With his gabardine suit and old-school burgundy tie, Giles knew how out of place he must have appeared. Even that was only a fraction of how out of place he actually felt. He brushed a hand through his slightly graying brown hair, then pushed his glasses up his nose for the hundredth time.
“Good Lord,” he muttered to himself. “These are librarians?”
But if he were honest with himself, Giles would be forced to admit that it wasn’t the dress or behavior of these people that had him wanting so desperately to retreat. Nor was it the fact that, with his love of dusty old books and getting lost in the stacks—ironically, the place he felt the most at home, and the polar opposite of the stacks.com party—he felt positively antique, though even the youngest person in the room was little more than a decade his junior.
No. Worst of all was how much they all reminded him of Jenny. With their sense of fashion and their technical knowledge and the confidence with which they spoke, moved, danced, even breathed, the people crowding the Cary Grant Suite gave him great cause for lament.
It wasn’t exactly grief, or mourning. Enough time had passed that those wounds had begun to heal. He’d even caught his eyes roaming appreciatively from time to time. The thought had occurred to him that he might, at some point, meet someone else whom he would like to have in his life. Someone else to love.
But he still missed her terribly. Still ached to tell her little things that he’d discovered in his research and wanted to share, only to realize that he had no one to share them with. No one who could truly appreciate what such utter trivialities meant to him. It still hurt.
With a sigh, Giles edged around several people who were talking loudly together about a “chat room” where they’d apparently spoken with Frank Herbert, the author of Dune. Giles didn’t have the heart to tell them that Herbert had been dead for years, and was dismayed that they didn’t realize it themselves. Dismayed, but not particularly surprised. After all, it all boiled down to Web sites and URL’s, not frontis-pieces and back matter. A pity.
He opened one of the French doors and let himself out onto the stone balcony, where a large group of people had already gathered. The sharp wind brought the scent of smoke. Instantly, Giles understood the hardiness of his fellows. Most of them were smokers, exiled to the frozen outdoors by law and the demands of political correctness.
With a shiver, he turned up the collar of his suit coat, and shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his gabardine trousers. In his room, he had a very nice pair of leather gloves, which he wished he’d brought. Exhaling, seeing his breath curl as if he, too, had lit a cigarette, his eyes scanned the cityscape, the lights and the activity far below. Sixth Avenue was bright with the electricity of life, vivid with every bit of excitement and bluster and spectacle that humanity could muster. That was New York City to him.
“Breathtaking, isn’t it?”
Her voice was soft, her tone thoughtful, with none of the razor edge of the city in it. Giles blinked, glanced just to his left, uncertain at first if the woman was speaking to him. But he couldn’t see her in his peripheral vision. Giles turned, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe.
She was divine. A tall, yet lithe woman with the most delicate features imaginable. Her faced seemed to glow, and though it might have been the neon burning in the city beyond, Giles chose to deem it some ethereal light. In either case, it made her look almost angelic. A splash of her honey-blond hair fell in a gentle wave across her face, while the rest was done up in a long, elaborate braid that fell down past her shoulders. It was unfashionably long, but Giles thought it quite lovely.
She wore a crushed red velvet dress with tight sleeves that accentuated the golden color of her hair. It wasn’t the most daring dress he had ever seen, but the way it fell across her body, few women could have worn it well. She wore it very, very well.
The Watcher realized that he was staring.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he stammered. “Did, uh, did you say something?”
The woman smiled at him, and Giles felt himself offering a silly, lopsided grin in return.
“You seemed to be appreciating the city,” she said. “I merely commented that it was breathtaking.”
American, he presumed, because of her lack of accent. But an American who used the word merely in casual conversation! Giles felt himself falling rapidly into infatuation.
“Indeed it is,” he said, after what felt like an embarrassingly long pause. “For such a depraved city, it certainly has its charms.”
The woman smiled broadly, and laughed softly, comfortably. There was a sort of gentle lilt to her laughter that gave it the ring of authenticity. She meant it.
