by Nancy Holder
Cordelia turned to Jusef. “It’s been . . . nice . . . chatting about ugly clothes.”
Jusef cupped her elbow and led her a few steps out of earshot. “My father’s burial may be attended by close family members only,” he said. “But may I invite you to the sedhekah?”
She hesitated. “I guess it depends on what it is.”
“It’s a traditional prayer meal for the dead, to pay our respects.” He held out a hand. “Since we’re fairly Westernized, there will also be a much larger reception for my family’s business associates. They’ll both be held on our compound.”
“Your compound,” she said slowly.
“In Indonesia, we invite everyone to funeral receptions. The larger the gathering, the more honor the family receives. You’d be most welcome,” he told her.
“At your father’s funeral.”
“Yes.” He was entirely serious.
“Well.”
His smile was amazing. He gave his nose a slight wrinkle. “For me? It would do me honor.”
C’mon, do it, she told herself. Free food and cute guys. Cute guys who make movies and have business associates and a compound.
It’s only slightly weird.
Right?
“I’ll have to check in with my boss, I mean my service,” she said. Successful L.A. actresses did not moonlight as receptionists.
“You’re a cautious girl. I like that.” He pointed to her purse. “My numbers are on my card. Including my cell phone.” He patted his shirt pocket, and she saw the thin bulge of something state-of-the-art. “We have at least three hours before the sedhekah. Slamet and I are just now going back to the house to wash the body in preparation for the burial.”
Eww. Too much information.
It occurred to her that she had never actually washed a dead body. She had recently put pieces of one back together like a jigsaw puzzle, and back in Sunnydale, she was always finding them in the most inconvenient places — the caf fridge, Aura’s gym locker, the backseat of her car. But washing one was new to her.
“It’s a ritual,” he told her. “My family is very big on ritual.” He smiled like someone having a private joke.
“Okay,” she managed weakly.
“Call in three hours, then,” he suggested. “It will be quite all right. I’ll send a car if you are able to attend.”
As in a limo? Are happy days here again?
“I’m a stranger,” she pointed out. “I mean, this is kind of a family affair” — a rich family affair, so shut up! — “and what should I wear?”
“Something black, if you have it.” He gave her a once-over that made her cheeks burn. “You must look wonderful in black.”
“I do,” she agreed.
He laid a hand on her forearm. His nails were impeccable.
A few paces away, just out of hearing range, Salami paced. He looked royally pissed off. Maybe he’s jealous, she thought hopefully. Or maybe if I show at the Neil Sedaka–thing, the family will, like, curse me or something.
“I could use someone in my cheering section,” he added. “I’m kind of the family black sheep.”
“Oh. Well. I’m a cheerful girl, they always say.” She held out her hand. “I’ll do my best.”
“Thanks.” He gave her a sad-boy smile. “I don’t know if you believe in karma, but I do.”
“I’m not sure.” She moved her shoulders. “Sometimes it seems like some people have more than their share of bad luck.” Like me with my acting career.
“And also, good luck,” she quickly added, because of course, that was where he was going.
“Let’s find out if our meeting was good luck. I don’t believe it was an accident that you pulled out that hideous blouse when I first looked over at you.” He took her hand.
Salami waved at him. “Jusef, we must go.”
“All right, Slamet,” he said.
“Oh, it’s Slamet,” she murmured.
“It means ‘good fortune’ in Indonesian.”
“Mine means Cordelia.”
Jusef looked hard at her. She felt as if she was swimming in his rich dark brown eyes. Accent on rich. “You’d better call.”
“Okay,” she croaked.
“Give us three hours,” he reminded her. “I’ll turn the phone off while we bury him.”
She nodded, a little grossed out.
Actually, a lot.
“Good luck,” she said. Then, as casually as she could, she turned slowly on her high, high heels and walked away.
I’m going on a date to a funeral. Only in L.A., she thought. Of course, also in Sunnydale, but then, these guys would be, like, demons in disguise or something.
