She took him by the arm, her fingers hot through the sleeve of his jean jacket, and walked him toward the basement door. “I spoke to CB . . .”

“So he knows?”

“Knows what?”

Fully aware that Amy could listen to half a dozen conversations simultaneously, Tony dropped his voice to a low murmur. He’d deal with her opinions on him keeping secrets from her later. “Everything. You said you were going to tell him everything.”

“Oh. Right. No. I told him I need you to work that big carbon arc lamp for me this morning; that I’m working on that ghost effect he wants for later in the season and I need more light levels. He’ll clear it with Peter and Sorge.”

“I don’t . . .” He didn’t want to go anywhere near the gate. He didn’t want to be within a hundred kilometers of it when it opened. And it didn’t matter. There wasn’t anyone else. “Sure. Whatever.”

Arra’s grip tightened for a heartbeat, as though she’d known what he’d been thinking. “I did a search for the last shadow this morning. It’s in the studio.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Be careful. It’ll know the others have been destroyed and it’ll be desperate to get back through the gate.”

“What about stuff coming this way?”

“I doubt it. Not yet. The Shadowlord hates to move without information; it’s his strength and, to a certain extent, his weakness. He likes to be sure. Worry once this last shadow is destroyed—although by destroying some of them away from the gate, we may delay his reaction.”

“Swell. That gives us time to prepare.”

“There’s nothing to prepare!”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “I knew that.” When she released him and reached for the basement door, it was his turn to take hold of her. “Arra, I was wondering, why do they need to bring the people back to the gate? I mean, one of them followed us out to that location shot last week so obviously the shadows move around fine on their own.”

“No, remember I told you that the more specific a shadow is the more constrained its movement? And these latest shadows are really mobile only before they’ve taken a host,” she continued when he nodded. “After they’ve experienced physical definition, their mobility is pretty much limited to moving a short distance to another host.”

“But they can survive on their own, right?”

Tony saw a muscle in her jaw jump as she clenched her teeth. “You cannot reform them!”

“That’s not what I meant.” Not entirely. “I just thought that it might be more . . . I don’t know, intelligent if they bailed on the host after they got the information. I mean lurking shadows are a lot harder to spot than people acting like they’re disappearing and acting like night of the living pod people.”