re here, so I’m here.”

  “The demons…”

  “The demons won’t be sneaking up on me if I’m sitting here waiting for them, will they?” Something in Leah’s face told Tony not to press it. Told him she’d been a lot more freaked by the demon in the parking lot than she’d let on, and what she didn’t want to be was alone. “Besides,” she added, pushing past him, “I’ve got nothing that pressing to do until Tuesday anyway. What on earth makes you think that Lee is straight?”

  Tony scrambled to catch up. “He sleeps with women.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s conclusive. Moron.”

  “He got stupid over you.”

  “Ninety percent of the male population does. Means nothing. Didn’t you see Kinsey?”

  “Sure. Liam Neeson totally got screwed by the Oscars that year.”

  “Granted, but my point is that if most of the world’s population is neither completely gay nor completely straight, then even the odds are in your favor. I’m not sure why he’d choose you to break cover with; I mean, you’re just passably attractive, reasonably intelligent, excitingly powerful, remarkably pleasant, appealingly broad-minded, definitely loyal, and appallingly self-sacrificing.”

  Reeling under the torrent of adjectives, Tony opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out.

  “Next to a man like, say, Liam Neeson,” she continued before he could find his voice, “you’re practically invisible. He’s someone I’d do in a minute.”

  “Right,” Tony snorted, finding his voice. “You’d do ninety percent of the male population in a minute.”

  She shrugged. “Eighty max.”

  “Kevin Groves.”

  “Fine. Eighty-one.” She dropped down onto the end of the chaise lounge. “It’s always amazed me,” she sighed, “that two men can ever manage to get together at all, given the whole lack of being articulate. Maybe he’s scared.”

  “Lee? Scared? Of me?”

  “Don’t be dumber than you have to, okay?

  Tony dragged his jeans back up over his hips—they were a little big and shoving his hands in his pockets dragged them low—and sat down beside her. “You sounded like Amy.”

  “You discuss your sex life with Amy?”

  “Okay, first, Lee has nothing to do with my sex life, and two, are you insane? Give Amy an inch and she’ll take a kilometer.”

  A dark brow rose and one hand patted his thigh. “Mixed metaphors, that’s what’s wrong with the world.” Leah glanced around the empty soundstage as though she’d lost something. “Where is Amy? Based on our very short acquaintance, I would have thought she’d be here.”

  “She left with the rest of the office staff. She had a date.”

  “On a Thursday? Good for her. I’m all for a sister getting some.”

  “Big surprise. Not. But it’s just for coffee at Ginger Joe’s—it’s a Goth coffee place she likes. She’s meeting a guy she knows from the net.”

  “You told her to be careful because she didn’t know this guy, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she told you that you were the one waiting for a demon, so you should be the one being careful, right?”

  “Not in so many words, but yeah.”

  Leah nodded, smug. “After a few thousand years, people get predictable.”

  “So where’s your partner?”

  Jack jumped and only just resisted spinning around and answering the question physically. He put most of the energy into slamming the door of his truck and managed to turn with something approaching calm. “She’s home with her kids. Tony call you?”

  Henry Fitzroy nodded and Jack wanted to wipe the smug, superior look right off his face. Which wasn’t fair because all the guy had done was nod, but there was something about him, something that made Jack want to fall in behind him and charge the shield wall. He wasn’t even sure what a shield wall was, but he fucking hated the feeling.

  “Tony tell you what’s going on?”

  “Yes.”

  Yes? That’s it? Fine, you want to be mister one word answer, we don’t need to talk. But the dark eyes were strangely compelling, and Jack’s mouth kept moving without any apparent prodding from his brain. “He thinks the demons are attracted to the soundstage, to his accumulated power at the soundstage.”

  “But you don’t believe that.”

  “He’s not telling me everything.”

  “Why would he?”

  “Because…” Jack had a feeling that because I told him to wouldn’t fly. “Because it’s my job to protect the public!”

