Heart pounding, fighting to get enough air into his lungs, his body said familiar before his brain caught up. No mistaking the flesh sprawled beneath him. Man. Young man. Good shape. Then his brain reengaged. Young man in good shape wearing a tuxedo . . . he lifted his head off the snowy white expanse of dress shirt to see the bottom of Lee's chin.

Then the rest of Lee's face as the actor lifted his head and shook it once as though to settle his brain back into place. The green eyes focused.

"Tony?"

"Yeah." One of his legs was down between the actor's thighs, their position a parody of intimacy. He was a little too shaken up to move, muscles doing a fairly accurate imitation of cooked spaghetti as the adrenaline left his system. No way Lee could know that, though, and he half expected the other man to heave him across the room. Didn't happen. He's probably winded, too. "You okay?"

"I think so." Lee shifted slightly and Tony thanked any G.o.ds who might be listening for that whole cooked spaghetti muscle thing. "You?"

Him what? A half frown up at him and he abruptly remembered. "Yeah. I'm good. Not good good," he added hurriedly in case Lee started thinking he was enjoying this too much. "Just not hurt good." He had a strong suspicion he was making less than no sense.

"What happened?"

"I fell. Down the stairs."

From this angle, Lee's smile was nearly blinding. A warm hand closed around Tony's bicep. "No s.h.i.t."

"Am I interrupting?"

And there was the expected, albeit delayed, heave. Both men were on their feet fast enough to rea.s.sure any onlooker that neither had been damaged by the collision. Except that the only onlooker had arrived after the collision.

"Zev!" Tony ran a hand back through his hair, and flashed a smile he knew was too wide, too hearty, and too guilty at CB Productions music director and his most recent ex. "I uh, fell down the stairs and Lee was there at the bottom and I slammed right into him. He was just . . . I mean, he cushioned my fall."

"So I saw." A white crescent flashed for an instant in the shadows of Zev's dark beard although his expression remained no more than neutrally concerned. "You guys all right?"

"Yeah. Lucky, eh?"

"Very. Nice catch, Lee."

"Sure." His face flushed-although that could have been from either sudden change in position, going down or coming up-Lee picked two large yellow melmac mugs of coffee off the kitchen table. "You guys probably want to . . .

uh, you know, talk and I've got to get one of these up to Mason."

Tony took a step toward him, hand outstretched, and stopped as the flush deepened. "You've got dust on the back of your tux."

"No problem. Brenda's dancing attendance on the girls. She can get it." He turned toward the stairs, paused, and visibly changed his mind. "Seems safer to use the other set."

As Lee left the kitchen, Tony spotted Adam's battery- flung out of his hand on impact-over by the sink. When he straightened, battery back in hand, he found Zev staring at him, dark brows almost to his hairline. "What?"

"You fell down the stairs?"

"Yeah . . ."

"And Lee just happened to be there to catch you?"

"Yeah."

"And having saved you, he sank to the floor with you cradled tenderly in his arms."

"It wasn't like that!"

Zev snickered. "Looked like that."

Tony rolled his eyes and pushed past the other man, heading for the butler's pantry and the battery chargers. On the bright side, of all the people who could have walked in on him and Lee in a vaguely compromising position, Zev was the least likely to blow it out of proportion. On the other hand, given their history, Zev was the most likely to tease him unmercifully about it, so he'd just nip that in the bud right now. "I hit him pretty hard, so it wasn't so much sinking to the floor as being slammed into the floor and he wasn't cradling me tenderly or any other way-bits of me were imbedded in his ribs."

"Looked like you were happy there."

Not much he could say to that.

"Looked like he was happy to have you there."

"You're delusional." Since he was there, he changed his own battery and tossed the rest of the fully charged into a box.

Hand shoved in the front pockets of his black jeans, Zev shrugged, the backpack slung over one shoulder riding up and down with the motion. "I'm just saying he looked like a man ready for a six-pack."

"What?"

"What's the difference between a straight man and a bi. . ."

Tony sighed and held up a hand. "Okay. I remember the joke. I should never have mentioned that whole crush thing."

"Since we were together at the time, it did seem a bit unnecessary." When Tony turned a worried face toward him, Zev grinned. "Because you know, I'm blind and stupid and would never have noticed on my own even if Amy hadn't discussed it at length."

"Bite me."

"Sorry. You gave that option up."

"You dumped me!"

"Oh, yeah. Nevertheless, biting remains off the agenda."

Back in the kitchen, Tony glanced up the back stairs and, much like Lee had, turned and headed for the main hall, Zev falling into step beside him. "So, unless you dropped by to taunt me with my relationship mistakes, why are you here?"

"Ambient noise."

"What?"

"I'm going to play some Tchaikovsky in the foyer and record it, then figure out how the dimensions of the s.p.a.ce change the sound. I may be able to use the minor distortions when I score the episode."