She glanced over her shoulder, mildly disappointed to see them heading in the opposite direction. It was time for her to get going anyway. Angel would be awake soon, and she wanted to find out if his Nira had called him. And who she was.
She was about halfway to the bus stop — as humiliating as it was in Los Angeles to be car-free, she was — when she felt a tug at her purse.
“Hey,” she said, jerking it toward her. She glanced down to see a very tiny child with a very tiny hand firmly inside her purse. She realized she had left it unzipped when she’d dropped Jusef’s card into it.
Solemnly the little girl stared up at Cordelia. Her face was moon-shaped and her eyes were two dark crescents. Her long black hair was caught up in two ponytails. Her front teeth were missing. She had on raspberry tie-dyed shorts and a sleeveless top, which made her look very cute and not at all like a little thief.
Slowly she withdrew her hand.
“Were you trying to steal something out of my purse?” Cordelia demanded.
The girl kept staring at her. Cordelia frowned. “You speakie English?”
Still staring.
Cordelia felt unnerved. She said, “Don’t do it again. It’s wrong. You’ll get in bad trouble. The police will throw you in jail. Bad girl.”
Cordelia made a show of zipping up her purse. “No, no.” She wagged her finger and kept walking.
After about five seconds she looked back.
The little girl was still staring after her.
Then she was joined by a boy who was slightly taller than she. He also wore tie-dyed clothes, in his case dark blue and white. He smacked the little girl hard against the cheek. The girl staggered backward but remained silent.
Cordelia shouted, “Hey!”
The little girl turned her attention back to Cordelia. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth down her chin. The boy started pulling on her arm. Then he began yelling at her in a foreign language. When she didn’t respond, he hit her again.
But her gaze was still focused on Cordelia as blood dripped from her chin to her colorful top.
“Stop it, you little bully!” Cordelia cried. She ran toward the two little children.
An oncoming pedestrian — a stooped woman with close-cropped gray hair — blocked her path.
“Excuse me,” Cordelia said, agitated, and swerved around her.
The two children had disappeared, practically into thin air.
Perplexed, Cordelia looked from side to side, then made a little circle. There was no way they could have just run off. She would have seen them.
The gray-haired woman thrust a hand at her and said, “Money?” She had almond-shaped eyes and a round face. She looked tired and haggard.
“All I have is bus fare,” Cordelia said.
“You, rich girl,” the woman accused. She held out her hand. “Money.”
“Hey, back off.” Cordelia took a step away. “I don’t have any money, okay? Just bus fare.”
Just then, the two little kids appeared out of nowhere, barreling toward Cordelia. As she glanced at them, the old woman grabbed her purse. She put it under her arm like a linebacker and took off at a dead heat into an alley. The two children followed after, darting along like baby gazelles.
“Hey!” Cordelia shouted.
She clattered after them
in her ridiculous high heels, realized she was going to either lose her purse or break her ankles, and stopped long enough to kick off her shoes. The three figures were getting tinier and tinier as she swept down gracefully the way she’d learned in modeling school back when her parents could afford such things, grabbed her shoes, and started after them.
“That’s my bus fare!” she bellowed.
A really dirty man with a vacant stare silently watched her pass. She frowned at him.
“Help me!”
“Got change? I’m a veteran,” he said.
She flew past him. Filth crusted her stockinged feet. She gagged but kept going.
A field of broken glass sparkled before her. She put on the brakes and squinted into the alley. There was nothing to see but darkness. Nothing to hear but the dirty man shambling up behind her.
“You got change?” he asked her.
She regarded him. “No,” she said. “But I bet you do.” She held out her hand. “Give me thirty-five cents.”
The man blinked at her.
That was when the screaming started.
CHAPTER FOUR
“As we used to say in the auld country,” Doyle said to Angel, “yuck.”
The two stood in Angel’s office. Near dusk, Angel had stirred from a mishmash of dreams that included hell, fire, and the dancing woman dressed in gold.
