by Various
Cordelia raised an eyebrow. “Don’t push your luck.”
They said their good-byes to Elijah and left the shop. The old magician turned the sign in the window around to CLOSED as soon as the door was shut behind them.
Traffic was mercifully light as they drove out to South Sepulveda. Cordelia noticed that Angel winced several times as he turned the wheel to maneuver the convertible, but he did not seem to have been hurt badly and soon enough the wincing stopped. They rode together in silence for a time. Despite the excitement at Cobwebs, or perhaps because of it, Cordelia was glad to have a few minutes to just breathe and enjoy the night air and the stars above.
She was also grateful that it was Angel behind the wheel. They’d known one another a long time now—though not by his standards—and it had reached the point where they didn’t feel the need to talk, to entertain each other. With someone else, the silence in the car would have been awkward. With Angel, it was just not.
As they stopped at a red light, he glanced at her, a smirk on his face. “Well, that didn’t go too badly.”
Cordelia smiled. “Here’s hoping your Christmas present to Wesley isn’t going to get him killed by the minions of the empress of Hell. Kinda cocky of that Len Yo, or whatever her name is, though. I mean, ‘empress of Hell,’ who is she kidding with that? With all the demon dimensions out there, not to mention all the would-be monarchs and deities…” she rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. Anybody can be other-dimensional royalty. Look at me.”
“Princess of Pylea,” Angel noted, nodding sagely. “Maybe you should’ve brought that up. Niu T’ou might’ve given you diplomatic immunity to being thrashed.”
“And started a war between this Wen Ho and Pylea? I don’t think so.”
Angel shrugged. “What’s the use of being a monarch—even an abdicated one—if you can’t pull rank once in a while?”
“You’ve got a point,” she said.
They found Tinseltown Galleries without much difficulty. It was tucked into a strip mall between an upscale health and nutrition shop and a Spudnuts, where they served sinfully good doughnuts made from potato. An unlikely recipe for sugary goodness, but Cordelia considered them one of the most perilous temptations around. It was with great relief—and some small disappointment—that she realized Spudnuts was closed for the night.
Cordelia had expected the dark, musty sort of place that was common in L.A., the sort of store where they sold still photographs and posters and old scripts and things. Tinseltown Galleries was far more sophisticated than that: brightly lit, with framed posters on display all over the walls and others on stands and easels set up around the showroom floor. It really was a gallery, and though most of the posters were for classic films, there were others for more recent films that must have simply been rare or misprints. She saw one for Revenge of the Jedi, which she remembered Xander once telling her had been the title of Return of the Jedi before they realized that Jedi were too honorable to get revenge. She didn’t even want to know how much they were charging for that one.
“Wow,” Angel said.
Behind the counter, a slender blond woman with trendy little glasses smiled sweetly at him. She looked like a stripper disguised as a librarian, but Cordelia figured she was probably very good for business.
“Thank you,” the woman said. “We get that a lot.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Angel replied, gazing around at the walls.
Cordelia spotted posters for Casablanca, Duck Soup, Blade Runner, North by Northwest, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Somehow she had a feeling that Angel was not going to be able to get out of this place without spending an awful lot of money.
“Angel—,” she began.
But he was not listening. He wasn’t even looking at the stripper-librarian behind the counter. His attention was on the posters, and he strolled through the gallery, smiling as he examined each of them. It struck her then that no matter how old any of these movies was, Angel was older. In the period where most of them had been made and released, he had been a tortured soul wandering the world, trying to make sense of his survival and the guilt that lay so heavy on his heart. It occurred to her that some of these movies probably meant a great deal to him.
He had paused beneath one particular poster. Cordelia walked over to him and studied it. Breezy had starred William Holden and Kay Lenz. Even though she was a student of cinema and had always wanted to be an actress, Cordelia had never heard of it.
“This was a good little movie,” Angel muttered.
“You must be thinking of something else,” the woman behind the counter said.
