Stepping into the cleared area in front of the washroom, for the first time walking side by side, a shadow skittered across their path. They jerked back. Lee caught a kind of moan in his throat and held it there.

“Just this coat,” Tony said, grabbing a fistful of fabric and yanking the coat still. “It sort of moved out in front of the light.”

Lee had shoved his way through the costumes with enough force to set the racks swaying and, in turn, the costumes. He looked at the coat, then turned just far enough to stare at Tony; kept staring long enough so Tony was sure he was going to demand an explanation.

“You know what’s happening around here, Foster. Spill it.”

Or perhaps a little more twenty-first Century. “What the hell is up with these shadows?”

Lee’s eyes narrowed. Then, without a word, he stomped the last three meters to his dressing room, entered, and slammed the door.

“Yeah.” Tony leaned on the scuffed drywall between Lee’s dressing room and makeup. “I’ll just wait out here.”

“. . . go through thousands of bottles of water every week and so crushing them before they go into the recycling bin is crucial or they’re just not going to fit.” Amy speared a piece of spiral pasta and frowned into its pattern. “Not to mention that whole wind catching them when they’re dumped and bouncing them over hell’s half acre thing.” Looking up, her frown deepened. “Tony? Are you even listening to me?”

He tore his gaze away from a patch of shadow climbing the soundstage wall. “Yeah. Crushing plastic water bottles. I heard you. Amy, can I tell you something a little . . . weird?”

“About Lee?’

Lee was the principal topic of a hundred lunch discussions. “Sort of.”

“Good thing Mason wasn’t on the set,” she snorted, picking through her chicken fettuccini. “He hates it when Lee gets more attention than he does.” The office staff had their own kitchen and their own caterer, but every one of them believed that the food on the soundstage was better. When the show was shooting on set, they ran a lottery to see who’d get to eat with the cast and crew. Amy won fairly often and when the inevitable protests arose, she reminded her coworkers that eventually someone would complain and the odds were good she’d be the one catching the shit. So far, no one had. Since there was always enough food for a dozen extra people and Mason usually ate in his dressing room, it was unlikely anyone ever would. She looked up, caught sight of Tony’s face, and stilled. “This is serious.” When he nodded, she put down her fork. “Go ahead.”

Where to start? “There’s a gate to another world, like a metaphysical gate, in the soundstage.”

When he paused, unsure, she nodded. “Go on.”

“Shadows come through it controlled by an evil wizard they call Shadowlord.”