Chapter Two: Wall, Wainscot, and Mouse
by L. Inman
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.
—T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
“Most of it’s junk,”
She dropped the half-rolled pile of
mail on the kitchen table and plopped down in one of the chairs, pulling her
sweatshirt in and out from her front.
“It’s sticky out there.”
The sweatshirt had actually belonged
to him once, but he had let her raid the clothing he kept here for extra things
without actually verbalizing the suggestion.
Willow had packed for England extremely impractically: he suspected the only part of her who cared
what she wore was also the part expecting to be hauled up before some mystical
tribunal for a capital trial, in which case one wants to look one’s best. Hanging out on a farm between in-depth magical
lessons, however, was very hard on diaphanous shirts and dresses, even ones
made with all-natural fibers.
Willow left off fanning herself and,
without waiting for Rupert to answer, began to sort desultorily through the
pile of mail she had retrieved. Neither
of them much expected answers from the other: words were dull, and the silences
had a proliferating amount of flavors, none of which were particularly
welcome. But there was nothing they
could do about that.
“But, oh, hey. Letter from Elisabeth.”
Rupert eyed the letter as she held
it out to him across the table. Willow
was trying to look him in the eye, but he held out for a few moments before
meeting her gaze briefly and reaching to take it. But instead of opening it, he put it down on
the island and went to pour himself some more coffee. What he really wanted was a good, deeply-aged
scotch, warmish and neat; but that would wreak havoc with his careful defenses,
and he needed those. So coffee it was.
“I’m not going to read over your
shoulder, you know.”
He stopped and put the coffee pot
down to look not quite at her. He
couldn’t take the letter away to read now without betraying to self-evidence the
fact they had been so assiduously ignoring: that he was desperate to guard his
privacy against her, desperate enough to pretend that he wanted Elisabeth to
come without also wanting her to protect him from Willow. It was foolish of him to have ever pretended
he could hide that from Elisabeth; equally foolish to keep up this charade.
He opened the letter.
Among other things, it said: You do realize, don’t you, that my
presence might open you up to her more than you want? I can’t take responsibility for that. I just wanted to make sure you know it, and
I’m cowardly enough that I have to write it in a letter rather than calling
you. And I tend to think that no amount
of preparation is ever enough for what comes, but one does try anyway, doesn’t
one?
“She’s coming here,” Rupert said to
“Oh,”
Another little silence, with another
new flavor.
“Okay,”
*
“Well,” Anne Langland said, setting her teacup down, “that is certainly distressing news. How very disappointing for you. Do you think the curse is removable?”
“I hope so,” Rupert said. He took a fortifying sip of his tea.
The priest frowned. “Rupert…are you by any chance applying to me for my services as a priest? Because I have to tell you that I’ve never performed an exorcism—I don’t have that gift—nor am I really in touch with priests who have. And I daresay you’ve employed your own methods for such things in the past.”
“Many times,” Rupert said colorlessly.
“Then….”
It was her straight practical and spiritual advice he wanted, but he didn’t know quite how to ask for it, so he remained silent.
Anne seemed to realize this, for she picked up her teacup again and inquired, “Does Elisabeth share your suspicions about the nature of this curse?”
“Well,” Rupert said uncomfortably, “she hasn’t said anything to indicate—”
But Anne interrupted. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that you haven’t discussed the curse with her?”
“Well….”
She fixed him with a severe look, but he must have looked as pitiful as he felt, because she subsided against the back of her chair and said, with a touch of amusement: “I see. So it is about both the house and Elisabeth.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Rupert confessed.
“Perhaps you’d better tell me what happened,” she said.
Rupert did. He left out nothing: his growing realization that his fanciful idea that the house was talking to him was not all in his mind; the shadows where no shadows should be; the odd matte silences that overtook him even though he knew Elisabeth was making noise with books a room away; and last night’s aborted attempt at celebration, with the lights and music cut off as if by guillotine, Elisabeth too instantly saturated in fear to do anything but cling to him, their struggle to escape by the front door….
Anne had let her gaze rest to the side, in the middle distance, while he spoke; but now she looked at him directly. “When did Elisabeth recover her self-possession?”
He thought about it, but couldn’t pin it down. “She made a joke when we got outside, I do remember that.”
“Did she lose control while you were inside, in the dark?”
“Never,” Rupert admitted. “She was very frightened, but she mastered it. Almost the entire time.”
Anne was silent for a long moment, and the thing she had wanted him to see clicked into place despite his struggles. From there, he saw even further, to another fear he had not voiced even to himself. “She’s not going to leave me over the house,” he said at last, as if hoping to make it unalterably true by asserting it.
