"I'm sorry."

"I'd had that compact for years."

"It's still there; you can get it in the morning."

"Oh, sure." Her nostrils flared. "If I survive. Well, even if I were willing to lend you another mirror, I don't have one."

"Amy?"

"Please." She tucked a strand of black-tipped magenta hair behind her ear. "I look this good when I leave the house and it lasts all day."

After a long moment, Mason sighed and pulled a small silver compact out of his pants pocket. "I like to check my touch-ups," he explained as he pa.s.sed it over.

"You always look wonderful!" Ashley gushed up at him.

He nodded. "True."

All eyes tracked Tony as he slid the compact into his front pocket. He leaned farther into the huddle and murmured, "Let the gardener's head out while I'm gone. I want to see how the thing in the . . ." Screw it, life was too short. ". . . the thing reacts to a replay."

"Mouse and Mason?" Zev asked.

Glancing over at the actor and the cameraman, he didn't immediately understand Zev's point. Mason ignored him- business as usual-Mouse peered at him through his viewfinder. Oh. Right. The possible return of the crazies. If the replays began again, would the house then feel it could expend the power to repossess? If Mouse and Mason didn't remember how far they'd fallen apart, could they make the decision to risk it again?

Did he have the right to risk them-all of them; a crazy Mouse was a dangerous roommate-for the sake of information that might not be relevant.

Might be, though.

No way of telling.

"Tony?"

"Ask them first." The good of the many. Yeah, like that'll apply to Mason. He touched the hard ridge of the compact, and straightened.

"So you going, then?" Sorge asked.

"Of course he's going," Peter answered. The director reached across the huddle and clasped Tony's forearm. "Bring Lee back to us. We can't lose him now; he's pulling in as much fan mail as Mason is."

"More."

As Mason sputtered, everyone else craned their heads to stare at the thing that was Lee.

He shrugged. "Small room, and Peter's voice tends to carry. Are you coming, Tony?"

"No," Tony muttered under his breath as he turned, "just breathing hard. Ow!" He scowled at Amy as he rubbed his bad arm. "What the h.e.l.l was that for?"

"So not the time to make jokes!"

"Can't think of a better time." Picking one of the lanterns up off the counter, he waved it toward the kitchen. "Let's go."

"Don't want to be alone in the dark with me?" Lee asked as the pantry door closed behind them.

"Stop it."

"You don't think your attraction to me might have caused me to ask myself a few questions about the way I'm living my life?"

"Yeah, right," Tony snorted. "With one bound, he was up and a gay? I don't think so."

"Perhaps you're selling yourself short."

"Perhaps you should shut the f.u.c.k up."

He could hear the creaking of Lucy's rope up on the third floor. Karl crying. The band playing on. Aware of each sound momentarily before it faded to background again.

The bas.e.m.e.nt door was open. The memory of touching the doork.n.o.b spasmed though Tony's left hand and the new pain burned a little of the rigidity out of his arm. Eyes watering, he realized that no pain, no gain was quite probably the stupidest mantra he'd ever heard. And that whole wizard being able to feel power thing truly sucked.

As he followed Lee down the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, the lantern light seemed to close around him, as though the darkness was too thick for it to make much of an impression. Old boards creaked under his weight as he hurried to keep up, not wanting to lose sight of the other man.

The splash as he stepped off onto the concrete floor came as a bit of a surprise. So did the cold water seeping in through his shoes. Apparently Graham Brummel hadn't been kidding about the bas.e.m.e.nt flooding. Great. And the thing knows, because Lee knows, about tossing live wires into the water and making soup.

He'd half turned back toward the stairs before he realized he'd moved. He didn't want to be soup. But then, who did?

A rustling from above caught his attention and he lifted the lantern. The light just barely made it to the top of the stairs.

The gardener's hand rose up on its wrist and flipped him the finger.

Looked like they hadn't released the head.

On the bright side, he could hear neither Karl nor the band. The silence was glorious. Muscles he hadn't realized were tense, relaxed.

"Cold feet, Tony?"

"Yeah. Cold and wet."

"You're perfectly safe. I don't want to hurt you."

Not Lee, he reminded himself. Also, big fat creepy evil liar. Wrapping his left hand carefully around the handle of the lantern, he slid Mason's compact out of his pocket and quietly thumbed it open. He almost p.i.s.sed himself as Lee's hand closed around his elbow.

"Come closer."

"I was going to."

"You're still standing at the foot of the stairs."

"I know! I said I was going to." He took a deep breath, hated the way it shuddered on the exhale, and allowed Lee to pull him forward. The bas.e.m.e.nt smelled of mold and old wood and wet rock.

