by Nancy Holder
Buffy liked. “There’s not much more, really,” she said. “After the penguin melted . . .”
• • •
He looked like a slender Santa Claus as he window-shopped his way along Sunnydale’s Main Street. The man had white hair, thick and wavy, and a matching white beard that was bushy and big, but still neatly styled. He had an air of self-importance, but without any hostility or arrogance; he nodded politely at passersby and consistently yielded the right of way to women and children. He wore a nicely tailored suit and an open-necked dress shirt that looked like silk, and Amanda Hoch was certain that his Italian loafers cost more than she could earn in a year.
Amanda was in full regalia herself. She was wearing her favorite black outfit and silver accessories, with a fresh purple rinse in her hair and her skin painstakingly paled with cosmetics. She stood in the entranceway alcove of the Magic Box, where she worked, sucking down the last of a clove cigarette. It was only Amanda’s fifth week in Sunnydale (her second week on the job), and she was still getting the lay of the land. She watched approaching strangers the same way she did most things in this town: with wary suspicion.
Even seen from a distance, the man appeared entirely too genial and pleasant. She didn’t like people who smiled easily, or who seemed so at home in the bright sunlight. She had a cultivated fondness for dark things and shadows, which was why she’d applied for the part-time job at the Magic Box. So far, however, the gig was a disappointment, like so much of her life. She spent most of her eight poorly compensated hours a day selling tacky items to New Age wannabes and Wiccan poseurs, who were surprisingly plentiful in the local population. At least the white-haired guy didn’t look like he was another one of those.
He was headed for the Magic Box, though. Just in time, Amanda dropped the cigarette butt and ground it beneath one booted foot. She opened the door and stepped aside so that the potential customer could enter.
“Thank you, miss,” the stranger said, taking the door and waving her in. His voice was warm and gentle, in an accent as Italian as his loafers. “I’d like to look around a bit.”
“Make yourself at home,” Amanda said as she returned to her station at the cash register. In seconds she was engrossed in her magazine again, though not so engrossed that she didn’t glance occasionally in the man’s direction. The Magic Box had some pricey wares, after all. Little things that fit easily into pockets. The well-heeled bearded man didn’t look like a shoplifter, but you never could tell.
The place was new to him. Amanda could tell that, even with her brief tenure. The stranger browsed the Magic Box’s merchandise like an explorer, giving each shelf and display a cursory glance before moving on to the next. He touched little but leaned close to read book spines and jar labels. He was working his way along the bins of herbs when he finally broke the silence.
“A surprisingly well-stocked establishment,” he said. “It seems out of place in a town like this.”
“Sunnydale is full of surprises,” Amanda said sourly, still trying to read. Despite herself, she continued, “You would not believe some of the things I’ve heard about since I got here. I sure don’t.”
“Ah,” the man said, “you’re a newcomer?”
Amanda nodded. Despite her initial distaste for his general manner, she found herself warming to him. “A little more than a month,” she said. “My grandmother needed some live-in help with my grandfather.”
“I thought so,” the man said, smiling again. “I didn’t think you were from around here.”
“The look, you mean?” Amanda asked. She waggled black-nailed fingers and flashed a smile, black-lipped and brief.
There were other Goths in Sunnydale, but not so many that Amanda didn’t cause comment. That was one reason she refused to give up the look, despite her grandmother’s pleas. Her appearance was a statement, a demonstration of individuality and rebellion. Amanda liked standing out in a white-bread world.
“It was the dialect, actually,” the man said. He stood next to the shop’s main cabinet now, where high-ticket items hid behind locked glass. “New Jersey,” he continued. “Paramus, I think.”
Amanda was impressed. “Wow. How did you know that?”
“Dialect. Regional variations in a language, specifically word choices and pronunciations,” the man said. He gestured at the locked case. “I wonder if I might see the crystals?”
Usually Amanda disliked fooling with the display case. Not this time, though—not for this customer. She dug out the keys, knelt, and worked the lock. “I thought I had an accent,” Amanda said.
The crystals he’d indicated were square cut and five in number. They rested on a black velvet presentation board. Amanda took the board from the case and set it on the display case’s top so that he could inspect them.
He looked, but didn’t touch. They glinted slightly as he eyed them. “No,” he said. “Accents are when two languages impact on one another. You speak with a distinctive dialect, my dear; I have an accent.”
It was precisely the sort of mini-lecture that Amanda had always found irritating in the extreme, but somehow the white-haired man made the information sound interesting, even useful. Wanting to repay the favor, she read from the card that accompanied the crystals.
“Latverian Spirit Stones,” she read aloud. “Premier quality, certified. They respond to human psycho-etheric potentials.” She’d never had to show the gems closely before, and she stumbled over some of the words. The instructions on how to use the things were clear enough, though.
Amanda took one stone in her hand. It was as slick as water against her skin. In the crystal’s depths, the slight glint of a moment before became something brighter, a spark that danced and shone brightly. The stone’s surface remained perfectly cool.
“Wow,” Amanda said. She’d never thought any of the stuff in the Magic Box would actually work. She looked up. “Wanna try it?” she asked.
