“Explain,” said Willow simply.
“On those nights when there really isn’t a whole lot to do, my husband and I hold séances,” said Lora. “We call up dead acquaintances or family members, just to see how they’re getting along in the afterlife. Or we call up historic figures at random. We think of our séances as spiritual fishing expeditions. We’ve been pretty lucky. We’ve spoken to the spirits of Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Victor Hugo.”
“All in English?” asked Xander.
Rick laughed weakly and looked at Willow as if she were the only woman in the entire world. “It’s been well documented that called-up spirits tend to speak in the language of the séance holders, whose minds they must be filtered through. Well, last week, we bumped into someone who claimed to have been reborn and was living in Sunnydale.”
“If the spirit was reborn, then how come you reached it on the astral plane?” asked Willow immediately.
Rick blinked; he hadn’t been expecting that question. “Why indeed? But who else could be in two places at the same time, if not a spirit? This spirit distinctly mentioned you, young lady.”
“What did she say?” asked Willow.
“Not much,” said Lora. “Spirits rarely do. She intimated that the two of you have a lot in common with us, and suggested—most strongly—that we look you up.”
“Which we did,” said Rick. “So what do you think of that, Willow? Your fame precedes you.”
Willow had the distinct feeling this charming man was an utter fruitcake. “Gee, I’m flattered, but, hey, I told my mother I would help around the house after school. We can talk later.”
“Fair enough,” said Rick. “When? Soon, I hope. Surely it shouldn’t be too much trouble to fit in a cup of coffee—or a milk shake—with Rick and Lora Church, occult mavens extraordinaire.” He bowed slightly, gallantly. “You might have the rare opportunity to take part in one of our supernatural adventures.”
Willow decided that in the final analysis, the fruitcake was still charming. “How about tomorrow,” she suggested.
“Excellent! Same time, same place? I trust that will give you enough time to do a background check on us via the Internet?”
Willow grinned. “Plenty of time. I mean, uh, that’ll be fine. C’mon, Xander, we’ve gotta go.”
Xander still couldn’t take his eyes off Lora. So Willow took him by the arm and pulled him away. Lora and Rick waved good-bye at them.
“By the way,” called out Lora, “where can we find Rupert Giles?”
“In the library. Where else?” Xander replied, flattered to have been asked.
“Xander!” Willow hissed.
“Oops. Sorry.”
They walked. Willow was relieved to be alone again with Xander, but it still bothered her that the Church couple had asked for Giles. Considering everything that was going down, perhaps she should have been more curious.
Lora Church and her husband opened the library doors the instant Giles flew out—backward! He missed them both completely, landing rump-first on the hard tile floor. Lora grimaced at the impact.
“Ooh! That had to hurt!” Rick said.
“Ouch!” was all Giles said after hitting the floor. He didn’t have time to say anything else, because he was still sliding across the hall.
From inside the library, Buffy shrieked at what she’d done, and she ran into the hall between Rick and Lora, without noticing them.
They realized immediately this lithe slip of a girl was responsible for the commotion. “Hey! Wait up!” Rick cried out as he and Lora followed Buffy to where Giles lay unconscious and unmoving, except for a few twitches now and again.
Buffy knelt beside him and felt his pulse, then put her ear to his chest. “Come on, Giles, I know you’re alive,” she said. “I can hear you wheezing.”
“Wait, young lady, I know first aid,” said Rick, gently pushing her aside. He had already taken off his jacket and was putting it under Giles’s head. “Giles! Are you comfortable?”
Giles shook away three or four of the zillion cobwebs clogging his brain. “I make a pretty good living,” he croaked. Then he groaned. “I need a cup of instant coffee.” Suddenly, he woke up, getting his bearing. He looked at them all suspiciously. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“I’m Buffy.” She peered closely at Giles, trying to determine whether he really didn’t remember her.
“I know that! I’m talking to him!”
Rick bowed his head slightly. “Rick Church, pleased to make your acquaintance, sir, and this is my wife—”
Giles gasped. Suddenly he had recognized her … from somewhere. A few seconds passed. He gasped again. “Lora—?”
“You know each other—?” said Rick in surprise.
“Hello, Rupert,” Lora said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Hello, Lora,” said Giles, his eyes going all misty and sentimental. “Nice to see you.”
Xander listened; Willow talked. It was a sunny afternoon, the air was warm and exhilarating, and he could barely keep his mind on what Willow was saying.
Eventually he concentrated hard enough to gather that her computer had crashed the night before and she’d stayed up till three fixing it. Willow detailed every method she’d used to find out which program had corrupted the others as if Xander should have been fascinated by the process. As it was, he could barely understand. …
Wait a second! Xander thought. Normally I’m only too happy to listen to Willow. But something’s calling me, like a songbird from over the next hill….
Then he heard it: the sharp crrrack! of a bat striking a baseball dead-on, and the cries and cheers of young boys playing around the next corner. Willow was three steps behind before she realized he’d sped up.
“Sorry, Willow, I know I promised to walk you home, but I just realized—”
“Oh.” She was none too successful at hiding her disappointment, but it didn’t matter because Xander didn’t notice. “What’s that?”
