Fall of Light (25 page)

“I used a trick that probably won't work twice,” she said. “Now you're going to have to act happy while you're sprayed with special effects blood. Oh, and just before lunch, Phrixos actually woke the rock by spilling Erika's blood on it.” The grass was still vibrant with energy, and the rocks glowed with it. The music was there, too, half a melody that played, cut off, started again. Beneath it all was a slow pulse, the heartbeat of something huge, old, and resting. Resting, but awake now.

The hairs on Opal's arms and legs bristled. The muscles in the back of her neck twitched. Whatever lay under the ground recognized her presence, and wanted her.

“Over here,” bellowed Neil. “Quit lagging!”

They reached the altar, where the coveners in their recently dried robes, Ariadne in period clothes as the mother doomed to die, and Gemma and Bettina in their white lace dresses as witnesses and innocents waited. Corvus took his mark at the head of the altar, straightened, and turned into a close approximation of Phrixos; it was hard to distinguish them by sight when they were in full makeup, but Opal could sense the spiritual difference.

Phrixos was inside her, and not lying quiet, either, though she had tried to lock his essence away. Her second self was intrigued by him; she let small bits of him out to play, enjoying his dark impulses, though not giving them any weight or power. Opal felt things going on in the back of her mind while she was focused on what was in front of her: Neil harangued his cast about their previous inadequacies and demanded better of them.

“Does that kind of screeching ever work?” Magenta muttered, from beside Opal.

“Sure,” Opal said. “Fear works. You should know that by now.”

Magenta stared into her eyes, then stepped back.

Opal considered this. She had opened to her dark half, and anybody smart
should
be scared of her, if that change was visible. Maybe she should mask it better. She closed her eyes and thought
disguise
, one of her best and most practiced skills. She felt the spin of energies as her looks reformed into something nonthreatening, knew each change; she had done this a lot when she was a teenager, to convince her parents she was innocent. Her great-uncle Tobias hadn't been fooled; he could see under surfaces. She looked toward Magenta again.

“What did you just do? I hate it that you can do makeup without tools.”

“Is it working? Are you reassured?”

“Yeah, and I don't like that either. Jerk me around! Who were you a minute ago? Almost as scary as the prick.”

“Takes one to deal with one,” said Opal.

Magenta half smiled and glanced toward Opal's crotch. Opal laughed, and said, “Not quite that way, but yeah, I decided to be my own mean self. Somebody I haven't been in a long time.”

“Well, that's weird. Makes me wonder who you normally are. Did it make a difference?”

“Yeah. I did a job on him, locked him up. Right now, he's Corvus, not Phrixos. Not sure that was smart, and I don't know that it'll last, but I managed it.”

“Cool,” said Magenta. “You gonna get nasty, too?”

“I hope not. Can't rule it out, though.”

“Can you give me some protection?”

Protection.
Why hadn't she thought of that before? She could make talismans for everybody—except Lauren, who had already been tapped by Phrixos, and Erika, who had been attacked by the altar. Maybe she could come up with something that would help even those who had been compromised.

She didn't have much experience with it, though. Her brother Jasper had worked on it more. Maybe when Uncle Tobias came, which should be any time now, he could help her.

“I—” Opal began, but then Neil yelled, “Is my goddamned blood ready to go?”

“Ready,” said the pale-faced special effects man.

“And it'll go the right direction this time? It'll land where I say it's supposed to land?”

“Yes,” squeaked the man.

“All right, then. One final blocking rehearsal without the blood, and then you lot have no excuses left!”

Opal kept her attention on Corvus, listened to make sure he remembered his lines and knew where he was supposed to go. The girls were flat in their delivery, having said everything twenty times already, but Corvus brought a new spirit to his gloating over the death of one of his character's most devoted followers.

“Good,” Neil said at last. “Last looks, and let's make this the actual last, shall we?”

Opal checked Corvus over carefully, referencing Polaroids from the morning shoot. He looked a little less realistic now, but nothing needed work.

“All right, clear the set,” said Neil. His call was repeated, louder, by the first assistant director. Opal fled with all the others to the cast corral. Rod got out his little TV, and they watched as the take went perfectly for the first time that day.

Everyone involved relaxed as soon as Neil called cut. He and the A.D. and the D.P. gathered around a monitor and watched a playback, with the script supervisor right behind them to take notes. Everyone else waited for the verdict.

“All right,” George, the first assistant director, called out, “looks like we got the master shot, finally! Two angles on it. Thank God. Clear the set. We'll go to close-ups on the principals next. Coveners, you're done for the day. The rest of you, take five while we set up.”

The actors went to the Wardrobe trailer, where they changed out of fake-blood-soaked robes into lounging wear. They came to the cast corral and settled into chairs, most leaning back as though exhausted. The makeup artists cleaned fake blood off everyone who had been spattered for the umpteenth time, and restored their pre-suicide makeup. Doreen, Gemma's mother, went to the Craft Services truck and came back with several bottles of water. She offered them to Gemma, Bettina, Ariadne, and Corvus, who all accepted.

“Do you want something to eat?” Opal asked Corvus.

He caught her hand and lifted it to his lips. She wondered if Phrixos had found his way back inside—she hadn't had time to tend to what she had pulled from Corvus earlier. The little dark flurries and explorations some part of her had entertained while the rest of her was being Opal LaZelle, special effects makeup queen, had slowed.

Something moved inside her, something that was not either of her selves. She closed her eyes and tried to wrap it in darkness again, but she felt the taint of it, itchy and exciting, glowing along her mental entrails and trails.

There was no sense from Corvus of threat or invasion, even as his lips pressed against the back of her hand, only a warmth that wakened memories of last night.

