by Nancy Holder
Arm in arm, Slayer and Watcher left the pit.
EPILOGUE
It was the Bronze. It was night.
It was a short, eager freshman, who said, “C’mon, c’mon,” to the coffee-making person as the cappuccino machine fizzed and spit. “Hurry up.”
Then everything was ready, and he scurried off, bearing gifts—a frothy cup and a plate with a muffin on it—to Queen Cordelia, who looked at him with utter disdain.
“Thank you, Jonathon,” she said, giving him the regal eye. “Did we forget something?”
He glanced down worriedly, and muttered, “Cinnamon, chocolate, half-caff, non-fat.” Then it came to him: “Extra foam!”
She plucked the muffin off the plate and gave him a series of well-go-get-it flicks of her hand. He whisked the coffee away.
Cordelia walked over to the table where Willow, Buffy, and Xander sat. Xander was reading the Sunnydale Press.
“Young men,” Cordelia drawled. “The only way to go.” She strolled off.
Xander told the others, “It says here they’ll all get consecutive life sentences. Investigators found bones of the missing girls in a huge cavern beneath the frat house, and older bones dating back fifty years.”
Xander continued reading. “A surprising number of corporations whose chairmen and founders are former Delta Zeta Kappas are suffering falling profits, IRS raids, and suicides in the board room.” He quipped, “Starve a snake, lose a fortune. Well, I guess the rich really are different, huh.”
Willow said to Buffy, “Have you heard from Angel?”
Buffy shook her head. She almost added, Of course not.
Willow leaned toward her intently. “When he got so mad about you being in danger and changed into … grrrr,” she flashed an expression of intense vampire anger as interpreted by a mild-mannered compubrain, “it was the most amazing thing I ever saw. I mean, how many guys can—”
Xander frowned as he kept reading the paper. Then he looked at Willow. “Angel, Angel, Angel. Does every conversation always have to come around to that freak?”
Emerging from the shadows, Angel walked up to the table. Buffy’s heart skipped a beat. Xander said, “Hey, man, how ya doin’?” without a trace of embarrassment that Angel had heard him.
Angel looked at Buffy. “Buffy,” he said.
She took a breath. “Angel.”
“Xander,” Xander said sarcastically, maybe hiding a little bit of hurt feelings. Maybe not. Buffy wasn’t sure there was much hiding going on.
Angel looked straight at her, and she tingled down to the soles of her feet. “I hear this place serves coffee.”
Coffee . . .
“Thought maybe you and I should get some.”
He was asking her on a date!
She didn’t respond. She would make him say it, all of it. She would make him eat his words.
“Sometime,” he added.
She still kept her face a mask.
“If you want,” he finished.
And with the tingling came the triumph. Okay, maybe she was a freak who staked vampires when everybody else was gabbing on the phone about their boyfriends. Maybe she was a mess half the time he saw her, from punching out demons and fighting the forces of darkness. Maybe she would never be homecoming queen in this town.
But Angel wanted to have coffee with her.
“Yeah,” she said, savoring the sweet, sweet moment.
Angel brightened. He looked happy—and relieved.
“Sometime,” she went on. “I’ll let you know.”
She got up, slid off her stool, and started walking.
* * *
Willow looked at Angel and Xander. They both wore slightly amazed expressions tinged with respect. She liked that. Respect was good. Buffy deserved it. A lot of it.
* * *
He asked me out, Buffy thought. He wants to date me.
She walked on into the night, head high.
Her smile grew.
THE THIRD CHRONICLE:
LIE TO ME
PROLOGUE
Playgrounds at night are lonely places. Children should not be left in them.
Bad things can happen.
Awash in eerie moonglow, the little merry-go-round turned slowly. The swings rocked, as if gently pushed by the night wind.
Eight-year-old James sat inside the jungle gym and looked out over the park for his family’s minivan. At home, it was warm and cozy; his older sister was probably catching up on her Melrose Place reruns while something good cooked for dinner.
“Come on, Mom,” he said, half-angry, half-anxious. “She’s always late.” She was always after him to be home by dark. But when she was supposed to pick him up, where was she?
“Are you lost?” asked a voice.
James turned, startled but not scared. It was a very pretty lady in a long white dress. Her skin was almost as white as her dress. She had a funny smile on her lips and she seemed to have trouble walking. James wondered if she was hurt.
“No, my mom’s just supposed to pick me up, is all,” he told her, climbing out of the jungle gym to face her.
“Do you want me to walk you home?” She talked funny, too. Like the bad guys on the cartoons.
“No, thank you,” he said politely.
The lady walked closer to the jungle gym and started slowly around, running her long, white fingers along the bars. Now she was a little closer, and now James was just a little bit nervous.
He walked around the other way. Her eyes looked funny. Like she wasn’t really seeing him.
“My mummy used to sing me to sleep at night. ‘Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.’ She had the sweetest voice.” She closed her eyes and smiled.
Okay, now he was getting scared. Now he was starting to figure out that this lady was maybe kind of cuckoo, running around in what looked like her nightgown with no sweater and not minding the cold.
And now she was staring at him. “What will your mummy sing when they find your body?”
