The Evil That Men Do

by Nancy Holder

  Migraine, she thought hideously. Her mother was plagued with them. Cordelia had kind of hoped that she herself was immune to them. Like varicose veins, and wrinkles. The thought that she might be starting to get them at the ripe old age of seventeen was too horrible to contemplate.

  “And he said my mom was a dithering idiot.”

  “Maybe he was trying to impress someone,” Cordelia ventured, not at all sure what was going on.

  “Excuse me?” Buffy said. “Like who, the British Society for the Advancement of Rudeness?”

  “What?” Cordelia touched her forehead and groaned. “I feel awful. I can’t talk about this right now.” She gestured at her nonfat yogurt and her apple. “I can’t even eat. I feel kind of nauseous.”

  There was a pause. “Do you think you might be possessed?” Buffy asked.

  Cordelia lowered her hand to her lap. “I swear, Buffy, you are not making any sense.” She lurched to her feet, not an easy thing to do when you were wearing a very short plaid skirt and your head was pounding, but she managed. “Can you drive me home? No, of course you can’t. You can’t even pass your driver’s test.”

  “Hey,” Buffy said angrily. “You know I haven’t even taken it. My God, what is wrong with you people?”

  Cordelia squinted at her. The pain was screaming out of control. “And they call me insensitive.”

  She groaned again and started to trudge across the quad. Maybe the nurse would give her something. Probably not, since that would be dispensing medicine and they might get sued for it. And Sunnydale High was in for a ton of lawsuits, you could bet that was for sure. What was one headache compared to three dead students and a whole bunch of severely injured ones?

  “Thanks for this special moment,” Buffy called after her.

  “Talk about possessed,” Cordelia muttered to herself.

  Jordan paced angrily as he observed the Sunnydale Art Gallery from across the street. Who was to know they’d have a great burglar alarm system? He’d waited for the night the security guard came late, then he’d broken that window and zzzzzing! that sucker had screamed bloody murder.

  The Queen and her boyfriend — Julian was his name — were getting tired of waiting. They weren’t talking about him joining the family anymore. But she was still wearing diamonds, and they did all kinds of awesome stuff like dissolving pearls in wine and drinking them. Jordan knew they were his one-way ticket out of Sunnydale for good.

  About that time, he felt someone staring at him. You walk long enough on the wrong side of the law, you get a sixth sense about that kind of thing.

  He whirled around, thought he saw a small, thin face staring at him from the darkness of an alley. Couldn’t quite place it, but it looked familiar.

  He gazed at the alley for a while. Nothing moved. He saw no face.

  Just getting paranoid, he thought.

  He turned his attention back to the gallery.

  Decided to just go for it.

  He walked across the street and pushed open the door. A little bell tinkled.

  A nice-looking woman, about forty, with curly blond hair, looked up from unloading a crate of chipped clay pots and smiled at him.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “You got urns?” he replied.

  Afternoon, when the shadows loom long over the chalkboard horizon.

  Xander didn’t know how he had gotten through this day. He was edgy, and his mood was not improved by the way he’d wasted his lunch hour driving Cordelia home. She had babbled on about a brain tumor all the way home; he had no idea what she was talking about or why she had bestowed upon him the designation of her driver. All she had done to acknowledge his presence was to say “Huh?” when he called out “You’re welcome, Queen C” as he drove out of sight.

  Now Xander sat across from Buffy in government, and she was not looking in the pink, either. The room was sparsely populated, with Cordy and Willow both out sick, and Oz missing. That only spurred their teacher, the unfortunately but aptly named Ms. Broadman, to make class so deadly dull that the rest of the class would think twice about showing tomorrow.

  It was driving Xander nuts, and he needed three looks from Buffy, two clearings of her throat, and a partridge in a pear tree to stop drumming his fingers on his desk.

  Then, blessedly, finally, the bell was just about to ring, and they could get the hell out of there.

  “Now, about your tests,” Ms. Broadman said. “I have some concerns, and I’d like to see the following students after class.” She glanced down. “Grace Wilcox, Sarah Beck, Mallory Morel, Buffy Summers, and Xander Harris.”

