“He is a weak fool, and he will do nothing to help you,” said a voice behind the statue of the Virgin.
Clad in a black robe decorated with crimson half moons, the sleeves reaching down to the floor and slashed with scarlet, Giacomo Fulcanelli glided toward her. His beardless face was weathered yet curiously unlined and even striking, his features distinct and well-formed. He had a lush mouth and dark eyebrows that contrasted sharply with the white hair streaming over his shoulders. His eyes were a startling crystal blue. His left hand, which was withered, he held against his side. It had gone bad, he had once told her, because the left chamber of the heart is the side which contains magick, and his had been so filled that his veins had overflowed with power. She believed this entirely. She had seen the effects of his power firsthand.
In his right hand he carried a cylindrical shape draped with a black cloth. Something inside scrabbled frantically.
“Maestro,” Catherine breathed, curtsying. “I didn’t realize you were in the room.”
“I heard enough.”
He crossed the room and set the covered cylinder down on a marble table that matched the one littered with ashes. She frowned at the hidden object, having no wish to repeat the sacrifice they had made an hour before. It had completely unnerved her and sent her reeling into the crying spell Regnier had witnessed.
“So,” Fulcanelli continued, laying a caressing hand on the drape, “you seek to replace me.”
“No, not at all.” She blinked, startled by his accusation. “He came unbidden.”
He sneered at her. “And you wept in his arms. Have you lost all faith in me?”
Catherine played nervously with the rings on her fingers. “Of course not, maestro. It is simply that Signore Regnier has offered his help. Should I not accept aid from whatever quarter I find it?” She hesitated. “A starving man would eat either a fig or a joint of meat, would he not?”
He closed his eyes and sighed heavily. “How little you understand, Catherine.” He and he alone dared to speak to her with such familiarity. Even her husband referred to her as Madame.
He stretched his hands to either side, then brought them together as he spoke. “Magick is complex, and only a master sorcerer can properly use it. If you allow that ignorant courtier to interfere, he might well impede the progress of my efforts.” Fulcanelli glared at her. “In fact, I sense that he may already have done so.”
“What?” she asked in a tiny voice. “What do you mean?”
“A soul whispers near my ear.” He cocked his head and touched his earlobe. “ ‘I desired to be born to this lady,’ it is telling me. ‘But my way has been prevented.’ ”
His eyes widened. “And now it departs, flying toward Heaven.”
“No!” she cried, staring up at the ceiling. “No, call it back!”
“It is gone.” He extended his arms toward her. “Poor child. It was a son.”
She covered her eyes with her hands. Swiftly he drew her into his embrace and urged her head down on his chest. “Turn that man away. Better still, persuade your father-in-law to exile him from court. He is a menace to you.”
She wept against his chest. He stroked her hair. It felt so wonderful to have someone to hold her, touch her, comfort her.
“Better yet, have him killed,” Fulcanelli said. “It would be the best thing you could do. That is, if you truly want children. Do you, little princess?”
She gazed up at him with fresh tears. “Si, you know I do.”
“Well, then.” He smiled at her. He eased her away from his chest and put his arm over her shoulders. Together they walked toward the draped cylinder.
With a flourish, he unveiled the object. Within, a tiny kitten batted at the bars of the round cage.
“No,” she protested, her blood running cold.
“Come now. Let’s not falter now, shall we?” Fulcanelli smiled. “The streets of the town are filled with cats. But there is not one single royal child in the royal nursery.” He began to open the cage. “Do I speak the truth?”
“Si,” she breathed, “you do.”
He pulled the kitten out by the scruff of the neck. It was gray and scrawny. A stray, she tried to tell herself. Something that would starve on the streets.
Something that would have died soon anyway.
* * *
When classes let out the following day, Buffy and her friends gathered in the library to discuss Springheel Jack. A small debate had arisen over whether Jack qualified as a demon or was some kind of nondemonic monster or ancient species. Xander suggested an alien origin, and the others largely ignored him. The way Buffy figured it, if you added aliens to the mix, things just got crazy from there. As if they weren’t crazy enough as it was.