The man smiled and drew back slightly from the offered stones. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m satisfied that they’re genuine. I’ll take the set.”
“All of them?” Amanda asked as she set down the stone. She blinked. The crystals were very expensive, among the dearest items in the shop.
“All five,” the man agreed. He smiled and his pale blue eyes twinkled, reminding her of the crystal’s surprising gleam. “Unless there are more?”
There weren’t. Amanda packaged the five stones carefully. Each went into its own locked case, and then the five cases went into a larger box, to be secured with packing tape and then deposited neatly into a handled bag bearing the store logo. She rang up the sale and accepted a credit card the color of platinum. Amanda dawdled slightly at each step, far from eager to conclude the transaction.
“Here you go,” she said with her very best smile as she passed the charge slip to him for his signature. “Will you be in Sunnydale long, Mr. Belasimo?”
“Balsamo,” he corrected her, but so gently that it didn’t sound like a correction at all. “Bal-sa-mo. And no, my dear, not for very long. Once my business concludes, I shall depart.”
“Oh,” Amanda said, trying to hide her disappointment. “Well, I hope to see you again.”
“Perhaps you shall,” Balsamo said. Then, unexpectedly, he took her right hand and kissed her fingers.
It was a flourish that Amanda had seen before in movies but never in real life. She had no idea of any proper way to respond, so all she could do was smile silently and blush a bit as he turned and exited with his purchase.
More than an hour passed before she could fully return her attention to the magazine. Something about the transaction affected her, and the effect lingered. It wasn’t the man’s easy knowledge, or his elegance and grace, or even the fact that he’d spent more in ten minutes than the Magic Box took in during most weeks. It was something else, something subtler.
He’d treated her like a lady, Amanda finally realized. He’d made her feel like she was someone special, and not just a G
oth shopgirl from New Jersey.
Balsamo forgot about the guttersnipe behind the counter before taking ten steps outside. No, not forgot; rather, he took and filed her image safely away from his consciousness. His knowledge of the purple-haired girl’s existence remained available, should he ever need to call upon it, but the distaste he felt no longer distracted him. He had taught himself the mental trick in his youth, and it had proved essential over the many years that followed.
The peasants he shared the walkway with received much the same attention. He nodded politely at other men, stepped aside for the ladies, and made himself smile at the children, and then drove them all from his thoughts. They didn’t matter. All that mattered was the paper sack he gripped in his left hand.
He’d been very fortunate, he realized. He never would have imagined that a place like Sunnydale would hold a genuine spirit stone, let alone five of them. Balsamo would have liked to know how the five glistening bits of crystal had made their way to the New World, and to this insipid little township. Perhaps later, after his primary business was done, he’d return to the Magic Box to research the matter.
He imagined that he could make the purple-haired wench tell him anything he wanted to know. Likely, he’d enjoy the process too.
Balsamo’s stride was long and brisk. It took him only minutes to traverse the six blocks between the shop and his hotel. He smiled at the doorman as he entered, smiled again at the concierge, and then checked at the front desk for messages. There were none, so he proceeded to his room, pausing only to purchase a Styrofoam container of coffee from the lobby shop. He disliked the local blend but disliked brewing his own even more.
A small suitcase waited for him in his penthouse suite. He inspected its seals carefully before opening it. It was the only piece of luggage that had not been unpacked, and it pleased him to see that none of the hotel staff had been foolish enough to tamper with it. The case was small, but its interior was efficiently designed and held a score of interesting instruments. After considering his options for a moment, he decided that the simplest method would be best.
It usually was, of course.
He chose a small mortar and pestle, each hewn from ivory that was once a dragon’s tooth. Both implements were marked with mystic symbols and discolored from heavy use. They’d been in Balsamo’s possession for a very long time.
He unwrapped the purchased stones. One by one they lit up like small suns when he touched them for the first time. They flared brightly enough to singe the skin of his fingertips and make his eyes water, but Balsamo scarcely noticed. He dropped them into the dragon-tooth mortar, applying the pestle as he muttered ancient words of power, and then went to work.
The Latverian pebbles broke with satisfying ease. Each flashed one last time as it shattered, then fell dark. Balsamo broke them into fragments, ground them into powder, and then ground them even more. When he was convinced that they no longer posed any hazard to him, he set his tools aside. The released energy added new scars to the pestle, but he didn’t care about that.
His suite had a dining area and a small kitchen equipped with reasonable-quality china coffee mugs. He selected one, filled it with the coffee he’d bought downstairs, and added cream and sugar. Settling into an armchair, he sipped and considered the events of the day.
Casual conversations with the local bumpkins had included mentions of unexplainable events—screams, disappearances, lights in the sky. The newspaper files in the local library told of numerous mysterious deaths. He’d found five Latverian spirit stones in what was, by his standards, a mere knickknack shop.
Clearly, there was more to Sunnydale than met the eye.
