by Nancy Holder
“Uh-huh,” Buffy said.
“With Xander and the others?”
“Xander was at the movies,” Buffy said. She finished her toast and drained the orange juice.
It was a nonanswer, but Joyce decided to let it pass. “What are you going to study, then?” she asked.
“What aren’t I going to study?” Buffy asked, ungrammatically. She ticked items off on her fingertips one at a time. “History,” she said. “Biology. Philosophy. And I promised Willow that I’d pretend to understand what she talks about.”
“So you’ll be at the Rosenbergs’?”
“Probably,” Buffy said. She nodded but looked away, and Joyce knew that she was lying. No, not lying; more likely, she was shading the truth. That was part of being a teenager too, and the signs were obvious to a parent, if one knew how to look, and Joyce did. “For a while, at least. I’m supposed to drop by Giles’s, too. He promised to loan me some research materials, from his personal collection.”
“You’re spending a lot of time with him, too,” Joyce said. The function that the school librarian held in her daughter’s life still loomed as a bit of a mystery. Well educated, soft spoken, and quite refined, he seemed every inch the proper gentleman. He was old enough to be Buffy’s father. Despite that, he seemed to have settled into a role that was as much friend as mentor.
“Giles is okay,” Buffy said. Coming from her, that was high praise for any adult. “For a stuffy ol’ Brit, I mean.”
“That’s not nice,” Joyce said. “He’s doing you a favor.”
“I meant it in a nice way,” Buffy said mildly. There was no more food to be had, so she dropped her used utensils onto her empty plate and began to clear the table. “And, believe me, Giles just loves doing stuff like this. He’s got books coming out of his ears, and he loves to show them off.” She paused. “That sounds grosser than I meant.”
“Call him before you go, then,” Joyce said.
Buffy’s response came in phases. First there was the clatter of plates and flatware being stowed in the dishwasher, followed by the glug-glug-glug of detergent being poured. Then, as the much-appreciated appliance hummed to life, Buffy picked up the kitchen phone and dialed.
Without meaning to pry, Joyce watched the transaction. She watched as Buffy looked first patient, then irritated, and, finally, worried. The expressions flowed one into another, like a plant blooming in time-lapse photography.
“That’s funny,” Buffy said, returning the receiver to its cradle. She didn’t sound like she thought it was funny at all, though. “There’s no answer.”
• • •
Gravel rattled against glass, a familiar sound. Willow set aside her computer mouse and went to the window. This really wasn’t the time of day for such subterfuge. There was no reason why any visitor simply couldn’t come to the front door and ring the doorbell like civilized folk, especially when her room was on the ground floor. She opened the window and said as much.
“I’m sorry,” Xander called from the lawn. His words were apologetic but his tone was slightly irritable, and it was easy to see why. He looked very tired, with shadows under his eyes. “Old habits die hard.”
They’d known each other most of their lives. That wasn’t a terribly long span of time in absolute terms, but from Willow’s viewpoint it was forever. She could remember sneak-watching Christmas specials on television with Xander, an interest that her parents didn’t entirely approve of or even understand. She had a bit of a crush—more than a bit, really—on Xander, and had watched with increasing anxiety as he threw himself at one girl after another, never taking time out for her. Buffy was among the most recent targets of his unrequited affection, which had lent an interesting texture to their friendship of late.
“You could have called,” she said, mildly chiding. Xander was a welcome guest at the Rosenberg home, but a girl liked to have a little warning.
“No, Will,” Xander said sourly. He was sweating a bit in the late-morning sun, and Willow thought it made him look sexy. “No, I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because I’d need a phone to do that, and mine is dead right now,” Xander said testily. His handsome features formed a half scowl. “And the MNN is on the air.”
“M-N-N?” She pronounced each of the letters as if it were a word complete unto itself.
“Mommy News Network,” Xander said. “Look, can I come in or not?”
Willow nodded and went to let him in. A moment later he dropped onto the edge of her bed as she seated herself once more at her computer.
