Anger carried him to the top of the stairs, then, hand on the latch, he paused. And turned. He couldn’t see the desk, couldn’t tell if Arra was still standing where he’d left her but, to borrow a phrase he’d heard too damned many times in the last few minutes, it didn’t matter. She could hear him. “What about your cats?”

“What?”

“Your cats. They’ll die, too.”

“Grow up, Tony. They’re cats.”

“And you took responsibility for their lives.”

As he closed the basement door behind him, he thought he heard her say, “What’s two more?” but the words were so quiet and weighted with sorrow, he couldn’t be sure.

‘Tony, what the hell are you doing?”

It wasn’t quite a scream. The complicated patterns of light and darkness that came with television lighting had been scraping at his nerves. Shadows that were nothing more than patches of blocked light kept moving, changing shape, and disappearing. Crawling out from under the worktable, Tony switched off the beam of the strongest flashlight he’d been able to find and twisted around until he could stare up at Adam. “I thought I saw . . .” A quick glance to either side, an obvious check for eavesdroppers, and a lowering of his voice. “. . . a rat.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, well I thought that while I wasn’t needed for other stuff, I should have a look and see if I could find droppings and shit.”

“Droppings are shit.”

“Right.”

The 1AD waited a moment then sighed. “And?”

“And what?”

“And did you find any?”

“Not yet, but this place has a billion nooks and crannies.”

“Yeah, it’s a regular English muffin.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Forget it. And keep looking. The last thing we need is to be part of another remake of Willard.”

Official sanction—of a sort—didn’t help. By the end of the afternoon, he’d found a dozen pens, a radio, three scripts for two different shows, a rather disturbing number of condom wrappers, and some rodent droppings, but no minions of the Shadowlord.

Seven shadows.

Twenty to thirty people on the soundstage. But not him, or Lee, or Arra. And why not Lee? Because he’d already been taken over and therefore pumped dry of all relevant information? Why not; that theory made as much sense as any of this did. So say, twenty-five minimum. Unless . . . was that why Arra was leaving? Because she was controlled by shadow? Possible, but not likely. After yesterday’s adventure in Lee’s dressing room, he was about 99% certain that he’d be able to spot the shadow-controlled; so, no easy excuses for the wizard. She was leaving because she was a . . .

“Tony.”

Still not quite a scream but getting closer.

Peter frowned. “Are you all right?”