Also, the Chihuahua from the Taco Bell commercials.
Now he and Doyle were looking at the autopsy photos that Angel had managed to download from the police department’s pathology lab. Kate didn’t know he could — and did — do this on a fairly routine basis whenever she mentioned anything out of the ordinary at a crime scene.
“Yuck’s a word,” Angel replied. He looked from the photo to the clock on the wall. “Where’s Cordelia? She’s late.”
“Maybe she got the part,” Doyle said hopefully. Doyle had this thing for Cordelia. Angel had no idea if it would ever go anywhere. His fellow Irishman wasn’t rich, and so far he had kept the fact that he was half-demon under wraps. Perhaps on account of the fact that Cordy had never had one single good word to say about demons.
“That would be good,” Angel said.
Doyle frowned. “But she’d call us to tell us, wouldn’t she? I mean, we’re her closest friends. Maybe she didn’t get the part. Maybe she’s in a terrible dive of a pub, drowning her sorrows.” He looked worried.
“Cordelia Chase?” Angel shook his head. “She wouldn’t be caught dead alone in a bar. Even if she was old enough to drink.” He shifted. “Let’s give her a few more minutes.”
“Before what?” Doyle asked unhappily. He picked up the phone. “I’ll call her place.”
“Good idea,” Angel said.
He shifted his attention back to the computer screen. The image in the color shot, while gutwrenching, was also mildly familiar. He couldn’t bring to mind the time and place, but he’d seen something like this before.
Trust Kate not to trust me enough to tell me everything, he thought, smiling grimly. Okay, burn victim; she hadn’t lied, but it was so much more than that.
Angel knew — but wasn’t precisely certain how he knew — that this person had been burned from the inside out.
So, can a burning body ignite an apartment building?
“I’m getting her machine,” Doyle reported. He said into the mouthpiece, “Cordelia, it’s Doyle. We’re a bit worried about you. If you’re not coming in soon, let us know, okay? Did I mention that it’s Doyle?”
Angel smiled to himself. As if it could be anyone else with that accent.
“Was that a person at one time?” Doyle queried as he hung up.
“It was,” Angel said. With the mouse, he moved the cursor over the black and red portions in the lower left corner of the screen.
He added, “Kate told me she’s had some strange homicides. I’m wondering if this is the body she found in Nira’s building last night.”
“What do you think?” Doyle asked, grimacing.
Angel stared hard at the photograph as slowly, images began to take form in his mind. They weren’t from his dreams, and there were no Chihuahuas in them.
“Spontaneous human combustion?” Doyle suggested in the ensuing silence. “You ever read about that? It happens.”
“Yes. It happens,” Angel replied slowly.
The images were Angel’s memories, long suppressed. Allowing them entrance, he began to remember a lot more than he’d ever thought he’d want to.
Than he ever would allow himself.
“Angel?” Doyle asked. “You think that’s what this is about?”
His Irish lilt took Angel back to Galway and when he was still human.
The memories clicked.
Galway, 1752
“Granny Quinn’s dead. Let’s go and make a wish on her corpse,” Doreen Kenney whispered to Angelus as she pushed him coyly away.
They were lying in the hay in her father’s barn. The sun had almost set, and the crimson beams gleamed through the upper doors of the loft. Doreen’s hair was a fiery red, proof, some said, that she was a sorceress. Angelus half-believed it. Her merest glance set him aflame.
“Granny’s dead, and there’s nothing more to be done with her bones but pray over them,” Angelus said, impatient with her. “Sure and we’ve both done enough praying for the dead in our lifetimes. For them we loved. For family and friends. What’s that old hag to us?”
Death was a constant companion in Galway; babes and children and the old folks dying, beggars starving, and sickness coming oftener than not. No house was spared forever, be it Catholic or Protestant. No man, be he aristocrat or tenant farmer.
