Constant. Babies dying. Rotting. And he was the only one who could see it. Their parents kissed and hugged and played with the tiny corpses until bits started falling off. “You’ve got to wake her up.”

Arra snorted. “And do what? Smack her on the head with a frying pan? You can’t knock someone unconscious without doing damage, Tony. There’s no such thing as a Vulcan neck pinch or any other tidy television solution. This is war—not everyone comes out . . .”

The only sound for a long time was Keisha’s labored breathing.

“. . . whole.” Turning on one heel, Arra headed back to the dining room. “Put her on my bed. She won’t wake up until I tell her to.”

At 5:57, Carol from the lighting crew showed up.

“If another shadow-held shows up searching for me, you’ll have to let them in. They’re just as likely to grab one of my neighbors and gouge an eye or something out in front of the peephole in order to get a reaction. With my luck, they’d probably grab the wrong neighbor.”

“Why don’t you let them in? Open the door and nighty-night them?”

“Because they’ll see me and he’ll know where I am. He’ll have something in them set to my power signature.”

“Keisha . . .”

“Didn’t see me. You distracted her.”

“Yeah, and she sure as hell saw me!”

“Didn’t you tell me that he doesn’t care about you? Now go away and let me finish this. Try putting your brains on ice if they’re still not working.”

Tony sighed. Carol had a black belt in some kind of martial art. He hadn’t been paying enough attention to the overheard conversation to know exactly which martial art but, bottom line, it didn’t much matter since he had equivalent training in absolutely nothing. Plastering a fake smile on his face, he opened the door. “Hey. What’s happening?”

“Don’t play dumb,” she snapped, pushing past him.

“All right.” He grabbed her shoulder, spun her back around, and threw the contents of his mug in her face. The coffee wasn’t exactly hot, but it distracted her just long enough for him to sweep her legs out from under her and send her crashing to the floor.

Really close contact kept her from landing any serious blows, but she still beat the crap out of him.

“What took you so long?” he gasped, not being at all careful of anything but aching ribs as he crawled off of Carol’s sleeping body.

“Time is relative. There’s one of those gel cold packs in the freezer. Maybe you’d better use it.”

“You think?” His voice already sounded higher. The way things were going, by the end of the night only dogs would be able to hear him.

At 7:02, it was Elaine from craft services.