Not that her family were technically witches, or used magic as a religion; magic was something they were born with, though it didn’t manifest until they reached their teens. Their family had many traditions associated with magic use. They had met witches—a variety of them, some professing Wiccans or Pagans with power and without, and some, well, just witches. The word witch didn’t explain the LaZelles, but Mom could get upset about almost anything.
The Dark God didn’t commit any of the film’s murders—that was all human stuff. Opal had read the script a number of times and she wasn’t sure if the humans were supposed to be acting under the influence of the Dark God, or on their own, thinking they could tell what the God wanted without asking him. She was pretty sure the film had, as part of its agenda, a veiled indictment of organized religion. Which was pretty silly for a horror film no one important would ever see. Then again, the director had pretensions to art. Always a problem, in Opal’s experience. People who thought they were doing art were much harder to work for.
Second bell rang twice, signalling the end of the take. “All right,” called the A.D., “we’re switching to Dark God’s POV of Serena. Last looks.”
Opal set her letter aside and grabbed her bag. Corvus wouldn’t be in this shot, but she might as well check on him anyway.
He smiled at her, and his green eyes glittered. Unnerved, she ducked away from him and left the set. The rest of the day was like that: nothing ever went wrong with the makeup, and each time she faced Corvus, she felt a chill—this was a stranger, and she wasn’t sure if he was friendly.
3
Shooting finished at eleven, and afterward, it took Opal an hour to photograph and then remove Corvus’s face and hands. The pieces came off easily. The good thing was Corvus slept through most of it. By the end, he looked like his normal self. She astringed the last of the glue from his face, moisturized his skin, and prodded his shoulder gently. He woke with a start.
Except for them, the Makeup trailer was empty. A production assistant had been by earlier to leave off call sheets and script pages for tomorrow’s scene. Lauren had an early call the following morning, and had left as soon as she was clean. Rod and Magenta had cleared all the counters and locked all the drawers and cupboards, then left. Hitch had left the Lincoln’s keys with Opal before he clocked out; he was done for the day and Corvus wasn’t working any longer, so Corvus had control of the car.
“Are you hungry?” Corvus asked as he levered himself out of his chair. He went to the clothes valet and pulled on a shirt.
“I suppose,” said Opal. “Are you? I have a couple more of those liquid diet things.” She checked the tiny fridge that was part of her counter. A few diet drinks, some protein shakes, and some makeup items that needed refrigeration.
Lapis had a coffee shop and a family restaurant, but neither stayed open late at night. There was no place nearby to get food. “I’m hungry, but not for another shake,” Corvus said. “Want to go out for dinner?”
Opal checked the call sheet for the following day. Corvus had a scene where he incited the sisters to fight with each other. They wouldn’t need to get to makeup until ten A.M. “Sure,” she said, feeling a little strange. She had spent hours and hours with him, but mostly in the context of playing with his face, or waiting to play with his face. They had lunch together, catered meals—along with all kinds of other people at the same table. Most dinnertimes, each of them took their per diem and went separate ways, but that was when they were on a more normal schedule.
The nearest open restaurant Opal knew about was on the highway, ten miles from Lapis, near the characterless hotel where most of the crew and the lesser cast had rooms. Opal drove the Lincoln there with Corvus relaxing in the passenger seat. The restaurant was an IHOP truck stop, and none of the strangers sipping coffee inside had ever seen someone Corvus’s height before, from the reaction they got when they walked in. Everybody gawked. Corvus was used to it.
“You movie people?” the waitress asked. She was young and blond and looked wilted but game.
“Yep,” said Corvus. “How could you tell?”
She grinned and avoided the obvious answer. “Don’t get many black Lincolns in the parking lot, not till you folks started dropping by. You want to sit with the others?”
“Where?” asked Corvus.
