Fucking great. He knew that almost voice. There was still a shadow here on the soundstage! Whirling around, Tony tried to get a good look at his own shadow as it danced with his heels over the concrete floor.

“Foster, what the hell are you doing?” Charlie glared at him over an armload of Styrofoam capstones. “If you’re done, get out of my way.”

“I’m, uh . . .” Did his shadow look darker? Occupied?

“You’re, uh, nothing. Haul ass over to the workshop and bring the box of sticks for this glue gun.”

“I have to . . . I mean, there’s someone . . .”

The capstones hit the floor; sticky hands closed around Tony’s shoulders and turned him away from the wall. “Workshop. Glue sticks. Now. And, Foster, if you’re having a nervous breakdown, I suggest you raise your caffeine levels and get over yourself. Today’s a bad day!”

Tell me about it. It wasn’t in his shadow, he decided—the voice wasn’t clear enough for that or maybe it wasn’t enough in his head. Any kind of accurate description took a beating around this sort of shit. Relief mixed with apprehension as he hurried toward the workshop. If not in his shadow, where? Or, more specifically, who?

Peter and Lee were running through phone dialogue as he passed the office set, Lee sitting with one thigh propped on the edge of the desk in what had become one of James Grant’s signature positions.

“. . . is still good and evil is still evil and good people continue to do what they can to negate the effects of evil people. But it’s your choice, Raymond; I won’t make it for you. After all, you’re the one with the centuries of experience.” Moving the phone away from his ear, Lee shook his head. “Did that last bit sound as over the top listening to it as it did saying it?”

Peter shrugged. “You’re talking to a vampire detective freaking out about a coven of aristocratic witches he’s just discovered he didn’t destroy back a hundred odd years ago; does it get more over the top than that?”

Tony walked on as the actor acknowledged the point.

“Three minute warning, people!”

Across the soundstage, other voices took up the cry and construction noises began to drop off. With no time to either stop shooting or stop building, the day would be a patchwork of both, carpenters and painters playing statue as the bell sounded, and bursting into antlike frenzy the second after “Cut.”

Glue sticks in hand, Tony got back to the office in time to see the first take of the scene.

“. . . won’t make it for you. After all, you’re the one with the centuries of experience.”