by Nancy Holder
Cordelia rammed the car in front of hers and said testily, “Why do they park so dam close to you?” She smiled at Buffy. “You up for this?”
They had dressed like they were up to this: Cordy in a very cool ice-blue Chinese satin dress, Buffy in black spaghetti straps and an extremely short skirt. Apparently, Buffy had not done the weird thing with her hair.
She hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea.”
“Me, too,” Cordelia enthused. “Let’s do it!” She plastered on her Doctor Debbi face and got out of the car.
Buffy hesitated.
“Come on,” Cordelia commanded. She might as well have snapped her fingers.
They got out. Cordelia led the invasion. Buffy brought up the rear.
* * *
Buffy had always imagined that a fraternity house would be a dump, with guy stuff all over the place, posters of the Budweiser girls, that kind of thing. But the Delta Zeta Kappa house was more like the well-furnished home of a rich family. There was partying going on, that was for sure, loud music and the tinkle of ice cubes and what she supposed were typical frat touches: the waiters were apparently new frat brothers, forced to run around in their underwear or girls’ underwear and full makeup, with signs around their necks that read, Pledge.
The other guys looked rich and the other girls were very pretty, no hussies need apply.
As she and Cordelia breezed in like they knew what they were doing and where they were going, a big guy with a thick neck and dark hair guzzled a huge stein of beer and looked them over with lust in his heart. He elbowed his compadre, a guy with a blond buzz job, and said, “Beaucoup babes.”
“Yaaaah!” his pal agreed.
Buffy and Cordelia made it to a far corner of the room before they took stock. Buffy leaned uncomfortably against some wood paneling while Cordelia stood up straight and smiled as eagerly and sincerely as a flight attendant ready to collect boarding passes.
“You know what’s so cool about college?” Cordelia told Buffy. “The diversity. You’ve got rich people and you’ve got all the other people.” She perked up. “Richard!”
He of the very white teeth approached with a drink for each of them. “Welcome, ladies,” he said.
“Thank you,” Cordelia answered. Buffy said nothing.
Richard toasted them and drank. Cordelia did the same.
Buffy wasn’t so sure about this whole deal. “Uh, is there alcohol in this?”
Richard was comforting. “Just a smidge.”
“Come on, Buffy,” Cordelia urged. “It’s just a smidge.”
“I’ll just…” Buffy set her drink down.
“I understand,” Richard said. “When I was your age, I wasn’t into grown-up things, either.”
Buffy looked down miserably and played with her hands.
“Have you see our multimedia room?” Richard asked.
Wearing her “really-listening, ha-ha” face, Cordelia said in one long run-on sentence, “The one with the cheery walnut paneling and the two forty-eight inch televisions on satellite feed? No. You want to show me?”
They headed off, Richard gesturing to Buffy. “What about—”
“She’s happiest by herself,” Cordelia replied.
Ditched, Buffy watched them go. What had she expected?
She looked around nervously, a little enviously, at all the couples. Everybody had somebody. This had so been an error in judgment.
For he is the Pink Panther, and all other panthers must bow before him.
* * *
Xander found an open window, climbed inside, and tumbled into the frat house. He bobbed up just in time to lean across a small wet bar and pluck a drink off a passing tray. Said tray was being carried by some poor schmuck charging around in his underwear and a big baby bib, with the obligatory Pledge sign around his neck. There was another one of them across the room in a black bustier forced to parade with a tray of drinks, and for what? So they could link into the old-boy network and get some dumb, meaningless job that brought in a million dollars a year?
Speaking of linking into, Xander knew he was going to pass muster in his red polo shirt and khakis. Most of the guys were wearing shirts and ties, true, but a few were natty and cazh, like him.
He grabbed a drink and joined the party, smiling at girls, smiling at food.
* * *
Alone again, still. Naturally.
