The door opened almost before he moved his hand away. Frowning, Lee peered out at him as though he wasn’t entirely certain he understood what he was seeing. “For me?”

“Yeah. Scene 22B.” The room behind the actor seemed unusually dark. “You discover the body.”

“The body?”

“Catherine’s body.” With the wig and the blood—and according to bar talk Darkest Night used more blood than any other program currently shooting in the Vancouver area—fans of the show would never know it wasn’t Nikki.

Stepping back, Tony indicated that Lee should precede him down the hall. He’d learned early on that expecting actors to follow was like expecting cats to follow and after the whole “quickie in the broom closet” incident with Mason and the previous wardrobe assistant, he never let them out of his sight. When Lee continued to merely stand and stare, he stepped forward again, suddenly concerned. “Hey, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

Tony wasn’t so sure. “You look . . .”

“I’m fine.” Lee gave himself a little shake and slowly moved out into the hall. It seemed that rather a lot of the shadows moved with him. The dressing room visibly lightened as he left.

And that’s just wrong. Tony stood where he was for a moment, eyes narrowed. Not to mention, well, wrong! He’d have asked himself if he were imagining things except that he had no idea what he thought he might be imagining. Finally, when it became obvious that nothing was out of place, he hurried after Lee, careful not to step on the actor’s shadow.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, it’s one goddamned line and I’ve already said it seventeen fucking times!”

The crew suddenly became very busy, looking anywhere but at Lee and Peter.

“It’s not about your performance, Lee,” the director said calmly, “it’s a technical glitch. There’s a shadow . . .”

“So get rid of it!”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to do.” Peter’s genial voice picked up an edge. “We’ve been trying to do it all afternoon.” As one, they turned toward the lighting crew clustered around the director of photography, who continued describing his latest concept in an exasperated mix of English and French.

Although over the course of the afternoon the lighting layout had practically been rebuilt, the shadow continued to reappear in take after take. Scene 22B, take one: it had covered Lee entirely as he’d leaned forward and flipped over the body. Scene 22B, take seventeen: it was a dark bar across his eyes.

Watching from the sidelines, Tony found himself wondering where the shadow was going. And then wondering when he’d started thinking in cheap horror clichés. Actually, he knew the answer to the second question: right after he’d met Henry.

“Get rid of it in post!” Lee snapped. “And why is it so fucking cold in here?” Usually someone who took the inevitable technical delays of television in stride, his temper had frayed a little more with every take. Hartley Skenski, the boom operator, had tried to make book on whether or not he’d stomp off the set before they were finished, but no one had taken him up on it.