“Moira said sure and if you wish on the dead when they’re laid out, you’ll have what you want.”
“And if that were so, would Moira be an old maid of nineteen?” Angelus scoffed.
Doreen looked puzzled. Angelus had always thought she was a bit thick; not a bad thing in a female, to be sure, as you did not want them thinking too much on things. Women had better things to do — looking after their men and taking care of their babies.
But Dorrie was rather like a colt, in that you were never certain if her mind would go to the place you were trying to lead her, or amble on the way, forgetting what she was about.
“What I’m saying is, Moira’s had lots of chances to make quite a few wishes,” Angel explained. “And we both know she’s not got a single suitor. Nor like to have one, with those teeth of hers.” He shivered. “And that breath.”
“That’s cruel,” she said. Then she grinned. “But it’s truth. But Granny Quinn could remedy that. I’m sure of it.”
“It’s a freezing day,” Angelus continued, “and we’ve better things to do than mock the corpse of the village wise woman.”
“Wise woman? She were a witch, and you know it,” Doreen said, pouting. “Her damned spirit will rise tonight and meet the Devil in the wood. She’ll fly off with him, naked on a broomstick.” Her green eyes gleamed with excitement.
“Ah, Doreen, me own enchantress, and if you’d only fly naked on my broomstick,” he quipped, catching up her hand, trying to place it where he would benefit most.
She burst into giggles and yanked her hand away. “Angelus, you know I’ve got my virtue still, and I’ll not give it to a man who isn’t my husband.”
“Sure and you delight in my suffering,” he moaned. “My father won’t give me the means to have a wife. If he has his way, I’ve years left as his dependent.”
“I haven’t years left,” she said pointedly. Her father was a very rich man, and she had a sizable dowry. Old Patrick Kenney wanted her married off while she was still in her prime; she was sixteen, and it was high time for her to find a suitable husband. As landed gentry himself, Angelus could be that husband, if his reputation didn’t precede him. Patrick Kenney thought him nothing but a wastrel and a scoundrel.
The gentleman’s opinion being truth, on both counts.
“Doreen, if I could, I
would.” He slipped his hand around her waist. “This very moment.”
Giggling, she pressed against him. “Yes, you would, Angelus. Of that, I’ve no doubt.” He caught his breath.
“But you may not. However,” she continued, before he had a chance to protest, “take me to Granny Quinn’s, and you can make a wish that may come true.”
She kissed him full and deep; if she had asked him to dig up the entire churchyard in that moment to procure for her a hand of glory, he would have agreed.
“ ’Tis said you’re a witch yourself,” he whispered.
She tensed. “Take that back, Angelus.” Her voice was as cold as stone. “Take it back, or never speak another word to me as long as you live.”
He blinked. “Sure, and you don’t believe such things yourself.”
“Not another word.” She moved away from him, arranging her clothes as she stood.
At that very moment the sun disappeared, and the colors in the barn bled to gray.
Then it must have been a trick of the light, for over her face, he swore he saw another face, deformed, hideous, its glowing red eyes filled with rage. Transfixed, he stared, but when he blinked, there was naught there but his own lovely Doreen.
“Don’t let us go,” he blurted. “It would be bad luck.”
She laughed at him full on. “What, and is himself a coward?” she taunted. “Then I’ll find another who’ll take me.”
“No, you won’t.” He stood up.
Her gaze traveled over his body, and a smile played at her lips.
“ ’Tis jealous you are, then?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Oh, Angelus, you’re such a modest sort,” she said gently, “if you’re thinking jealousy is the order of the day.”
He melted. He told himself firmly that the strange apparition was merely a trick of the light, and his own foolish imagination. The nights were long and he was bored with the world. Such a situation called for making things up to keep himself entertained — such as leaving Galway forever and making his fortune. Then he could have a woman like Doreen to wife.
“Doreen,” he said feelingly, “I love you.”
“Meself, and all the other colleens in Galway,” she chided.