Angel turned to her. “I don’t think so.”
She smiled condescendingly and Cordelia wanted to slap her.
“Breezy was directed by Clint Eastwood. It hasn’t seen the light of day since its original release. The rumor is that Eastwood bought up the rights because he wasn’t happy with the film, and it’s in a vault at his production company. So you see, you aren’t nearly old enough to have seen it.”
Angel glanced at Cordelia, amusement sparkling in his eyes. “Right. Of course. Must have been something else.” Then he strode back to the woman, all business. “Listen, I’m hoping you can help me. I’m looking for a Christmas gift for a friend, but most of these are a little out of my range. He’s a big Humphrey Bogart fan, likes the things from that era. Any suggestions?”
The woman put her sales smile back on. “Well, I’m afraid that anything with Bogart is going to be comparably priced with the things you’ve looked at on the walls. Are there other actors from that period your friend enjoys?”
“The classics,” Angel said. “I’m guessing Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall—”
“Grace McCandless,” Cordelia interrupted.
The woman nodded in understanding. “Oh, yes, perfect. Grace McCandless was in a lot of those film noir pictures. She never quite made the A-list, but nearly everyone who was anyone acted with her in something.”
Cordelia smiled, revising her opinion of the woman. Anyone who called movies pictures couldn’t be all that bad. “She was one of the most underrated actresses of her era,” she told the woman.
“Absolutely elegant,” the gallery attendant replied. “You know, I think I have the perfect thing.” She came out from behind the counter and strode purposefully around the shop, examining the easels and displays with a studious frown. After a few minutes she shook her head and asked them to wait a moment while she went in the back. Barely another minute had passed before she returned with a tall, framed movie poster.
“Manhattan After Dark,” the woman said, though the title was clearly legible. “Not hugely successful, but a nice poster, and it had James Cagney and Grace McCandless. Can’t go wrong, even if he hasn’t seen the movie. It’s also about an eighth the price of any of the Bogart posters.”
Cordelia gazed at the poster, a smile spreading across her face. “Well, if Gunn doesn’t want it, I’ll take it.”
Angel glanced at her, then back to the woman. “I guess that’s a yes.” Then, as the gallery attendant brought the framed poster around behind the counter to wrap it up, he glanced at Cordelia. “If he doesn’t like it, we’ll talk.”
“Deal.”
There was a strange sort of smile on his face that Cordelia did not think she had ever seen before.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, uncomfortable. “Is there something on my face?”
“Like what?” Angel asked, turning away.
Soon enough they were back in the car and Angel drove west on South Sepulveda. It took only a few minutes to reach the Santa Monica pier, and several more to find Traeger’s Antiques. To Cordelia it looked like a hundred other shops she had seen, but there was no denying the quality of the items behind the plate-glass windows. Some places calling themselves antique stores sold just about any piece of junk somebody else wanted to get rid of. There were three or four items in the front window of Traeger’s that she would have liked to have
for her own apartment, including a beautiful lamp that she prayed would be so ridiculously expensive that it would not even be within range so she would not be tempted to spend the money.
They were inside Traeger’s for all of five minutes. Cordelia glanced around and immediately saw exactly the sort of thing she’d had in mind for Fred. She took a great deal of pleasure in Angel’s purchase of the antique because she knew how much Fred would enjoy it, and because it wasn’t her money.
The lamp was nearly eight hundred dollars. “It’s a lamp,” she said, when Mr. Traeger told her.
“Yes,” the old man had agreed with a gentle smile. “A very valuable lamp.”
Angel could have bought two antique writing tables for the price of that lamp, and still had plenty left over for Spudnuts. Cordelia had sighed and handed Traeger a business card so that he could deliver the writing table, and they had left.
Outside the shop he paused and looked at her. “Cordelia, I just wanted to say…thanks again for your help. I really couldn’t have done this without your input.”
“True,” she agreed.