Yet, in spite of all the other things that ought to have been on her mind, Buffy was mainly concerned about Giles. She had been trying to call, and later to beep him, without any success. The last two calls, she’d keyed in the school’s number, so he’d be able to figure out that they were in the library. At the very least, he ought to have phoned her back.
So when the phone did ring, at about four o’clock, Buffy leaped from her chair, ignoring the others, and dashed for it. After all, how many calls did the library get after school hours?
“Hello?” Buffy said into the phone.
“Buffy?”
“Giles. Listen, I thought we’d worked out the beeper thing. That’s why I gave it to you. Where have you been all day? I’ve been trying to—”
“Buffy . . .” Giles’s voice was very faint.
“Our connection sucks,” she said, positioning the phone against her ear. “I can barely hear you. Look, I’m sorry to interrupt your wicked-crazy fun, which I’m sure you’re having with all the other, um, wicked-crazy library people, but weird stuff is happening. Willow thinks the sky is falling, and . . .”
“Buffy,” Giles said again.
Something in his tone stopped her. She looked at the others, who immediately went on the alert, and said, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m in hospital,” he said simply. “I was . . . I was pushed down some stairs.”
“Oh, my God.” Buffy sank slowly into a chair. Her entire body went numb. “Giles, are you all right?”
The others stared at her, the anxiety on their faces bordering on outright fear.
“I’m afraid I neglected to tuck and roll,” he said slowly. “I’ve got . . . I have to stay here.” He sighed. “I’m rather muzzy, I must admit. I have what is so charmingly referred to as a ‘morphine drip’ protruding from my forearm. Ugly little beast, but quite effective, actually.”
Buffy cleared her throat. “Morphine? Oh, my God, Giles.” She closed her eyes. “How bad?”
“I’m all right. A bit black and blue around the edges. A few ribs cracked. And a ghastly headache.”
Brain damage, Buffy thought, bulleting ahead. An operation. He could die on the table. Oh, God . . .
“But enough of that. You had an emergency of some kind?” he asked her.
“What? Oh. It’s not important. What do the doctors say about—”
“Tell Giles about Springheel Jack,” Xander spoke up, a look of concern on his face.
“Uh-uh. No way,” Buffy insisted, covering the phone for a second. “Giles? We’re okay here. We’ll figure it out. You just get better.”
“But Buffy,” Giles protested. “If you’re in danger, I must help you figure out what—”
“We’ll deal. If things get too hairy, we’ll call you back, okay?”
Buffy interrogated Giles about his condition for several minutes longer before hanging up the phone. She didn’t mention Springheel Jack. Not at all. Though she knew they would likely benefit greatly from his help, in view of his current condition she kept silent. He would be up in an instant and on his way home, and probably do himself more damage than the jerk who pushed him down the stairs. Buffy couldn’t afford that. She needed her Watcher all in one piece.
“So what’s the d
iagnosis?” Willow asked, her concern obvious.
“He’s banged up pretty badly, but other than that, I’m not sure,” Buffy said with a frown. “He fell asleep talking to me,” she told them. Then she bit her lower lip. “But not before he told me that someone ransacked his hotel room.”
They all looked at each other.
“I’m going to New York,” Buffy announced.
Xander raised a hand. “Oh, Buffy? Springheel Jack? Major weird stuff? Sky falling?”
“Hospitals have security. Okay, not like prisons. But security.” Oz shrugged.
“Something’s going on around here,” Xander added, with a little less conviction. “We need to figure out what it is.”
“I thought you could take care of things like that on your own,” she snapped at him. “What do you need me for?”
Xander blinked and lifted his chin. “You want to start?”
She nodded at Willow. “Take care of everybody.”
Willow nodded back, confidently, then blinked and pointed at herself.
“Buffy—” Xander began.
She headed for the door.