“There is always a certain charm in depravity,” she said boldly, grinning at Giles.
As his cheeks flushed crimson, she turned her gaze away from him and out toward the city he had been admiring moments ago. “It is a wonderful place,” she said. “Though I suspect most of the tech-head numb-skulls slobbering all over each other in the other room have rarely if ever even looked out a window.”
Giles chuckled, dropped his gaze, then brought his right hand up quickly to keep his glasses from plummeting twenty-seven stories. He gave her a sidelong glance, and thought, whimsically, It could be love.
“Rupert Giles,” he said, turning to hold out his hand.
With a firm grip, she shook it. “Micaela Tomasi,” she said. “It’s very much my pleasure.”
“You must be cold.”
She raised her face and nodded. “I am.”
He gave her his suit jacket, and felt warmer than he had since landing at JFK.
That was the beginning. For nearly an hour, they spoke of New York, its culture and museums, its depravity, and then of other cities they’d visited or yearned to visit. They talked of books and bookstores, and Giles was astonished to find that she was aware of some of his favorite used bookstores, some so out of the way he’d nearly forgotten about them himself. From Avenue Victor Hugo in Boston, to Cobwebs on Great Russell Road, across from the British Museum in London, Micaela knew them all
The party ended, the other librarians leaving very reluctantly. The bartenders in their white shirts and black vests left their posts. A man came with a noisy industrial vacuum cleaner, whose hum could be heard through the closed balcony doors.
Still, Giles and Micaela talked on. There seemed to be so much to say. A few minutes before midnight, Giles looked regretfully at his watch.
“I hate to bring this up, but . . .”
“Yes,” she immediately agreed. “It is getting late. Perhaps we could pick up our conversation at breakfast?”
The Watcher nearly laughed out loud. In his experience, there was nothing like avoiding the discomfort of asking a woman out by having her ask first.
“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” he said with great certainty. “Shall we say nine o’clock, in the lobby?”
“I’ll be there, stomach rumbling,” she replied.
They walked together out to the elevator. When they had stepped in, and he had pressed the number 16, she chuckled to herself.
“Hmm?” he asked. “Did I miss something?”
“We’re on the same floor,” she said. “I was just thinking what a lark it would have been if they’d double-booked me into your room.”
Giles blinked, blushed once more, but his only reply was a slightly embarrassed smile. His mind, however, was racing with the possibilities. So much so, that when they stepped off on the sixteenth floor, and Micaela turned in the opposite direction, he felt a bit of disappointment.
“Good night, Miss Tomasi,” Giles said. “Sleep well.”
“And to you, Mr. Giles,” she replied, almost primly. Then mischief crept into her eyes as she said, “Pleasant dreams.”
As he walked down the hall toward his room, Giles whistled jauntily, his jaw muscles already somewhat sore from the smile that threatened to stretch his face for eternity. Somewhere, he heard a phone begin to ring. Ar
ound the corner, he heard a door open. He reached the juncture in the corridor, rounded the corner, and was nearly barreled over by a broad-shouldered man wearing a Yankees baseball cap.
“’Scuse,” the man grunted, but didn’t look up; his face was obscured by the bill of the cap.
“Yes, well,” Giles said, affronted. “Perhaps if you watched where you were walking . . .”
But his reproach was lost on the man, who had already hurried around the corner. Grumbling slightly, Giles turned back down the corridor. Only then did he notice that the phone was still ringing. The sound was coming from the open door of room 1622, just down the hall.
His room.
The phone stopped ringing as Giles rushed to the open door, eyes darting about with caution. He pushed the door fully open and flicked on the light. The place was a shambles. Many of his things were in tatters, the clothes thrown about the room, drawers open, mirror shattered. A thief, he realized immediately. Searching for valuables. And the phone ringing? A signal, perhaps, from a cohort, lying in wait to warn the burglar should the room’s registered occupant return.
It had just happened. The phone, the sound of a door opening.