But he wasn’t listening. A frown creased Angel’s forehead and lifted his chin as though he had smelled something strange.
“Hang on,” he said, then strode around behind the car.
Cordelia followed him, but Angel asked her to move over beside him while he opened the trunk. She wondered if he had something in there for her that he did not want her to see and she peeked from beside the trunk as he reached beneath the carefully packaged poster and the bag that held Wesley’s book.
When he pulled a long sword from beneath the framed poster, her eyes widened.
“Angel, what—”
But then a long shadow blotted out some of the light from the streetlamp above—a shadow with the head of an ox.
“You have incurred the wrath of Yen Lo,” a low voice rumbled.
Angel slammed the trunk and Cordelia stared over the car at Niu T’ou. The demon stood on the sidewalk, hunched over, ox-head hanging low as though he were about to charge. Apparently, whatever lies Elijah Carnegie had told him, Niu T’ou had not believed them.
“Yen Lo,” Cordelia remembered. “That was it!”
“What are you, the library police?” Angel asked.
With a roar, the demon lunged at him. Angel spun out of the way and Niu T’ou collided with the back of the convertible, caving in the rear side panel with a crunch of metal. Angel shot an elbow at the back of the demon’s head and Niu T’ou was driven down onto its belly on the trunk.
Angel swung the sword down, its keen blade gleaming under the streetlight, and hacked through the demon’s neck with a splintering of bone. Niu T’ou’s ox head fell off the back of the car, thunked off the bumper, and hit the pavement with a wet thud.
For a long moment, Angel stared down at it. At last he wiped the sword off on the demon’s pelt, then opened the trunk again and returned the blade to its hiding place there.
“Sorry,” Cordelia told the demon’s corpse. “But he bought the book as a gift.”
They got into the car and pulled away, leaving what remained of Niu T’ou for somebody else to explain. Her heart was beating rapidly as Angel drove back toward the office. No matter how many times she had dealt with the horrors the world had to offer, it still got her blood pumping.
Several minutes went by and then they were pulling into a parking lot. Cordelia glanced up in surprise, wondering how they could have gotten back so fast, thinking perhaps she had fallen asleep for a few minutes and been unaware of it.
But the apartment building that loomed up ahead of them was unfamiliar to her.
“Where are we?” she asked.
Angel’s face was expressionless. “Just one last errand. I have to pick something up. Want to come in?”
She looked around. It wasn’t the worst neighborhood, but it was quiet, and she thought it might be best not to sit in the convertible by herself.
“Why not?” she said as she climbed out.
The building was nicer on the inside than out. It had a doorman and a reception area where Angel had to go and speak to someone behind the counter before they would be allowed upstairs. It wasn’t exactly ritzy, but the apartment building was certainly classy.
They rode the elevator to the seventh floor. When the doors opened Cordelia was impressed by the décor. There were attractive paintings and potted plants all along the corridor, and the woodwork was beautiful. She followed Angel down the hall to 18J, where he knocked.
It took several moments, but eventually a voice inside told them to wait just a minute.
“Angel?” the voice asked from within. A grandmotherly voice, the voice of an old woman.
Cordelia raised an eyebrow and glanced at him curiously, but Angel ignored her.
“It’s me,” he replied.
There came the sound of the lock being drawn back, and then the door opened. The old woman who stood just over the threshold was tall and had excellent, almost regal posture despite her age. The dress she wore was simple and attractive, and though her skin was wrinkled and her shoulder-length hair pure white, she seemed quite comfortable with herself. There was a sparkle in her eye as she gazed at Angel.
“This is your friend?” the old woman asked, glancing at Cordelia.
“Yes,” Angel replied, also turning to her. “Cordelia Chase, I want to introduce you to an old friend.”
The woman laughed throatily, her hand fluttering elegantly up to touch her hair. “A very old friend,” she said. And then she put out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Chase. I’m Grace McCandless.”
