LITMIR.BIZ

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in the air turned into a mixture of ash and fog.

      She could hear music, something from an old movie she had caught on cable. She couldn’t quite place it, though—and then she did. It was from Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet.

      There was movement all around her. She wanted to rise and see what was going on, but she couldn’t. Something was weighing her down, refusing to let her up.

      The music was beautiful, and she tried to open her eyes. She managed to raise her lids far enough to see that she seemed to be in a church. There was a wedding going on, she thought. The Gryffald cousins were there, standing around where she lay. Handsome men in tuxes were seating the guests, and she saw that Father Gunderson—an Elven himself—was ready to officiate at the ceremony.

      She couldn’t turn her head, but she caught sight of the long white sleeve on her arm.

      She was wearing a wedding dress.

      It was her wedding!

      But something was very wrong. She should have been walking down the aisle, not lying on the altar. And everyone was beginning to scream in horror and shout to one another. And above all the noise, she could hear one voice.

      It was the vampire cop. Mark Valiente. And he was screaming her name as if…as if he thought that if he shouted loudly enough he could wake her and save her from the horror that was about to take place.

      Warned by his shouting, she realized that she had to break free from whatever was holding her there, frozen to the altar. She managed to turn her head and saw the red velvet runner than stretched from the altar to the door. Except that it wasn’t a runner. It was a river of blood.

      She jerked herself awake. She was in the guest bedroom at Castle House. She’d had a nightmare and nothing more.

      It was night, and she was safe… . She closed her eyes again.

      She could hear the cousins and Declan Wainwright talking downstairs. They were joined by another male voice: Mick Townsend, Barrie’s love—and a shapeshifter.

      Shapeshifters, vampires…Were more of the Other races involved in the evil, as well? Leprechauns, gnomes, weres?

      Elven?

      No, she couldn’t believe that the male Elven population would ever accept the sacrifice of Elven women. Her own people couldn’t be involved.

      She hadn’t realized that she was prejudiced before all this began, but the truth was, she did think of her kind as more ethical, far less violent, and…a cut above.

      “Wrong,” she murmured.

      The truth was that Elven could be involved; she had to acknowledge that. Evil was evil—and it came in all guises.

      Just as good came in all forms. She had to accept help and be grateful—and learn not to judge.

      Jonquil whined and licked her fingers. “Good dog,” she told him.

      She lay there, knowing that she desperately needed rest, but she was afraid to sleep again, afraid of her dreams. She was tempted to run downstairs so that she could be with people.

      Jonquil whined softly again. He nudged her hand and wagged his tail.

      The dog was with her, standing guard so closely, she dared to shut her eyes again.

      And when she slept next, it was deeply.

      Mark and Brodie pulled up two blocks from the old Hildegard Studio.

      They weren’t there on official police business. Alessande had been right about one thing: to be official, they would need a search warrant. They didn’t have that kind of time.

      They went through the hole in the gate that Alessande had told them about, rather than using their powers. Mark was only at half strength, having used up his reserves becoming a giant bat earlier. And it would just be a waste of energy he might need later should Brodie need to teleport and Mark make one more transformation into a bat.

      There were five long soundstages that comprised the studio. Abandoned and neglected, they were dark and dangerous. Brodie had come prepared with large flashlights so they could see their way around.

      They went cautiously and methodically from one stage to the next. The first three were empty, and it didn’t appear that anyone had been there for years. Cameras, lighting, sets, props—nothing remained.

      The fourth soundstage was different.

      The last thing filmed in it might well have been during the 1940s. Huge old cameras stood sentinel, along with recording equipment that could have housed elephants. Two sets remained; one was a cemetery at night. Walking around it, they found cardboard headstones, rubber hatchets and plastic guns and knives. There were fake corpses sticking out of graves—most of them truly rotting by this point.

      Brodie found a film marker. “It was called The Awakening of Dr. Evil. A classic, I’m sure. Did you ever see it?”

      “Can’t say that I caught it,” Mark told him.

      The second set was equally sad—like something lost in time. It was also filthy and decaying. “I’m surprised all this wasn’t broken down, like on the other soundstages. With the cost of things these days, I would think someone would snap this place up and start a new studio. Everything here is outdated,” Brodie said.

      “Yeah, but…just the real estate.”

      “True,” Brodie agreed.

      “I wonder if the dead women were ever here, or whether the killer—or killers—hid here, sneaking out to snatch the women as they passed by,” Mark said thoughtfully.

      “Doesn’t seem that we’ve found anything to give us that answer yet,” Brodie said.

      “Anyway, we have one more soundstage to go,” Mark reminded him.

      They headed to the fifth building.

      Like the fourth, it had not been completely stripped. This set looked as if it had been meant for a Victorian-era film. The facades of houses decorated with gingerbread porches and window trim stood to one side, while the other half of the soundstage had been dressed to resemble a series of businesses from the same time period. One of them had a huge sign that read Wax Works! Enter if Ye Dare!

      “Hildegard seems to have been doing a lot of horror movies,” Brodie commented.

      “Maybe he was living a horror movie,” Mark said. “I don’t really know anything about him, other than that he was a famous magician.”

      “He booked himself as ‘Sebastian the Magnificent,’” Brodie said. “I remember one of my dad’s old friends talking about him one night when my father first took me to the House of Illusion. He was good—today he’d be all over TV, I imagine. But Sebastian also loved movies—making them, that is—and I imagine that’s why he founded the studio. But onstage, he was pretty amazing.” He paused and looked at Mark. “He liked to tell the crowds that he could even defy death.”

      “As far as I know, he’s been buried for years,” Mark said.

      “Has been buried…”

      “Apparently now someone wants to see if the illusionist really can defy death,” Mark said.

      “So—do we start with the Hildegard family?” Brodie asked.

      “As good a place as any,” Mark said. He walked over to the wax works, aiming his flashlight as he went.

      Behind the facade he saw a love seat with a script on it. Moving closer, he noticed that there was no dust on the wood or upholstery—or the end table next to it.

      He slipped on a latex glove and picked up the script. He flipped it over to read the title aloud. “Death in the Bowery, by Greg Swayze.” It was new, by an up-and-coming scriptwriter whose name Mark thought he recognized. He looked up as Brodie joined him.

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