* * *
Buffy’s mom wasn’t home from work yet. But the fact that Joyce wasn’t home was both a relief and an inconvenience. Buffy needed money for a plane ticket, and she needed to gently explain why she was headed off to the big city during the school week. Joyce was getting used to Buffy’s life as the Slayer, but in many ways the Chosen One was still her one and only little girl. And most mothers did not take kindly to notes that read, “Dear Mom, Gone to NYC to check on Giles. He’s been hurt. Love, Buffy.”
What else could she do? Giles was not just her Watcher. He was her friend.
But what exactly could she do for him in New York? Make sure no one else pushed him down a flight of stairs. Try to find out who broke into his room. Figure out if this was a Hellmouth kind of thing or a New York City kind of thing. After all, it was actually possible that Giles was just a random victim.
She called the airlines, and was put on hell hold. She sat there, rifling through the kitchen trying to find one of her mom’s credit card receipts from which she could read off the number—not a very nice thing to do but she didn’t have much choice. It would take forever for her to pay her mom back, but she’d just have to understand.
She waited and waited, growing angrier and angrier, and had just brought the phone over to the fridge to search for snacks when the house began to shake violently. A seasoned Southern Californian, Buffy’s first thought was of an earthquake and she ran beneath the transom in the kitchen, grabbing onto either side of the jamb as she was thrown back and forth.
Thunder blasted through the air so loudly it made her dive to the floor and cover her ears and shut her eyes tight. It was as if a grenade had just exploded in the room. The floor rolled. A thin crack formed in one wall. Glass shattered. Her body thrummed with the noise, and Buffy felt like she was being pummeled in the chest and gut and back by it.
Then it was gone.
She lifted her head and opened her eyes.
Buffy hung up and looked around at the kitchen. The teakettle, normally on the back burner, had slid to the floor. Her mom’s spice rack was knocked over. The smell of caraway seeds permeated the room.
She tidied up, feeling odd, almost as if she were a guest in her own home. The sense of not belonging had seemed to dog her lately—first at the Bronze, and now here—and she didn’t like it.
Then she heard the splat of thick raindrops. Made sense with the thunder, she figured, if that was real thunder this time and not Hellmouth thunder.
Idly she glanced out the window.
Odd round shapes were tumbling from a sunny sky.
Shapes whose legs flailed spasmodically.
“Okay . . . .?” Buffy whispered, and opened the kitchen door.
It was toads. Dozens . . . no, hundreds of large green toads, plummeting toward the grass, and the sidewalk, and the blacktop.
She made a face, said, “Eew,” and sighed.
Exactly how a Slayer was supposed to attack a rain of toads was beyond her. The key was to figure out what was causing it, and she was not at all sure they’d be able to do that without Giles.
Poor Giles.
Chapter
3
XANDER STOOD JUST INSIDE THE Door to Mr. Frankel’s office, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. The man was sifting through some files on a table by the window. Outside, the shadows had grown long. It was almost five-thirty, and it would be dark soon.
Finally, out of patience and wishing he were anywhere else, Xander cleared his throat. The guidance counselor turned abruptly, startled as though he expected trouble in his office. For a moment, Xander wondered if that was just because he was a guidance counselor, or because they lived on the Hellmouth, and who knew what might happen in this school after hours. The memory of Jenny Calendar’s murder was still fresh after a year. And it didn’t help that another guidance counselor, Mr. Platt, had been savagely murdered just a few offices down earlier in the school year.
“Ah, Xander, come in!” Mr. Frankel said, with exaggerated hospitality, once he’d seen that no threat was forthcoming. “I’m happy to see you here on time. Happy to see you here at all, in fact.”
With a shrug, Xander stepped into the office and dropped into the chair in front of Frankel’s desk. The mousy little man had a furry caterpillar of a moustache, as if that could somehow make up for his rapidly receding hairline. Xander had never liked him, but he thought that might have been more because he was a guidance counselor than because of his horrible geekiness. After all, Xander knew from geeks. Or at least, he used to. Back when he cared what people thought about him. He’d since learned that there was more to the world than the opinions of the general public.