“But you’re afraid of that.”
Rupert found himself unable to speak.
“Or—you’re afraid of some overwhelming reason for her to leave coming on the scene, and this might be the one.”
Rupert always hated this part of coming to visit Anne, the way she turned him inside out, however matter-of-factly, then returned him to his proper state, dusted him off, and sent him on his way. It was precisely what he came for, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
“How much older are you than she?” Anne asked.
He hadn’t expected this question, but nevertheless it touched a forgotten bruise. “Twenty years,” he answered.
“Twenty years,” she repeated. “This did not, however, prevent you forming a full-blown partnership with her.”
“No,” he said.
“Have any irreconcilable differences in outlook or mindset arisen from this difference?”
He thought
about it, dimly aware that she was getting at something important and he needed
to answer as accurately as possible.
“Cultural differences,” he said; “generational culture, I mean, as well
as national. But those are…superficial,
really. No more an obstacle to
cooperation than my differences with my other friends from
“Or than your differences with the Slayer.”
“I was including Buffy in that latter group,” Rupert said austerely.
“Hmm,” was all Anne replied for a moment. She took another sip of her tea and put down the cup; reached for a pen and uncapped it one-handed, then recapped it in a reversal of the same motion of her hand. The pen made a small click, then another, in the silence of the office.
“How is your relationship with Buffy, at the moment, if I may inquire?” she asked him mildly.
“Oh, much as usual,” Rupert said, with as much lightness as he could muster.
“And what is usual?” Anne asked.
“A diplomatic minefield,” Rupert said, before he could stop himself. “But not,” he added, “completely unpredictable, so it’s not as if there are a great many quarrels.”
“But you’d hardly describe your usual relationship by talking mainly about quarrels, I suspect, unless there had been a recent one.” Click; click, went the pen.
Rupert tipped up his chin, and his free hand came up to tuck itself under the other elbow. “I’m not really interested in talking about it,” he said, with a light voice of warning that frightened him more than it frightened her.
“As you wish.” Anne let her gaze wander off once more. The silence lingered, but Rupert did not take the bait.
“To get back to Elisabeth and the house,” Anne said at last, without returning her gaze to him, “would you consider an insurmountable problem to lie more in the future, or in the past?”
“Is this the part where I confide that I didn’t get enough love in my childhood?” Rupert said dryly.
“The past, then,” Anne said, equally dryly.
Rupert winced. “A touch, a touch, I do confess’t.” Elisabeth must be rubbing off on him, he thought.
Anne gave him a genuine smile.
“Things can reach critical mass, you know,” he said, earnest at last. “There’s only so much overcoming one can do.”
“Yes,” Anne said, “I think that is very apt—critical mass. I think, though, that if things reach that point, the focus usually narrows to a freer decision. No less frightening, of course, but freer.”
Rupert understood what she meant. But he couldn’t bear to contemplate what decision that might have to be, so he merely glossed the meaning and sat waiting for her to continue.
“But this,” Anne said, “is not that time, I don’t think.”
Rupert shook his head, vaguely relieved.
“Well, then,” she said, letting go the pen and rising with her teacup. “I expect you’ve got a lot to do. Exorcisms, as I understand it, require a hefty amount of research.”
“But—” Rupert wasn’t ready for her to let him go; he hadn’t got the advice he had come for. “What am I to do?”
Anne turned from the table, a quick, controlled motion. “I should have thought that obvious,” she said, with a trace of irritation that instantly put starch in his spine. “Go home and tell Elisabeth everything you just told me.”
“Right,” he said, and rose chastened to hand her his teacup.
*
He was on his way to do exactly what Anne had told him, except his trouser pocket exploded with “Für Elise” in the street, instantly triggering the schizophrenic shift to his other life. He dug out the mobile and opened it. The luminous screen said, “Buffy.”
“Hello?” he said, managing to put the broadest-possible put-upon note into the word.
“Giles, if I know you you’re not actually in the middle of anything, so don’t give me that.”
“How do you know that? I happen to be on my way to planning an exorcism on my new house.” He hadn’t planned to blurt that out, but it seemed to work on a tactical level, because Buffy backed down.
“Oh,” she said. “That sucks. Is it bad?”
“Not yet,” he said, with an edge to his voice. “What’s up?”
“I need you
to go to
*
Elisabeth answered her phone at home with a sleepy sigh. “Hello?”
“’Lis’beth? It’s me.”
“Rupert?” She broke off to give a prolonged yawn. “Sorry. Haven’t had my tea yet.”
