by Mel Odom
“Downtown,” Xander said. “We’re going to the open market area.”
“Ah,” Oz said. “Searching. Do we have any clue-type things? Or are we just following pheromones here?”
Xander dug the necklace from his pocket. “Last night, while we were fighting those Black Wind guys, the swordswoman dropped this.”
Oz reached for it, feeling it briefly and smelling it. “Lemons. Exotic.”
Xander took the necklace back, watching the ’burbs slide by outside the window. “Wait till you see her. She’s absolutely gorgeous.”
Oz nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Xander waited until he couldn’t handle it any longer. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but you’re thinking something.”
Oz shrugged. “I’m an internal person. Usually I think a lot.”
“So what are you thinking about?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah, right now.” Xander felt a little defensive and really didn’t want to.
“Willow. Willow and me. You, some, maybe.”
“Get to the thinking about me part.”
“Actually,” Oz replied, turning the corner when the light turned green, “I find the whole Willow and me thing much more interesting. You’re more like bean sprouts on a vegetarian buffet. A nice addition, but I didn’t go there looking for you.” He smiled.
“Thanks for that. No, really, I mean that.” Xander tried to listen to the music but couldn’t concentrate. “You think I’m stupid to be out looking for her, don’t you?”
Oz shook his head. “A little impulsive, maybe.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because you asked,” Oz replied simply. “And I know you’d go crazier if you were by yourself.”
Xander looked away from Oz’s honest expression. “I appreciate that. And I would. Go crazier, I mean.” He paused, trying to get past the sudden thickness in his throat. “This whole coming graduation thing is getting to be a bummer, you know?”
“Maybe.”
“Remember what it was like back in grade school?” Xander asked. “By our senior year, we figured we’d be top dogs. King of the hill. The very best there was in high school. We’d have the coolest comebacks, our pick of the girls, and no homework. It’s what we gave all those years up for as underclassmen.”
“It’s not much fun the second time around, either.”
“Sorry,” Xander said. “Forgot.” Oz had experienced his own problems with his first senior year, which was why he was repeating it this year. “But you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Oz replied. “I know what you mean. That’s kinda how I felt the first time. Until I found out I wasn’t going to make it through. That’ll leave you kinda flat, for sure.” He shrugged. “But, on a brighter note, I got to spend more time with Willow than if I’d gone to university this year. Sometimes life has a way of working things out for you on its own. You just gotta leave it alone and let it happen.”
“I know.” Xander blew out a frustrated breath. “I thought I had a handle on this year. Dating Cordelia Chase, who I never figured would give me the time of day, being part of the group with Buffy, and finally getting out of school seemed just around the corner. Then Cordy was gone.”
“She had her reasons,” Oz pointed out.
“That she did.” Xander couldn’t look at Oz, knowing both of them knew what those reasons were.
“It might not have worked out anyway,” Oz said. “Leaving high school has that effect on people. Willow and I are doing great, but who knows what the future holds?”
Xander shook his head. “Can’t see a time when you and she aren’t together.”
“Me neither. But stranger things have happened.”
“Then there’s this whole get-out-of-school thing going on. You and Willow and Buffy are already planning college. You know what I’m planning?”
“No.”
“Nothing.” Xander sighed. “Maybe a road trip. I always wanted to go see stuff, you know.”
“What stuff?”
Xander shrugged. “Other stuff, I guess. I’ve pretty much seen all this stuff.” He waved at Sunnydale. A gray-haired granny lady on the corner waved back.
“So there you are,” Oz said, “feeling maybe okay about other stuff when along comes these new demons and Mystery Girl.”
Xander glanced at Oz. “How’d you know I was calling her that?”
Oz glanced at him. “You don’t know who she is, you don’t know where she came from, you don’t even know her name. What else are you going to call her?”
