“I’m getting in touch with my inner lesbian.” Tony pointed toward the discarded clothing on the bed. “Try the blue.”

Henry stripped off the shirt, yanked a cream-colored sweater off the pile, and dragged it over his head.

“Or not.” Grinning, Tony backed away from the door so Henry could leave. Feeling better than he had in hours, he fell into step beside the shorter man. Feeling grounded. Which said something about the entertainment industry when he turned to a vampire for grounding. Or maybe it just said something about him.

“You sounded upset when you called.”

And the ground disappeared again. Once the show had stopped going on, once he was on his way home from the studio, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what had happened. He’d found himself thumbing in Henry’s number before he came to a conscious decision to pull out his phone.

“Someone died at work today.”

Henry paused at the end of the hall, turning to look at him. “The stuntman?”

What stuntman? It took Tony a moment to remember that Henry had been at the second unit shoot. “Daniel? No, those guys are hard to kill; knock them down and they just bounce back. Daniel’s fine. It was the victim of the week. On the show,” he added hurriedly as Henry’s eyes widened. “There’s always a body; I mean there has to be, right? The show’s about a vampire detective. But this was a real body.” He swallowed although his mouth had gone so dry it didn’t help. “I sort of found it.”

“Sort of?”

“Mason Reed was with me. He yanked open her dressing room door and she fell out.” One hand dragged back through his hair. “Dead.”

Cool fingers on his elbow, Henry steered him over to the green leather sofa and gently pushed him into a sitting position before dropping down next to him. “You okay?”

“Yeah . . .”

“But you don’t think you should be.”

“It’s not that she’s dead. That’s bad, but it’s not what’s got me so . . . I don’t know, freaked, I guess.” Resting his forearms on his thighs, hands dangling, Tony laced and unlaced his fingers, not really seeing the patterns they made. Trying not to see Nikki’s face. “Just for a moment, before her head hit the floor, she looked terrified. You’ve seen a lot of bodies, Henry. Why would she look terrified? Never mind, don’t answer that. Obviously something frightened her. But she was alone in the dressing room. I mean, of course she was alone; those things are so small most actors can barely fit their egos in with them, but she was alone . . .”

“I’ve left a lot of people alone in locked rooms.”

“Well, it wasn’t you, so you’re saying . . .” Twisting around, he raised a hand as Henry opened his mouth to reply. “Oh, don’t give me that fucking ‘more things in heaven and Earth’ quote. You’re saying it was something like you. Something not of this world . . .” Not of this world. Not this world. Fuck! He almost had it.