Fall of Light (14 page)

The Invader heaved a deep sigh and relaxed in the chair, his shoulders slumping and his eyes falling shut. She hadn't known he was so tense. It was a clue. Possessing another was exhausting. She might be able to use that, or at least take note of it to report to her mother.

She got out her solvents and makeup removers and went to work on Corvus.

He slept through the removal. A production assistant brought in the call sheet and new script pages for the following day early in the process. Opal paused long enough to glance at their start time for the next day. The weather forecast was for rain, so they were filming on the soundstage again. Corvus was supposed to be in the Makeup trailer by ten A.M.

She stuffed the call sheet and the script in her messenger bag and moisturized Corvus's hands, arms, upper body, and his face, which was empty of the Invader but also of consciousness.

Lauren and Magenta hovered as Opal finished.

“Corr?” Opal whispered, gripping his shoulder.

It took him a long time and some serious shaking to wake up. “What?” he said at last, opening eyes still hidden behind the Dark God's contact lenses. “What happened? How'd I get back in the trailer?” He glanced toward the clock on the mirror. “Is that A.M. or P.M.?”

“It's midnight,” said Lauren. “What do you remember about today? Anything?”

He groaned, and said, “This morning. Opal and I were—you said you told me to rest well, and I was a little upset. I don't like to sleep soundly. It makes me nervous. Have I slept through the whole day?” He gripped Opal's arm. “Did you hypnotize me into it?”

“No, I didn't!”

“I'm sorry.” He let her go.

“Corvus, you spent most of the day being someone else,” said Lauren. “Someone incredibly creepy, a lot like the role you play, a manipulator who gets off on other people's pain.”

“What?”

“The good thing is, he can act,” she continued. “He's doing you proud. But we'd much rather have
you
around.”

He looked at his watch, pressed a button to get the date. “It's November, not April First,” he said. “I don't like this joke, Lauren.”

“Are you hungry?” Opal asked.

Distracted, he glanced toward his stomach and frowned. “Ravenous. Opal—”

“Come on, big guy. Let's go get some supper.”

He let her pull him to his feet. He accepted the shirt she handed him. Magenta and Lauren were watching him so intently he turned his back to them and whispered, “What do they want?”

“They want to make sure you're okay.”

“It's not just my shoulders or my ass, eh?” He flexed his biceps and glanced back.

“Those, too,” Opal whispered, and smiled.

He put on the shirt and buttoned it to the top button. He set the back of his hand on his forehead. “I'm so tired,” he said.

“Let's get you to the car. You can nap on the way to the restaurant.” Hitch had left Opal the keys again once Corvus was off the clock. “You've got to eat, though, Corvus. I don't know if you had anything all day aside from a protein shake I forced on you.”

“You were really talking and interacting with me all day?”

“Not you. Someone else in your body.” She snagged the last set of Polaroids she'd taken before she removed his makeup, rubber-banded them together, and stuck them in her messenger bag. The Invader had posed for the Polaroids, showing his teeth, his horns, and the unlikely gleam in his eyes. She would show them to Corvus at the restaurant; maybe that would help bring this home to him.

“This feels like a bad extended jape,” he said. He shook his head. “It's hard for me to take seriously.”

“It's outside your experience. Of course it'll take you a while to get used to it,” Opal said. She remembered the steps she and her family had to take every time they introduced outsiders to who they really were. “You don't have to believe us, Corr. You
do
have to decide what to do next.”

He followed her down the trailer stairs, Magenta and Lauren in their wake. Opal pressed the keychain button to unlock the Lincoln, and Magenta and Lauren climbed into the backseat. Corvus stared at them. “You're coming?”

“We've been waiting all day to talk to you,” said Lauren, “and we're not letting you out of our sight.”

He shrugged massively. “I'm not up to much conversation, I'm afraid,” he said.

“That's okay. Whatever you've got.”

“All right, then.”

Opal held the door so Corvus could climb into the passenger seat, then went around the car and got behind the wheel. She started the car and drove.

“Did you dream?” Lauren asked from the backseat.

“What?” Corvus said.

“While you slept through the day, did you have any dreams? Say, one where you woke up for a second and talked to Opal?”

“Was that not a dream?” he asked. Opal, watching the view out the front window of light blades on a dark road, with tree shadows crowding close, was conscious of Corvus's regard. His gaze prickled against the skin of her right cheek like sunlight.

“What do you remember?” she asked, without looking toward him.

“Did you tell me you loved me?”

She closed her eyes, then opened them so she could watch the road. “That was really you I was talking to? I wasn't sure.”

“It wasn't a dream?”

“No, I really said that.”

“Did you mean it?” He shifted in his seat, turned to peer toward the backseat. “Or should we have this conversation later?”

“They heard everything I said before,” she said. “I meant it, sure. How could I not love you? I don't like the one who's been using you, though, and he has me over a barrel now.”

“What do you mean?”

“He only let you out tonight after I promised to help him back inside you tomorrow.”

“
You're
the one who put him in me?”

“Not exactly. I put the Dark God's face on over yours, and he used that, somehow. I don't know what to do. Do you want to quit the film?”

“No,” he said. “I still have dreams that this'll be a break-out role for me. I want to act this part.”

“But when I put the face on you, you're gone—I think.”

“Lauren?” Corvus said.

“You and I and Blaise did scene twenty-three all day today, Corvus. Do you remember any of it?”

“No,” he said.

“Well, you were great, whoever you were, creepy as hell,” said Lauren. “I have to tell you, if you quit now, the whole production will fall apart, and it won't be doing your career any favors, either. But if it's a matter of survival, well, you should do whatever you have to.”