The ground was alive with excited anticipation, and it kept trying to send exploratory feelers up through her feet. Something inside her reached down toward the invading energy, but explorations from both directions stubbed against Flint's shield. She needed time and space to figure out what had happened.

“Actually,” Corvus said, in his own voice, letting her hand slip from his, “I'm starving. I don't know what he had for lunch, but I don't think it was enough. Could you get me one of those energy drinks? I don't have his power over the makeup, to eat with it on and not mess it up.”

“Sure.” Opal went to the Craft Services wagon and got some cold protein drinks and a couple of straws. She brought them back and then stood behind Corvus as he drank, contemplating her inner universe.

Magenta tapped her shoulder, startling her, and she looked up without thinking about who she was. Magenta sucked in breath and took a step back, and Shadow Opal smiled wide, the smile of seduction that said,
you're the most interesting person I've ever seen. Come closer.
Magenta wavered, not fleeing, not approaching.

Opal straightened, tried to find her usual face. “Sorry. Identity crisis.”

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” Magenta asked after a pause.

“Hard to tell at this point.”

“If you have a choice, could you veer toward the good witch end of the spectrum? We really don't need more bad blood on the set.”

“That's my usual inclination, when I act like a witch at all,” said Opal.

Magenta glared at her, then said, “Well, anyway, about protection.”

“Protection?” said Corvus.

“Not that kind,” Magenta said. “If this is the good witch I'm talking to, can you say a spell that will protect me from you and the prick?”

“Let me think.” One thing that had worked for her was Flint's shield, but she didn't want to give any of that away; she needed it herself. She held up her hand, studied it, turned it over and back, and tried to see how Flint's shield surrounded her like a clear second skin. What were the components of this energy? It came from Flint, which made it something other people usually couldn't make or use. She wanted to make more of it. She stroked fingers across it, trying to taste its ingredients. Her younger sister Gypsum was a cook who could analyze components of baked goods by savoring a bite. Opal wondered if she could sample spells the same way, though her darker power might taint them somehow. Opal had never paid much attention to food, and she hadn't done much magical investigating since she was a teenager, hungry for skills and knowledge that would help her outfight her younger and more powerful siblings.

She lifted her hand to her mouth and pressed her lips to the back of it, touched the tip of her tongue to it. She could barely tell the fireskin was there; it wasn't trying to protect her from herself. She sucked on it, and then a taste flared in her mouth, a jalapeño scorch across her lips and tongue.
Analyze,
she thought to herself and to Evil Opal.
Replicate
.

Offer it energy, and ask it to change the new energy into itself,
responded one of her.

She lowered her hand and closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of Corvus staring up at her from the chair, Magenta focused intensely on her, Rod down the trailer tending to Bettina, Gemma in one of the closer chairs with Doreen hovering over her.

In her mental study, Opal talked to the small ball of Flintfire that remained after it had built her shield. “Can you make more of yourself to share with my friends?” she asked it.

Let's try,
it thought.

She opened her power reservoir and trickled power toward the fireball. It ate the power and grew. When it was the size of a small weather balloon and she had almost exhausted her reserves, she opened her eyes. Magenta waited.

“I think I can give you a shield,” she said. “My little brother gave me a kind of bodyshield that protects me from Phrixos's power, unless I take it off. I was rolling it back from just one finger, or my lips, when he made me feed him. I don't know about using this power on someone who isn't—isn't a witch herself—so this might not work. It might fail spectacularly. Do you want to try anyway?”

“How wrong could it go?” Magenta asked.

“I don't know. I've never done anything like this before.”

“What if it cripples me, or makes it so I can't work?”

“Yeah,” said Opal, “what if?”

Magenta frowned ferociously at her, then lifted a leg and propped her running-shoe-clad foot on the back of Corvus's makeup chair. “Maybe you could put it around my foot and see if it works.”

“Take off your shoe and sock,” Opal said.

Magenta glared at her, then did it. Opal cleared a section of counter. “Sit here.” Magenta hopped up, and Opal took her foot—toenails neatly trimmed and coated in sparkling black polish, the long slender muscles and bones an elegance of form—between her hands. Opal went into overawareness, her body's eyes focused on her hands and Magenta's foot, her mind's self engaged with Flint's fireball in her study, consulting and interacting with it. “We want to protect someone who is not like we are,” she told it, and it sent out a thin, questing thread that eased along the lace of her veins, arteries, muscles, and nerves to her fingers and palms, to lie like a simmering sea of fire just under her skin.

“Okay,” she said, her voice tight, her attention split, “I'm going to start now. Tell me if it hurts and I'll try to reverse it. Ready?”

“I guess,” said Magenta. She scrunched up her face.

Opal stroked two fingers along the arch of Magenta's foot, spreading the smallest flush of fire along the skin. She glanced toward Magenta's face, looking for signs of pain.

“Oh,” Magenta said. “That's warm.”

“Does it burn?”

“No. Feels nice.”

“Okay, I'm going to be a little bolder.” She tapped into the stream of Flintfire lying under her skin and spread it over Magenta's foot in a sweep of her whole hand.

“Yikes!” said Magenta.

Opal looked at her, but she looked more surprised than pained. Opal waited for a more telling reaction.

“It's okay,” said Magenta.

Opal gloved her whole foot in shield, then let go. Magenta stared down at her foot, kicked it, flexed her toes. “It's a little warm, but other than that, I can't even tell anything's there. So now my foot's safe?”

“Safe as I can make it,” Opal said, “with what I know right now.”

“Do the rest of me?”

Opal sucked on her lower lip, then held out her hands. “Give me your foot again.”

Magenta held out her foot, and Opal grasped it, spoke to the fireball. “Send energy from me to her, slide along all her skin, and protect her from outside sorcery.”