Her back to the main dance area, Buffy played with her hands, turned back in the direction of her drink, picked it up, and put it back. She wished she matched the wallpaper. Not that there was wallpaper. Okay, then, she wished that her dress was a charming shade of Navajo White.
Couples danced closely together. Lots of couples. Guys and girls were meeting, smiling, talking. This party was a very lonely place to be if you were lonely.
Then, across the room, a guy who was pretty much of a honey smiled at her and raised his glass to her, looking very serious, like he thought she looked good. Cool. She picked her drink back up, did the toasting thing, and took a very small sip. Whoa. Way strong.
Then the thick-necked, dark-haired guy of “beaucoup babes” fame started making like he was going to dance all the way over to her. As she watched, wide-eyed, he got his mojo workin’. “New girl! Come on, sweetheart! Dance! Ahhhyeeahh,” he yelled as he barreled toward her.
She looked left and right for a polite avenue of escape—you did not kickbox intruders into submission at frat parties, she guessed. Just as the guy was about to land on her, Tom wrapped a hand around Buffy’s upper arm and pulled her out of the end zone.
“May I have this dance?” he asked.
He ushered her to the dance floor as the guy broke on through to the other side.
Then Tom pulled her into his arms, and they slow-danced.
“Thanks for—” Buffy began.
“No. We’re not all a bunch of drunken louts,” Tom said apologetically. “Some of us are sober louts.” He smiled and glanced down shyly. “I’m really glad that you decided to come.” He waited a beat, then bent his knees and peered into her eyes. “And you’re not.”
She sighed and smiled tightly. “No. It’s just… I shouldn’t be here.”
“Because you’re seeing someone,” he finished for her.
“No.”
“You’re not seeing someone?”
It was painful even to say. “Someone’s not seeing me.”
“So why shouldn’t you be here?” he pressed.
Where to begin? “Because I have obligations, people that I’m responsible for … or to … or with.” She shrugged and laughed uneasily. “It’s complicated.”
“You’re big on responsibility. I like that. But there’s such a thing as being too mature. You should relax and enjoy yourself once in a while.”
Buffy looked at him curiously. “You think I’m too mature?”
He laughed at himself. “I talk too much. Have you picked up on that yet? Anyway, the Hulk is gone so you don’t have to dance with me—”
He started to step back. She didn’t let him go, putting his arm back around her as she said, “He might come back.”
He regarded her seriously. She got a little closer, and they danced like two normal people digging on each other on a normal night at a normal party.
* * *
Xander was impressing the hell out of them. He grabbed two crab claws off a tray and waved them in the air, announcing, in his best Japanese accent, “Godzilla is attacking downtown Tokyo! Argh! Argh!”
The two babe-types laughed.
The king of comedy. Xander reigned supreme.
* * *
There were others who were not so amused. Richard stood with two of his frat brothers, a large one with dark hair and a large one with a short blond buzz job.
The dark-haired one said, “Who’s this dork?”
“Never saw him before in my life,” Richard drawled.
“We got us a crasher.” The guy with the buzz job was delighted.
Richard smiled unpleasantly. Unpleasant things could happen to uninvited guests. And they would. He would see to that.
The three fraternity brothers moved toward Xander.
* * *
Xander asked the two hotties, “So have you seen a pair of girls here? One of them is about so high—” He measured off to the tip of Buffy’s sweet blond head.
Three guys surrounded him. One of them was Cordelia’s Beemer Boy. Xander said, “Hey, guys,” with as much innocent pleasantry as he could muster.
One of the other guys, with dark hair and no neck, shouted, “New pledge!”
“New pledge!” said the third guy, this one with short blond hair.
They hooked their arms under his shoulders and began to drag him away. Everyone else started laughing and chanting, “New pledge!” moving in on Xander until he was lost, literally, in a crowd of rich guys with beers and attitudes.
So not a great place to be.
* * *
Buffy wandered outside to get some air. The party was happening. She was not.
Something crunched beneath her shoe.