She gestured with a pink-feather-poof-topped pen toward the corner booth. Travis Roy and Bethany Telfair, the Forest of the Night scriptwriters, were holed up there with pots of coffee, laptops, and color-coded pages of script. Opal had met with Bethany in preproduction to discuss her concept for the Dark God. In those meetings, the young scriptwriter had been energetic and confusing, full of contradictory details. Opal had gotten a clearer picture from the production designer, who would dictate the look of the whole picture anyway.
Now Bethany looked frazzled. Her hair, ginger, thick, and shoulder length, stood up in tufts, as though she had been tugging at it.
Travis, Bethany’s husband and mentor, blinked blearily at his screen. He was older than Bethany. His hair was a thick shock of gray, and he had deep character brackets around his mouth. He wasn’t smiling now.
“They look busy,” Corvus told the waitress. Then Bethany glanced up, brightened, and beckoned them over.
Opal wondered what Corvus really wanted to do. He was good-natured enough to head for the table.
“Want something to eat?” asked the waitress, following them.
“Yes, please,” said Opal.
“You one of the stars, hon?” asked the waitress.
Opal smiled and shook her head. “I do makeup. Mr. Weather is the star.”
Corvus slid into the booth beside Bethany, then shook his head. “The makeup is the real star, Jenny,” he said.
Opal checked the waitress’s nametag, saw that Corvus had her name correct. She sat next to Travis, who scooted over to make room. He stacked some of the pages and pulled them closer to his laptop.
“You been in anything I might have seen?” the waitress asked Corvus.
“Depends on whether you like horror films,” Corvus said. “I play a lot of monsters.”
She shook her head, handed them menus. “Naw. I got enough scares in my daily life. Rather see romances. Your voice sounds familiar, though.”
“I don’t usually have speaking parts. Could I get some coffee, please?”
She started. “Oh, sure. You want some, too, hon?”
“Please,” Opal answered.
The waitress went to a neighboring table and grabbed mugs and silverware wrapped in white paper napkins, set them on the table in front of Opal and Corvus, and headed for the kitchen and the coffeepot.
“What are you guys doing?” Opal asked the writers.
“Rewriting scenes twenty-five, twenty-six, and twenty-seven,” said Bethany.
“Adding in scene twenty-five A. Aldridge wants more monster, Corr,” said Travis. “After he saw yesterday’s dailies, he decided to beef up your part. You got an extra week?”
“If they have the budget for me, sure. What am I supposed to be doing now?”
“He wants you to do an extra scene with child Caitlyn, really mess her up.”
“It makes dramatic sense,” said Bethany. “I always wondered about her motivations, anyway, Trav. She has everything going for her, looks, talent, youth, and she’s just so bad.”
“Caitlyn and Serena both have father issues,” said Travis. “Their mom killed their father, remember? Years before she killed herself.”
“What? That’s not in the script,” Corvus said.
“It was part of the brainstorming we did early on. Serena was out there at one of the rituals. She was five or six. Mom was high on something. Dad was, too. In the grip of the drug, Mom sacrificed Dad. Lots of blood. Dark God shows up. Serena saw what happened, but she suppresses it. Caitlyn never found out. To Caitlyn, Dad went away one night and never came back. She’s been searching for him or a reasonable facsimile ever since.”
�
��Eww. Serena thinks Dad’s blood was spilled to summon Dark God? So maybe she thinks of Dark God as her replacement father?” Bethany tugged at her hair, then attacked her laptop’s keyboard.
“Which is pretty disgusting, since he thinks she’s his bride,” said Travis.
Bethany shrugged. “Hey, they’re creepy witches. What more do you need?”
“Where do you guys get your ideas about witches?” Opal asked, with a touch of acid. She regretted the question the moment after it came out. It wasn’t her job to critique scripts or supply magical reality.
Travis and Bethany grinned. “Watching other peoples’ movies,” said Travis.
Bethany lost her smile. “Yeah, but Trav, this particular project—”
“Oh, right. We actually did some original work on this project. Bethany got the idea while she was staying at the Lapis B&B,” Travis said.
“You visited Lapis before you wrote the script?” asked Corvus. “Why on earth?”