Up close he looked worse, she decided. No, worse wasn’t it, because you had to look bad before you could look worse, and Xander never looked bad to her. But sitting mere feet away from her, signs of fatigue were more clearly drawn. His eyes were bloodshot and his shoulders slumped as he gazed at her. He looked as if he’d aged a few years since the day before.
“How were the movies?” Willow asked.
Rather than answer, Xander asked a question of his own. “Did you hear the news?” he asked. “About Jonathan?”
“Jonathan?” Willow asked. She looked blank. That wasn’t someone she thought about very often.
“He’s asleep,” Xander said. He gave her a quick rundown of the night before, of picking up Jonathan before the movies and dropping him off after. He got that awkward and abashed sound in his voice when he talked about the cheerleader movie and seemed honestly embarrassed to have fallen asleep during it.
“The next thing I knew, Mom was trying to shake me awake,” Xander said. “Not that it took much effort. I’d only been out a couple hours.”
“She could wake you,” Willow said slowly.
Xander nodded.
“But Jonathan was dead to the world,” she continued, and immediately regretted her choice of words. Just because she wasn’t close to Jonathan didn’t mean that she’d ever want anything bad to happen to him. She’d spent plenty of time on the fringes of school society, too much time not to have some sympathy for her low-key classmate.
“Yeah,” Xander said. “My mom’s ballistic. She’s been on the phone all morning, and every time I try to catch some winks, she flips out.” He made an expression that looked like a smile but wasn’t, not really. “She’s been on the phone all day and watching TV, and it’s making her crazy. Threw a glass of water at me once,” he said. “Dad really got a hoot out of that one. So I cut out.”
“Oh,” Willow said.
“Just in time, too. She was making noises about having me talk with the police, or public health people,” Xander continued. “I don’t think that’s who needs to be told.”
Willow thought again about the search she had run for Buffy into the background and history of the newly reopened drive-in. Was there anything in all those pages of reports that she’d missed? A chill of self-doubt swept through her.
Had she even asked the right questions?
Xander seemed to read her mind. He could do that sometimes. “I don’t think it’s the movie place, Will,” he said. “Or, at least, not just the movie place. Mom talked to Aura’s folks—”
“Your mother knows Aura’s family?” Willow asked, startled. It was hard to think of those two bloodlines interacting, even on a social basis.
“I told you, she’s calling everyone,” Xander said. “But Aura wasn’t at the opening.”
“I haven’t seen her in class lately,” Willow said. She rummaged through her memory, looking for the few exchanges she’d had with Cordelia in the previous few days. “Cordy says she’s been out of school since Thursday.”
“That’s because she’s been in the hospital since Thursday morning,” Xander said. “According to an exclusive report from MNN.”
“Sleepy?” Willow asked. A small teddy bear rested on her desktop, next to the computer. Without conscious thought she picked up the stuffed animal and started to toy with it nervously.
“Very sleepy,” Xander said.
“Maybe we sho
uld talk to Cordelia about this,” Willow said.
“I’ll tell you who we should really talk to,” Xander said.
“Buffy?”
He nodded again. “And Giles. Cordy may know a lot about penguins, but she’s not the brains of the operation,” he said. “Any chance I could use your phone?”
“Sure,” Willow said. “It’s just a matter of deciding who to call first.”
She reached for the phone, but it rang before her fingers even made contact. Startled, Willow picked it up before the first ring completed. A brief exchange later, she passed the phone to Xander, who looked at her blankly.
“Buffy,” she said. “She’s looking for you.”
He looked a lot happier when he took the phone and began talking.
CHAPTER NINE
Buffy had been to Giles’s home many times before. When she knocked on his front door this time, its arched wood sounded precisely as it always had. Even the polished brass of the doorknob, warmed by the midday sun, was reassuringly familiar as she coiled her fingers around it.
Even so, something felt different.
She turned to the others lingering behind her. “No answer,” she said. “Just like the phone.”
