The Book of Fours

by Nancy Holder

  “Don’t answer that,” he said, wincing.

  “I’ve heard from Oz as well,” Giles said. “Willow’s doing well. Also, he mentioned that an axe was said to be at the fire—”

  A bulbous, semihuman head poked into the library, and its grin was fascinating in its special revolting way.

  It was Principal Snyder, the principal most people loved to hate.

  As opposed to poor Principal Flutie, Buffy thought, the principal some people loved to eat.

  “Mr. Giles, there you are,” Snyder said, in his smarmiest “Oh, yay, I got bad news for you” voice. “And Miss Summers and our own Cordelia Chase, who is obviously turning into quite the delinquent herself.”

  Just then, Angel walked up behind Snyder. Snyder gave a shout of surprise and said, “And who might you be?”

  “We saved him from all that stuff outside,” Cordelia said quickly. Everyone looked at her. “Well, he saved us. Me. Saving was involved,” she amended. “And hey, excuse me, but I am not a delinquent. I don’t hang out with these people.”

  “I suppose looks can be deceiving,” Snyder said nastily. To Giles, he continued, “I’m sure you’ll be just delighted to know that we’re going to finally get some use out of this library.”

  “Oh?” Giles asked, peering over the tops of his glasses.

  “The Red Cross is setting up an emergency shelter in the gym. I invited the nurses to bunk in here.”

  “Oooh, nurses,” Xander blurted. Everyone looked at him sharply. “O-kay, sexist private notion, which is frowned upon by the current administration’s thought police. Nurses can be men. Ugly men.” He smiled at Principal Snyder. “Better?”

  “Get a haircut,” Snyder snapped. His head disappeared back behind the swinging double doors.

  “Ja, mein Führer,” Xander muttered.

  “This is great,” Buffy muttered also. “Giles, we’re in the middle of fighting a big evil. What are we going to do with civilians around?”

  “We won’t even be able to discuss the exciting reading you two have been doing,” Xander added.

  “Hey, we could use a code,” Cordelia piped. “You know, like when Buffy left town because she killed Angel and she couldn’t face being such a loser? For example, Xander could be Night-hawk, again.”

  Xander was moderately flattered. Buffy chuckled slightly. Cordelia had totally grooved on the Nighthawk thing.

  “Only you’ll have to be something else now, like Chickenhawk,” Cordelia said scathingly. She looked past him to Giles. “And when we want to say ‘vampire,’ we could say, um, ‘surfer.’ ” She blinked at her own brilliance.

  “As in, ‘The surfer sucked all that chick’s blood while shootin’ the curl?’ ” Xander asked pointedly.

  “Hey. Let’s use some vampire-friendly language,” Buffy said, indicating Angel.

  “Sorry, Angel,” Cordelia said to Angel. To Xander, “Of course not. ‘Blood’ will be in code, too. ‘The surfer . . . waxed his board.’ ”

  “That sounds vaguely obscene. Not even vaguely, as a matter of fact,” Giles observed.

  “I like it.” Xander rubbed her hands together. “And we could use the term ‘mustache wax’ for—”

  “We’re not using a code,” Giles announced. “We’ll have to think of something else in order to work efficiently, despite our lack of privacy. And—and we should make things nice for the nurses. It’s a wonderful thing they’re doing, being here. Except for the, ah, bothering-us part.”

  He started picking up dusty volumes of demon lore. Also, candy wrappers and empty Coke cans.

  Not two seconds later, the library’s doors swung open, and Snyder marched in, leading half a dozen women in jeans and jackets into what, for three years, had been pretty much exclusive Slayer Territory.

  “And here we are,” Snyder said, loving the discomfort. He noticed the disarray the earthquake had caused.

  “You young people, make yourselves useful and clean this place up.” He sighed. “Kids today. In my day, an earthquake was an opportunity to demonstrate good citizenship.”

  “Of course, the Hawaiian Island chain was forming back then,” Xander muttered.

  “I’ll leave you all to get acquainted.” Snyder turned to go, then wheeled around. “Just what are you all doing in here, anyway?”

  “Cramming,” Buffy piped up. She fumbled, adding, “For various tests.”