The man in the Yankees cap.
Giles ran from his room, sprinted along the corridor and around the corner. Down the hall, he saw the stairwell door swinging shut under the glowing red EXIT sign. The anger that began to build inside him was a distant memory, but all too familiar. There existed within Rupert Giles a man capable of great bouts of rage. It didn’t matter if the thief had actually stolen anything, for Giles had little of value with him save for a few antique books.
No, it was the principle of the thing. The violation.
The anger boiled up inside him and his heart pounded as he reached the stairwell door. Giles gripped the knob, twisted it, and flung the door open hard enough to bang loudly against the cement wall inside. Instantly he started down the steps, holding lightly to the handrail as he moved his feet rapidly. At the next landing, he began to slow. He could no longer hear the running steps of the man he pursued. At the fifteenth floor he paused and listened carefully.
The door behind him sprang violently open, and Giles had only just begun to turn around when he felt a pair of powerful hands slam into his back. Flailing wildly, he fell forward and tumbled down the cement steps, striking his head several times.
He cried out.
But his cry was cut short as his head slammed into the landing, and he crumbled into unconsciousness.
“Rupert?” The voice was distant, and Giles drifted up out of the blackness inside his head for only a moment. He tried to focus on the face above him. The woman, the honey hair. He knew her, but her name escaped him.
“Honey,” he whispered, looking again at her hair.
“I’ve called for help, Rupert,” she said. “The ambulance is on its way.”
Then he slipped into darkness again, retreating from the pain.
* * * * *
Buffy didn’t like being in the library without Giles. Never mind that they were on school property in the middle of the night without anyone’s permission. When Giles was with them, such nocturnal visits might be suspicious, but they’d find a way to explain them. Buffy didn’t want to think-about having to explain how she’d come to have a key to the school. Still, her disquiet had little to do with the potential for discovery and consequences.
She’d been in trouble before.
No, her agitation had more to do with the hollow feeling in her gut. The library was Giles’s province. He was the Watcher, the holder of knowledge, the man with the books. Being here alone had Buffy reflecting on what things might be like without him. The thought didn’t sit very well with her. She needed Giles: he was the backbone of everything the Slayer stood for. He was such a huge part of her life, not merely because he was her Watcher and her friend, but because as long as Giles was around, she could remind herself that no matter how lonely the life of the Chosen One would become, she was not completely alone. Not as long as she had Giles.
The place just didn’t feel right without him there, presiding over the stacks, caring for his dusty leather volumes.
Seated at the study table with the green glass lamps, Buffy sighed and slammed shut a book entitled Dragons and Fire Demons which had given her exactly jack in her search for the identity of the bizarre creature they’d encountered earlier that night.
“We need Giles,” she said, not for the first time.
Oz sat opposite her at the oak library table. He looked up from the book he had been skimming, raised his eyebrows, and nodded. “He’s the man.”
“Hey!” Willow balked.
She sat in the hard wooden chair that Giles had begrudgingly allowed to be placed in front of the small desk upon which the library’s computer sat. The computer, which Giles had once called “that dread machine.” But Willow was a hacker par excellence. At the moment, the dreaded hacker was glaring at them in consternation.
“I can be the man sometimes,” she said, then faltered. “If . . . I were a man. You know what I mean. Giles has way too much monster trivia stored in his brain, and we could sure use him right now. But I’m not too slouchy in the research department.”
Buffy shook her head, a slight smile on her face.
“You’re pretty amazing, Willow,” Oz said. “There’s plenty of times you’ve helped in ways Giles couldn’t. But he is the Watcher, y’know?”
“She knows, Oz,” Buffy said, then turned again to Willow. “Don’t go all Xander on me, Will. You know you’re a major asset to the team.”
Willow grinned. “Yeah, I am, aren’t I?”
“Even a greater asset if you could figure out who this fire-puking moron is,” Buffy added with a sigh.
“Oh, is that all?” Willow asked innocently. “That’s easy.”