“I'm not doing my own acting,” he muttered, “but I'm doing all right. That troubles me. I want to do the work . . . I feel okay now. As soon as you put the face on me, I return to being this other guy?”

“That's the impression I get,” Opal said. “Magenta and Lauren and I have been speculating about how it works. We have ideas, but no certainties.”

Corvus shook his head. “This is crazy.”

“Yeah,” said Opal. “Just deal with as much of it as you can. Ignore the rest.”

“How's that going to help us get rid of the Dark God?” Magenta asked.

“We can't force Corvus to believe something he's not ready for,” Opal said, “no matter how urgent it is.”

“How urgent is it?” Corvus asked.

“It's hard to say. Is he hurting you? You don't seem to have suffered today, but he says he might hurt you tomorrow unless I do what he says.”

“What he makes her do is let him suck on her like a vampire,” Lauren told Corvus. “Except it's not blood he takes, but her life force. He did that to me, too, or something like it. I'm not sure what he did to me, but it was horrible.”

“Shit, Lauren, he drank your blood,” said Magenta.

“Didn't drink it, more like licked it, and then he put a spell on me that turned me into a drooling idiot, worshipping him just like Serena. All the rest of today's filming! I didn't come out of it till you stripped off my makeup, Madge. I remember it all, though. I was awake and watching. I just couldn't come to the surface.”

“You all believe this happened today,” said Corvus.

“We were there, and you weren't,” said Magenta.

“But I—” He pressed his face into his palms. “I can't think about this now.”

“Don't worry, Corr,” said Opal. “We're almost at the restaurant. Guys, give it a rest. Let him eat.”

“We need a plan,” said Magenta.

Opal said, “The call sheet said we're filming scene twelve C tomorrow, and I got a stack of new script pages for Corvus. Are you in that scene, Lauren?”

“No. That's afternoon, Corvus with Gemma and Bettina. It's a new one about how messed up the sisters get as kids. In the morning, Blaise and I are filming in the B&B. One of our fabulous bitch-fight scenes.”

“What's your call time tomorrow?” Opal asked.

“I need to be in Makeup by seven thirty,” said Lauren. “We're supposed to be on the set by eight. What's yours?”

“Corvus goes into Makeup at ten so we can film at two. They give me four hours to put together Dark God. With the Invader's help, it takes less time. If there's any time after you finish and before we start filming, maybe we can talk, if Corvus is too out of it tonight.” She pulled into the restaurant parking lot and turned off the engine.

Magenta and Lauren got out of the car. Opal reached for her door handle, but Corvus grasped her wrist. “Wait,” he murmured.

Opal opened her window. “You guys get a table, will you? We'll be in soon.”

Magenta saluted and headed into the restaurant with Lauren.

“I'm fuzzy on a lot of details,” Corvus said in the relative darkness of the car, “but I remember you said you loved me.”

“So what?”

“What does it—where do we—I'm not sure—”

“It's not a trap or an obligation, Corvus. It's just part of the way I work. To change someone so completely, I must love them in both their personas, before makeup and after. It usually wears off when the picture's over.”

“This happens to you a lot.”

“Only when I'm at the top of my game.”

“Do you ever follow up on the feeling?”

“Oh, come on. Who needs the tsuris?”

He stared out the windshield, his large hand still loosely circling her wrist. “Did you feel like this during
Dead Loss
?”

“Immediately,” she said. “You're not hard to love.”

He sat silent, his fingers warm around her wrist, his palm a warm, dry pressure against the back of her hand. “Did it wear off afterward?”

“No.”

“Why didn't you—”

She blew out a breath. “You try to maintain a low profile, but those people at
Entertainment Tonight
and
Access Hollywood
just love pictures of you with starlets, you know?”

“I think that's why those girls call me. Guaranteed exposure. The Beauty and the Beast captions write themselves. It means nothing.”

She laughed. “Oh,
they
call
you
, eh?”

“Most of the time, I'd rather stay home and read a book,” he said. She heard an undertone of laughter. “Opal,” he said, the laughter gone.

She waited. She had gotten involved with one of her other special projects, a popular leading actor who could have picked anyone. He professed to be tired of high-maintenance relationships—not the most promising opening, but she had loved him deeply, or the character he was playing, anyway, a tortured soul with interesting facial scars she applied as necessary. He had been sweet, tender even; on idle days, they had spent time in the wilderness, where he could be someone he wasn't: unrecognized. But she always knew who he was.

He took her to a couple of premieres, too; he wasn't ashamed to be seen with someone who gave him no extra clout. He never treated her as a lesser being, the way some stars treated all the people whose names came at the end of the movie rather than the beginning, but she never cut her self-imposed tethers while she was with him and showed him she could fly.

Later, the news stories weren't kind to her: another in the chain of broken hearts he'd left behind, but this time, they said, given her profession, at least she knew how to conceal the tracks of her tears. Dreadful stuff.

Corvus tugged gently on her wrist. She unbuckled her seat belt and waited. He looped an arm around her, and lifted her (with some help from her) over the center console to settle in his lap. She relaxed against his chest; she had dreamed of being there, curled in his arms, his heart beating in her ear, and now she could hear it. She nestled against the huge warm mountain of him. His arms circled her, and his breath stirred her hair. He smelled like the sandalwood-scented moisturizer she'd rubbed on him, and underneath it, his own scent, that of a large, powerful, clean male animal.

A voice whispered:
Don't be stupid; we've been down this road before. Nothing good can last. You don't know him. You don't know anything about him. How can you trust him?

Who needs trust?
some other part of her asked.
I just want to fool around.

He tipped her chin up and lowered his face, touched his lips to hers. His kiss was gentle and tasted sour. She gripped his face and explored his mouth, then pushed away. “I can taste how hungry you are,” she whispered. “You should eat. We can do this later.”