Part 19 (1/2)
”You came to me so that I could help you deal with the Demonic Convergence, and now you're putting other people in danger.”
”Oh, no!” Both hands went up, palms toward him. ”Don't put that on me. I came to you so we could s.p.a.ckle the weak spots and maybe deal with a few long-legged beasties that'd scuttled in from the closest h.e.l.ls. I never intended to face down demons. And people? People are in danger every time they step into the shower. Do you know how many household accidents happen in the bathroom? Should they stop showering? Or what about the chance of choking and dying? Should everyone stop eating? These demons are the only things that can hurt me, and I don't think it's unreasonable that I should avoid them!”
”But they can't only hurt you! You've lived for thirty-five hundred years; don't you think shorter lives should be protected because they are shorter?”
She sat back and frowned. ”No.”
Actually, he should've seen that coming.
”Look, let's forget about me for the moment and talk about you. You're a wizard, and wizards pretty much have three options.”
She flipped up a finger. ”An ascetic life of learning.” A second finger. ”World domination.” A third finger. ”Or supporting the greater good. What's it going to be?”
”World domination.”
All three fingers snapped down. ”Wrong answer.”
Was it fair that she could go for so long without blinking? Finally, he looked away and sighed. ”Do I get a big red W on my chest?”
”Why would I know about your skin problems?”
”Just asking.”
Her expression bordered on triumphant as she patted his arm and stood. ”You really shouldn't waste any time learning those runes.
CB says you can stay here and use his office.”
”Me? Where are you going?”
”To get your laundry.” Tone and expression together suggested that if he was all that stood between the world and demonic domination, the world was doomed.
”Right. Laundry.” He watched her walk to the door. ”Leah?”
She paused, holding the door handle.
”What if you're wrong? What if the next guy doesn't come here first? What if it goes after you?”
She chewed the corner of her lower lip, looking a lot younger than someone who'd seen her entire village slaughtered thirty-five hundred years ago. Then she tossed her hair back over her shoulder and smiled. It wasn't a particularly believable smile, not when one hand dropped to rest against the curve of her belly. ”Then I race back here and you get to be my hero again.”
”But if...”
”Tony, relax, we drove right past that demon this morning and it still came here first. Since I seem to have another option, I'm not going to spend the rest of the Demonic Convergence, however long it lasts, cowering behind you. Nor will I let this latest plan of Ryne Cyratane's control my life any more than I let his first plan control me. You'll deal with the demons; I'll get on with living.”
”And my life?”
”Do you have a life that doesn't involve your job?” Her wave gathered in the studio beyond CB's office. ”And, hey, here you are.”
The door closed behind her. Tony stared at it a moment longer. He felt like he should have argued harder. If Leah stayed at the studio, then the demons would head here guaranteed, and he had a feeling there weren't many guarantees in demonology. But even on short acquaintance it was obvious that Leah was all about having things happen for her, her way. It'd likely become habit after the first couple of millennia-right about the time she'd got out of the habit of relying on other people who inconveniently died just when they were needed.
Still, at least she wasn't cowering behind him. That was a good thing, right?
The four sketches he'd made in the car were spread out on CB's blotter. His weight on the edge of the desk, Tony picked up the least complicated and stared at it for a long moment, his thumb leaving a vegetable-soup-colored print on the paper. He raised his other hand. He focused. He picked his spot. He drew the pattern.
Or not.
The blue lines sputtered and broke apart, tumbling out of the air like fireworks.
Tony braced himself and somehow managed to neither slide to the floor nor end up sprawling and drooling across CB's desk.
Afterimages floated across his vision. Blue sparks tumbling and falling. Tumbling and falling. Tumbling and...
He swallowed hard, belched vegetable soup, and didn't throw up.
”Go me,” he muttered, staggering forward to stomp out a bit of smoldering carpet. Going actually sounded like a good idea. He needed food. Lots and lots of food.
Who the h.e.l.l had moved CB's door so far from his desk?
Since Amy'd never let him live down a little heavy breathing, he clutched at the door handle and tried to stop panting before he went out into the office. It was quiet. Too quiet. The hair lifted off the back of Tony's neck...
... and settled down again as he realized that Amy wasn't at her desk. That always lowered the noise level. She'd probably sent Krista out to the soundstage to find someone and then, with the office PA still gone, had to deliver the next urgent message herself.
Given the belt of red lights blinking across the bottom of her phone, she'd been gone for a while.
Even though there seemed to be a perfectly mundane reason for the unnatural calm, Tony walked carefully out into the middle of the room, his heels barely touching the floor. Caution, yes, but also he had a suspicion that the wrong step would cause his head to fall off his shoulders. After the year he'd had, rhetorical statements became frighteningly possible and he much preferred his head where it was.
He could hear voices raised in the bull pen as the writers bashed the last rough edges off the season's final script. It didn't take much concentration to make out the actual words.
”Because we need a little physical action here! It's a cla.s.sic bit and it always gets laughs. We can't lose!”
It sounded like Mason was going to get nailed in the nuts again. The writers never got tired of slipping physical humor into the script. So far, Peter and the other directors had managed to keep this particular piece of physical humor from actually happening to their temperamental star, mollifying the writers with guest stars and bit players curled around their crotches and moaning. The writers had some issues.
He could hear Rachel Chou, the office manager, talking quietly to someone in the small kitchen.
”And just what, exactly, do you mean by that?”
Mason's voice boomed out of his small office on the other side of the main doors. Was he still with the press? And, if so, shouldn't he be back on set by now? Tony tried to remember Raymond Dark's call sheet for the day and drew a blank.
He shuffled a couple of steps forward but still missed the reporter's reply. Mason, however, had done Bard on the Beach and knew how to project above the sound of flapping canvas and not so distant traffic crossing the Burrard Bridge. One hollow-core door was nothing to him. ”How dare you insinuate that about my fans!”
Mason's fans were predominantly middle-aged women with Web sites and frighteningly explicit imaginations. Less common were those who believed that vampires truly lurked in the darkness-beyond that, they couldn't seem to agree on the particulars. Tony was fairly certain he'd never seen Henry actually lurk. Rarest of all were the fans who admired Mason's acting.
”My fans are the salt of the earth!”
Who really talked like that? Tony wondered, moving closer still. Although, in all fairness, some of those Web sites had some pretty salty language, not to mention an interesting concept of male anatomy. Or at least of Mason's anatomy. And, while he was hardly one to complain about hot man-on-man action, he was a little confused by all the Raymond Dark/James Taylor Grant stuff out there. Leaving the actors' preferences out of it entirely, Raymond Dark was a tomcat with a new conquest every week and half a hundred tragic love affairs in his past. Even James Taylor Grant had buried one true love and staked another.
Lee'd dated the second actress for a while until a chance to star in a remake of Time Tunnel had drawn her to Toronto.
The door of Mason's office flew open, snapping Tony's attention back to the matter at hand. He barely had enough time to look like he hadn't been eavesdropping when the star of Darkest Night made a dramatic exit-or entrance, depending on point of view-announcing, ”This interview is over!”
”Mr. Reed, you have to be aware that this show has been attracting an unhealthy amount of paranormal attention.”