“Maybe that was a lock.” Xander juggled the necklace in his palm. “I just have a feeling about this. She likes me. She told me I was polite and brave, and that I have a good sense of humor.” He paused, thinking. “Do you know how many girls have ever told me that? I mean, all three of those things?”
Oz shook his head. “No idea.”
“I can count them on—” Xander stopped himself and sighed. “None, Oz, that’s how many have told me that. Zipola. And this was only a first date. Kinda. Maybe once she gets to know me—actually, that’s kind of scary to think about.”
“Then don’t.”
“Can’t think about anything else,” Xander sighed.
Oz drove carefully through the crowds, getting closer to the open market area. Farmers put up stands with vegetables, fruits, and flowers. Flea market merchants and craftsmen worked booths or out of the backs of flatbed trucks. There was an old movie theater that showed old science fiction and horror movies for two bucks a head.
“I sound pathetic, don’t I?”
“No.”
“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“No.”
“Because you care about me?”
“Because it might get back to Willow and I don’t even want to try explaining that.”
Xander shook his head. “You’re a funny guy. God, you gotta love that warped sense of humor. Otherwise you’d hate it.”
Oz only smiled as he pulled into a parking area only a couple of blocks from the open market.
“Look, before you get into the whole she-could-be-amantisgirl-or-a-mummy-or-somebody-out-to-use-me, just know that I’ve already scoped that whole scene out. I know the risks I’m taking.”
“Good,” Oz said, switching off the engine. “Because if she’s jumping twenty feet into the air, shooting demons with flintlock pistols, and lopping off body parts like it was nothing, I got a news flash for you: she ain’t normal.”
“That’s kind of judgmental, don’t you think?” Anger stirred inside Xander and he struggled to keep it under control.
“I know about things that aren’t normal. And this is one of them.”
“You’re the most normal guy I know,” Xander protested.
“I’m a werewolf, Xander. Buffy’s the Slayer. Willow’s a witch. Giles is a Watcher. Angel is a vampire. Not exactly poster children for normal.”
“She’s normal enough.”
“Boy, are you hooked.” Oz stepped out of the van.
Xander got out on his side. “Look at what you’re saying. Maybe normal just isn’t what I’m looking for in my life.”
“I know. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Oz nodded toward the market. “C’mon. Let’s go see if we can ferret out Mystery Girl’s secret identity.”
* * *
Most people, Buffy reminded herself, wouldn’t feel safe entering a vampire’s lair. She stepped across the threshold into Angel’s mansion, though, and felt like a weight had lifted from her shoulders.
Angel slept sitting up against the wall beside the unlit fireplace. He only wore torn and stained pants, naked from the waist up. The wounds, burns and cuts mostly, stood out against his flesh. His forearms rested on his bent knees, and he didn’t appear comfortable at all.
The mansion was huge and rambling, and had high ceilings. The bookshelves held old tomes on demonology and the supern
atural. There were couches, a bed, and red velvet curtains. The place wasn’t a home; it really was a lair, a place where an animal came to hide from the rest of the world. Buffy felt guilty about thinking that, but she knew it was true. Angel didn’t live there; he existed. He lived when he was with her, and sometimes that thought scared her, kind of felt like responsibility. But she knew he felt the same way about her. She invested so much trust and hope in him, yet was afraid of those ties at the same time.
Newspapers lay scattered around him and she wondered what he’d been searching for.
She crossed the room with total Slayer stealth, not wanting to wake him. Easing her backpack from her shoulders, she sat cross-legged in front of him. She propped her elbows on her knees and rested her chin on her fists. She scanned the newspapers. There were a couple local papers, an L.A. Times, and a Wall Street Journal. Not exactly Angel’s typical reading material, she thought.
She studied the various wounds on Angel’s body, knowing some of them were fresh and wondering where they’d come from. But she also remembered what it had felt like to lie in his arms, to be totally wrapped up in someone else’s flesh. She missed that, was afraid of that, and wanted that all in one heartbeat. Then the feeling burst.