He didn’t understand what she meant, but he understood that he should do something to protect himself. He began to inch away from her. “I’m not supposed to talk to people,” he told her.
She looked at him like you do when you watch someone eat something you really want. “Well, I’m not a person, see,” she began, coming toward him as he kept moving away, “so that’s just—”
A dark figure stepped between James and the lady. James jerked back, looking up to see the face of a man. The man looked so angry he almost frightened James worse than the lady.
So when he said, “Run home,” James did. As fast as his legs could go.
And he never played in that park again.
* * *
Angel made sure the boy was safe. Then he took a moment before he turned to face the child’s attacker.
As he did, her pale face lit up. He had known it would. And he hated himself for it.
“My Angel,” she said in her breathy, singsong voice. The voice of madness.
“Hello, Drusilla.” He felt no similar joy on seeing her. Only guilt and the perpetual remorse that, thanks to the Romani curse, haunted his nights and plagued his days.
She and Spike had burst upon Sunnydale a few months before. He wasn’t certain what had drawn them here. Both had personal scores to settle with him, Angel, but it was clear they had moved in for the long haul. After Buffy had killed the Master the previous spring, the vampires turned to the Anointed One as their leader. But Spike had shoved the demonic little boy into a wire cage and allowed the daylight to burn him to a cinder.
Drusilla glided slowly toward him, a sad, starved wraith. She looked very ill. “Do you remember the song Mummy used to sing me? Pretty.”
He could not meet her gaze. “I remember,” Angel said, his tone flat and low as all the awful images ran through his mind.
“Yes. You do,” she said pointedly, and he was certain her mind was filled with their joined past as well.
“Drusilla, leave here.” He looked at her hard, wanting very badly for her to listen to him. “I’m offering you that chance. Take Spike and get out.”
“Or you’ll hurt me?” She was not afraid.
He looked down again. He hated seeing her like this. Hated seeing what she had become.
“No. No, you can’t. Not anymore.” A whisper of a smile crossed her face. Did she mean that he was incapable of hurting her now that he had gotten back his soul, or that the wounds he had inflicted on her ran so deep she could not be hurt worse?
“If you don’t leave,” he said, “it’ll go badly. For all of us.”
“My dear boy’s gone all away, hasn’t he? To her.” She was mournful.
“Who?” Angel asked, wary, alert.
* * *
It was a wet night. Rainwater glistened between the illuminated plastic skylights that bulged like loaves of bread on the rooftop where Buffy patrolled.
* * *
“The girl. The Slayer,” Drusilla said. “Your heart stinks of her.” She put her hand on Angel’s chest, caressing him. “Poor little thing. She has no idea what’s in store.”
* * *
Buffy came to the edge of the roof and peered down over a playground. Hunting ground, more like. Vampires congregated here—
She froze.
Angel was standing with a pretty girl with long, black hair. Though his back was to Buffy, she would recognize Angel’s dark hair and well-cut jacket anywhere. The girl wore a long, white dress, and she was in his arms. Buffy watched, shocked. Were they kissing?
* * *
“This can’t go on, Drusilla,” Angel said. “It’s got to end.”
“Oh, no, my pet.” She leaned in close, as if taking in his essence. In Angel’s ear, she whispered, “This is just the beginning.”
She drifted back into the night.
With fierce sorrow, he watched her go.
* * *
So did Buffy.
Near tears.
CHAPTER 1
Another morning and Sunnydale was still on the map.
Another morning at Sunnydale High, and not only was Giles still alive and researching, but he was also accompanying Jenny Calendar, resident computer science teacher and techno-pagan, down the stairs.
“It’s a secret,” she was saying.
Giles pressed, “What kind of secret?”
“The kind that’s secret. You know, where I don’t actually tell you what it is.” She grinned at him. He knew she found him highly amusing. As Xander Harris might put it, That was a plus.
He was not to be put off. “I just think it’s customary that when two people are going out of an evening, that they both have an idea what they’re doing.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs and turned right. He was on his way to the library, and she to the lair of that dread horde of demonic machines known as computers.
“Oh, come on!” she chided him gently. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
He tried another tack. “But, I… how will I know what to wear?”
She wryly took in his appearance. “Do you own anything else?”
“Not as such,” he admitted.
She chuckled. “Rupert, you’re going to have to trust me.”
“All right.” He surrendered. “I put myself in your hands.”
She walked past him with a teasing smile on her face. “That sounds like fun.” Grinning, she turned as she walked away not to the computer laboratory but to one of the exit doors. “Okay. Seven-thirty, tomorrow night?”
He was still processing the comment about her hands and fun with a pleased expression on his face. “Yes.”
* * *
Buffy waited a beat as Giles and Ms. Calendar finished their goo-goo eyes session. Some people were doing well in the romance department. That was nice. For Giles, especially nice.
She came up to him and said, “Hey.”
They began to walk together toward the library. He asked her, “Did we hunt last night?”
“I did a couple of quick sweeps downtown.”
“Any encounters?”
She hesitated. There was no need to tell him, was there? Angel meeting girls on the sly had nothing to do with the forces of darkness. Uncomfortable, she said, “Nothing vampiry.”