“It’s spring, and in spring, a young man’s fancy turns toward—”
“Yes?”
“Baseball.”
“Oh.”
“See ya!”
The sandlot game was in its fourth inning when Xander asked to join one of the teams. Xander couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a baseball from a yard away, but one team needed a right fielder—the position least likely to see any action, making it the position for which Xander was most perfectly suited.
Willow watched Xander play until it became apparent Xander would ignore her completely, because that’s how boys were supposed to treat girls when they were playing baseball.
So she walked a few blocks to a small park and sat down on a bench. She would read Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility until the game was over. Maybe then Xander would be interested in walking her the rest of the way home.
The distant noise of the game barely made a dent in her consciousness as she became lost in Austen’s comedy of nineteenth-century English marriage, death, and manners. She was jolted back to the present by the sudden knowledge that one of Xander’s teammates—a huge blond with more muscles on his arms than she thought possible—was trying to get her attention.
“Earth to Willow! Come in, please!”
“What—?”
“It’s Xander! He’s been hit on the head!”
“Oh no! Poor Xander! Is he hurt?”
“With him it’s kinda hard to tell. A fly ball hit him on the head and knocked him out. He’s been wacky ever since, calling your name, calling other people’s names.”
“Such as Mom? Dad? Giles? … Buffy?”
“No. He’s talking about someone named John Kane. And who else? Danforth. Corwin. Ever hear of any of these people? ’Cause I sure haven’t.”
But Willow was already running away. She was out of breath and utterly exhausted by the time she reached right field. The two teams were gathered around Xander. One of the smaller guys poured water from a plastic bottle on his face.
“Let him breathe! Let him breathe!” she yelled despite her burning lungs.
The boys parted to let her through.
“Xander! Are you all right?”
Just then he woke up, sputtering water. “Willow! I just had the strangest dream!”
“Terrific—he’s awake, folks!” shouted the short guy. “That’s three outs!”
“It’s good to meet you too,” said Rick Church, shaking Giles’s hand. “Although I must admit I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about you until recently,” he added, staring at his wife.
Buffy grinned at Giles’s red-faced embarrassment.
“Mrs. Church and I were together on the Oxford debate team, Buffy,” said Giles.
“And that was only the beginning!” said Lora happily.
Giles looked at Rick, directly and honestly. “Yes, but after we graduated we lost touch, as university teammates are so inclined to do.”
“I never would have guessed,” said Rick dryly.
Giles was escorting Buffy and the Churches into the library, then seemed to think better of it. “Would you care to join me for a cup of coffee in the teachers’ lounge? I feel the need to freshen up.”
“But what about me?” Buffy blurted out.
“I think the combat lesson is over for today,” said Giles. “I’ve really had enough punishment.”
“You’re teaching her combat?” exclaimed Lora. “You have changed!”
Giles cleared his throat. “Not as much as you think. In the ways of combat, Buffy is the instructor, while I am just the pupil.”
“She’s teaching you!” Rick laughed.
Buffy opened her mouth to reply, but Giles stifled her by putting a hand on her shoulder and steering her away, while saying to Rick, “She has a gift, remarkable for one so young. Now why don’t you two wait for a moment? Buffy usually offers me a few private words of encouragement after my lesson, and today I desperately need to hear them.”
Rick snickered. “Sure. We’ll be right here.” He watched them make a turn down another hall and then said to his wife, “What did you see in him?”
Lora smiled, remembering the young Giles fondly even as she said, “How am I supposed to know? I was young and impressionable. Besides, remember that truck stop waitress you told me about once? What did you see in her?”
“That was completely her idea. I had nothing to do with it.”
“A likely story. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Since meeting you, I never thought of Giles at all until the ghost suggested we see him while we were in Sunnydale.”
“Now I’m happy.” He pointed at his lips. “How about another smooch?”
Meanwhile, Buffy was letting loose with a barrage of questions about Giles’s personal life. And even though Giles tried to impress Buffy with the fact that his pre-Watcher existence was none of her business, he nonetheless couldn’t help remarking, “It’s like seeing a ghost, only I’ve seen ghosts and they’re not nearly as attractive. She has such wonderful—” He cleared his throat. “Buffy, I have no idea what Lora and this Rick Church fellow—”
“Her husband,” Buffy pointed out.
“—are doing here, but I will find out. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has something to do with the Eisenberg prophecy.”
“Why? Maybe she and her husband are just passing through town.”
“I suspect this ghost they spoke of is helping them overcome the spell of forgetfulness too. Besides, did you notice something profound about the connection between Lora and me? I think you would call it ‘cosmic.’”
“Why would I do that?”
“It wasn’t quite as if we were actually destined for one another, like genuine soul mates, just that we shared the feeling we’d shared something, sometime, somewhere, where there was a place for us. Then, for no apparent reason, we drifted apart. But it’s gratifying to know something of that feeling remains to this day.”
“I don’t call that ‘cosmic.’ It’s more like Cosmopolitan.”
“I wonder what she wants.”
“Now, that’s the suspicious Giles I know,” said Buffy, already walking away.