  “I think we’ve moved some distance away from your actual job description, Constable.”

  “No, we haven’t. Look…” He folded his arms, unable to look away but unwilling to appear compliant. “…I catch the bad guys; that’s what I do. These are bad guys. In order to catch them—all right, deal with them,” he added as a red-gold brow rose, “I need to have all the facts. Which I don’t.”

  “Perhaps he doesn’t think you can cope with all the facts.”

  “Well, he should try me.”

  “Yes. Perhaps he should.”

  Distracted by Fitzroy’s too-charming smile, it took Jack a moment to realize that the other man’s eyes weren’t dark at all but hazel. Frowning, he matched his shorter stride as they headed toward the studio’s back door.

  “I assume you’re here as backup muscle? He sent me out to buy cherry-flavored cough medicine,” Fitzroy continued before Jack could answer. “A specific brand that’s, unfortunately, not particularly popular.” He hefted a bulging canvas bag. “I had to visit nearly every drugstore on the lower mainland before I found the volume he asked for.”

  “What’s Tony going to do with that much cherry-flavored cough medicine?”

  “He’s going to do magic, Constable Elson.”

  “What the hell was that?”

  “I think someone’s at the back door,” Leah sighed.

  “Right.” On his feet, heart pounding, Tony could barely hear short, sharp bursts of the buzzer over the thrum of blood in his ears. “Do you think it’s a demon?”

  “I think demons seldom ask to be let in. And I think that your boss gave the security guard the night off, so you’d better get it.”

  “Right.” Tony headed for the back of the soundstage, his breathing almost returned to normal.

  There was no security hole in the door and since Leah hadn’t actually said it wasn’t a demon, he took a moment to find his focus and wrote “go home” as small as he could manage it an inch or so from the pitted steel. If there was a demon, and the demon charged when he opened the door, it would charge right through the command and that would hopefully be that.

  Except that the door opened inward.

  “Having a fish fry?” Jack asked, grimacing as he stepped over the threshold. “Because if you are, your fish are burning.”

  “I’m not.” Given that the door was in the only home it had ever known, nothing had happened but sizzle and smell. At least he hoped it was because the door had no other home to go to because a bad smell wasn’t much of a weapon against claws and teeth. “Hey, Henry.” Calmly. Business as usual. Do not touch the bite on your…Crap. He forced his arm down. “Did you get the stuff?”

  “Every bottle left in this part of British Columbia.”

  “Thanks.” He took the bag and turned his attention back to Jack. “What are you doing here?”

  “The nutbar who works in your front office called me.”

  As a general rule, that wasn’t a specific enough description, but…“Amy?”

  “She said you needed a gun.”

  “You brought me a gun?”

  “I’m carrying a gun. My gun. You’re not going anywhere near it.”


  “A gun?” Henry asked, in a tone that managed to squeeze are you insane into the two small words.

  “You can shoot demons,” Jack told him before Tony could answer. “It may not stop them, but it sure as shit slows them down. I shot one this morning half a dozen times. Exactly six shots. I know that because there’s one fuckload of forms I have to fill out when I fire this thing, so…” Half a pivot and he was facing Tony. “…you can thank me for coming back and risking yet another three hours of paperwork—involving, let’s not forget, lying. And, while we’re on the subject, let’s not forget the interviews with my superiors during which I will also have to lie.”

  “You didn’t have to come.”

  “Yeah, and risk you actually getting your hands on a weapon? Like that’s going to happen.”

  “I think you’re taking the greater risk being here, Constable. Your career…”

  “Bugger my career. I got a one-armed dead guy in the morgue.”

  Tony watched Henry study Jack for a moment and then turn and flash him a smile. “Perhaps you should just thank him, Tony. After all, you wanted to bring him in.”

  “You did?” Jack’s brows rose but he looked pleased.

