Smoke and Mirrors by Tanya Huff Page A

on?”
    â€œI mean, I am not the only predator in the city.”
    â€œUh, Earth to Henry; how the hell do you think I survived this lo . . . OW!”
    After a long moment, Brianna nodded. “You check. Then you don’t lie.”
    â€œDeal.”

    Reaching for the door handle, Tony realized that the door at the end of the hall had been divided in half—like the doors of fake farmhouse kitchens in margarine commercials. He could no longer hear the baby crying and since he couldn’t hear it, he doubted that Brianna could. Given that she was safely back inside the huge bathroom being fussed over by both Brenda and Everett, he briefly considered lying about having checked.
    Except that he’d more or less given her a promise and, staring at the door with the hair lifting off the back of his neck and a chill stroking icy fingers down his spine, he realized that this was neither the time nor place to break his word—although he didn’t know why and that was definitely freaking him out.
    The brass door handle was very cold.
    With any luck, the room would be locked.
    Nope. No luck today.
    He expected a dramatic creak as he pushed it open, but the well-oiled hinges merely whispered something he didn’t quite catch as he stepped over the threshold. The sky had grown overcast again, replacing the afternoon light with the soft drumming of rain against the windows. His right hand went back to the light switch, found it where it always was, and flicked the first little plastic tab up.
    Nothing happened.
    They weren’t actually using this space, so no one had replaced the thirty-year-old bulbs.
    Tony really wished he believed that.
    The air was colder than the air in the rest of the house and, considering the rest of the house had been comfortably cool in spite of television lighting, that was saying something. He could smell . . . pork chops?
    There was ambient light enough to see the wide border of primary colored racing cars just under the edge of the crown molding. Light enough to see the hammock strung across one corner and filled with stuffed animals so covered in dust they all appeared to be the same shade of gray. Light enough to see the crib. And the changing table. And that the safety grate had been removed from the fireplace in the far wall.
    Light enough to see the baby burning on the hearth. The border suggested it was a boy, but things had gotten too crispy to be certain. His stomach twisted and he’d have puked except there were close to a dozen adults, two kids, and a camera between him and the nearest toilet.
    Besides, this was just a recording of something that had happened in the past. He wasn’t watching this baby die and that helped. A little.
    Man, you’d think I’d be used to this kind of shit by now.
    He could hear it screaming again.
    Or he could hear something screaming.
    The room grew suddenly darker.
    Tony stepped back and slammed the door. Realized it had separated and he’d only brought the bottom with him, realized the darkness had almost filled the room, spat out the necessary seven words in one long string of panicked syllables, and reached . The upper part of the door slammed shut.
    The half-dozen people standing around the video village were watching him as he turned.
    â€œWhat the hell was that?” Peter demanded sticking his head out of the bathroom.
    Wishing that the skin between his shoulder blades would just fucking stop creeping back and forth and up and down, Tony hurried away from the nursery. “Air pressure,” he explained, hands out and away from his sides, fingers spread in the classic ‘not my fault’ gesture. “It slammed before I could stop it.”
    â€œIf we’d been rolling . . .”
    â€œWe weren’t,” Tina broke in pointedly from behind the monitors, holding up her arm and tapping one finger on her watch.
    Peter’s eyes widened. “Right. Well, don’t just stand there.