“Good on you. Now put this fucking thing back where it belongs and get the hell off my set. I got work to do.” The tone of voice suggested a deeper concern than the words.

“Right. Sorry.”

“Dumb ass.”

As Les called his crew back to the job, Tony rolled the lamp back along the path of its cable. With his stomach tying itself in knots, he quickly separated it from the board, secured the wires, and made sure everything was exactly the way he’d found it. Somehow, he managed to keep his hands from shaking too badly.

Outside of his conscious control, his shadow flickered around the edges.

Arra was just hanging up the phone as Tony walked down the stairs into the basement. She turned as he tossed the light meter onto her desk, looking him up and down. Her brows drew in as she completed the inspection. “You okay?”

He wondered what he looked like. Wondered if she could see the fear that had his guts in knots and stuck his shirt to the sweat on his back. “I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh.”

It sounded like she didn’t believe him. Tough. He was fine. “No one showed up. Nothing came through. He’s sitting up there considering things.”

“He?”

“The Shadowlord.”

Her frown deepened. “You felt that?”

“Not the sitting.” Dragging the second chair out into the middle of the room, out where the arrangement of the overhead fluorescents banished shadow, he dropped onto it. “But the considering, yeah.” He’d never seen anyone’s eyebrows actually touch before. “What?”

“You felt the considering.”

“Yeah. I guess.” The noise she made was in no way reassuring. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Something!” he snapped.

“I’m just impressed by your sensitivity.”

She sounded sincere and even if she wasn’t, he suspected he didn’t want to know the actual answer. Slouching deeper in the chair, he shoved both hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Yeah, well, I’m gay.”

“So I’ve heard.” Twisting around, she plucked a piece of paper off her desk. “I made a few calls while you were gone.”

“On the phone?”

“There’s an alternative I haven’t discovered in the last seven years?”

“I just wondered why you don’t do a locator spell or something.”

“Because if I locate them using wizardry and we don’t stop them and they get back through the gate . . .”

“He’ll know you’re here,” Tony interjected into the pause. “Does it matter? There’s only one of you here and you said that back in the day he wiped out the rest of your order.” Her expression didn’t change, but her cheeks paled and Tony realized he might have put his foot in it. “I mean, it’s not like he’s going to be afraid of you being here.”

The presence he’d felt on the other side of the gate caused fear, it didn’t feel it.