Fall of Light (4 page)

“I know my place. Thanks, honey.” He let her go, and she edged away from him, turned to look back. She stared at the pointy-toothed smile, the too-dark eyes, as a flicker of firelight ran over his face.

She hoped he was okay.

“Stand by for rehearsal. All nonactors off the set,” Neil yelled.

Opal fled. She ran back to the car and pulled out her traveling kit, then joined Wardrobe, Makeup, and Hair at the cluster of canvas-backed chairs on the edge of the clearing, behind the backdrop.

“Cue music,” called Neil. Someone punched a tape player. Eerie music full of whining wind instruments from unnamed countries and the thud of deep drums started up. “Action!” The frozen people in white, the looming figure in black all responded to the music. their motions small and restrained at first, growing wilder and looser.

“Okay, great,” said Neil. “Let's do it from the top with the cameras.”

“Last looks!” called the first assistant director, George Corvassian.

Opal grabbed her kit and joined a rush of Makeup, Hair, and Wardrobe people to the actors. Corvus started the scene with the hood up; midway through, when the minions had loosened up and didn't look like bad 1980s dance party victims, he would drop the hood.

He lowered the hood when she approached him and bent so that his face neared hers. She studied his face and could find nothing to correct.

“This is so strange,” he murmured, in almost his own voice, and then, the Dark God spoke: “I like you. I like this. I wasn't sure at first, but now I'm glad you're all here.”

She backed away again, her heart beating too fast. The hair on her arms stood; her skin prickled everywhere.

“Starting marks,” yelled Neil. “Here we go, people. Start the music again.”

A bell rang. George cried, “We're on bell. Roll sound, please.”

“Rolling.”

“Roll camera.”

“Rolling.”

“Action,” Neil said.

Opal settled into Corvus's giant custom canvas-backed chair, opened her senses, and reached for what disturbed her here.

The ground was alive with more than scuffed grass. She had a sense of profound sleep, with an edge of waking, of old wounds, covered but not healed, and of something unhuman, a mind that didn't work like anything she had ever encountered.

She had had a brief career as a tree talker when she was sixteen—the family invited a tree to live in their house over the Christmas season every year, and the youngest with gifts was the one who issued the invitation. She had only done it once before her younger brother Jasper came into his power and took over the job. Communicating wasn't one of her stronger gifts; she had had to listen hard to find a tree that volunteered to travel. Even then she wasn't sure if she'd chosen the right one, not until her mother spoke to the tree and confirmed it. Since then—twelve years ago—she hadn't tried to talk to anyone but humans, and that using her mouth.

“What are you?” she whispered.

The ancient sleeper surged beneath her, alive with an energy she could sense but not see. It didn't answer.

It was this that was seeping up into Corvus's skin, shifting him in ways Opal hadn't. She wondered what it wanted, whether it would hurt him.

Magenta, in a chair next to hers, cradled a tiny portable TV that showed a black-and-white version of what the hot camera on the set was filming. At the moment, the camera was focused on Corvus's face. Magenta whispered, “What you did with him? That's amazing. How did you do it? Can I watch you next time? I want to learn.”

“If it's all right with Corvus,” Opal whispered.

“Cut! Let's run it again,” Neil called.

Usually everyone had magazines to flip through while they waited, but tonight, Wardrobe, Makeup, Hair, and drivers all watched whatever monitors they had, even three takes in. Opal couldn't stop staring at Corvus. Whatever was in him worked on her, inviting her to fall in love with him even more than she already had.

During one of the touch-up moments between takes when everyone rushed to fix whatever had gone awry during the last take, Opal said, “Corr, are you okay in there?”

He just smiled. She lifted a gilt-dipped brush, lowered it. He needed no help from her.

“Starving,” he whispered then, and she went to the mobile Craft Services van and got him a protein shake. He sipped while they reset the cameras, but he didn't speak to her again.

They closed down at midnight, just before the rain started. Hitch drove Corvus and Opal back through sweeping rain as other crew broke down sets and sheltered equipment under tarps. Someone rushed the exposed film off to be developed.

In the Makeup trailer, Corvus sprawled in his chair. Opal got out the Polaroid camera and shot more pictures of him, compared them to her earlier shots. She wrote time and date across the bottoms of the new Polaroids in Sharpie permanent ink.

The horns on his forehead were the most obvious change, and they still looked good. The rest of her forehead pieces didn't have them, though. She'd have to spend the rest of the night making new appliances.

Or maybe she could cheat. As long as she had the photos for continuity, she should be able to manage. She wasn't sure how to manage the wild magic out in the clearing, though.

“Ready for removal?” she asked Corvus when she had satisfactory shots from several angles.

“Please,” he said. He held out his hands. She pulled the latex mitts off gently. They came off all in a piece. She handed Corvus a towel, and he wiped sweat and moisturizer off his hands. She set the gloves up on spikes to dry; she would powder, maybe blow-dry them tomorrow, as necessary.

She got out her special solvent and prepared to take the first section of his facial prosthesis off. It clung to his face. She eased a brush loaded with solvent along the edges. As the outside edge of her finger brushed over the prosthetic, she felt not latex but flesh, warm, with pores and tiny hairs.

She set the brush down across the solvent tin. Her hand shook. She stroked Corvus's leafy cheek, pointed chin, horns. The eyes, a solid dark green color, watched her, and the mouth quirked in a small smile.

“Let him go,” Opal whispered. Warm power gathered in her fingertips. She touched them lightly to his face, and the foreign power that had been riding him since they had arrived at the clearing seeped away. Her fingernail flicked up the edge of a cheek piece.