That in itself was an ominous sign. Ten calls to Giles’s number had produced responses numbering precisely zero. It was Saturday, and there was no reason to expect him to be at home, but Buffy was getting a bad feeling.
“Car’s still here,” Xander said. He took up position beside the little, low-powered vehicle. Cars as an institution engaged his attention, even when the example at hand failed to impress. He was a teenage boy, after all. He leaned to peer through one closed car window, shading his view with cupped hands. “Nothing here,” he said.
“Here, either,” Cordelia said, but she seemed to base her findings on only the most cursory inspection of the courtyard. It was Willow who was still taking the lay of the land, peering behind bushes and eyeing the cut grass.
“Stay out here, guys,” Buffy said.
“Buff, you shouldn’t go in there alone,” Xander said. Cordelia and Willow nodded in agreement, but neither girl moved to join Buffy when he did.
“Down, boy,” she said, waving him back again. “I need reinforcements on the outside.” This time he obeyed and rejoined the others as Buffy knocked on the door one last time. “Hello?” she called loudly. “Giles, if you won’t come out, I’m coming in.”
Still no answer.
She repeated the command. “Stay out here, all of you. I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.” She continued more softly as she gripped the knob more tightly, “If the coast is clear.”
She thought she’d need to break the lock. For someone with Buffy’s strength, that kind of thing wasn’t particularly difficult. This time, however, it wasn’t even necessary. The knob turned easily, another ominous sign. It wasn’t like Giles to leave the entrance to his home unsecured. Buffy pushed the door open.
“Hello?” she called. “Giles, it’s me. Hello? Hello?”
With one final glance to make sure that the others didn’t follow, she stepped into the shadowed interior of her Watcher’s domicile. A minute or two later she re-emerged and gestured everyone inside.
“C’mon, guys,” she said. “See if you can figure this out.”
“Wow,” Willow said less than a minute later, followed by echoes from Xander and Cordelia.
“You see my point?” Buffy said, and closed the front door behind them.
There was nothing wrong with the home, at least nothing that the naked eye could see. The windows were closed and unbroken, and the doors were similarly intact. The furniture had been recently dusted, and the books and magazines laid out on the low coffee table were in neat stacks. The place could have been a film set, or a model home, albeit one lavishly furnished with reading materials.
But Giles himself was nowhere to be found. She’d checked the other rooms. Worse, there was an odd feeling to the air, a faint reminder of the electricity she’d experienced while on patrol the previous nights.
Buffy felt vaguely as if she’d entered a haunted house.
Only one thing seemed overtly amiss: the desk’s working surface. Next to open books, age-yellowed documents, and a legal pad, a tea service perched. It had been abandoned while still on the job, and that had clearly been a while ago. The water in the pot was room temperature, and the leaves in the basket filter were soggy and swollen from steeping far too long. Beside the pot sat a teacup on the same tray. The level of dark tea in it had dropped, leaving a ring to mark its original level, and Buffy could tell from the mark that much of the liquid loss had been to evaporation. The cup had been left unattended for some hours.
Giles had been sitting here, Buffy realized. He’d prepared himself a pot of tea to accompany his review of the books and excursuses.
Before he could finish, it had happened.
Whatever “it” was.
“Very Marie Celeste,” Willow said. She inspected the tea service daintily and then lifted one of the open books. Her nose wrinkled as she leafed though it.
“Marie who?” Buffy asked her.
“Not a who, a what,” Cordelia said, her back to the rest of them. She was busily inspecting a decorative wall hanging that clearly did not meet the elevated Chase family standards. “Crew disappeared, with meals waiting for them on the tables. It’s a mystery that’s never been solved.”
The others stared at her for a silent moment. Xander broke it with a two-word question. “Book report?” he asked.
Cordelia shook her head. “Don’t be silly. I saw a movie. That’s what this is like, though.”