  The bell pealed, and the rest of the class fled. Grace, Mallory, and Sarah, who usually sat in a cluster in the back and passed notes all period, hunched over nervously. Xander turned and glanced questioningly at Buffy, who shrugged.

  “Since I’m involved, it can only mean one thing: we are the F-bees, and there are too many of us for the hive to feed,” Buffy said.

  “Thus proving that I needn’t waste my time with fruitless studying, ever again,” Xander said happily, although in truth, he was extremely bummed. God, I must be a moron. “I read those chapters so much I practically memorized them. And yet.”

  “And yet,” Buffy said, sighing. “I, for one, did not study at all. I looked for Oz. And listened to my mom complain about the gallery.”

  Xander cocked his head. “Business is slow? Statues are ugly?”

  Buffy shrugged. “Actually, ’half-listened’ is a better term. Since it didn’t involve staking a bad guy or looking for a good one, I sort of bypassed the direct feed and went for bandwidth. Summing up, she was very pissed off, but not at me.” She lowered her voice. “That was all any Slayer or teenage daughter needed to know.”

  “Indeed,” Xander said authoritatively. He started drumming his fingers on the desk. Let Broadman glare. This class period was over and he was on his own time.

  After a minute or so, which stretched out into infinity, Ms. Broadman picked up a thin pile of papers and came around to the other side of her desk. Xander felt a little sorry for her. All that stuff about a pretty face on a zaftig body was true. Lovely eyes, had Ms. Broadman. Nice hair, too.

  But whoa, camel, attractiveness demerits for the chewed-on look: she tapped the top of the stack with short, bitten nails and bloody cuticles. This was a new habit, and it grossed Xander out big time. Cordelia, too. They had actually discussed it without sniping at each other too much. And mutually decided that someone that tightly wound needed some help.

  On the other hand, maybe with all these headaches, Cordy herself needed to slow down. Or something.

  Drum, drum, drum, went his fingers. Maybe I should try out for the Dingoes as a percussionist.

  “All right.” Like a doctor studying a medical chart, Ms. Broadman glanced down at the top piece of paper, lifted it, and skimmed the next page.

  Xander blinked. He knew his own handwriting, and he knew a big red “A” when he saw one. Astonished, he looked over at Buffy, who was grinning back at him and giving him a thumbs-up.

  “No way,” he blurted.

  “Way, Xand.” Buffy looked very proud of him.

  “Mr. Harris, I wish to show you your test paper,” Ms. Broadman said, giving him her attention. She handed him the stapled pages. Sure enough, the A remained. It wasn’t just some silly mirage.

  “Wow.” Xander blinked. “This is amazing.”

  Ms. Broadman inclined her head. “My thought, as well. I was extremely pleased. Until I read Julie Masterson’s paper.”

  That was apparently the next test on the stack, which she lifted with a flourish and also handed to Xander. Julie had received an A as well.

  Xander glanced at it, then at his. He waited.

  Buffy waited.

  The three girls in the back stayed quiet.

  “Look at the first section of your test paper,” Ms. Broadman suggested.

  It was multiple choice.

  “Read your answers.”
>
  “Um, A, B, A, A, B, C, D.” Whoops, the C and D were both marked as wrong.

  “Now please read Ms. Masterson’s answers.”

  He skimmed them silently. They were exactly the same. Xander shrugged.

  “A coincidence.”

  “Now read your first essay question, on how a bill is passed.”

  “Okay.” He skimmed that, too. He raised his brows at Ms. Broadman. “I read the book this time. It’s practically like that word for word, and —”

  “No. It’s not,” Ms. Broadman said. “At first, I thought that as well, but I checked the book. Close, but not close enough. Much closer to Ms. Masterson’s answer, in fact.” She sniffed as if something smelled worse than a reanimated zombie cat. “Now, I direct your attention to the fifth question.”

  She made him go through the same rigmarole. His test, Julie’s.

