He didn't want to go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

There was no reason for him to go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

If he needed to talk to Arra, it would be a lot more efficient if he just called her and had her come up to the soundstage.

Tony stopped about halfway down the stairs. He turned, raised his foot to start back up again, and stopped.

He did want to go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

And he had a d.a.m.ned good reason for going.

Two steps farther down and he began to feel slightly nauseous.

Who knew what chemicals she was using down there. Half of them would probably blow up if looked at the wrong way and the other half were likely toxic. Better he just go back upstairs and call her.

He was three steps up before he stopped himself.

Bite me, old woman!

Four steps from the bottom, the hair lifting off the back of his neck, sweat running down his sides, he said a silent, Screw it! and jumped.

He felt better the moment he landed.

Wiping his palms against his jeans, he came out from behind a set of shelves and face- to-face with a rotting corpse standing and swaying in the middle of the room.

Sagging gray flesh had ripped open under its own weight and well-fed maggots squirmed out of the rents. A hand with bones protruding through three fingertips reached out for him while white rheumy eyes tried to focus on his face. Dark, withered lips parted and a voice said, "It takes a lot to discourage you, doesn't it? All right, fine.

As long as you're here, you can tell me if the maggots are too much."

"Th ... th ... th ..." It felt as though all connections between his mouth and his brain had been severed.

"The maggots, Tony. Are they over the top? I think they give a corpse a nice lived-in look, but they're not for everyone."

"Arra?"

The corpse sighed and was suddenly the much shorter, older wizard-the maggots nowhere in sight. "It's just a glamour," she said, checking her fingertips. "Raymond Dark'll be stopping the villain du jour from raising the dead in a couple of weeks and I need to work out the details. It's not as easy as it looks maintaining three separate glamours over moving actors. Good thing CB's too cheap to hire more than three corpses. So . . ." An eyebrow rose. ". . . what can I do for you?"

"That was ..." He waved a hand. "f.u.c.k. I mean ..."

"Thank you. Always nice to have an appreciative audience. I take it Mr. Nicholas is functional this morning?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Good." She waited, then folded her arms and sighed again. "Since you managed to get down here in spite of wards set to prevent that very thing, I a.s.sume you want something. What?"

"Right." Tony glanced down at his watch. Seven minutes before he had to get Laura and Frank to the set. "The gate. We're shooting right under it."

"So?"

"I don't think we'll be done by 11:15."

"I repeat, so?"

"You have to be there. You should be there. Just in case."

"As I believe I mentioned last night, there's no just in case."

"But I. . ."

"Yes. I got your message. You used a really bright light on the shadow leaving Mr.

Nicholas and you think you destroyed it, but you're not one hundred percent positive."

She folded her arms. Tony had read somewhere that people folded their arms as a protective gesture. Arra didn't so much look like she was protecting herself as putting up battlements, raising the moat bridge, and hanging out no trespa.s.sing signs. "The shadow could have returned unaffected," she continued, "and therefore the shadows that would have been sent today still will be sent. It could have been injured but not destroyed in which case shadows will come through to find and remove the threat. It could have been destroyed and so nothing went back through the gate at all in which case shadows will come through to find out why."The Shadowlord will continue to send his shadows through. You might as well just live your life while you can because there's nothing you can do about it."

"Hey, I have access to a 6,000 watt carbon arc lamp!"

"If the lamp destroyed the shadow, can you shine it on the gate every time it opens?"

"No, but you can ..."

"I can what?"

"I don't know!" Everything he knew about wizards came from the movies and none of it was particularly helpful. "You could help!"

"I helped last night and unless my memory is faulty, which it isn't, I told you that I'm not going after the shadows. As you might say, been there, done that, got the scars." Her arms still crossed, her right hand gripped her left sleeve with white-knuckled force.

"You fought before!"

"Older and wiser now. Didn't you have somewhere you need to be?"

He looked at his watch. s.h.i.t! "This isn't over."

Arra shrugged-although a certain twist to her mouth made the motion look more fatalistic than nonchalant. "That's what I keep telling you."

"All right, let's get Mom's reaction shots." Finding himself at the end of his tether, Peter yanked off his headphones and tossed them back to Tina before walking out onto the set. "Lee, if you don't mind . . . ?"

Cracking open a bottle of water, Lee indicated that he didn't.

There were stars, Mason Reed among them, who saw no reason they should have to reread their lines so that the cameras could catch the reactions of the secondary characters. On more than one occasion, Tony, as the least essential member of the crew, had found himself holding a script and trying not to sound like a complete idiot while reading Raymond Dark's dialogue. Given Raymond Dark's dialogue, that wasn't exactly a job for an amateur.

Unless Lee had another commitment, he always stayed. Tony felt this gave his scenes a depth that Mason's didn't have and that it could be at least part of the reason for the amount of fan mail Lee had started to receive-although he didn't kid himself that the larger reason involved the eyes, the smile, and the a.s.s. It had taken him a couple of months to actually notice Lee's acting ability and he was a trained professional.

Under normal circ.u.mstances, Tony was all in favor of Lee's presence on the set. Today, he'd have been happier had Lee been out of the building. h.e.l.l, out of the country. If Arra was right and the next opening of the gate would release more shadows into the world, Lee needed to be as far from the gate as possible-not standing underneath it chatting to the boom operator while Peter went over the reactions he wanted with Laura.

