Blinking away afterimages, he dragged himself to his feet. Besides pain, he was feeling remarkably calm. “I think we’ve pretty much established that the Shadowlord will kill us looking for you.” He held up a hand as Arra raised her palm toward him again. “I’m going.” Half a dozen steps down from the door, most of his weight on the banister, he turned. “This is your mess. Take some responsibility and clean it up.”

“Responsibility!” She spat the word back at him.

“Maybe you’ve heard of it; it’s the flip side of power.”

Her angle was bad and she missed him with the second shot.

Zev was standing just inside the production office, balancing a pile of CDs in one hand and dangling a set of small computer speakers from the other. He looked up as Tony came out of the basement, his nose wrinkling at the distinct smell of char cut off by the closing door. “What’s burning?”

“Rome.” Tony touched a fingertip to his eyebrow piercing. The skin felt puffy and the slightest pressure hurt like hell—not surprising, he supposed, gold was a good conductor. “And I was just speaking to Nero.”

“Ah.” The musical director frowned. “Did you and Arra have a fight?”

“A disagreement.”

“Ah, again. I never knew you were that interested in special effects. You didn’t mention it on Friday.”

“Slipped my mind. We, uh . . .” he began, just as Zev said, “If we, uh . . .”

A moment’s silence.

“Go ahead.” A simultaneous polite injunction which, after another moment’s silence, degenerated into two thirds of a Three Stooges routine as the stack of CDs started to slide. Zev shifted his grip, Tony reached out a hand to help, and the spark was clearly visible even under the fluorescent lights.

The clatter of the CD cases hitting the floor almost drowned out Zev’s reaction.

“Bloody HELL!”

Almost.

“Man, Zev, I’m sorry.” Tony dropped to his knees and began gathering up the spilled music. “It’s that thing that Arra and I were working on. I guess it got me all charged up.”

“You guess?” Clutching his right hand with his left, Zev sucked air through his teeth. “What did she have you doing down there; rubbing cats with glass rods?”

“What?”

“High school physics experiment. Never mind.” He worked his fingers and, satisfied they were still functional, reached down to take back the stack of CDs. “I guess if it got you on your knees, I can suffer the pain.” As Tony grinned in surprise, his eyes widened. “I said that out loud?”

Tony nodded.

The skin between the top edge of his beard and the bottom edge of his glasses flushed red. “Great. I’ll just . . .” Speakers banging against his legs, he backed up. “Look, I’ve got a ton of . . . um.” Somehow, although Tony wasn’t sure how, he got the door to post open with his elbow. “Later.” And vanished.