  “I think I’ll go back to school,” one of the nurses drawled as she glanced at Angel. She had red hair pulled back in a French braid and green eyes that just had to be colored contact lenses. She was good in the jeans department.

  And also the slutty smile department, Buffy thought, narrowing her eyes and moving closer to Angel.

  “We sought refuge,” Cordelia said. She looked at the others. “And cramming. Refuge and cramming.” She nodded vigorously.

  “Principal Snyder?” boomed a deep male voice.

  The doors opened and a tall, broad-shouldered man in cammies and a helmet looked down from his chiseled large soldier heights at the pointy-toothed little rodent man. “My men would like to inspect the earthquake damage, sir.”

  “Of course.” Snyder smiled triumphantly at Giles. “I’ll put you in charge of the library detail, Mr. Giles. That’s how bad things are around here.”

  He left.

  “I’m for dropping out of school and enlisting,” Cordelia said. She touched her hair, which bordered on Bride of Frankensteinian, and unknowingly transferred some soot from her chin and smeared it down the entire side of her face.

  Giles smiled grimly at the redheaded nurse and held out his hand. “I’m Rupert Giles, the school librarian. I’m sure I speak for our entire town when I say thank you for coming. We’re in rather bad straits here.”

  “Yeah. Monica Hamilton here. What the hell is going on?” she asked, ignoring Giles and swiveling her head toward Angel.

  “Hell,” Cordelia said simply. “Hell is happening. Because we live on a hellmou—”

  Giles snapped his fingers at her and she shrugged as if to say that divulging classified information was not of the dire.

  “Okay. I’m picking up books,” she grumped

  “Anything to keep you quiet, Miss Loose Lips,” Xander whispered to her.

  She gave him an imperious glare. “I wouldn’t talk about my lips if I were you, Drool Boy.”

  “Atmospheric disturbances,” Giles said authoritatively. “I believe they’ve been pinpointed as the cause of all this wind and rain. The fires, well, you know Southern California. All the dry brush. So much dry vegetation could be set off by something fairly minor. A cigarette tossed from a truck, for example. And earthquakes . . . simple movements of the earth’s crust.”

  “Or the end of the world,” Xander pitched in.

  One of the other nurses, a chubby, short blonde, said to Buffy, “I haven’t ever seen anything like this. And you wouldn’t believe some of the disaster sites I’ve been to.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Buffy drawled.

  The nurse held up a huge book with Vampyre written across the front. “Do they actually let you guys check things like this out? I thought with all the political correctness these days, this would be verboten.”

  “Oh. That, uh,” Giles said, as Buffy looked to him for help. “Special collections. We have a fine . . . fantasy collection. Um. Yes. If you please. That book is very dangerous.” He caught himself. “I mean, old.”

  “He means old,” Buffy echoed, wide-eyed and innocent. At least, I think I look wide-eyed and innocent. Or maybe I look guilty as sin. Which leads me to an interesting thought: How can sin be guilty? Can you say “guilty as sloth? Guilty as envy?”

  Buffy snapped out of her reverie. “I’ll just put that book away in the weapons . . . collections.” She grabbed the book out of the nurse’s hands. “And also, the collections that are special are there.”

  “Mr. Giles, we’ll have cots for ourselves,” Monica said briskly. “We’ll be happy to get some extras for
you and your students.” She looked at Angel. “The atmo-spheric disturbances are getting worse. You’ll all probably have to stay here through the night.”

  Buffy looked at Angel. Angel looked at Buffy.

  Two hearts, with just one thought:

  Uh-oh.

  * * *

  It was almost dawn. In a puffy down bag, Buffy lay awake. Her lips were still tingling, and had tingled for what seemed like hours and hours, a timeless, sweet dream that had everything to do with Angel and nothing to do with walking fabric dummies.

  Angel had crept to her side, taking advantage of everyone’s deep, exhausted slumber, and murmured, “Buffy, I’m going to the boiler room. Fewer questions that way.”

  “Or more,” Buffy pointed out, wanting very much for him to stay with her.