If Arra was wrong . . . well, Tony would still have been happier with Lee anywhere but unavoidably in sight. He couldn't stop thinking about what had happened between them-between him and Lee's body at any rate-and it was distracting.

"TONY!"He jerked his head toward the microphone so quickly he nearly gave himself whiplash.

"Yeah, Adam?"

"Find Everett and get him out here. Frank's comb over needs to be touched up before his shots."

And faintly from the background. "It's not a comb over!"

Everett was in makeup with Mason Reed in the chair. Startled, Tony checked his sides.

"Uh, Mr. Reed, you're not..."

"Promo shots," the actor snapped. "For The Georgia Straight. Yet another article about my personal life-rich and single in Canada's hippest city." His sigh was deep enough to waft a cotton ball off the counter. "They should be concentrating on my art; I don't know why they're so fascinated by what I do in my minimal amount of spare time."

They're not fascinated, they're inundated-you won't shut up about it. Flashing Mason the "sorry I'm interrupting but I'm carrying a message from someone much more important than me" smile he'd perfected after three days on the job, Tony turned to the other man, currently wiping lotion off his fingers. "Everett, you're needed on set."

"He's not finished with me."

"It's not a problem, Mason. We need a moment for that bronz . . . moisturizer," Everett corrected quickly as Mason glared at him, "to set."

"Georgia Straight interview my a.s.s," the makeup artist muttered a moment later as they made their way back to the soundstage. "They've never shot him in anything but black and white. I'm betting he has a hot date with one of his para-sailing, s...o...b..arding bimbos. Hard bodies young enough to be your daughter are seldom impressed by vampire pallor. Don't quote me on that, though."

Tony winced. "Harsh."

"I call them as I see them, kid. And I knew Frank's comb-over wouldn't be up to the overacting he was going to put it through. What happened to subtlety?" he demanded as they waited at the soundstage door for the red light to go off.

"It's a show about a vampire detective," Tony reminded him, opening the door and motioning him through. "Subtle isn't exactly the selling point."

"... which is when the police arrived."

"Keep rolling," Peter called as Laura allowed her shocked expression to fade. "Let's try it again with more sorrow less indignation. Lee ..."

"Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Mackay, that was when Raymond Dark found your daughter. It was too late for him to do anything, too late for anyone to do anything, which is when the midget basketball team arrived."

"Keep rolling. Do it again. A little less sorrow this time although the tear was terrific if you can work up another one. Lee, stop trying to make her laugh. We've got nine pages to get through today and you know how CB feels about overtime."

Laura smiled across the set. "That's all right Peter; I don't find midget basketball funny."

"Yak herders? Operatic mutes? The Vancouver Canucks?" Lee grinned at the older woman. "You've got to be able to laugh at the Canucks or you'll die of a broken heart.""That's a fiver for the hockey jar, Lee." The hockey jar was a direct result of differing opinions during the previous season's playoffs; differing opinions that had resulted in a black eye, two broken fingers, and an a.s.sault with a blueberry m.u.f.fin. "And line ..."

"Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Mackay ..."

As he delivered the line once again, Lee seemed fine. He was a little hyper, but his energy levels were always high while the camera was rolling. Had Tony not been specifically looking for the effects of yesterday's adventure, he would have missed the pinched looked around the actor's eyes or the way his usual fluid gestures had picked up a slight staccato movement-like a physical stutter. It could have been a lot worse- he'd expected it to be a lot worse-and it could, in fact, be nothing more than a perfectly normal reaction to being force-fed half a bottle of warm, catnip-flavored vodka.

The shadow appeared to have caused no actual damage.

Tony glanced at his watch. 11:10.

That shadow appeared to have caused no actual damage. And as much as he wanted to believe it was over, lessons learned from a thousand movies and a hundred television shows were telling him it couldn't possibly be that easy.

A thousand movies, a hundred television shows, and one real downer of a wizard.

Arra had every intention of staying away from the set-from the set, from the gate, from the whole inevitable disaster. At 11:11, according to the clock on the tech monitor, she was standing behind the video village wondering just what, exactly, she thought she was doing.

Gathering information?

Yes. That sounded safe enough.

She needed information in order to plan, in order to survive, which meant that vested self-interest had brought her out of her workshop-not curiosity nor, heaven forbid, an inexplicable desire to become involved. Once was enough. More than.

The big carbon arc lamp was on, maintaining ambient light for the close-ups. It was throwing an uncomfortable amount of heat, and was clearly the reason her T-shirt was now sticking to a line of sweat dribbling down her spine. As long as it stayed on, she couldn't see a shadow making it through.

Peter sat back and pushed his headphones down around his neck. "That's got it."

And the light shut off.

Cue dramatic irony.

"No!"

As all eyes turned toward him, Tony suddenly realized he'd spoken aloud.Yelled actually.

Peter leaned around the edge of the monitor to fix him with an interrogative gaze.

"Problem, Mr. Foster?"

Mister? He was so screwed. He could feel the vibration beginning, the gate opening.

What difference did it make if he looked like an a.s.s? He had to say something! Arra! Arra was there. Behind Peter. She'd back him up. Right. Who the f.u.c.k am I kidding. "Sorry. I uh . . . thought I saw one of the lights shift."

Everyone looked up. Everyone but him.

He looked at Arra. Who was looking up. But not at the lights.

Her face had paled and she was panting; even from ten feet away, he could see her chest rise and fall. He could almost see the terror oozing off her like . . . like the maggots oozing out of the corpse. Oh, yeah, I really needed that image.