Buffy felt a twinge in her stomach, a note of warning that came from her Slayer senses, and watched as Angel’s eyes opened. “Hey,” she said.
Angel looked embarrassed. “Didn’t hear you come in.”
“Slayer skills,” Buffy said. “Makes evil things everywhere live in fear.”
“Have you been here long?” Angel sat up straighter.
“A couple minutes. What about you?” She touched one of the papers. “I know you’ve been here long enough to catch up on some reading, but looking at all the new cuts and bruises, you’ve been elsewhere as well.”
“I was following up on the Black Wind gang.”
“Clue-type things?”
“I found some of them down by the harbor.”
Buffy remembered the newscast she’d heard on the radio at lunch. “Big explosion? Possible munitions storage for gang activity?”
“Yeah. But then I lost them.”
“You shouldn’t have gone by yourself.”
“I had to. These guys have got you marked, Buffy, and I need to know why.”
“We need to know why,” Buffy corrected.
Angel nodded. “I thought you were supposed to be at school with Giles.”
“I took a rain check. I knew you’d be looking into this thing and I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Thanks.”
“So give. What did you find out?” She listened intently as he described the confrontation inside the warehouse, looking at the papers regarding Chengxian Zhiyong and the shipping business he was bringing to Sunnydale. Then she gave him the story of the statue in the crate her mother had been responsible for. “If the mayor’s involved, which he is, we can kind of fill in the blank about how the Black Wind members had my picture.”
“Yeah. The main concern is why Zhiyong is here in Sunnydale.”
“Crime monopoly. Zhiyong wants more. Total greed factor.”
“Sunnydale isn’t exactly the Boardwalk of gangdom,” Angel replied.
“Maybe there’s more crime-type things going through Sunnydale than we thought,” Buffy pointed out. “We aren’t exactly crime-fighters. We specialize in demons, who are usually involved in crime-type things, but we don’t know all the mundane things that go on here.”
“I thought about that,” Angel agreed. “And I even considered the possibility that Sunnydale was a staging area.”
“Bigger and better conquests from here? Now we’re talking Risk, not Monopoly.”
Angel got to his feet, not moving as fluidly as normal. The wounds had evidently taken their toll. He paced, thinking on his feet. “There’s more to it than that. The lawyer I talked to said that Zhiyong was having him dig up old land claims from a hundred and fifty, two hundred years ago. Some of the paperwork got lost over the years, and Zhiyong’s take on it was that some of those files were lost intentionally.”
“Why?”
Angel shook his head. “Collins didn’t know. He’d started the research, but hadn’t gotten very far before he was taken to the warehouse today.”
“Did the papers help?”
“No. There’s a lot of fanfare about Zhiyong’s company, about the number of jobs it could potentially open up here in Sunnydale as well as the effect it might have on some aspects of Pacific Rim shipping.”
“But that’s not what we’re looking for.”
“No. And there’s very little background material in those articles that doesn’t reflect favorably on Zhiyong and his operation.”
“We didn’t ask Willy about Zhiyong last night,” Buffy said. “We didn’t know his name last night. We could go there.”
“Zhiyong is involved,” Angel said. “I was just thinking about making the rounds myself.”
Buffy nodded. “When I got here, you looked like you were thinking really long and deep thoughts.”
Angel smiled. “Yeah. Let me grab a quick shower and we’ll go.”
“The sun will still be up for a while longer. Is there a way you can get to the Alibi in the daylight?”
“I can get there through the sewers,” Angel said, disappearing into a back room.
“Not a pleasant thought,” Buffy said.
“It’s a relatively short trip from here.”
“Easy for you to say,” Buffy shot back. “Only one of us can hold our breath the whole way.”
“It’s a nice piece. Probably worth a hundred dollars or so. Do you want to sell it?”
Xander took the necklace back from the Hispanic man’s hands protectively. “I’m not looking to sell it,” he explained. “I wanted to know if you’d seen another one like it.”
