Smoke and Mirrors by Tanya Huff

expression was giving the whole thing away.
    The vanishing . . . not entirely unexpected.
    The chair tipping sideways, as gravity won out and he headed for the floor . . . he had to admit he’d been kind of expecting that, too.
    Then a strong hand closed around his arm and yanked him back onto his feet. He fought to find his balance, won the fight, and turned to look down into a pair of concerned green eyes.
    â€œAre you all right, Tony?” Lee asked, one hand still loosely clasped around Tony’s bicep. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Three
    â€œTONY! THE mirror!”
    Right, the mirror. The mirror where he’d just seen the dead up and animate—or as animate as any extras ever were between shots. Oh, fuck . . . the extras! If that feeling wasn’t his blood actually running cold, it was pretty damned close—kind of a sick feeling in his stomach that moved out to his extremities so quickly he thought he might hurl. Traditionally, the presence of extras right before disaster meant a high body count and dead people in the drawing room certainly seemed like an accurate harbinger of disaster to Tony.
    He stared at their reflections in the small part of the mirror still clear of hair spray. They all seemed oblivious to their fate. Might as well dress them in red shirts now and get it over with!
    â€œTony!”
    He twisted around to see the first assistant director staring up at him in annoyance.
    â€œFinish spraying the damned mirror!”
    It might be damned, he supposed. Damned could explain why it showed dead people. . . .
    â€œTony?”
    Tony looked down into Lee’s concerned face and forced his brain to start working again. It wasn’t as if these were the first ghosts he’d ever seen. Okay, technically, he hadn’t seen the last set—he’d only heard them screaming—but he was used to metaphysical pop-ups. Hell, he used to sleep with one. “Can I talk to you for a minute? I mean . . .” A gesture took in the chair, the mirror, and the plastic bottle of hair spray. “. . . when I’m done.”
    Dark brows drew in, and Lee glanced back at Peter still talking to Mason. “Sure.”
    Directing Mason—or rather, Mason’s ego—took time.
    A moment later, Tony was back on the floor. “Those two kids you were talking to . . .” At Lee’s suddenly closed expression, he paused. “It’s okay, I’m not going to get them into trouble. I know they weren’t supposed to be in the scene.” Hello, understatement. “I just wondered who they were.”
    Lee considered it—considered Tony—for a moment then he shrugged. “They’re Mr. Brummell’s niece and nephew. Cassie, short for Cassandra, which she informed me was a stupid, old-fashioned name, and Stephen. They were . . . well, she was just so thrilled at being here that I didn’t have the heart to turn them in. I warned them that they had to stay in the background, though.”
    â€œYeah, I saw you positioning them. You didn’t notice anything strange?”
    â€œStrange?”
    â€œAbout the way they looked.”
    â€œOnly that they were younger than everyone else in the room. I’d say mid-to-late teens, no older.”
    And not going to get any older either. All right. We’re shooting an episode about a haunted house in a haunted house and that sort of thing never ends well. Real dead people not so big on the happy ending. So what do I do? I get everyone out of the haunted house. And how do I do that?
    Production assistants had about as much power as . . . well, bottom line, they didn’t have any power. None. Nada. Zip. And zilch.
    He had to call the boss. Since CB remembered the shadows and the Shadowlord, CB would believe him. Announcing to anyone else that he’d seen a ghost—two ghosts—would result in ridicule at best. “A ghost?” He could hear the broad