Chapter Sixteen
Laurie's
phone was ringing in his pocket. Devlin Steele had just leapt off a
temple roof in pursuit of Calvin, though, and chickens were
scattering everywhere.
Laurie
hit the crash pad, rolled aside and curled up laughing. There was
no chance of a transformation now. Devlin's personality wouldn't be
rising up to swallow his own any time soon. All he'd had to do for
the last hour was run across a rooftop, back and forth until
Douglas Brett and a team from the CG department said he'd got it
right, and then argue with Brett and an insurance guy for the
privilege of making the tiny eight-foot stunt jump on his
own.
At least he'd got to jump. He fumbled the phone from his
pocket, still laughing. He'd heard Brett yell cut as he hit the mat, so presumably
the job was done and he was free to pick up. The incoming call was
from Sasha, who never rang him at work...
“Mr Fitzroy? No cells on set, please.”
Laurie looked up. Douglas Brett was standing by the mat,
squinting critically at the facade temple wall and the real
limestone blocks along its top, carvings and all, that had been
constructed for this scene. Three yards behind him, Nicole Delgado
was pacing back and forth, chattering carelessly into the mic of
her headset. Laurie had been brought up not to cry
unfair, but Douglas
caught his involuntary glance. “Miss Delgado is excepted,” he said
tersely. “She has family circumstances.”
What, and I don't? Laurie pushed his
hands into the pockets of his jeans and bit back the response. He'd
call Sasha back in a moment. “Okay, sir,” he said cheerfully. “How
did we go on that? A print?”
“No. I’ve decided to run the Egypt scenes in costume, not as a
modern-dress flashback. You and Price report to wardrobe now. And
leave that cellphone in your trailer—you won't have any pockets,
that's for sure.”
Laurie
jumped off the mat. It was on a scaffold five feet off the ground
and he could have thrown a handspring en route, but he didn't want
to give Brett a coronary: the director winced as it was, and off by
the trailers the poor insurance guy dropped his plastic cup of
coffee on the ground. Laurie had no idea where wardrobe was. His
morning here so far had been a mix of hot-focussed attention and
utter neglect. He'd been examined from head to foot by makeup
staff, CG men and stunt coordinators, but if not for Bailey he
wouldn't have known where the toilets were. Bailey had shown him
the catering truck, the best coffee vendor and what size perimeter
to leave around Nicole and Wesley for his own safety. He was waving
from the sidelines now. Laurie gave Brett a friendly nod—he could
do impersonal British courtesy for as long as required, no matter
how volatile his director—and set off at a jog. As soon as he was
far enough away from Brett he pulled out his mobile and hit
callback, but before the line could ring, Bailey grabbed him by the
arm. “Come on, Fitz. They're fitting us up with our miniskirts, and
Valentine's in a hell of a mood.”
***
The
wardrobe department was like an aircraft hangar by contrast with
the rooms in which Laurie had been stripped down and bundled into
his costumes over the years. The only similarity was the lack of
natural light. All the Ivory Gate facilities were windowless,
Bailey had told him, some for filming purposes, but most because
where there was glass, a reporter or a fan would find a way. One
scrap of footage hitting the internet would spell
disaster.
Laurie, who privately thought it would spell yet more
publicity for the Blood Moon
carnival, had only nodded. He was trying to orient
himself. All the activity within the room's huge space was
concentrated around a single figure. Laurie would have liked an
hour or so to wander round the racks and rails of clothes, each set
neatly sealed in polythene and fascinating as a travelling
exhibition on what the well-dressed immortal had been wearing
through the ages. There were brocades and silks—the
Blood Moon Frosts had
gone through an Elizabethan stage—and enough modern-day designer
gear to kit out a catwalk army. He remembered Rayne's End, and Mr
Jacobs, whose productions had been mostly modern-dress because his
single wardrobe item of any value was the thin gold coronet Laurie
had worn as Hamlet, and then he wanted time not to wander but to
hide himself somewhere for five minutes—call Sasha, steal one of
Bailey's joints, do anything to feel less like an utter fake and
stranger here... But a small, smiling woman caught him by the arm:
said, “Ah, Mr Fitzroy,” as if he'd been the answer to all her
prayers, and towed him into the eye of the storm.
Hers was
the last smile Laurie was to see for a while. She handed him over
to a grim-faced wardrobe assistant, who in turn marched him more or
less into the arms of a harried-looking girl who looked him over as
if sizing him up for his shroud, informed him that she was Zara,
his personal costume manager for today, and promptly shot off to do
something else. Laurie sank into the chair she'd pointed out. It
was a large, comfortable one—Bailey had warned him that most of his
time in this glamorous world would be spent waiting—and he tried to
settle and look casual.