“I was just
on my way home, but I got a call from Buffy.
I’ve got to go to
“Oh yeah? Something up?”
“Oh, nothing disastrous, except as it involves Andrew.”
“Mm—I forgot. Wasn’t he supposed to be here by now?”
“It seems there’s a difficulty with his passport. Something about an outstanding warrant for an armored truck robbery. I ask you.”
Elisabeth started to snicker.
“Don’t tell me it’s true,” Rupert said. “Buffy didn’t say, and I’m trying very hard not to care.”
“Well, what
can your going to
“
“Okay,” Elisabeth said. “I’ll see you then. I’m going to do my work at home today.”
“Right,” he said. “And—Elisabeth?”
“Yeah?”
“There are—some things—I need to talk to you about later. Don’t let me forget.”
She was silent a moment, but he couldn’t interpret it before she said: “Yeah, sure thing. I’ll make a mental note.”
“Right then. I’ll call you later.”
Rupert
closed the call and put the mobile phone back into his pocket. He oughtn’t to feel a sense of reprieve, but
he couldn’t properly resent this fool’s errand on Andrew Wells’s behalf. A trip to
He tried not to think about his house at all.
*
At home, Elisabeth showered, dressed, ate, and sat down to her laptop with her notes from the day before. She wasn’t at all looking forward to this slog. She had never quite been able to free herself from that suspicion, played upon by the First, that she was playing baby games with academia; and she had not yet figured out how to have a sense of humor about it. There was a trick to it, she knew; if you kept plugging away maybe it would fall into place.
But she hadn’t any patience for the slog today.
She
wondered where Rupert had gone so early in the morning. Had he gone out to the house, to clean up
their abandoned picnic? She got up and
went to look out the window. No, his car
was still there; so one could presume he’d walked to the train station to leave
for
Perhaps, she thought, staring across the room at her messy desk, she should go out to clean up the picnic. Maybe being in Rupert’s beloved house would give her an angle on the matter; after all, she had never actually been inside it alone, for Rupert had always opted to come with her when she went to catalogue Greenbill senior’s library. There was definitely something creepy about what had happened last night, but Rupert hadn’t said anything about it, and if she went during broad afternoon, there was at least no chance of being plunged in darkness willy-nilly. She’d be careful, and she’d take her cell-phone.
Perspective, that was what she wanted.
She would go to the house after lunch.
*
Elisabeth found herself approaching Pyke’s Lea with an increasing flutter in her nerves as Rupert’s car trundled bumpily over the gravel lane. She set the parking brake and turned off the engine, her hands tingling almost painfully.
What’s the matter with you? she admonished herself. It’s a house. Whatever’s creepy about it can be taken care of.
She checked her pockets—cell-phone, check; vial of holy water (a whim), check; the housekey the Greenbill had given her, check—and made her approach to the front door. If she remembered right, she wouldn’t even need the key; the door had slammed shut, but they had made no attempt to lock it.
And so it was. Elisabeth pushed open the door and peered in for a moment before crossing the threshold. The house in daylight was as sympathetic as it had been the night before, when she had looked back at it on leaving; and it had that same lonely air, an air of someone rather resigned to having secrets that lost their excitement with every passing year.
Elisabeth crossed the threshold, being careful to push the heavy door all the way open and out of the path of any stray drafts that might shut it.
The lights were still out. It occurred to Elisabeth that perhaps there had been a power outage; she wished she had thought to call the electric company and check. At the very least Rupert ought to have them send a guy; if the wiring was bad, he needed to know sooner rather than later.
She went
directly to the study, noting on her way the fuse box that had sat tucked in a
shadow of the corridor, hidden in plain sight.
Rupert was the one with the eye for detail, at least about general
surroundings, not her. Occasionally
Elisabeth gave in to a pang of envy against Rupert about this sort of
thing: she was thirty years old and
probably wouldn’t ever have that general air of utter competence—and whatever
you could say about Rupert’s faults, mediocrity wasn’t one of them. She was very ashamed of her snivelling
behavior the night before. None of
Rupert’s other compatriots were like that.
Xander may have said he hid from danger, but he had taken an immediate
opportunity to shove himself into dark places after Buffy.
She was in the study doorway, looking at the remains of their abandoned picnic, as if the scene had been left by someone other than herself and Rupert.
Perspective. She had been right; it was to be found here.