Cordelia felt herself go numb. She stared at the woman, speechless, and then her gaze shot toward Angel before returning to the well-lined face of one of the greatest actresses of a bygone age.
“But, how…I don’t…” She turned to Angel again. “You know Grace McCandless!”
But it was the old woman who replied. “He was kind to me once, a very long time ago. I’ve never forgotten.” For a moment her eyes went to Angel and lingered upon his face a moment, a wistful smile appearing upon her lips as she remembered events that must have happened many decades before Cordelia was even born.
Then Grace McCandless turned her attention back to Cordelia. “Angel tells me that you’re an actress, Miss Chase, and that you’ve been growing discouraged of late. If you’d like, I’d be pleased if you’d come in and join me for a cup of tea, and we can chat for a little while.”
Cordelia stared at her again and then, at last, she felt herself able to respond. “I’d love that, Ms. McCandless. You have no idea.”
The elderly actress stepped back from the door, and Cordelia walked into her apartment. She paused once she was inside, though, and looked back at Angel. He had remained in the hallway.
“You had this planned all along? Before the thing with the poster?”
Angel only shrugged.
“You’re not coming in?” Cordelia asked.
“I want to get back. Grace and I caught up earlier,” he explained. “Take a taxi home when you’re through. On me.” Angel glanced past her at Grace. “You two have fun, okay?”
Then he smiled at Cordelia one final time.
“Merry Christmas.”
9 P.M.
It can Happen to You
by Scott and Denise Ciencin
The darkness was listening to him.
A crazy thought, Wesley knew, but he felt it strong and clear as he drifted down a lonely street near the hotel, a cool wind caressing him, the pale moon and twinkling stars above battling to penetrate the thick layer of smog that smothered Los Angeles. Head down, hands in his pockets, he shied away from yet another amber pool of light hammering at him from a well-meaning streetlamp and hugged the shadows near an unlit pawn shop window.
Something glittered between the rusted bars that protected the storefront, seducing Wesley’s gaze, arresting his desire to take another step toward the hotel. Drawing closer to the display win
dow, he saw a beguiling statuette rising majestically from the bric-a-brac. According to the little tag that drooped over the engraving on the figurine’s base, obscuring any other details, it was an Academy Award from the 1930s.
Fitting, Wesley thought bitterly. Tarnished Hollywood gold, a symbol of dreams and victories that meant so much one day, and virtually nothing the next. Yes, indeed, the darkness was listening to him. It heard the gale-force winds of conflict blasting through his mind, it knew the decision he had to make and how little time he had to do so, and it was offering comfort the only way it knew how: by directing him to this site, proudly proclaiming the pointlessness of it all.
Why feel down, why fret? the darkness asked. Especially when it all amounts to nothing in the end…
A woman’s scream shattered the night. Wesley spun in the direction of the cry and saw movement in a dark alley across the street. The piercing scream came again, but this time Wesley was in motion, flying in front of an oncoming car, ignoring the squeal of brakes and the angry honking, soaring up the sidewalk, darting into the darkness.
The shadows swallowed him whole and the screaming stopped. A single step forward and Wesley heard a crunch of glass beneath his shoe. He froze. Looking up, he dimly made out the remains of a shattered light moored near the roof of the building to his right.
Damn, he thought, staring ahead into the alley, the street at his back, picturing a pair of thieves—or something worse—crouched in the alley’s darkness, about to make their move against the foolhardy do-gooder they had lured to the “rescue.” Two beams of blinding light suddenly tore through the darkness, shredding the shadows, burning twin suns into Wesley’s brain. A car’s headlights. And beyond the glare, the dim forms of a big car and two figures registered despite the sea of stars stabbing at Wesley’s field of vision.
Wesley turned to run—and froze at the sight of two college-age guys in bulky dark coats racing toward him from the street. They were as tall as Wesley and built like linebackers. What had he been cornered by? Demons? Vampires?