She bent down. It was a shard of glass.
She straightened and looked up at the second story. A door was boarded over with slats that looked hastily nailed into place.
“You okay?” Tom asked, joining her.
Startled, she whirled around, dropping the piece of glass. “Yeah. I was just… thinking.”
They were pumping up the volume inside. Richard the Smarmy strolled out, a little tipsy, and handed Buffy and Tom each a drink. He clinked their glasses with his own.
“To my Argentinean junk bonds, which just matured in double digits!”
He held up his glass and guzzled down the contents.
Tom gave Buffy a look and said, “To … maturity.” He raised his glass.
“What the hell,” Buffy said. She chug-a-lugged the whole darn thing, taking Tom by surprise. Good. “I’m tired of being mature.”
Tom smiled.
So did Richard.
* * *
As usual, Willow and Giles were pulling night duty doing scary-factor research in the library. Willow didn’t mind. Before Buffy came along, she had spent most of her nights doing homework, surfing the Net, or watching other, cooler people have more fun than she and Xander at the Bronze.
Willow held the bracelet Buffy had found and typed various combinations of E, N, T into the computer to see if anything clueful popped up.
Willow continued, “Bent.”
Giles suggested, “Sent.”
Willow: “Rent”
Giles: “Lent.”
Willow: “Kent.” Bong! Connection made. “Kent! That’s it!”
Giles said, “Her boyfriend’s name is Kent?”
Willow was on a roll. Her fingers flew. “No. Kent Preparatory School. Just outside town. That’s where I’ve seen these bracelets.”
Giles leaned in toward her and looked at the monitor screen. “What are you doing?”
“Pulling up their school newsletter for the last few months, to see if there’s anything about—”
“A missing girl,” Giles finished, as he and Willow looked together at a front page of the Kent School News. Above a photo of a young, pretty girl, blared the headline, CALLIE, OUR HEARTS AND PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU.
* * *
I’m doing this for Buffy, I’m doing this for Buffy, Xander thought, as he both scanned for his pal and, as an added bonus, allowed himself to be totally humiliated before a cast of at least four dozen.
The jerkwater fratboys had grabbed his head and puckered up his lips. They were smearing lipstick, in a shade that was so terribly wrong for him, all over his mouth. His shirt was gone and he was wearing a bra that would have dwarfed even Dolly Parton. He wore a gray silk skirt.
“Come on, dance, pretty boy!” said the guy with the short blond hair. Xander swayed lamely from side to side. “Come on, shake it! Don’t break it!” They were swatting him with paddles, even the girls who had laughed at his Godzilla routine.
It was getting to be a bit much and he couldn’t see Buffy, so he said, unsmiling, “Okay, big fun. Who’s next?”
He started to walk away, but the dark-haired guy with no neck grabbed him and smashed a long, curly blond wig on his head. “You are, doll-face. Keep on dancing.” He whirled him around.
The guy with the blond buzz job started twisting the night way.
“Dance, stranger,” he said, laughing.
Xander danced.
I’m doing this for Buffy.
* * *
Either something was terribly wrong with her, or Buffy was a world-class lightweight when it came to drinking.
She could barely see the spinning room as it shifted and pitched. Some guy with long blond hair was dancing with his back to her in a bra and half slip.
She mumbled, “Tom?” but no one answered.
Weaving, she found some stairs and headed up them, bobbing like a cork on the ocean. Down a hall, she pushed open a door and stumbled into someone. She slurred, “Oh, sorry,” then realized it was a dresser or a statue, or something. Whatever.
She looked across the room and saw a big, inviting bed. Yes. She minced across the room and climbed onto it.
“Okay. Nice bed. Just need to stop spinning for a…”
She lay down, completely out of it.
* * *
Richard opened the door and crept toward the sleeping girl. She lay on her side. He rolled her over onto her back and trailed his fingers across her skin.
Someone grabbed him and threw him against the wall. It was Tom, who said angrily, “Get away from her.”