  “I did. Past tense. But Henry…” He glanced over at Henry who was wearing his blandest expression. Like blood wouldn’t clot in his mouth. “Fine. Whatever. Thanks. Come on.” He led the way back to Leah and the chaise lounge wondering if he’d actually been in control for that short time in the parking lot or if he’d been delusional.

  Circumstances were pushing him strongly toward the latter belief.

  “And this is supposed to do what, exactly?” Jack demanded at last. He’d been amazingly quiet until they were two thirds of the way around the soundstage, so points for patience. Or he was just too stubborn to ask until the frustration levels rose sufficiently.

  Tony was betting on the latter. He finished the last ward along the side wall—or as close to the side wall as he could get, which meant, in a couple of places, two to three meters into the soundstage. “It’s an early warning system,” he said as he dipped the number two brush back into the bowl of cough syrup Henry was holding and bent to paint the more complex rune in the corner. “Something crosses the line with ill intent…” He paused, squinted up at his laptop open across Jack’s hands, then added a final flourish. “…and we’ll know it in time to brace ourselves.”

  “How?”

  “Will we know? I have no fucking idea. I’ve never done this before.”

  “The wards on your apartment—” Leah began.

  “Were meant to keep things out,” Tony interrupted. “But we don’t want to keep them out of here; we want them in here, so I can deal with them. This is new.”

  “Then aren’t you moving a little fast?”

  He twisted around just far enough to scowl at her. “This is the fourth wall. They’re long walls. I’m getting the hang of it.”

  “Okay, but the end of that squiggle has always turned left before.”

  “Fine.” A little more cough syrup turned the squiggle to the left. “Happy?”

  “Who wouldn’t be?”

  “I’m not,” Jack grunted. “What happens if demons drop in from above?”

  “It’s covered. Just give me a minute to finish.”

  “And if something with claws and teeth attacks before you’re finished?”

  “Then we won’t know until someone gets eviscerated.”

  “No one gets eviscerated!”

  “Not if you’ll shut up and let me work.”

  Arra’s instructions said he should visualize the complex corner runes and then mentally draw a line from corner to corner, the lines crossing overhead in the middle of the square. Okay, so the space enclosed wasn’t exactly square, but it did offer the biggest bang for the buck, so Tony was still going with it. He closed his eyes. Saw the runes. Drew the lines.

  “Cool.” Leah sounded as though she was smiling.

  When Tony opened his eyes, there was a cherry-cough-syrup-colored translucent dome over the soundstage.

  And then there wasn’t.

  Although the scent of expectorant lingered.

  “Is it gone?” Jack asked, breathing through the neck of his T-shirt pulled up over his mouth.

  Tony checked. “No. It’s still there. That was like a test pattern to show that it worked.”

  A red-gold brow rose as Henry studied his face. “Really?”

  Made sense, so why not. “Yeah. Really.”

  The second time the buzzer went off, Tony sighed and headed for the back door as though he’d never been startled, never jumped to his feet at the sound. Not that it mattered much since he could hear Leah telling Jack and Henry about how he’d reacted the last time. Jack seemed to think it was pretty funny.

  First demon that showed up, Jack was going to be out in front.

  When the door opened, the pizza delivery girl handed him a plastic shopping bag containing two bomb bottles of cola and began pulling the extra large pizza out of the insulated pouch. “You Tony Foster?” she asked without looking up.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t order a pizza.”

  “Come from your boss, Chester Bane. He order. He pay.” She shoved the box into his hands and grinned as his stomach growled. “He say I give you message, too. He say you should answer your damned e-mail.”

  “Pepperoni, sausage, olives, tomatoes, mushrooms, green pepper, and double cheese; your boss knows how to order a pizza.” Jack pulled a slice from the box and bit off the tip with obvious enjoyment. “None of this good-for-you broccoli crap.”

  “Personally, I could have done without the olives,” Leah muttered, flicking a piece off her slice.

