Smoke and Ashes (20 page)

Long pause. Probably not as long as it seemed.
Time slows when you have both feet in your mouth.

“Just let me know if I can help, okay?”

Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt. And since Tony knew from sad experience how the conversation would go if he said no, he decided to take the path of not having yet another argument with Lee. “Sure,” he lied.

Lee looked surprised. “With the…” He gestured at the floor. “You know.”

“Yeah.”

Wizardman and Actorboy.

Nope. Not going there either.

 

“Tony! Why is Kevin Groves in CB's office?”

Tony glanced down at the hand holding his arm. Specifically at the large black spider that covered the back of it. “New tat?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Amy sneered. “A new tat would still be all red and puffy and gross. Now, answer the question; has CB agreed to give that creep an interview?”

“No.”

Her grip tightened. “Stop being coy.”

“He…Kevin…saw something, in the parking lot.”

Brown eyes rolled between the double fringe of thickly mascaraed lashes. “Saw what?”

Tony jerked his head toward the door to the bull pen, currently open a suspicious six inches. “The walls have ears.”

“Yeah? Well, they also have the coffeemaker from the office kitchen.” Amy's voice rose to
don't fuck with me
levels. “So unless they want me to take it back…”

The door slammed closed with near panicked speed.

“Start talking,” she continued, “before my phone…” Her phone rang. “Bugger. Talk fast.”

“Amy…” She'd filed points onto her fingernails and those points were now dimpling the sleeve of his borrowed shirt. Considering how much his amazing new healing ability hurt, it didn't seem smart to just jerk his arm free.

“Faster than that.”

Talking seemed to be his only route to freedom. “Groves saw me vanquish a demon in our parking lot. I thought CB'd be the best guy to deal with it.”

“Vanquish?”

“Amy!” Rachel Chou stuck her head out of the finance office. “Are you going to get that?”

Not really a question.

She let go of Tony and snatched up the phone. “CB Productions! Our mailing address? Okay, but I'm warning you right now that we use unsolicited scripts in the porta john on location shoots. Yeah, exactly for what you think. Hello? Ha!” The receiver went back into the cradle with a triumphant clatter. “Tony!”

He'd have been safely inside CB's office if he hadn't stopped to knock. Knocking seemed like a good idea given that Leah was behind closed doors with two men. Although the thought of CB and Kevin Groves as two parts of a threesome made him want to scrub his brain out with bleach. Since no one had commanded/invited him in, he turned to see Amy standing by her desk, hands on her hips. Even the PowerPuff Girls on her T-shirt looked annoyed.

“Vanquish?” she repeated, pointedly.

“I sent it home.”

“Leah's way or
BOOM! SIZZLE!
ASH!” Her hands flicked open on each of the last three words.

“Sort of Leah's way.” He shrugged. “Sort of not.”

“Can it come back?”

“It's not dead, so I guess it can.” Just in time he remembered Amy knew the
Reader's Digest
version and stopped himself from saying,
It'll come back if Ryne Cyratane sends it back.

“I want to help.”

Thanks to Lee, he knew how to cut this off. “Sure.”

“Don't bullshit me,” she snorted. “I mean it.”

“I know.” Tony tried to sound like he'd meant it, too, even though they both knew he hadn't.

Her eyes narrowed. “Well?”

Odds were good she wasn't going to take
I'll get back to you on that
for an answer. What did it mean that he could lie to Lee but not to Amy? Was it some sort of weird psychological thing or was it just because Amy was scarier? A memory poked at him. Jack had shot the red demon, at least twice. “Bullets can hurt them. Can you find us a gun?”

“Are you insane?”

A good question and one he'd been considering himself lately. “Just for backup. In case I fall over again.”

“Are you likely to?” she demanded as the door opened behind him.

Odds were good. Whatever he'd done in the parking lot had healed his physical injuries but had left him feeling weirdly fragile. Not tired, exactly. He reached out with his round peg, looking for the round hole in the universe….

“Tony?”

Okay. Definitely way past time to ditch
that
analogy.

“Tony!”

Leah this time, not Amy. She grabbed his arm, dragged him into the office, and closed the door while he tried to decide if she looked any more disheveled than she had. He decided she didn't but only because the alternative was too disturbing.

Kevin was sitting on CB's couch poking unhappily at his handheld. “I can't get an uplink.”

“I told you,” CB growled from behind his desk as the reporter set the PDA on top of his open backpack. “We're in a dead zone.”

“Your phone won't work either.” Tony crossed the room and dropped onto the other end of the couch. His trousers squished, and he realized a little too late he should have stayed standing. But since there was
already
a damp imprint of his ass on the cushion, he remained where he was.

“You seem confident, Mr. Foster.”

“Phones haven't worked since…Wait. Not confident about the phone thing?”

“No.”

Confident. As in filled with confidence. Hey, why not? He'd just sent a demon home by force of will alone. His will. His will alone. He had been the world. He had the power!
Although it might be best to play that down a bit in front of the boss.
He shrugged.

“Ow!” The lines of blood on the shirt had dried, sticking the fabric to his skin. Specifically to his right nipple. Shrugging had ripped it free.

“I'm pleased to see that this new confidence hasn't changed you,” CB growled as Tony clutched at his chest.

Weirdly, in spite of the sarcasm, CB actually did seem pleased. What had he expected? What had Leah told him? Tony repeated the latter question out loud as Leah perched on the far edge of CB's desk.