“I, uh, was really sick for a couple of weeks, Mr. Frankel,” he said lamely.
“Yes, well that didn’t seem to impact your attendance record, did it?” the man asked, eyeing Xander closely.
“My parents don’t like it if I miss school, but they wanted me to come right home. Anyway, I don’t know what the big deal is. I’m set, Mr. Frankel. I haven’t robbed any banks or purchased any high-powered weaponry, so . . .” Xander began to stand up.
“Please, Xander, sit down.” Frankel pointed to the chair. “You know, there are only two other students who haven’t come to see me yet about their plans for after high school, and one of them is your friend Miss Summers.”
“Good luck there,” Xander murmured.
“I’m required to speak to all the students, Xander. It’s my job. You put me off as long as possible, and then asked me to meet you at a time you thought would be too inconvenient for me. Well, it was. I usually have dinner at six o’clock. Instead, I’ll be here. But I am here, and so are you, so let’s talk. Why waste that time?”
“That was my question,” Xander replied.
Mr. Frankel picked up a folder from his desk. Xander’s school record, Xander deduced, from the fact that his name and the word transcript were on the tab. “You know,” the guidance counselor said, eyebrows raised, “your grades really aren’t as bad as you seem to think. And I see here that you were accepted at several of the schools to which you applied. Is it simply a matter of not having decided which school you’d like to attend?”
“I have a plan,” Xander lied.
The man looked at Xander. “Would you care to share that plan with me, Xander?”
“No. Actually. Not at all.”
He shrugged. “I can’t force you, but you realize the kind of limits you place on your future prospects if you decide not to . . .”
Xander stood up. Frankel blinked.
“Look, Mr. Frankel, I appreciate your interest. You’ve done your job, okay? You got me in here, we talked about my future, and all is right with the world. You have no idea what my life is like, what I’m like, what my plans for the future are. That means you don’t have enough to go on to even offer an opinion of wh
at I ought to do with that future.”
The counselor stared at him with his mouth open in a comical little O. He half-rose, sputtering an argument of some kind.
Xander walked out. Graduation was only a few months away, and he was going to graduate, that much was certain. For the moment, it was enough.
That’s what he told himself anyway. But in his mind, he carried an image of Buffy, and the question, What would happen to her?
And to whatever “us” there was?
* * *
“Buffy, what is going on?”
Giles still sounded weak, but not nearly as disoriented. Obviously the docs had scaled back the painkillers. Buffy still felt bad for him, but she was glad that he would, at least, be aware enough to call for help if anyone tried to go after him again.
“It isn’t important, Giles,” she said, cradling the phone as she swallowed the last of the french fries that constituted her evening meal.
“As of yesterday, it was an emergency,” he said stiffly. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m only going to become more agitated.”
Buffy sighed. “I’m more worried about you right now than I am about Sunnydale,” she said. “You still don’t have any idea who pushed you, or why?”
“Not a clue,” he confessed. “But what is—”
“I wish I could come out there, but I just can’t. Not right now. Just do me a favor, and try not to get killed. It would be a major hassle to start breaking in a new Watcher now, y’know? Training you was hard enough,” Buffy teased.
“Yes, of course,” Giles said gruffly. “I’d hate to put a new Watcher through what I’ve been through with you.”
Buffy winced. She had begun the teasing, hoping to distract him but also warn him of potential danger. And she was glad that his intermittent sense of humor had returned. But his comment cut through her own levity, brought her to a place of pain and sadness. They’d all been through a lot, but Giles had suffered so much, from the grisly murder of Jenny Calendar to his own torture at Angel’s hands.
Deep in Buffy’s heart, there was a part of her that felt the blame for all of that. And in that same dark place, she wondered if Giles blamed her as well. His words spoke to that part of her, and though Buffy knew it was useless to contemplate, the mere idea hurt her.
Out of the Madhouse Page 5