She crossed to the blankets and picked up the wine glasses first. Hers had a little left; the sides of the glass were stained purple where the wine had settled below its original level. Rupert’s had large male fingerprints across the bottom of the bowl, just above the stem. With a small inward shudder of pleasure she remembered the drift of his hand exploring hers in the darkness the night before: a much better thing to remember about his fingerprints than the black ones he had left across her wrist a few months before. Before, when the First Evil had saturated their thoughts and living spaces.
Elisabeth shook off the memory and tipped back the last dry swallow of wine, then packed the wineglasses in the basket.
After the wineglasses went the near-empty bottle of wine. Then the olives and pickles, the sandwich crusts, the empty custard ramekins, the leftover hunk of French bread, the drying cheddar, the silverware, the napkins.
Now all that was left was the crumbs on the blanket. Elisabeth got up and gathered the blanket into her arms, to shake it outside the French doors onto the tiny roofed porch that looked onto the overgrown back garden.
She didn’t see the odd shadow follow her in the ancient mirror over the mantel.
When she came back in with the blanket, she left the French doors open too. No sense in closing up an escape route, if she needed one. She folded the blanket and the one that had been under it, and put it in the pile with the other two they had brought in but never used. She paused a moment to look around: yes, this would have been a delicious place to make love—the painted ceiling, the quality of light, the homely grandeur, the bookshelves. They would get around to it eventually, she hoped.
The house was quiet around her. Elisabeth thought she could learn to love a life she made here: this place was broad and ancient, dignified and yet slightly rough around the edges. Much like Rupert himself, really: and she already loved him.
Elisabeth let out a sigh and bent to pick up the picnic basket. She’d gotten perspective, but no answers. Perhaps the answers would come later, when she understood the question. Meanwhile she’d take home the picnic basket, and leave the other things to pick up later, or use as they needed them.
All at once the lights came up, feeble in the daylight, and the music unswallowed its sound.
Elisabeth jumped a full centimeter off the floor and let out a small yelp. The picnic basket rattled on the floor where she had nearly lifted it up, only to snatch her hand away at the sudden sound.
“Dammit,” Elisabeth breathed, pressing at her chest as if to smooth down her heart rate. “Now they get the power back on. I really need to make that call.” She stood, breathing slowly and absorbing the sensual jazz as it played in the daylight. It was no longer in the least a sexy sound. “It’s a good thing we weren’t stuck here last night.”
As if in answer, the French doors swung deliberately (but too quickly for her to leap over and stop them) shut.
Now, instead of jumping into the air, Elisabeth stood very still. In the distance, down the corridor, she heard the front door swing heavily, creaking, and shut with a clack.
“Ohhh, shit,” Elisabeth said, very softly.
*
By the time Rupert wrangled his way out of several officially-carpeted offices and out onto the street, he had decided he would much rather be at home having a painful heart-to-heart with Elisabeth. He took out his mobile and checked for messages; none. He toyed with the idea of calling Buffy and declaring his mission accomplished, but decided against it and put his mobile back in his pocket.
He checked
his watch. He had got done quickly
enough to have time for a quick one before catching the slow train back to
He changed course slightly and made for a nearby pub he knew.
*
What the hell, Elisabeth thought. Why not try politeness?
She crossed to the boombox and clicked off the music. Then she stood up and cleared her throat. “Um…excuse me? Could you open the doors, please?”
At first, nothing. Then a slow creak out in the hall told her the front door was opening.
So, a friendly haunt. Or, at least one whose respect could be earned. Possibly. Elisabeth picked up the picnic basket and tried not to hurry her steps toward the front door.
She had just entered the foyer, looking out on the front garden and cheerful daylight, when the door slammed quickly shut.
“Ah ha ha,” Elisabeth said. “Ah hahahaha. That was really funny.” She stopped in the foyer entry, swinging her picnic basket with faux cheer. “Really great joke,” she said, louder.
Then all the lights went out again.
“Stupidity,” Elisabeth muttered, “thy name is Bowen.”
She decided that there was no point hanging around in the front of the house if all the ghost (if that was what it was) was going to do was open the door and shut it, playing keep-away with her freedom. So she took self and basket back into the study.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve never had the impression that you’re anything but a nice house. What’s with the hauntiness all of a sudden?”
The music clicked back on, soft warm brass mixing with the warm daylight.
She turned it back off and took out the tape. “Sorry,” she said. “I only dance with people I know.” There was nothing to stop this…thing from putting the tape back in once she put it down. Or strangling her with the tape’s guts. Elisabeth shuddered and put the tape on the floor. This was not going to end well, whether she channeled Buffy’s bravado or not.
But nothing happened. Elisabeth waited. After a moment she thought she saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye, but when she moved it wasn’t there.