She slid her chair back to let them get a look at the computer screen, upon which there was a frighteningly accurate sketch of the creature they’d battled earlier.
Buffy’s eyes widened. “That’d be him.”
“According to legend he’s called Springheel Jack,” Willow explained. “First known sighting was in London in 1837. Apparently he mostly assaulted women. This sketch comes from the London Times of February 22, 1838. The assaults went on for years, kind of sporadically. In 1845, he attacked a prostitute in broad daylight, in front of witnesses.”
“Not a very careful monster, is he?” Oz asked.
“Or he’s just not afraid of getting caught,” Buffy replied.
That gave them all pause for a moment. Then Willow went on.
“In 1877 almost an entire English village got a good look at him. There’s a record of an appearance in Liverpool in 1904. Then he seems to have disappeared for almost fifty years. Next time he shows up is, believe it or not, in Houston, Texas. Let me check the date . . .” she turned back to the computer a moment. “Okay, June 18, 1953. Since then, not a peep.”
Buffy was thoughtful a moment, and Willow and Oz were both watching her, waiting for her to decide their next move.
“Why Sunnydale?” she asked.
Willow shrugged “It’s the Hellmouth. Don’t all the nasties get around to visiting eventually?”
“Big demon tourist spot,” Oz agreed good-naturedly.
“Yeah, but he hasn’t popped up since 1953,” Buffy argued. “I mean, why now?”
Their contemplation was interrupted by movement up in the stacks. They’d come in that way, through the back door, to avoid being seen coming through the school’s front entrance. As they all looked up, Xander emerged from among the bookshelves.
“Hey,” he said, too subdued by far for Buffy’s tastes.
“Hey, Xand,” she said.
“How’s Cordelia?” Willow asked quickly.
Xander nodded slowly. “She’s going to be okay. The docs want her overnight, just to make sure she isn’t in shock or something. They couldn’t quite get why she was so freaked over her hair. They must not have teenage dau
ghters. Anyway, she’s fine, really. It looked a lot worse than it was. And she’s already set up an appointment with her hairdresser in the morning.”
“That’s a relief,” Oz said.
Buffy glanced at him, wondering if he was being sarcastic about Cordelia’s hairdresser appointment, or sincere about her medical condition. It was hard to tell with him sometimes, his wit was so dry.
As Xander came down one of the short stairwells into the reading area of the library, Buffy stood up and walked toward him. She stood awkwardly and looked at him.
“Listen, Xander, I’m sorry about tonight,” she said. “I just . . . I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and I guess I just don’t want to lose you. Any of you.”
Xander paused, not meeting her gaze for a moment. Finally, he looked at her, and Buffy knew from that look that he was still angry.
“I understand, Buffy,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I’m not pissed about it. One of the only reasons Giles doesn’t get all wacked about us hanging with you is that you’ve always been real clear that we’re not a liability. That we can hold our own.
“Looks like that was all just talk, huh?”
Buffy’s eyes widened. “Not at all!” she protested. “I just . . . I can’t believe I have to explain this to you.”
“Explain it to yourself,” Xander said angrily. “We’re supposed to be a team, Buffy. Maybe we’re not all the Slayer, but we all have a job to do. Why don’t you just do yours, and let the rest of us take care of ourselves. We can do it, you know.”
“Xander,” Willow said tentatively, as Buffy stood speechless between them. “Buffy’s saved our lives more times than I can count.”
“I know that, Will!” Xander said, throwing his arms up in exasperation. “And only an idiot or a jerk wouldn’t be grateful. I am. All I’m saying is, if we’re a team, Buffy ought to start acting like a team player.”
He stared at her, without malice, but with an anger that hurt her deeply. She knew Xander was her friend, knew he cared greatly for her. That only made it worse.
Buffy sighed. “I’ll take it under advisement,” she said, trying for levity but only succeeding in causing Xander to shake his head in surrender.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book One - OUT of the MADHOUSE Page 3