Bethany said, “My folks live in Lapis. I grew up around here. A couple years ago, we were having a big family party, and not everybody could stay at my folks’ house, so I spent my first night ever in the scary B&B. When I was a kid”—Bethany’s gaze softened—“I thought the B&B was run by ghosts. Mr. and Mrs. Gates—well, they’re still there. I thought they were old when I was a kid, but now they’re positively ancient. You can see the cobwebs on ’em. They manage to keep the place clean, though.
“Anyway, I had such a dream in that house. More like a nightmare. Most of the plot for the movie, in fact. The next morning I got my cousin to drive me out to that clearing, which was a place we never went when we were kids. It was supposed to be haunted, too. I mean, when I’d sleep over at my girlfriends’, all the kids knew some story about something horrible that happened there. And it was creepy out there. That altar, those stains. The story kind of—well, I talked it over with Trav, and we figured we could make something out of it. It’s one of those gift things. Kind of drops into your lap.”
The waitress finally brought them coffee and took their sandwich orders.
“You thought that clearing was haunted when you were a kid?” Opal repeated after the waitress left.
“Yeah. My brother wanted to sneak over there one Halloween, but I was petrified and wouldn’t do it. Everybody said kids had died there in some horrible way—bled out on the altar rock, or something worse. There were lots of rumors of Bad People in the woods. Nobody said the W word, though. They were more like bogeymen and bogeywomen.”
She went on, “Now that I think about it, there are lots of places around here that felt off when I was a kid. We had a few places it was safe to go, like the lake and the library, and the rest of the world was filled with scary places.”
“You have any trouble getting permits for the locations?” Opal asked. She knew some sites where people practiced magic; the sites had their own powers, and made it hard for nonmagical people to find them or stay on them. Was Lapis trying to protect itself from her or from others?
“I don’t know. Not my department. The locations were perfect, though, which I guess they would be, since this is the place I was describing in the script.”
“I wonder if they scouted anywhere else,” Opal muttered.
“Is there something wrong with here? I thought everything was going great,” said Travis.
“This place feels weird to me,” Opal said. “Which doesn’t make a bit of difference to anybody who matters. I just—I think there’s something going on under the surface.”
“You trying to creep me out?” Bethany asked.
“No. No, sorry. Corr—”
“Maybe I know what you’re talking about,” he said. “The non-posthypnotic suggestions?”
“Right. Really, I’m not trying to force you anywhere near your role.”
“You guys are speaking code now,” said Travis.
Opal bit her lip, tried to figure out whether to share her concern with anyone. What the heck. Travis and Bethany were writers. They were close to being wallpaper, too . . . depending on whether the director and his team included them. “Corvus falls further into character than he needs to, even when he’s not on the set,” she said. “And that Dark God guy—not really a fun person.”
“I thought he was fun,” said Travis. “I love writing for him. Stuff almost writes itself. Deliciously creepy.”
Opal frowned and checked Corvus’s reaction to this. He looked puzzled.
The waitress brought their sandwiches, and they ate.
“So,” said Bethany when Opal had finished half her sandwich, “what’s not to like about Dark God? Personally, I think he’s not creepy enough. Trav made him all seductive instead of terrifying.”
“It’s a trend,” Travis said. “Horrifying heroes. Vampires and werewolves are really hot in romance right now. Why not gods?”
“We’re writing a romance?” asked Bethany.
“Of course. Twisted, but that resonates with people at the moment.”
“Oh. I wish I’d known. Well, anyway, Opal—”
“He called me a handmaiden and thanked me for selecting such a perfect vessel for him.”
“I what?” said Corvus. “Are you saying I said that?”
“You did. Ask Lauren. Also, his face is alive,” Opal said. The minute it was out of her mouth, she thought, This is a mistake. I shouldn’t be talking to outside people about this stuff. Never break the wall of silence that surrounds our magic.
But this is not our magic. I don’t have to keep it secret.