  There was always someone who bitched about the toppings, Tony reflected as he chewed. It was practically a requirement of pizza eating. Three people in the group, one person bitched. Five to seven people, two bitching. Unless there were anchovies, and then everyone but one person bitched, regardless of numbers. Of course, in this particular group, the stats were kind of skewed….

  “You not having any, Fitzroy?”

  “No, thanks. I ate before I came.”

  Jack shrugged and took another piece. “Great. More for me. Where are you going?”

  Barely two steps away from the chaise, Henry turned and smiled at Jack. “Why?”

  “Because I think, given all the weird shit going down…” Jack paused to wipe a bit of grease off his chin. “…that if we’re going to work together, we shouldn’t leave each other in the dark about what’s going on.”

  “Fair enough. I’m going out to the office.”

  “Why? There’s no one there.”

  Henry’s smile grew a little edged. Tony shuffled back just far enough to be out of the line of fire—just in case. Better Jack caught that look than him. “Television people,” Henry explained pointedly, “don’t keep the same hours as mere mortals. There’s probably a few people still working on postproduction…”

  Post? Tony stiffened.

  “…and Chester Bane never leaves his office before midnight.”

  “You and Mr. Bane friends?”

  “We’ve dined together a few times.”

  “Son of a BITCH!” Tony tossed aside his crust and clawed at the hot cheese and pizza sauce that had slid off it and onto his crotch. By the time he finished scraping and swearing, Henry was gone.

  Just as well. Not like I was going to call him on making stupid vampire double entendres in front of Jack. He took another handful of napkins from Leah—who had almost stopped laughing—and scrubbed at the denim.

  “You guys have some issues,” Jack snorted.

  Tony snatched the last piece of pizza out from under his hand. “Do not.” Great. Even straight Mounties were noticing.

  “Uh-huh. So why here?”

  “Why not here?” Leah wondered. “They have issues everywhere else.”

  “No, why are we waiting here?” Jack’s gesture took in the immediate area, empty but for two
folding chairs, food debris, and the chaise he shared with Leah. “There’s a lot more comfortable places to wait in this soundstage, so why specifically here?”

  “I did a spell here,” Tony told him, gesturing with the pizza crust. “A big one. It left a mark.”

  “What kind of spell?”

  “I’m not sure.” Teeth slightly clenched, half a shrug—Tony was a very good liar. “I screwed it up.”

  “It had something to do with the ceiling?”

  Had he looked up? He didn’t remember looking up. “Yeah. It had something to do with the ceiling. But the rest is classified. If I told you, I’d have to turn you into a frog.”

  “You can do that?”

  He swallowed and smiled. “I could try.”

  Jack shook his head, but what exactly he was denying wasn’t clear. “Like I said to your friend Fitzroy, I don’t think we should be keeping secrets.”

  “Is this a police thing; asking so many questions?” Leah leaned in. Tony figured she’d suddenly remembered she had a few secrets of her own. “Or are you naturally so curious?”

  No sign of Ryne Cyratane, so at least Jack had a fighting chance, but Leah on her own, being intense and interested and brushing breasts against bicep, was enough to attract male attention.

  She attracted Jack’s. He probably wasn’t even aware he’d straightened his shoulders. “It’s what cops do, ask questions.”

  And spout bad cop show dialogue.

  Tony cleaned up while they flirted and tried not to think about what was happening in the boss’ office. Figures. The one time I could use a little e-mail distraction from a psychotic eight-year-old, I’d never get an uplink. Even if he had a cable, there wasn’t a phone jack on this side of the soundstage.

  “I was thinking.”

  Since he’d gotten used to Henry suddenly appearing by his side years ago, Tony enjoyed Jack and Leah’s reaction.

  “Wasn’t your original plan to find the weak points between this world and the hells…” Four-hundred-and-sixty-odd years of Catholicism gave Henry a little trouble with the plural. “…and have Tony close them before they open and expel a demon?”