The man leaned back in his folding chair and put his jeweler’s loupe away. Silver rings, bracelets, and necklace chains filled the black velvet-bottomed boxes on the cloth-covered table. “Not today.”
“Not today?” Xander’s excitement quickened his pulse. “Did you see one like it yesterday?”
“No.”
Keeping his impatience in check, Xander asked, “Then when did you see one like it?”
The man shook his head. “I don’t know that I have, kid. I only know that I haven’t seen a piece like that today or yesterday.” He rolled a toothpick in his mouth. “Tell you what, I’ll give you one hundred twenty-five dollars for the necklace. Won’t even ask you where you got it.”
Xander curbed a heated remark. “I’ll think about it and get back to you.” He turned to leave.
“Go ahead,” the man promised, “but you ain’t gonna get a better offer here.”
Disgusted and starting to get more than a little dejected with nearly an hour invested and nothing to show for it, Xander threaded back through the marketplace. The area was a narrow street with pedestrian-only traffic, open to anyone with goods to sell and a license, from farm products to clothing to jewelry. A few of the stands offered candied apples and cookies. It was a great place to come and hang out during the spring and early summer.
Oz waited by a collection of velvet paintings of Kid Rock, X-Men, and other media stars. “No luck?”
“No.” Xander scanned the booths and market areas, trying not to let his frustration sound in his voice. Oz had been a good sport about giving up his time. Xander continued down the lines of booths.
“I’ve been thinking,” Oz said.
“Please don’t do that.”
“C’mon, you’re going to have to lighten up a little bit here or you’re going to go into critical meltdown.”
“I’m light.”
“What I was thinking was that you might want to consider starting your own self-help group. Kind of a I Can’t Help Loving Supernatural theme. You know, a haven for unlucky-in-love guys and ghouls.”
“Har-de-har-har,” Xander replied. “I mean, hardly
a har-har there.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
A dragon fluttering on a pennant caught Xander’s eye. He made his way down to a booth specializing in Eastern herbal remedies, incense, and kimonos that was at the back of the market area. It wasn’t jewelry, but maybe the culture was right.
A young Asian guy worked the counter, hair slicked back and wearing a Bronze tee shirt. He filled jars with different incense sticks. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” Xander told him, placing the necklace on the glass counter. “I’m trying to find someone who might know about this necklace.”
The guy took the necklace and inspected it. “This is very old. Chinese, I think, if that helps.” He glanced up.
Xander shook his head. “Not really. I figured Chinese. I met this girl and she dropped it. I found it later. I want to return it to her, but I didn’t get her name. I thought maybe the necklace was unique enough I could find out where she got it and who she was.”
“Beats me.” The guy handed the necklace back and smiled. “Judging by that grin on your face, she must have been pretty.”
“Very.”
“Wish I could help you. You might ask Master Kim. He knows a lot about old jewelry, and this is definitely not something you’re going to find on a shelf somewhere.”
A momentary elation filled Xander. “Where do I find Master Kim?”
“Down at the Green Dragon Temple martial arts dojo. It’s not far from here.”
Xander memorized the directions, which weren’t difficult, then headed back to where he’d left Oz. Only Oz wasn’t where Xander had left him. The sidewalk in front of the closed movie theater was empty.
While he stood there looking, a strong arm roped around Xander’s neck and dragged him back. He grabbed the thick forearm with both hands and tried to fight his way free. He even considered screaming, which wasn’t all that macho but could keep a person alive, but he couldn’t get any air out of his lungs. Or in. His vision faded around the edges as he kicked. One of the Black Wind gang members grabbed Xander’s feet and held them as they entered the theater with him.
They carried him past the concession stand and into the dark area of the theater.
Xander was on the verge of passing out when he saw Oz lying facedown on the carpet in the aisle. One of the Black Wind gangers was securing Oz’s arms behind his back with strips of gray duct tape.
