“What, without Tony? Jesus, CB, he’s just the production assistant. I think I can struggle on. Adam!” The director’s voice echoed off the ceiling. “Where the hell has Mason got himself off to?”

No one seemed to know.

“Well, find him, for Christ’s sake. And count the fan club, a couple of them were minors! And get someone over here to clean up this puke.”

Confident that things were now back as they should be, at least on the surface—essentially business as usual for television—CB turned . . . and stopped as the director called his name.

“Yes?”

“Tony and Arra.”

“Yes?”

“Is there something going on with them? You know . . .” He waggled a hand. “. . . going on?”

Chester Bane favored the director with a long, level stare. “I wouldn’t like to guess.”

In point of fact, he very much disliked guessing. He liked to know.

He intended to know.

Fifteen

Fifteen

“IT WAS . . . It was in my. . .”

“Shhhh, not yet.”

Tony leaned heavily on Arra’s arm as she walked him down the basement stairs and sighed in relief as they stepped out onto the workshop floor, realizing the significance of the observation he’d made the first time he came down here. There were no shadows.

He stumbled toward a chair, dropped onto it, and didn’t have the strength to protest when Arra grabbed a folded space blanket from a shelf and wrapped it around him. The security of something between him and the world actually felt pretty good.

“Now tell me,” the wizard commanded as she sat.

So he did.

“It was hiding in your shadow?” She frowned. “That explains the deepening of the shadow-taint, but they’ve never . . . This is new behavior for them.”

Tony considered shrugging, decided his head might lose its precarious balance if he tried, and snorted instead. “They were in Hartley for just over twenty-four hours. You said that no one knows how to hide like an alcoholic. I guess they learned a few tricks.”

“No . . . I banished the shadow holding Hartley.”

“It slipped through the pauses in your banishing spell. You were breathing kind of heavy so it wasn’t one long string of syllables like usual.”

Her frown deepened. “It told you that or are you guessing?”

“I touched it. Remember, I told you.” Unsure of what might be useful wizardly information, he’d told her everything.

“Did I tell you what a stupid thing that was for you to have done?”

“You kind of choked when I got to it the first time. So . . .” He was about to ask: What now? What happened now that the Shadowlord had the information he was waiting for? And then he realized he didn’t really want to know. Not yet. He could use a few more minutes of ignorant bliss. “. . . so what’s your story?”