  He shrugged. “My guess is that either the Red Cross or the National Guard will have a lot of equipment to unload.” At her questioning look, he added, “From their trucks. Parked outside. In the sun.”

  “Ah.” She flashed him a brief smile. “Some people will do anything to get out of a little manual labor. Even turn into vampires.”

  “It’s not a dodge I recommend,” he said.

  Then he bent over her bag and gathered her up in his arms, kissing her deeply and tenderly. A powerful thrill formed at the base of her spine and fanned outward and upward, making her catch her breath. His lips were gentle and probing, and Buffy closed her eyes, willing herself not to want him so much. So incredibly much.

  She slid her arms around his neck and heard his soft groan against the hollow of her ear. He lingered at her jawline, nuzzling her neck, and a frisson of fear mixed with the wanting, making it all the more irresistible. Slayers thrived on danger.

  Vampires lived for the hunt, and the kill.

  Most vampires, Buffy amended. Her heart was thundering. Every single one of them, except for Angel.

  “Buffy,” he murmured softly, spanning his hands across her back. He trailed a fingertip down her nose and across her mouth. She caught it and held it between her teeth, looking up at him languidly. His eyes widened slightly in response, and he kissed her again, more deeply this time.

  She wanted him to keep going. She wanted . . .

  . . . all the things we can’t ever have, she thought, clinging to him. Oh, Angel, Angel, I want you.

  So bite me now and—

  Firmly, Angel moved away. He touched her eyebrow, cupped her cheek. With a steady, intense gaze, he got up and moved away, his footfalls soundless on the library floor.

  After he left, she heard Xander chuckle.

  “Shut up, Xand,” Buffy said pleasantly.

  Then she slept.

  * * *

  In San Diego, Christopher Bothwell slumped at his kitchen table and drank the coffee Cecile had made for him. Apparently he’d passed out on the couch during the ritual, and he had a hell of a hangover, though he could have sworn he’d only shared a couple glasses of wine with her during the course of the evening. She’d stayed over—he’d picked her up and she hadn’t wanted to call a cab, as the distance from his home in Ocean Beach and hers, in Lakeside, made it outrageously expensive.

  He said, “I’m terribly embarrassed about all this. You know, we Brits generally boast that we could hold our liquor better than Australians.”

  She had changed her attire after the ritual; now she was wearing yesterday’s pair of jeans and black turtleneck sweater. A turban of vivid colors was wound around her hair, a modified and much less Marge Simpson–like version of the headdresses favored by Erykah Badu. With Mariposa on her lap, she drank her own cup of coffee. She was reading The San Diego Union-Tribune.

  She had the most elegant and classic bone structure, putting him in mind of India, whose mother was a beautiful and famous Philippine actress.

  “It’s no problem,” she said. “I’ve been known to tie one on myself now and then.” She put down the newspaper and smiled. “My temp job ended yesterday. I’ve been scheduled for a new assignment on Monday, but if I give them forty-eight hours’ notice, I can cancel it. Would you like me to come with you to Sunnyvale?”

  “Sunnydale,” he corrected. He was flattered. “That’s very kind of you, really. But this friend—”

  “The sick one,” she cut in helpfully.

  “Yes. The sick one.” He hated lying to her. She was a splendid girl, really. Yet he couldn’t exactly bring her along on Watcher business. It would be extremely awkward; he and Rupert Giles needed to speak privately, and the Slayers shouldn’t be shouldered with the burden of discussing confidential Council matters with a complete stranger in close proximity. And Sunnydale wasn’t precisely the kind of town where one could find diversions for a companion while one went about one’s business.

  “Actually,” he continued, “we haven’t seen each other in quite a long time, and we’ve got a bit of, ah, emotional baggage to sort out. We had a row, if you must know.” He made himself blush, which, he was embarrassed to admit, he could do on command. “It’s frightfully dreary.”

  “Oh.” She raised her brows. “Then of course . . . I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  He loved her accent. And her sweetness.

  “It was very kind of you to offer. I hope I haven’t offended you.”

  “Mais non. We all have our secrets.” Her eyes glittered and she tilted her head as if daring him to reveal his.

  “Ah.” He made a face. “I have offended you.”