  “No,” Xander insisted. “It was the book.”

  “I think not,” she said crisply, plucking the papers away from him and walking around her desk. She picked up a red pencil, flashed him a look of contempt, crossed out his A, and made another mark. She showed him the test.

  An F.

  “This is more in keeping, don’t you think?”

  “I didn’t cheat off her,” Xander insisted, his stomach clenching. “I don’t even know her.” Then, realizing how that sounded, he added loudly, “I don’t cheat in class.”

  “No. Just outside of class.” She gestured to Willow’s empty seat. “Off your friends.”

  “Willow doesn’t cheat,” Xander said, his blood pressure rising. He felt hot. And sick. “She’s tutored me, yes.”

  Ms. Broadman sneered at him. “And done your homework for you.”

  “And she’s not here to defend herself or Xander,” Buffy said.

  Xander threw Buffy a grateful look. “Yeah,” he said.

  “The F stands,” Ms. Broadman said.

  Xander’s mouth dropped. He couldn’t believe it. The one time he tried his very hardest; the one time he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The unfairness of it was too much. He flared with fury, leaped out of his chair, and grabbed for his paper.

  Ms. Broadman yanked it out of his reach and held it above her head with a funny little smile.

  “That’s my property,” Xander said. Now he was livid. She was enjoying this. “You . . .” The word was on his tongue, and it wasn’t witch.

  “Xander, chill,” Buffy said quietly.

  He whirled around. “Back off, Buffy,” he flung at her. She jerked; wide-eyed. He turned back to Ms. Broadman, narrowing his eyes at her. “Give me that paper, now, or I . . .”

  She ripped the paper in two.

  He stared at the pieces. His mouth worked but no words came out. He couldn’t remember ever being this angry. He balled his fists; her brows raised as if to say, Just try it.

  Without another word, Xander stormed from the room. He slammed the classroom door as hard as he could.

  She will pay for this.

  Oh, man, will she pay.

  Chapter 4

  GILES SENT BUFFY A NOTE DURING HER LAST-PERIOD class, which she had spent listening to everyone talk about Xander Harris’s wigout in government. Written on an official pass request form, he requested that she come to the library immediately after school. Teachers and other faculty types could do things like that without arousing any suspicion.

  Like talking to Giles right now was anywhere on her top ten. Not eager, she ducked into the rest room first and splashed some cold water on her face, then bent outside at the drinking fountain. She kept looking for Xander, wondering about the fallout, worrying about her friend. And friend he was, for which she was grateful. She didn’t seem to have quite as many as she had once assumed.

  She swung through the double doors to find Giles at the study table, surrounded not by towers of books about demonic possession, as she had hoped, but with his elbow on a plain manila folder. He didn’t even look up when she walked over to him, even though her boots were making plenty of noise.

  “Yeah,” she said coldly.

  “Good.” His voice was distant. She was hurt; she had assumed — okay, hoped — that he wanted to apologize, and now she waited for it, making no show of hiding her anger.

  But when he kept scribbling, she put her hand on the desk and said, “You asked to see me. You have seen. Are we done?”

  “Sorry.” Then he looked up and pushed up his glasses in his Giles way and pinched the bridge of his nose in his Giles way, and she wanted to cry or sit down or break something, preferably one of his bone china teacups. Because he talked like Giles, and he acted like Giles, but he couldn’t be Giles, not if he thought she was a bloody bimbo.

  “Very sorry,” he added. Then he lifted his elbow off the folder and said, “I have something to show you.” He hesitated, and his voice was soft. “You may want to sit down.”

  “On the other hand, I may not,” she snapped. She realized she was being childish, but she couldn’t help herself. She flipped the folder open. Then she saw, and she sank into the nearest chair.

  Buffy had seen a lot of autopsy photos in her years as a Slayer. She had seen a lot of dead bodies, too. Mangled, decomposing bodies, putrefied corpses, the remains of demons so revolting that now, in the library, she couldn’t make herself remember what they looked like.