The huge
room was divided into about thirty cubicles, screened off from one
another to a certain extent but mostly intervisible. Laurie didn't
need Bailey Price's unsubtle gestures and winks—though by now he
was quite glad to see him there, a comparatively familiar face
across the way in his own cubicle—to work out for himself who was
causing the fox-in-the-henhouse effect. Wesley Lombard was standing
poised on a dresser's stool. Whether he'd been put there for a
fitting or had climbed up in order to make his opinions better
felt, Laurie wasn't sure, but he examined him with interest. Wes
was livid with frustration, jabbing his finger at one offender then
another amid the crowd that surrounded him. The plump, smiling
woman who'd greeted Laurie as he'd arrived was trying to hold up to
him a large cup of iced water: as Laurie watched, Wesley swiped it
aside, sending most of it into her face.
Laurie
jumped upright. This was a red rag to him, a trigger set up long
ago by Marielle's enslavement to his father, who liked to have his
treble scotch brought to him in her delicate hands, and from time
to time would reward her by knocking it back out of them if the
drink or his mood or some other aspect of his bloodyminded world
wasn't right. But by the time Laurie had taken three steps, the
moment was gone. Wesley was ranting at someone else, and the
assistant was towelling herself off, still smiling, clearly used to
this and quite unfazed.
Laurie
sat back down. What had he planned to do anyway—stride up to
Wesley, seize a gauntlet from the Elizabethan racks, slap him round
the face with it and demand satisfaction? Instead he knotted his
fingers together and tried to work out for himself why this
creature was tolerated.
In a way it was easy to see. His physical beauty was obvious,
would hit you in the eye from fifty yards without the aid of
makeup. He held himself perfectly, like a man expecting to be
filmed from any angle at any time. His voice projection wasn't
great—Laurie guessed that he'd never had to pitch any further than
a boom mic over his head, so whatever was causing this tantrum
wasn't clear yet—but his gestures and timing were great, powerful
without exaggeration. Whatever Laurie's views on the
Blood Moon phenomenon
generally, he accepted that Wes turned in a good job.
The
trouble was that he'd been doing so for seven years now, and
Valentine Frost was meant to have received his gift of immortality
at the age of eighteen. Although Wesley had pulled it off well,
he'd have been in his mid-twenties for the first film, Laurie
guessed, which must make him...
The
hubbub of the crowd died down a little. Laurie heard, harsh and
furious—“I want that bitch fired! Yes, you, with your fucking
body-shaper stocking and your botox and whatever else you had the
fucking nerve to suggest. Douglas! Where's Douglas? Get Douglas in
here now!”
Half a
dozen people scattered from the edges of the crowd, presumably in
search of Brett. Through the gaps they'd left, Laurie got a better
view of Wesley from the shoulders down. They were good, broad
shoulders, but his torso was thickening too. He had a bit of weight
piling on around the midriff, genetic or rich living, which was why
some poor fool had dared suggest the stocking, Laurie guessed. It
was a perfectly normal, nice body—for a man, not a kid in his
teens.
And the
fool had been Libby Palermo. Now Laurie could see her, helpless
target for Wesley's jabbing finger. She was standing with her mouth
open, her tan drained out to yellow. “Wesley,” she tried hoarsely.
“I didn't mean anything by it. I only thought—”
“Shut up! I know what you damn well thought.
Douglas!”
The
director appeared, flanked on both sides by his usual retinue of
note-takers and assistants. Laurie saw that, as soon as the
newcomers understood who was getting the sharp edge of Wesley's
tongue, they took up eager positions in the crowd, ringside seats.
He guessed that Libby hadn't made herself too popular. Nicole
hadn't stirred from her cubicle, but she'd set aside her magazine
and was watching the circus with the first emotion Laurie had seen
her betray: a hungry avidity like Carmen's when awaiting her first
taste of blood. As for Bailey, he was openly gawping. This would be
more fun for him than anyone else, if Libby really had replaced the
inner monitor that kept him from temptation...
Laurie
was gawping himself. Shame hit him. He didn't like Libby either,
but he felt a kind of acquaintance with her from the UK, and she'd
coached him as well as she could about matte. He didn't have to
watch this show.
He got
up to leave, but immediately the wardrobe assistant shot into the