“You’re lying.”

Regina’s laugh floated through the theater. “Baby, I don’t have to lie.”

“You were at Teddi’s. You heard all about this at Teddi’s.”

“Sweetheart, I hear everything at Teddi’s. I heard about you and North looking for Mark. I heard about all the rich little boys who didn’t know how to come out, all the rich old men who couldn’t. Teddi practically showed me where they were with glow-in-the-dark paint. I heard about you and the Slasher.” A hint of dark amusement came on the next words. “I really thought I had a chance with you, Shaw. I can tell a virgin from a mile off, but a virgin like you, all cut up and damaged and sick with puppy love for your big, butch best friend,” Tony punctuated each word by kicking North in the side. “Well, I really thought I had you. I put it on a little too hard at Teddi’s that day, but sometimes fortune favors the bold.”

“Don’t touch him. Don’t you ever fucking touch him again.”

Regina’s laughter drifted through the theater again, but it was Tony’s voice when he spoke. “Normally I’d be all sweetness and light with you, but I’m under a lot of pressure. I’ve got to get going before the cops decide to check the Lucky again. And I have to be honest: I really have been in a foul mood ever since that little bitch stole my work and deleted the copies, like he wanted me to know. So, here’s the new deal: if you don’t get out here, I’m going to do something bad to North. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”

For another moment, Shaw’s thoughts fuzzed into gray, mindless terror.

It had been like this the night the West End Slasher had cornered Shaw in an alley, with Carl pressing Shaw back against the bricks, one arm across Shaw’s chest to protect him. Shaw didn’t really remember anything else: not his attacker, not the feel of the knife as it cut deep into his leg and across his balls, not even the noise Carl made when he died. His mind had gone to this same buzzing black-out, and then the next thing Shaw remembered, he was staring down at Carl, and Carl was dead, and there was the coppery bright pain running through Shaw.

Not again. Not again.

It wasn’t the words that dragged Shaw out of that blank thunderhead. It was another memory. A different memory. Shaw on his back, his head aching, staring up at North McKinney, a rainbow shimmer of fluorescents flickering around North as he bent to check that Shaw was ok.

Shaw’s thoughts crackled again, coalescing in those bursts of bad reception. Not again. Not North.

He swept his hand across the light board. The theater pitched into blackness again. He kept smashing the boards. Queen came on, playing at a volume that rattled Shaw, threatening to shake him to pieces even inside the booth. Then Shaw staggered toward the door. The stairs. The lobby. The theater proper.