"Tchaikovsky?"

"Onegin."

"Who?"

"Ballet based on a novel by Pushkin."

"Hobbit?"

"Russian."

"CB's idea?"

"Your lack of confidence in my ability to make musical choices is why we're no longer together."

"I thought it was my lack of being Jewish?"

"Minor reason." "Or my inability to understand what you see in Richard Dean Anderson."

"Much larger reason." Grinning, Zev slid the backpack off his shoulder and set it on the floor by the lighting rig in the entrance hall. "Don't you have production a.s.sisting to do?"

He did. Adam was still without a battery, although given the radio reception and the fact that most of the crew was standing about six feet away from him, it wasn't likely he could be feeling the loss. "You want to go for a beer after work?"

The music director glanced at his watch. "It's just past six. Technically, I'm after work so it depends on what time you finish up."

"CB said he'd be by to pick the girls up at eight."

Zev winced at the reminder of the episode's guest stars. "They're safely upstairs, right?"

A crash from the second floor answered before Tony could.

"Why are they eating?"

"What?"

"They're eating soup in cups. Why are they eating and not leaving? I want my room back. This is our s.p.a.ce." Stephen watched his sister pacing, flickering even to his sight as she moved through people and equipment and he added, more to himself than to her, "You'll be fine once they're gone. You'll see."

"So, I just spoke to your father and he says he can't pick you up for a while, so you can stay and finish the scene if that's what you want to do. Or Tony can drive you back to the studio."

Ashley, her gaze locked on Mason, nodded.

"You want to stay?"

Brianna spread her arms and whirled up and down the hall, crashing into people and equipment. "I like being a ghost."

The red splatters were very bright against the hard gloss of the bathroom walls. Ca.s.sie touched one finger to the wall and then to the slightly darker splatter on the shoulder of one of the little girls. Faces, clothes, hair, both children were dripping with red. One of them kept licking it off her hand.

Red.

Some kind of syrup.

Red as . . .

She looked down at the crimson moisture on her fingertip. "Stephen, I remember. It's about the blood . . ."

Chapter Five.

BRENDA HAD DONE more than remove the dust from Lee's tux; when Tony found them tucked behind an open door, she seemed to be taking a good shot at removing his fillings with her tongue. There was enough visible movement happening in his cheeks, he looked like he had a pair of gerbils making out in his mouth.

Back in the butler's pantry, Tony jammed dead batteries into the chargers with more force than was strictly necessary. Hey, Lee could play tonsil hockey with whoever he wanted. He was an adult, Brenda was an adult; they had history and so what if Lee had told him earlier that history had been a mistake-nothing like an accidental cuddle with another man to make a straight boy run off and prove his heteros.e.xuality.

He just wished Lee hadn't been so stereotypical.

Oh, no! Gay cooties! Must wash them away with girl spit!

f.u.c.k it.

"Man, what's that battery ever done to you?" Ink-stained fingers with black-and-magenta-tipped nails yanked the battery from his hand and slid it effortlessly into the s.p.a.ce. "Aren't men supposed to be better at the whole insert tab A into slot B thing?" Amy demanded as Tony ignored her and moved on to the second charger. "I mean, it's a skill set that comes with the equipment, right? Unless you're having trouble with this because you're having man trouble and we're talking a cla.s.sic case of displacement."

He glared at her over the final battery. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?"

"Oh, my G.o.d, I'm right!" When he took a step toward her, she held up both hands and grinned. "Okay, okay, it's not like my inbox isn't already full of stories of erectile dysfunction."

Tony sighed, determined not to get involved in an argument he couldn't win. "I got you a spam filter."

"What'd be the fun in that? Anyway, I'm here with tomorrow's sides."

"Where's Wanda?" "Who?"

"Office PA."

"I know who, I was being sarcastic. b.i.t.c.h sold a movie-of-the-week script to an American network and quit this afternoon. She's moving to LA to become a rich-and-famous writer." Amy's snort carried the wisdom of six years in Canadian television. "Yeah, like that ever happens." She held up her hands again, this time so that Tony could note the black streaks across both palms. "Left me to deal with a printer jam in the photocopier and this c.r.a.p doesn't wash off. I'd have asked the boss if he minded dropping the sides off when he picked up the girls," she added lowering her hands and looking around, "but I wanted to see the inside of the house. It doesn't look haunted."

Ethereal music drifted in from the front hall.

"Sounds haunted."

"That's Zev. He's distorting Tchaikovsky."

"Kinky. So, how long have I got to look around?"

Tony glanced at his watch. "Not long. It's 8:40 now, and when I came downstairs at 8:30, they were almost finished.

You go take a quick look; I'd better call CB and find out if he wants me to drive the girls back to the studio."

"Suck-up."

"Adult of record."

"Responsible suck-up."