Richard frowned. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
Tom glared at him. “I saw what you were doing.”
“I just wanted to have a little fun,” Richard argued.
Tom said in a menacing voice, “Well, she’s not here for your fun, you pervert! She’s here for the pleasure of the One we serve.”
Richard slid his glance to the side and said obediently, “In His name.”
“And that goes for the other one, too,” Tom ordered him.
They both turned and looked at the inert form of the little blond’s friend, Richard’s “date,” Cordelia. She was propped between the nightstand and the bed where the blond—was her name Buffy? Did it matter?—lay unconscious.
CHAPTER 3
In the library, Giles read a printout of the Kent School News.
“Callie Megan Anderson … missing for over a week. No one’s seen her, no one knows what happened to her,” he said.
“This being Sunnydale and all,” Willow observed, “I guess we can rule out something good.”
That must have activated Giles’s sense of Slayer duty, for he thought a moment, reached for the phone, and announced, “I’m calling Buffy.”
“No!” Willow shouted.
He looked confused. “Why not?”
Stay calm, think fast, Willow told herself. “Because Buffy and her mother—”
“Are sick,” Giles finished. “You’re right. We shouldn’t disturb them until we know more.”
More, Willow thought. Oh, no, not more. “You mean like if there are others?” Because there were, lots of others, scrolling up the screen.
“Brittany Oswald, junior at St. Michael’s, disappeared a year ago. So did Kelly Percell, sophomore at Grant.”
“A year,” Giles said, musing, as he read over her shoulder.
“Almost to the day.”
Giles’s neural net was making its clever Giles connections. She could see it in his eyes. “An anniversary. Or perhaps some other event significant to the killer.”
Willow ascended shrill mode. “Killer? Now there’s a killer? We don’t know there’s a—”
“No. But this being Sunnydale and all…”
Her own words, back to haunt her. “Gulp.”
“We need to know where Buffy found that bracelet, and then we can begin a search from there.”
Giles again reached for the phone.
Willow said quickly. “Good idea. Call Angel.” Giles looked at her. She was working overtime; the last time she’d covered so thoroughly for anyone had been in the fifth grade, when she’d played lookout so a bunch of girls could smoke in the bathroom. Now she’d graduated to lying about frat parties. Prison was surely next. “He was there when Buffy found it. We’re gonna need all the help we can get.”
It must have made sense. This time she said nothing as he picked up the phone.
* * *
The party was over. The drunken stragglers were stumbling out. Xander, still attired as Sunnydale’s answer to Demi Moore in one or several of her films, got shown the door by his old friends, dark-haired frat boy and blond-haired frat boy. They threw him his clothes and started to shut the door.
“Party’s over, jerkwater,” the blond frat boy said, laughing.
Xander said, “Wait. A friend of mine was here.’
Dark-haired frat boy paused, gave him the onceover. “You know, in all that light, with the wig ana all”—he let the thought hang as he gave Xander a mock admiring glance—“you’re still butt ugly.”
He and his good buddy chortled at this most awesome display of rapier wit as they slammed the door in Xander’s face. Fuming, Xander dropped his clothes onto the porch and whipped off the bra and wig.
* * *
The party was over.
It had served its purpose, and now it was time to fulfill the promise.
A male figure, stripped to the waist, knelt before the dark pit. His upper body was a mass of raised diamond-shaped scars. The others, robed and hooded, kept a respectful distance.
A cup and a sword rested on the edge of the pit Richard slowly carried the sword over to the kneeling figure. Holding it very formally, he began to slice into the figure’s back.
The pain was cleansing; the pain was good.
In His name …
* * *
Cordelia had just come to. Chained to the rock wall, she was filled with fear as she looked at Buffy, who was also chained and who had been awake for some time. Buffy was taking in everything as furiously as she could: strength of bonds, possible escape routes, number of rich guys’ butts to kick.