CHAPTER TWO
Dinner at the Summers house that night was comfort food, as it often was. Joyce Summers’s marriage had ended badly, and although many aspects of traditional family life had fallen by the wayside in the years since, Joyce refused to let go of them all. After coming to Sunnydale in search of a fresh start, she always tried to make the evening meal a sort of capstone for the day. She wanted it to be a time when she and Buffy could sit and talk and, hopefully, reinforce their bonds. That meant sitting together at the big dining room table, eating solid and substantial food, using real plates and real utensils. Paper cartons, Styrofoam cups, and plastic sporks seldom visited the Summers residence, if Joyce had anything to say about it.
Unless she was very, very busy.
She allowed the first minute or two of the meal to pass in near silence. She liked watching Buffy eat. There was something reassuringly basic about it. And Buffy could eat an astonishing amount. Joyce knew that teenagers had healthy appetites, but her daughter seemed to have a bottomless hunger. Given that the younger Summers didn’t seem to have much interest in sports, it was a wonder that the girl was able to keep herself so trim.
Finally, Joyce allowed herself to ask the question. “So,” she said, “how was school today, dear?”
“Gloomph!” Buffy said. She chewed rapidly and swallowed. “Good,” she repeated, before shoveling more chicken casserole into her mouth.
“Did you learn anything?” Joyce asked.
Buffy shrugged. Joyce supposed that a shrug was about as much of an answer as she would have given her own mother, back in the day.
“Did anything interesting happen?” Joyce asked. She tried not to sound needy.
Buffy took a crusty roll and broke it, then spread butter on the fleecy whiteness inside. As she worked, she spoke. “Kind of,” she said. “Someone detonated a frog in bio. Willow thinks she’s figured out a new file transfer protocol, but I can’t tell what she’s talking about. Xander got a job.”
“Detonated a frog?” Joyce asked. She set her forkful of food down for a moment.
Buffy shrugged again. “Dunno,” she said. “Wasn’t my lab section it happened in.”
“Oh.” For some reason Joyce felt relieved. She wouldn’t want her little girl to see something so gruesome. “Oh, well, that’s better. What about Xander?”
“What about him?” Buffy asked. She ate half her buttered roll with a single, engulfing bite and set the remainder on her plate.
“You said he got a job,” Joyce said. Xander was one of Buffy’s friends, but beyond that, she wasn’t sure what role the Harris boy played in her daughter’s life. From what little she’d seen of them together, there didn’t seem to be any kind of romance in progress, though she had a hunch Xander wished differently. “What kind of job?”
“He’s a flunky. No, a gopher. We agreed he’s a gopher,” Buffy said. “That’s not as good as a flunky but better than a minion.” She was still focused almost entirely on her meal. Asparagus spears disappeared into her mouth with amazing rapidity.
“Don’t bolt your food, dear,” Joyce said patiently. She generally looked forward to each evening meal with her daughter, but sometimes she wondered why.
“They’re reopening the Sunnydale Drive-In,” Buffy said by way of explanation.
“Oh. That’s right,” Joyce said. “I heard about that. I wonder if that’s such a good idea.”
Now she had Buffy’s attention. The blond teenager paused and looked at her mom. “Oh yeah?” she said.
Joyce nodded. “They were talking about it at the gallery today,” she said. “One of our bank’s loan officers has the property’s account. He’s working with the people reopening the place.” She sipped her iced tea. “Barney’s lived here a long time. He says that place has a history of trouble.”
“Barney?” Buffy asked. She snickered, with the easy cruelty of youth. “You actually know someone named Barney? Is he a caveman or a purple dinosaur?”
“Barney is very nice,” Joyce said in mild reproof. More than once in recent years it had occurred to Joyce that the day might come when the name Buffy would be considered quaint or goofy. “He has the gallery’s account too. I like him.”
A worried expression flickered across Buffy’s features. No, not worried, wary. The look of mild apprehension came and went so fas
t that a casual observer might have missed it. Not Joyce, however. Joyce had seen that look before. Buffy could be remarkably mature about some things, but she tended to view her mother’s occasional forays into the dating scene with some trepidation.
That was understandable, considering how some of those forays had played out.
“Not like that,” Joyce said half-honestly.
“Oh,” Buffy said. “Okay.” She helped herself to more casserole and set about making it disappear. “Tell me about the drive-in,” she said between mouthfuls.
“Barney says they shut it down about twenty years ago,” Joyce said. She ate some of her own meal. The asparagus spears were fresh and tender, bought at a farmers’ market and poached in chicken broth. They tasted good. “Home video and the rise in gas prices—”
“—conspired to make the business impractical,” Buffy interrupted.
Joyce looked at her, one eyebrow raised in silent interrogation.
“Xander,” Buffy explained.
Joyce sighed. She wasn’t surprised. Xander was a veritable wellspring of pop-culture trivia. Sometimes she wondered how anyone could know so much useless information.
“They’re not gone completely,” Joyce said. “And sometimes they come back.”
“Sounds pretty retro to me,” Buffy said. “And not in a good way. What’s the appeal?”
Joyce thought back to her teenage years. She thought about one of her earliest dates, with a boy whose name she’d long forgotten. They’d sat in the front seat of her parents’ car, eating bad concession-stand food and watching bad movies. The night air had been clean and cool, and the world had still seemed bright and exciting.
“It was fun,” was all that Joyce could think to say. It seemed very distant.