She reached for her brush and worked carefully, pulled the pieces off, and tossed them in the trash. The horns came off as though they were part of the forehead pieces. She set them on the counter near his life-mask so she could match tomorrow's mask to them. She worked with haste, hoping the new energy wouldn't return and force Corvus back into character.

She took care with his skin, finishing with another round of moisturizer.

“Feels good,” he said as she massaged lotion into his face. He still wore the dark contacts and watched her face more than her hands.

“Good,” she echoed, distracted. “How are you, otherwise? Did you notice anything different?” She finished and capped her bottles.

Corvus popped out the contacts, set them into the solution-filled container she held out. He studied the more recent Polaroids. “I don't know. It doesn't look like the prototype, or even what I looked like when we left the trailer. Looks much better, actually. When did you change it?”

“Um—last looks, right before the first shot.”

“I don't remember. Guess I was distracted. Did you watch the monitors while we shot?” asked Corvus.

“Sure.”

“How'd I come across?”

“Amazing.”

He smiled, seemed entirely himself again. “Good. I wonder if the D.P. will let me see the dailies. Do you know when they're supposed to arrive?”

“Three sets tomorrow night, but I'm pretty sure Aldridge doesn't want any of the actors looking at them. News at supper was he's an overcontrolling asshole.” There had been a half-hour meal break in the midst of the night's filming; Corvus had been restricted to protein shakes, but Opal had wolfed a sandwich and listened to other crew members talking.

It wasn't the first time she and Corvus had heard these rumors about the director. They had done research on cast and crew while Corvus contemplated the project, mostly quizzing other people who had worked with the principals before. The part was too good to turn down, even though it wasn't a great script.

“Frustrating,” Corvus said. He moved his shoulders, still clothed in the black robe. “A good night's work.”

“Time for your beauty sleep,” Opal said. She checked the call sheet the assistant director had handed out just before they stopped filming for the night. “Call's for four P.M. tomorrow—we'll have to start makeup around noon.”

He sighed and pulled himself to his feet. “Thanks for taking care of me.” He gave her a hug, then ambled out of the trailer.

She policed her area, straightening, cleaning, restocking supplies. She got out the new set of latex appliances she'd use on Corvus tomorrow, draped them over the life-mask, checked to make sure there was no one nearby, and then, studying the Polaroids and the previous pieces of altered mask, she let her power seep into the forehead pieces to form the horns. A tiny touch of alien power still lingered in the horns from that day's mask; when she touched their tips, the power jumped into her fingers. She touched the new horns and the power flowed into them.

Disturbing. Yet it helped, added some quality that made the horns match absolutely with the earlier set.

When she had finished, she curled up in the residual warmth Corvus's body had left in his oversized chair. She studied pictures of the face she had built, with its later additions. Who had shifted her work? She'd never encountered outside magic on a set before, even though she had done most of her work in weird supernatural movies.

The face, with its blank white eye sockets, stared back at her. A corner of its mouth quirked up into a smile.

2

The following day, Corvus had a scene on the soundstage with Lauren Marcos, who played the older sister, Serena, in the film. Opal was thrilled. He almost never got close-ups—she'd spent hours watching his old movies on DVD after she met him on
Dead Loss
, and he was mostly a shambling monster in the distance, obscured by fog and darkness and attended by scary musical cues. Even when his face appeared full screen in the scary psycho shots, he was always projecting rage or madness. This was going to be different.

Corvus and Lauren had run lines during a late breakfast just before Corvus's makeup call time, off in a corner, hunched (at least, Corvus hunched; Lauren, two feet shorter, had cricked her neck to keep his face in view) together. Opal, eating a breakfast burrito with Makeup and Wardrobe, had felt a familiar flare of jealousy, and had, with a practiced mental motion, tamped it down. Corvus wasn't her creation at breakfast; he was entirely his own self, and he could be interested in Lauren if he liked. Or just work with her.

Opal fell in love with everyone she worked on. She had to love them. Otherwise what she did to them wouldn't look convincing. She loved them, and she had to convince herself to leave them alone. She throttled her urge to claim Corvus and ate the rest of her burrito, then went to the Makeup trailer and rechecked her preparations.

Corvus was quiet when he came in, silent as he stretched out, shirtless, in his chair and lay back so she could work. Today, because of the close-ups, Opal was applying neck and chest prosthetics as well as face and hands. Lauren, in the next chair being tended by Rodrigo, was quiet, too. Opal cleansed, shaved, moisturized Corvus's face, letting the magic seep from her fingertips into his skin only a little. The pieces of the false face slid on smoothly. When she pulled up out of her creative trance and glanced at the clock, she saw she had finished an hour early.

Lauren was still sitting in the nearest makeup chair, flipping through a fashion magazine. Rodrigo was gone.

“That was intense,” she said. “You always get so wrapped up in your work?”

“Yep.” Opal shook her head to wake herself, checked Corvus. He looked great. She studied the Polaroids she'd taken the night before and compared them with Corvus now, was satisfied with the match. She took more shots and dated them.

“Opal,” whispered Corvus. “You did it to me again.”

“Oh, God,” she said, and pressed her palm to his enhanced forehead, released him from paralysis. “Sorry. Are you all right?”

“Feeling strangely fine.” He stretched and rose to his feet, all the visible skin on his front altered into Dark God, though Opal had done less work on his upper arms and lower abdomen. “It's not something I enjoyed, that sense of utter helplessness, but it didn't leave me stiff the way I expected. I almost trust you enough to relax, and it does make it easier for me to stay still. Nothing even itched. Posthypnotic suggestion?” He paused, arrested by his own image in the mirror. “Oh, I
am
someone else now,” he murmured low.