If he needed to talk to Arra, it would be a lot more efficient if he just called her and had her come up to the soundstage.

Tony stopped about halfway down the stairs. He turned, raised his foot to start back up again, and stopped.

He did want to go down to the basement.

And he had a damned good reason for going.

Two steps farther down and he began to feel slightly nauseous.

Who knew what chemicals she was using down there. Half of them would probably blow up if looked at the wrong way and the other half were likely toxic. Better he just go back upstairs and call her.

He was three steps up before he stopped himself.

Bite me, old woman!

Four steps from the bottom, the hair lifting off the back of his neck, sweat running down his sides, he said a silent, Screw it! and jumped.

He felt better the moment he landed.

Wiping his palms against his jeans, he came out from behind a set of shelves and face-to-face with a rotting corpse standing and swaying in the middle of the room.

Sagging gray flesh had ripped open under its own weight and well-fed maggots squirmed out of the rents. A hand with bones protruding through three fingertips reached out for him while white rheumy eyes tried to focus on his face. Dark, withered lips parted and a voice said, “It takes a lot to discourage you, doesn’t it? All right, fine. As long as you’re here, you can tell me if the maggots are too much.”

“Th . . . th . . . th . . .” It felt as though all connections between his mouth and his brain had been severed.

“The maggots, Tony. Are they over the top? I think they give a corpse a nice lived-in look, but they’re not for everyone.”

“Arra?”

The corpse sighed and was suddenly the much shorter, older wizard—the maggots nowhere in sight. “It’s just a glamour,” she said, checking her fingertips. “Raymond Dark’ll be stopping the villain du jour from raising the dead in a couple of weeks and I need to work out the details. It’s not as easy as it looks maintaining three separate glamours over moving actors. Good thing CB’s too cheap to hire more than three corpses. So . . .” An eyebrow rose. “. . . what can I do for you?”

“That was . . .” He waved a hand. “Fuck. I mean . . .”

“Thank you. Always nice to have an appreciative audience. I take it Mr. Nicholas is functional this morning?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Good.” She waited, then folded her arms and sighed again. “Since you managed to get down here in spite of wards set to prevent that very thing, I assume you want something. What?”

“Right.” Tony glanced down at his watch. Seven minutes before he had to get Laura and Frank to the set. “The gate. We’re shooting right under it.”

“So?”

“I don’t think we’ll be done by 11:15.”