“My face is alive?” Corvus asked, more confused than ever.
“The face I put on you is alive.”
“Can I use this stuff in the script?” Travis asked.
“How are you going to use something about a mask being alive?” said Bethany. “It’s been done, and it’s not our movie.”
“Not the mask,” Travis said. “The handmaiden and vessel stuff.”
Opal sighed, and decided that on the whole, it was probably a good thing they weren’t taking her seriously.
“I called you a handmaiden?” Corvus said, and pressed the knuckle of his index finger against his lips, then dropped his hand. “I wonder what I meant.”
“I am a handmaiden,” said Opal. “I wait on you and serve you.”
He studied her, his brows lowered. Finally a smile flared, as though he knew she was kidding. His gaze was warm, and she felt again the queer tight twist in her chest, the love she couldn’t stop. She wanted to help and protect him, give him all the tools he needed to be great.
She had felt like this about Gayle Graceland, the first star she had been personally attached to on a project, in Weather Witch, even when Gayle was a raving bitch, throwing things that broke and couldn’t easily be replaced, and occasionally hitting crew with them. Adoration had engulfed Opal. She had put up with all kinds of lunatic behavior from Gayle; the love pressed her into servitude, pulled her best skills out of her, forced her to make sure Gayle was perfect in every take, even when others whispered commiseration to Opal behind the scenes.
After Gayle’s part wrapped, Gayle had invited Opal on a spa vacation. The grip on Opal’s heart had vanished. She envisioned the trip: Gayle behaving badly, abusing Opal, Opal picking up after her and trying to calm everyone hurt by her. Opal had refused the invitation. Later, she read all about Gayle’s supposed spa antics in the tabloids—slapping a masseuse, starting a mud fight—and she felt nothing but relief that she hadn’t gone. The picture came out; Gayle’s performance got great notices, while her personal life was chewed up and spit out by the media.
Opal got a better job, and fell in love again. Her next film hadn’t been a monster film and she’d been one of a core of makeup artists under the supervision of a key artist. She’d fallen for Gerry that time, even though she didn’t always make him up. He looked good enough not to need much help. They’d gone out after the film wrapped. The relationship had died a natural if public death.
Corvus was
the only person she’d worked with so far who kept a grip on her heart, all unknowing, even after they finished a picture. She had gone on thinking about him, wishing she were with him, even after Dead Loss was made and out.
He had never given her a reason to think he reciprocated her feelings.
Now they were working on a second job together. She hadn’t had to let go of the love.
In the break between pictures, Opal had gone home and talked to her mother, a newscaster and social commentator, who knew about being famous and loved for how she looked and behaved on camera.
“Crushes are strange,” her mother said. “I have fans who send me all kinds of things. Photographs. Poetry. Pastry. Underwear, some of it used. Impassioned letters begging me for fingernails or locks of hair or a lipstick kiss on the return envelope. I use my talents to turn on the charm, but I always try not to turn it too high. People watch me. They feel they know me. They want to own me. Sometimes it’s disturbing, and other times it’s my dream come true, the height of my desire. If it gets sick and twisted, I can deal with it: I have the skills to shut the fans down before they hurt me or themselves.
“So, my dearest daughter, have you asked yourself what you get from this love, why you let yourself fall into it?”
“No,” Opal said, after consideration. “I wondered whether I should try to cure myself of it.”
“You could shut it off with a thought,” said her mother. “It’s a choice you’ve made. It must pay off somehow.”
Opal thought about Gayle. Everyone else on the Weather Witch shoot had hated the star, but she looked so good on film they had to work with her. Not hating her had helped Opal get her job done, no matter what Gayle did. If Opal had stood her ground against unreasonable behavior or demands, or even asked for the respect she deserved, everything would have taken twice as long. Her love for Gayle had been useful; it kept the film close to budget and gave Opal the power to do her job even after it would have become unbearable for anyone in her right mind. She had cruised through work in an altered state of fatuous adoration and done fine.
Fall of Light Page 5