“Ms. Burnett told me what happened in the parking lot. That you returned a demon to its hell without using the proper runes. That wizards who feel they can ignore the rules are dangerous.”

“I saved her ass.” It seemed so obvious and yet he kept having to bring it up.

“She doesn't dispute that, Mr. Foster, but she considers it a matter of luck that you've injured no one but yourself to this point.”

Tony frowned at Leah who was looking…smug. Not overtly, but it was there. “She doesn't like that she can't control me.”

To Tony's surprise, CB smiled. “No, I don't imagine that she does.”

“That's not—” Leah began, but CB raised a hand.

“Mr. Foster,” he said, “has always been able to see what is in front of him. It's a rare skill. Mr. Groves…”

Kevin jumped.

“…has identified the rune cut into the demon's hand as this.” The sheet of paper he lifted held a new swoop and squiggle. “It is on the third circle of Ms. Burnett's interesting tattoo…”

Interesting? That was a bit of an understatement. Tony glanced at Kevin, who was blushing again. He'd have heard a lie even with his ears that interesting color of puce, so if Leah hadn't told them what the tattoo actually was, what had she told them?

“…and it seems to indicate,” CB continued, “that she was its primary target.”

“Why?” Tony prodded.

“Because it's on my tattoo,” Leah told him, smiling. Ryne Cyratane flickered behind her.

Rune-to-rune attraction was apparently true enough for Kevin's gift and banal enough to give nothing away. Looked like Leah still hadn't given up her backstory, using her demonically-fueled sex appeal to keep CB and Kevin Groves from asking inconvenient questions. It seemed only vampires and Demongates got to have secret identities while wizards were left flapping in the breeze. Tony frowned at the rune. “Did the demon in the soundstage have one?”

“There was something,” CB acknowledged. “But it moved too fast for me to get a good look at it.”

“I knew it wasn't a fan,” Kevin muttered.

“Actually, Mr. Groves, there is nothing that says the demon isn't also a fan.”

The reporter snorted. “You think they watch syndicated TV in hell? Never mind,” he continued before anyone could answer. “I withdraw the question.”

“Mr. Groves was attempting to access the electronic copy of the page he found.” CB set the rune to one side and laced his fingers together. “His astrologer friend was only able to work out the time of the Demonic Convergence in a general way, so I suggest he retrieve the original and bring it here for our demonic consultant to study it. Perhaps, with her experience, she'll have more luck.” The look he shot Leah said he figured she could do anything she put her pretty little head to.

Eww. Tony felt slightly sick.

The look Leah shot CB in turn sat just to one side of
Are you nuts?
“You're going to let him walk out of here?”

“Why not?”

“With this story?”

“Your story is safe with me,” Kevin told her.

Tony snorted. The ringing tones and the hand over the heart detracted somewhat from the believability. Seemed that twenty minutes or so removed from the demon, being inside the story was no longer enough to suppress old habits. “Safe doesn't mean out of the paper, does it?”

Kevin's betrayed expression was slightly less believable than his sincere expression. After a few moments of reorganizing his face, he ended up in the general vicinity of resigned. “Okay, fine. But we're a weekly. I've got until next Tuesday at 3:00 to file, so you've got until then to change my mind, right?”

“Yeah, that sounds fair except that you've been digitally recording on that handheld, so you've got blackmail material if nothing else.”

“Kevin!”

As Leah's shocked exclamation—heavy on the second syllable—caught his attention, Tony grabbed the PDA from the backpack. When Kevin lunged for it, Tony held up his left hand. “We can't trust you.”

Back in the corner of the couch, as far as he could get from Tony's hand and still be on the couch, Kevin glared over the barrier of his backpack. “I'm a journalist!”

“Essentially.” Still working the rune, Tony stared down at the screen and double-tapped the record icon with his right thumb. “If he'd got the uplink, he'd probably have shot the sound file back to his office.”

“No, I…” The weight of disbelief cut him off. “Yes. Fine. I would have. But you don't understand.” He lowered the backpack onto his lap and fiddled with a strap. “This is a complete validation of my entire life. Demons and wizards and sex!”

“Sex?” CB asked. One eyebrow rose.

Tony suppressed a shudder. “Don't ask.” Sounded like CB's virtue was intact at least. Back to Kevin. “So you've been validated, big whoop; you've still got questions. You want to know why the demons are attacking Leah. You want to know where they come from.” Tony took a moment to study the rune on his palm, then he grinned at the reporter. “You want to know how I sent something capable of smashing its way into a car out of this world using only the finger of my right hand. Hell, that's not even my good hand.” He waved his left, feeling power ripple with the movement. “Not even my wizard hand. You've got to be wondering
exactly
what I'm capable of.”

Not
exactly
a threat.

“Are you threatening me?”

Okay, maybe it was.

“I don't even know you guys,” he continued. “Why should I do what you want?”

“Because we're trying to save the world here, Kevin.”

“By suppressing the truth?”

“If that's what it takes.”

“And what kind of a world will that give us?”

“One not strewn with dismembered bodies, you shortsighted jackass.”

“You want that page I found.” His chin lifted. “I think I've got bargaining power.”

“Yeah? I think you've got…”

“Mr. Foster.”

Tony sighed. At this rate the Demonic Convergence would be over before the conversation. “Here's a thought: you let us look at that page, you don't talk about this to anyone, and I don't erase your memory.”