Read Smoke and Mirrors for Free Online

all adults and were therefore fully capable of walking from the holding area to the set without him having to pay to see that they managed it. Human nature being what it was, and with two thirds of the season in the can, Tony could pretty much guarantee that someone—or some two or three—would wander off and need to be brought back to the herd while he did his best border collie impression. Snarling permitted ; biting frowned on.
    It took a moment for him to realize that the scream was not a rehearsal. Extras generally did a lot of screaming on shows staring vampires. Some of them, disdaining the more spontaneous terror of their contemporaries, liked to practice.
    On the other side of the conservatory, a half dressed woman clutching a pair of panty hose to her chest, backed away from one of the raised beds and continued to scream. By the time Tony reached her, the screams had become whimpers, barely audible over the sound of the rain.
    â€œWhat?” he demanded. “What’s wrong?”
    Conditioned to respond to anyone with a radio and a clipboard, she pointed a trembling finger toward the garden. “I sat down, on the edge, to put on . . .” Taupe streamers waved from her other hand. “. . . and I sort of fell. Back.” Glancing around, she suddenly realized she had an audience and, in spite of her fear, began to play to it. “I put my hand down on the dirt. It sank in just a little. The next thing I knew, something grabbed it.”
    â€œSomething?”
    â€œFingers. I felt fingers close around mine. Cold fingers.” A half turn toward her listeners. “Like fingers from a grave .”
    Tony had to admit that the raised beds did look rather remarkably like graves. Yeah, and so does any dirt pile longer than it is wide. He stepped forward, noticed where the dirt had been disturbed, and poked it with the clipboard. He didn’t believe the bit about the fingers, of course, but there was no point in taking unnecessary chances. Over the last few years he’d learned that belief had absolutely nothing to do with reality.
    The clipboard sank about a centimeter into the dirt and stopped with a clunk.
    Clunk sounded safe enough.
    In Tony’s experience, the metaphysical seldom went clunk.
    A moment’s digging later, he pulled out a rusted, handleless garden claw.
    â€œWas this what you felt?”
    â€œNo.” She shuddered, dramatically. “I felt fingers.”
    â€œCold fingers.” Tony held the claw toward her and she touched it tentatively.
    â€œOkay, maybe.”
    â€œMaybe?”
    â€œFine.” Her snort was impressive. “Probably. Okay? It felt like fingers, it’s barely dawn, and it’s kind of spooky in here, and I haven’t had any coffee yet!”
    Show over, the other extras began to drift away and the woman who’d done the screaming pointedly continued dressing. Tony tossed the claw back onto the garden bed and headed for the door. Drawing level with Everett, he asked for a time check.
    â€œThey’ll be ready when they’re needed,” Everett told him, layering on scarlet lipstick with a lavish hand. “But don’t quote me on that.”
    â€œI kind of have to quote you on that, Everett. Adam’s going to ask.”
    â€œFine.” He pointedly capped the lipstick and drew a mascara wand from its tube with a flourish. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Oh, calm down,” he added as the middle-aged woman in the chair recoiled from the waving black bristles. “Thirty years in this business and I’ve yet to put an eye out.”
    â€œI put one in once,” Sharyl announced and Tony figured that was his cue to leave. Sharyl’s mortuary stories were usually a hoot, but somehow he just wasn’t in the mood for fun and frolic with the dead. Pausing on the threshold, he glanced back over the room to do a final head count. Party guests and cater-waiters clumped with