He frowned as he watched her go. I’m not just suspicious of women, he thought defensively. I’m suspicious of everyone!
With a sharp intake of breath he realized that he was even suspicious of his dreams. Although it behooved a Watcher to be paranoid, he couldn’t help wondering if he was going too far.
But when he returned to Rick and Lora in the hall, they’d been having an intense discussion that ceased the instant he walked in. “Well, Lora, this is certainly a pleasant surprise, but you didn’t come all the way to Sunnydale from wherever it is you’re living now—”
“Carmel,” she put in helpfully.
“—just to look me up,” Giles continued.
“I should hope not,” said Rick slyly.
“We’ll probably have more privacy there.”
“The teachers’ lounge is that way,” said Giles. “We’ll probably have more privacy there.”
On the way, he and Lora tried to catch up with each other. Twice Lora mentioned her surprise that he had not been married, not even once, during the last two decades. Rick remarked that he’d been married and divorced enough times for all three of them.
“You must be rich,” said Giles.
“Not anymore,” said Rick.
Inside the lounge, Giles led his guests to a corner furnished with pieces purchased from the Salvation Army. “So really, people, why are you here?”
Rick and Lora suddenly became quite serious. “A ghost named Sarah Dinsdale suggested we come see you,” said Rick.
CHAPTER FIVE
By the time she turned onto her block, Buffy felt pretty good inside, thanks in part to her plan to take a nap as soon as she made it home in the hopes of learning about the fate of Samantha Kane.
Suddenly her good feeling evaporated. What was that huge van with the satellite dish on top doing across the street from her house?
On both sides of the van was painted a large, garish logo: a column of frogs falling from a clear blue sky. Buffy recognized it as the hallmark of the syndicated show dealing with paranormal phenomena called Charles Fort’s Peculiar Planet. It aired on Channel 13, appropriately enough, every weeknight at 11 p.m. The subject matter ranged from giant ants in the Amazon to the ghosts of aliens on a space shuttle. Buffy usually watched it for laughs, but she wasn’t laughing now.
Especially when the show’s top reporter, Eric Frank, got out of the passenger side and, microphone in hand, headed toward her front door!
“Sarah Dinsdale, eh? Never heard of her.” Giles sipped his cup of coffee. Today the coffee machine in the teachers’ lounge was producing an especially bitter product, and he fought to maintain a neutral expression lest the Churches think he was uncomfortable with the subject matter. He had played dumb for a while, a skill he’d picked up through necessity while dealing with the education bureaucracy on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Funny,” said Rick with a smile. “She seems to have heard of you.” He sipped his coffee and immediately stopped smiling.
“I don’t see how,” Giles replied casually.
“Oh please, Giles,” said Lora impatiently. “You were always interested in the occult. It’s all you ever talked about.”
“I’m afraid you have me confused with someone else,” said Giles indignantly. “I’m interested in books and movies and art.”
“Humph! You never had time to see any movies unless they starred Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing,” said Lora.
“Do I detect a trace of resentment?” chuckled Rick.
“Sweetums,” Lora cooed. Nevertheless, she continued the attack on Giles. “The only books you ever read had to do with paranormal subjects such as spontaneous combustion and psychic detectives—and the art, good grief, the art! It was all primitive stuff and usually had been handled by witch doctors first.”
“Ever do any research on UFOs?” Giles asked in all innocence.
Giles sighed. He’d forgotten how stubborn Lora could be when she felt like it. But that was part of the problem. Over the years, he’d forgotten almost everything about her, but now that she was in his presence again, memories and emotions were resurfacing like salmon jumping up a waterfall.
“All right,” said Giles. “What does this Sarah Dinsdale want with me?”
“I’m glad you asked!” said Rick briskly, his eyes darting this way and that. He lowered his voice. “Is this place bugged?”
“I should certainly hope not!” said Giles, hoping he was right.
“Good. What I am about to tell you, most people would find somewhat extravagant—perhaps unbelievable. But I assure you, every word is true.”
“Or close to it,” added Lora.
“Lora and I used to look forward to our weekly séances, when we’d sit in our darkened den to call forth the spirits of the dead.”
“There were no portents the night Sarah came—subjective or otherwise—that the upcoming séance would contain a few unpleasant surprises,” said Lora.
“No sudden flashes of lightning in a clear sky,” said Rick. “No white owls in the trees, not even an old-fashioned chill up the spine. I had my hopes, too. Cleopatra had intimated she’d be back for a return engagement, and lately we’d snared a few ladies-in-waiting from the court of King Louis XVI of France.”
“Those weren’t ladies,” said Lora. “I myself was hoping Nijinsky, the great ballet dancer, would drop in again, though in a mood less neurotic than before.”
“You just like what you see in his eyes,” said Rick jealously.
“You just like Cleopatra’s—,” Lora began, before Giles interrupted and reminded them of the story they were supposed to be telling. “Of course,” said Lora. “You can imagine our surprise when, having done this hundreds of times before, the séance conjured up all sorts of atmospheric effects, such as flickering candlelight, creeping fog, and a stench so repulsive I won’t begin to describe it to you.”
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