“Well, I’ve been researching your friend Spike. The profile is fairly unappetizing. But I still haven’t got a bead on why he’s here.”
Buffy could barely keep her mind on the conversation. Spike. Right. Major bad vampire, new in town. She kept seeing Angel with that girl. She said, “You’ll figure it out.”
“Are you all right?” Giles peered at her. “You seem a little glum.”
“I’m fine.”
He was clearly not convinced. “Well, why don’t you take the night off?”
“Oh, that’d be nice,” she told him sincerely.
They were at the library with its porthole windows. Giles brightened as if happy to please her. “Yes. You could spend some time with Angel.”
That hurt. Of course, Giles didn’t know it hurt. “I don’t know,” Buffy said, downcast. “He might have other plans.”
Sadly, she walked away.
* * *
In history, they were apparently discussing the French Revolution, but Buffy barely listened.
“Well, it seems like Louis XVI was just sort of a weak king,” someone said.
The teacher responded, “Well, that’s fair enough. Any other impressions?”
Buffy unfolded Willow’s note and read, Do you know who she was?
In the row ahead of them, Xander sat next to Cordelia, who was actually participating.
“I just don’t see why everyone is always picking on Marie Antoinette,” Cordelia said. “I can so relate to her. She worked really hard to look that good. And people just don’t appreciate that kind of effort.”
Xander looked at her with his wry Xander polite stare.
Buffy wrote, No. Dark hair. Old dress. Pretty. She folded the note and handed it back to Willow.
Cordelia was still busily defending the French monarchy, based on its fashion sense. “And I know, the peasants were all depressed.”
Xander offered, “I think you mean, ‘oppressed.’ ”
“Whatever.” Clearly she didn’t want to be interrupted or corrected. “They were cranky. So they’re like, ‘Let’s lose some heads.’ That’s fair? And Marie Antoinette cared about them. She was going to let them have cake!”
Their teacher said politely as Xander stared, “Yes, well, that’s a very interesting perspective.”
Willow scribbled on the note and handed it back to Buffy. Buffy opened it.
Vampire?
The bell rang. Everyone rose and gathered their books. Buffy turned to Willow as they walked into the hall and said, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. They seemed pretty friendly.”
Xander caught up with them, ready for gossip. “Who’s friendly?”
“No one,” Buffy replied.
“Angel and a girl,” Willow filled in.
“Will, do we have to be in total share mode?” Buffy asked, giving her a look.
“Hey, it’s me,” Xander reminded her. “If Angel’s doing something wrong I need to know.” He smiled. “ ’Cause it gives me a happy.”
“I’m glad someone has a happy,” Buffy said, not nappily.
They walked into the lounge, hallowed hall of studying and extreme conversing.
“Aw, you just need cheering up. And I know just the thing.” He hummed some funky music as he pumped his arms and swiveled his hips. “Crazed dance party at the Bronze!”
Buffy sighed. “I don’t know.”
Xander restrained himself with a few sways. “Very calm dance party at the Bronze.”
He sat next to Willow in a chair. “Moping at the Bronze.”
Someone said behind Buffy, “I’d suggest a box of Oreos dunked in apple juice, but maybe she’s over that phase.”
She’d know
that voice anywhere. Buffy whirled around. “Ford?” She threw her arms around the tall, dark-haired boy. “Ford!”
He hugged her back. “Hey, Summers, how you been?”
This was neat. “What are you doing here?”
“Matriculating.”
She had no idea what he meant. “Huh?”
“I’m finishing out my senior year at Sunnydale High. Dad got transferred.”
“This is great,” Buffy said, getting a happy of her own.
Ford looked kind of shy. She remembered his long bangs and his angular face. They used to joke that he looked like the hero of a dozen Japanese anime cartoons. “I’m glad you think so. I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”
“Remember you? Duh, we were in school together for seven years. You were my giant fifth-grade crush.”
“So. You two know each other?” Xander cut in.
“Oh!” Buffy looked at her two friends. Holding Ford’s hand, she led him to the chairs where her two best friends—correction, best friends from Sunnydale—sat waiting to be introduced, and said, “I’m sorry. This is Ford. Uh, Billy Fordham. This is Xander and Willow.” She pointed at them in turn.
“Hi,” Xander said with one of his polite, fake smiles that sometimes accompanied Cordelia’s history rambles.
“Hey,” Ford replied.
“Nice to meet you.” Willow smiled very sweetly.
“Ford and I went to Hemery together, in L.A.” Buffy smiled at Ford bigtime. “And now you’re here? For real?”
“Dad got the transfer, and boom. He just dragged me out of Hemery and put me down here.”
“This is great!” She gazed up at him, remembering more normal days. Fifth grade had been way before she’d known she was the Slayer. Before her parents started fighting and eventually split up. He was a symbol of all that, and it made her feel warm inside to have him standing next to her. “Well, I mean, it’s hard—sudden move, all your friends, delicate time, very emotional—but let’s talk about me: this is great!”
Willow said, “So you two were sweeties in the fifth grade?”
“Not even,” Buffy told her. She looked at him slyly. “Ford wouldn’t give me the time of day.”