“She’s right,” Willow said, sounding vaguely distracted. She had begun to read, and the words had drawn her in, but not so deeply that she couldn’t kibitz. “It’s one of the classic maritime mysteries, and it dates back to the 1870s. Very old school, and it’s never been solved.”
“This isn’t good,” Buffy said. “This isn’t good at all.”
Now Willow looked up from the book. “No,” she said. She looked worried. “It isn’t.”
“What is it, Willow?” Buffy asked. “What did you find?”
“Just—just a story,” the other girl said slowly. She tilted the worn book so that the others could see its title.
The worn gilt letters read Secrets of Alchemie and How to Profit Thereby, followed by a subtitle in smaller type too worn to be deciphered.
“You and Giles and your ancient secret texts,” Cordelia said, then fell silent as Buffy shot her a glance.
Willow shook her head. “This isn’t old,” she said. “Not really. Only about a hundred years’ vintage—”
“Sounds pretty old to me,” Xander said from the kitchen. “Buff, there’s tea fixin’s laid out in here—you should take a look.”
“Later, Xander,” Buffy said but filed the information away in her head. It comported with what she’d already determined, that someone or something had taken Giles by surprise. “What’s special about the book?” she asked Willow.
“Nothing, really,” Willow said. “That’s what’s weird.” When the others stared at her, she took a deep breath before continuing. “I mean, Giles has quite the library, you know. He’s got books bound in demon-hide and printed on skin, and he’s got books that I swear are older than people, even though I know that makes no sense at—”
“Willow,” Buffy said. “Focus.”
The red-haired girl nodded. She sat in the desk chair and set the book down, still open, as she continued. “This is nothing special,” she said. “It’s not very old, and—”
“A hundred years,” Xander said again. He’d emerged from the kitchen and was standing in the doorway.
“Not very old by Giles’s standards,” Willow said, continuing on. “And this is a popular work.” She paused. “Not bestseller popular, but aimed at a general audience.”
“A Reader’s Digest condensed occult text?” Buffy asked, feeling faintly boggled. What was next
? A paperback edition of The Crimson Chronicles?
Willow nodded again. “Kinda,” she said, turning pages. “More like an overview with pretty pictures. You could sell this down at the Magic Box and not worry about anyone losing his soul in the process. I’m surprised Giles even has something like this.”
“He said he wanted to figure out what was in the missing books,” Buffy said slowly. Her forehead wrinkled as she thought. “He wanted to extradite—”
“Extrapolate, probably,” Willow said. She gave a faint smile. When Willow made corrections, she was far gentler about it than Cordelia.
“Extrapolate,” Buffy said, more sharply than she’d intended. No matter who was doing it, she didn’t like being corrected.
“Uh-huh,” Willow said. She started to read. “Give me a minute. I’ve done enough research with Giles that I know his methods. Maybe I can figure out what he was working on.” She paused again. “Specifically, I mean.”
Buffy gave her the moment. To pass the time, she accepted Xander’s invitation to inspect the kitchen. He’d been right. The work area was what she termed a tidy mess: kettle still half full, whistle top set aside. The tea-leaf tin was tightly closed but remained on the counter, rather than in the cupboard where she knew it belonged. An insulated pot holder lay beside it, along with the spring-loaded tongs that she’d seen Giles use to fill the teapot’s basket filter.
Looking at the array made her feel worse. For some reason the tableau acted as a focus for the worry and presentiment she felt. She’d known Giles only a year or so, but that year had been filled with challenge and adventure. Though she’d have a hard time admitting it to anyone, he’d become more than a friend and a mentor. No one could ever fill the gap left by her absent father, but Giles’s presence made the void somewhat less consuming.
And now someone or something had taken him from her.
“He was here,” she said very softly. “He must have been working on the missing book thing.” She tapped the work surface with one finger. “And they got him.”
“Got him?” Xander said, still at her side. “I mean, are you sure he didn’t just pop off to the market or something?” But his question had the hopeful quality of someone grasping at straws.