  But this was the worst.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  “They’re looking for Mark Dellasandro.”

  “Why?” she croaked. “He couldn’t have done this.” Nothing human could have done this.

  “Because a ring of his was found embedded in the . . .” He pointed. She saw the glint of metal.

  He flipped to the next photo. This one showed the face.

  It was Lindsey Acuff.

  The room spun.

  Giles inclined his head. “I’m sorry, Buffy. I know you were trying very hard to find her.”

  “Oh, God, God,” she whispered.

  “This was not your fault,” he said firmly.

  The gentle tone of his voice startled her. It also gave her fresh hope that for some strange reason, he had been forced to say the cruel things he had said about her and her mom on the phone to England.

  She glanced sideways at him. His lips were pursed together as he turned the stack of photos facedown and picked up the first of a number of what she recognized to be police reports.

  “I want Willow to hack into the computer, see if there’s anything missing from the autopsy report,” he began. “As is often the case here in Sunnydale.”

  “Okay,” Buffy said. “Listen, Giles, everyone’s been very . . . different lately. Including, um, you.”

  She flushed when he frowned at her, but she wasn’t about to pull punches now. The bar had been raised, if not in numbers of deaths, then in the sheer savagery of them.

  She turned in her chair to gesture to the book cage, where he kept his collection of the really good stuff — leatherbound volumes on folklore and legend, encyclopedias of demons, monster guides, that kind of thing. Also, where they locked Oz up when he turned into the star of Teen Wolf Three: The Willow Years.

  “I’m starting to think maybe possession.” She ducked her head. ”Those dreams, seeing my double with the evil heart . . . that sounds like possession, doesn’t it?

  “So, the books,” she continued eagerly, realizing she had his attention. “And the autopsy research, sure. But I think you’d better ask Willow to do it. She’s not really listening much to me these days, she’s cranky also. And we could ask Xand —”

  “I beg your pardon?” he said finally. “Did I hear correctly? You think I’m possessed?” His eyes narrowed and his features grew hard.

  Uh-oh.

  “Giles, think about it,” she said, squirming mentally, if not physically. “You, um, you said to your friend David that I —”

  “You listened in on a private conversation?”

  “See?” she cut in. “You’re really pissed off at me, and y
ou, well I do piss you off a lot, but not like this, Giles.”

  “I can’t believe it.” He whipped off his glasses and stared at her. “I know you’re an unmannered girl, and I try to make allowances for it. After all, your home life has been unstable and, one must admit, you’ve had to spend more time learning which kind of cutlery to use to fillet a demon, not a salmon. But this is beyond the pale, Buffy. This really caps it.”

  “No, listen. Listen to yourself.” She got out of her chair and held out her hands. “Giles, we have dead people all over Sunnydale. Parents, students, and now this little girl. That’s what’s important, not how rude I am and whatever you said about salmon.

  “Look, I’m sorry I overheard you. You don’t know how sorry,“ she added. ”But we need to focus.”

  He raised his chin. “How dare you tell me how to act.” He turned away from her. “I think you’d better go.”

  “But Giles, how you’re acting is bizarre,” she insisted. “And if you were yourself, you would know that.”

  There was a silence.

  “Fine.” She threw up her hands in despair. “Terrific.”

  She stomped out of the library and started walking home.

  About halfway down the block at the beginning of Waverly Park, Xander caught up with her.

  “Hey, Buffy,” he said, jostling her. “What’s the haps, gal toy? You look how I feel.”

  “Xander.” She blinked at him and stopped walking. Facing him, she searched his face. “You’re cheerful.”

  “Relax.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s only temporary.” Then he cocked his head and gave her a questioning look. “What’s up? Because you are not cheerful.”

  “It’s just that . . .” She thought a moment. “No. Never mind.” She smiled and squared her shoulders. “Observe my cheerfulness.”

  “Oh.” He smiled brightly. “I see. You’ve developed multiple personalities and you’re trying to give everyone a chance to act out.” He closed his eyes. “I’d like to speak to the slightly less perky one, known as Buffy.”