He stumbled once on a bit of cracked concrete, but Lee's grip kept him on his feet. Hurt like h.e.l.l, since he was gripping the left arm but better than falling when falling would have extinguished his light. "Thanks."

"Like I said, I don't want you hurt."

"I wasn't thanking you."

Amused. "Yes, you were."

Not amused. "Bite me."

At least the reflection of the lantern light off the water pushed the darkness back a little farther. Enough to see Lee if not the actual bas.e.m.e.nt. Under the circ.u.mstances, it didn't exactly help to see Lee, but it was nice to know he wasn't alone. Of course, Lee all by himself wasn't alone. He suppressed most of a totally inappropriate snicker.

"Care to share the joke?"

"It's not really very funny."

The sound of them splashing forward bounced off hard surfaces, nearly but not quite an echo. Made sense; big house, big bas.e.m.e.nt. Tony was pretty sure he could hear water . . . not so much running as dribbling . . . somewhere close.

"So, is there a laundry room down here?"

"Yes."

"Wine cellar?"

"There is."

"Bathroom?"

"No."

"That's too bad because all this wet is reminding me that I could really use a chance to p.i.s.s."

"Too bad."

He snorted. "Yeah, well I've walked through worse, so how are you going to stop me if I just whip out and let 'er rip?"

Lee's grip tightened way past the point of pain. Tony's hand spasmed. The lantern fell. Without releasing his hold, Lee bent and gracefully scooped it out of the air just before it hit the water, straightened, and hung it back over Tony's fingers.

Teeth so tightly clenched he thought he could hear enamel crack, Tony held the lantern as securely as possible and yanked his arm free. He staggered, would have fallen but slammed up against a stone pillar instead, forgave it for new bruises, and collapsed against its support. Right. Taunting the thing in the bas.e.m.e.nt-bad idea.

Gaining a little more movement in his left hand-bad trade.

"I don't want to hurt you."

"Yeah, I get the emphasis." His voice sounded almost normal, which was good because he hadn't totally ruled out screaming as an option. "You don't want to, but you will."

Lee continued walking to where the edge of the light lapped up against a section of the fieldstone foundations then he turned and spread his hands. "I have a proposition for you."

Deja vu all over again. "What is it about evil," he wondered aloud, "that makes it so d.a.m.ned attracted to my a.s.s?"

The thing raised Lee's eyebrows into a painfully familiar expression. "Excuse me?"

"You, the Shadowlord . . . Is it something I'm doing? Because if it is, I'll stop."

"What?" "My a.s.s," Tony sighed. "Your interest."

Understanding. Then disgust. "My interest in you has nothing to do with your body or your perverse and deviant behavior."

"Oh." Wait a minute. "You shove people off the sanity cliff and then pull a Matrix battery thing on them and I'm a deviant?"

"What are you babbling about?"

"Little trouble keeping up with contemporary culture? Here, I'll translate. You drive people crazy and then you feed off their deaths. You have no business calling me a deviant."

"h.o.m.os.e.xuality is against the law of nature."

Tony felt his lip curl. "You're one to talk; you're a thing in a bas.e.m.e.nt!"

"I am a power!"

"Yeah, big power. So you've killed a few . . . dozen people." He kicked at the water. "You're still stuck in a flooded f.u.c.king bas.e.m.e.nt."

Lee shuddered and his nose started to bleed.

"Okay, I'm sorry." Jerking away from the pillar, Tony took a step toward Lee. "I'm sure it's a very nice bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Enough."

"Right."

"Or I may just kill him now." The shudders grew more violent.

Would another step closer make it better or worse? "I said I was sorry."

"You'll consider my offer?"

"So make an offer."

"I want you to join me."

"Say what?"

"With your power added to ours, we could be free."

Ours? Things in the bas.e.m.e.nt? Plural? Listening for a second presence, Tony remembered the mirror. He glanced down, adjusted it to pick up Lee's reflection, saw movement to the actor's left-looked up at a blank fieldstone wall- looked down, made another adjustment, and saw something looking back.

Sort of.

The wall was in constant movement. Roiling. A description he honestly thought he'd never use. Features appeared and disappeared, pushing out from the stone and reabsorbing a moment later. Eyes. Nose. Mouth. It was as if someone with a scary sense of proportion had animated one of those abstract paintings Henry liked so much-where the proportions were already a little frightening.

"You're very quiet."

"Just a little surprised," Tony admitted. When it spoke, the features appeared in the standard arrangement. The mouth even moved although Lee still did the actual talking. Tony couldn't shake the feeling he'd seen the face before.