  “Not in the least.” She raised her coffee cup to her lips and peered at him over the rim. “I shall be eager to see you again.”

  “I, as well.” Relieved, he smiled at her, and she smiled back.

  “Right, then. I ought to pack. Throw a few things in an overnight bag.”

  “May I do anything to help?”

  “Damn. The dog,” he said, as Mariposa licked Cecile’s hand. Back in England, he wouldn’t have hesitated to bring the little dog with him. But he didn’t know what he was getting into in the home town of the reigning Slayer. He cherished the dog; he had promised India he would take care of her forever and always.

  “Perhaps I could watch her for you,” she suggested. Brightening, she looked around. “I could stay here and house sit for you, or I can take her back to my place.”

  “That’s extremely generous.” He meant it. But he was hesitant to take her up on her offer. For one thing, he didn’t know her all that well. For another, he didn’t want to presume, but the thought of Mariposa staying in a stranger’s home, where they might not be as careful about shutting doors before she could scoot outside and run away, was not at all appealing.

  “I’d be happy to stay here,” she said.

  “Who’ll watch your apartment? If you stay here, I mean?” Kit asked her.

  Her smile was warm as she replied, “I have a roommate. It would be nice to have my own place for a few days.”

  “Ah.” He felt a bit disingenuous; she was obviously interested in him, and he had no intention of moving forward in any kind of more serious relationship.

  “It would be no trouble. Vraiment.” She gave the dog a pat. “We’ll get along just fine, Mariposa and I. I feel as if I already know your little puppy dog.”

  The dog yipped with delight and settled onto her lap like the most entitled of spoiled, fat Persian cats.

  “Very well, then.” He scooted back his chair. “It’s quite kind of you, Cecile.”

  “Pas de tout. Not at all.” She gave the dog an affectionate scratching behind the ears. “It is I who should be thanking you.”

  The French, he thought, amused. So flowery and gallant.

  Then he went to pack, giving his bedroom a quick look-’round to see if there were any telltale signs of his secret life as a Watcher. He was generally conscientious about it, not so much for fear that a friend or acquaintance would notice something, but because the crime rate in this part of San Diego was rather high. If someone broke in, he wanted them stealing items that were uninteresting and unremarkable. Nothing
, at any rate, that would pique one’s curiosity about him in the least.

  He heard her in the kitchen, and realized that it was past noon and he hadn’t offered her anything to eat. He was quite flummoxed; he didn’t recall anything about ending the ritual. He himself had ground the herbals for the rite, and they had never interacted so strongly with alcohol before. Certainly, he’d gotten a buzz on other occasions, but nothing like what had happened last night.

  So, did I actually see India? he wondered. He would need to discuss the evening with Cecile without revealing too much information.

  But if I saw her . . . if I can speak with her, tell her that I love her, that she is, and was, cherished . . .

  Perhaps then, both of us shall find peace.

  The television went on and he set to packing his bag. When he was finished, he discovered that she had made them each a ham sandwich. She was eating hers on his sofa in front of the television. When he came into the room, she looked up at him and said, “Look at this.”

  On the screen, a woman dressed in a rain slicker and holding an umbrella stood before a harbor in the throes of massive tides. Large, angry waves slammed against the stone breakwater behind her as she spoke. Rain soaked her. Lightning flashed.

  “The coastal town of Sunnydale is being slammed with alarmingly high tides, which local oceanographers are at a loss to explain. In addition, the fire which began in Sunnydale National Forest is now raging out of control and consuming huge sections of the historic downtown area. Additional firefighters are on call to be flown in, but the town is reeling under weather conditions too bad to allow planes into the air space.”

  He frowned. “Giles didn’t say anything about any of that.”

  “Giles?” she repeated.

  “My friend.” He frowned at the images on the screen: a restaurant whose windows had been shattered by the encroaching sea. Towering pine trees glowing with flame.

  “I’d better go now,” he said, “before there’s no town to go to. I’ll drive you home so you can get some things.”

  “No need,” she said. “I called my roommate while you were packing. Cameron has to come out to this area later to do some errands. He’s going to have someone follow him out with my car.”