“It’s all right, Tony. It’s about time CB knew what was going on. It is happening in his studio, after all.” Sighing deeply, apparently unable to look the big man in the eye, Arra picked up a pencil and doodled on a scrap of paper as she talked. “I had the bat because I suspected Tony was going to be attacked by a . . .” Explanation and pencil paused. “. . . by another member of the crew.”

“Why?”

To Tony’s surprise, Arra spilled the whole story. From the shadow glimpsed at the location shoot, right down to what Tony had just told her. She’d didn’t give up Henry’s secret identity as a creature of the night but laid out the details of everything else. CB’s expression never changed. Tony had to give him credit for not interrupting unless, as was likely, he was too stunned to interrupt. Tony’d been a part of the story from the beginning and even he found it hard to believe.

When Arra finally stopped talking, he nodded slowly. “So it appears Constable Elson’s instincts are correct. There is something going on at my studio.”

“The police,” Arra snorted, “are less than useless in a case like this.”

“Very probably. Why was I not kept informed from the beginning?”

“You were there when I fell through the gate. You would have realized much, much earlier than Tony here that the Shadowlord wasn’t planning an invasion—no matter how much I personally wanted to believe that. You’d have realized he was looking for me.” She lifted her head then and met his gaze. “Given the destruction he’s capable of, I wasn’t entirely convinced you wouldn’t just toss me back up through the gate.”

“It is a solution that occurred to me as you were speaking.”

It hadn’t occurred to Tony. But then CB hadn’t seen the blackboard.

“So. Mr. Foster here has survived two encounters with the shadows; why, then, did they kill Nikki Waugh?”

Arra sighed and ran a hand back through her hair, standing it up in gray spikes. “That was a different kind of shadow; primitive and sent here to gather the information that would allow the Shadowlord to create the more complex shadows that interacted with Tony and the others. The information was Nikki Waugh’s life.”

“He sent it to kill?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“He needed that information—the information that killed Nikki Waugh—in order to continue his search for you?”

“Apparently.”

“So your presence here is responsible for . . .”

“For everything. Yes.” Arra slumped down in her chair, her tailbone barely on the edge of the seat. “Trust me, I’ve added Nikki to the li . . . Damn it!” She picked up the piece of paper she’d been doodling on. “I’ve just scribbled over an invoice for blasting caps.”

“Leave it,” CB commanded as she reached for an art eraser.