“Okay,” she said, “we can do the metaphorical dance thing. Only, if you write ‘DIE’ in blood on the wall, that’ll be really, really lame.” Of course, she thought, ghosts are famous for having a really lame sense of humor, so what have I just done?
DIE did not appear in blood on the wall. Elisabeth almost wished it would. She slipped a hand inside the placket of her jersey shirt and gripped her cross. “So, uh, what’s your deal, anyway? Did you die here, or what? Are you a ghost?”
No answer, unless a distant whistle of wind outside the French doors was an answer.
Why the hell am I talking to this thing? Elisabeth thought. What am I, M. Night Shyamalan?
She turned around, just as the tape flung itself at her face. She brought up an awkward hand just in time to stop it cracking the lens of her glasses. It dropped to the floor at her feet and stayed there.
“This is rapidly ceasing to amuse,” Elisabeth said, reaching for her cross again.
Suddenly the French doors blew open and a great gust of wind rushed at where Elisabeth stood, picnic basket in one hand, cross in the other. The fresh air should have lifted her spirits, but instead it seemed to carry a hidden staleness, a dirtiness that touched her soul in a way that was horribly familiar….
She didn’t even try for the escape when the doors slammed shut again, cracking one of the lower panes.
Know anybody who might be interested in this white elephant? Mr Greenbill mocked in her mind.
“Oh, so, stupid,” Elisabeth murmured. “Why did I not see it all before? And Rupert….”
Rupert must have known. You don’t get to be an old Watcher if you don’t know.
And he was
in
Elisabeth thought of her cell-phone, then wondered if this was the evil’s plan: to get them all suckered into entering the pitcher plant, one by one. Not that this was her primary worry. She had to get herself to a safe space.
Shadows started weaving themselves across the ceiling, then whirling about the room. Nothing else moved, but Elisabeth had the sense of a gathering energy. Ohh, this is not at all going to be fun, she thought. And there was no safe space in the house, that she knew.
Maybe she could make one. People in these situations drew circles to shelter in, didn’t they? But she didn’t have anything holy. No, wait, she did. Holy water.
Holy water. A picnic basket with…a small remnant of red wine, some olives, and a hunk of bread.
Bread, water, wine.
“Oh, gosh,” she muttered. “Talk about lame. This is never going to work.”
Air was moving inside the house now. Elisabeth’s hair stirred on her shoulders. Well, nothing to lose.
She took out the bottle of wine and uncorked it with her teeth, then poured it out in a thin dribble around her on the faded rug, her thumb over the lip to control the flow. She used no words: however ineffective a Eucharistic circle might be, she had no intention of debasing the elements for a ghost she didn’t know. She put down the basket inside the circle and took out the bread. It had dried enough that she could easily crumble it and drop it in bits around the same circle as the wine.
“Right,” she murmured. “Wine, bread….”
As she took out the holy water the breeze rose to a gusting wind. Her hair flew up and obscured her vision, twisting and lifting. She brushed it roughly out of the way and poured a thin stream of holy water all around the circle.
Her hair fell free to her shoulders. Elisabeth looked around her: the edges of the lightest blanket in the pile several feet away were still flapping madly, and the fraying parts of the carpet trembled. But inside her circle everything was still.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Elisabeth said. “It worked?”
If it worked, then probably she’d be able to use her cell-phone without the ghost screwing with the transmission. She took it out and sat down on the carpet inside the circle. Pitcher-plant or no, she had a phone call to make.
*
Rupert had been very good.
He’d had the quick one, and then a slow one, and then he had
stopped. And now he was riding, in full
possession of his faculties, out of the station on his way to
His mobile went off in his trousers. Rupert was really starting to actively hate “Für Elise.” He squirmed in his seat and dug out the little phone, expecting to see “Buffy” on the screen.
It said, “Elisabeth—mobile.”
He opened the phone curiously. “Yeees?” he said, pleasantly.
“Rupert,” Elisabeth said, with that false buoyant cheer that instantly boded no good.
He groaned inwardly. “Yes?”
“So,” she said sweetly. “When exactly were you going to tell me that the house is haunted?”
Damn. She’d figured it out, and before he’d had the
chance to broach the subject himself.
“Um…er…well, you know, my dear, I had planned to discuss it with you this
morning, but I was called off on this errand to
There was a dead silence that lasted ten seconds before the penny dropped.
“Ohhh,” Rupert said softly. “Oh dear.”
She still said nothing, but he could practically feel her giving him a scathing look.
He said, faintly: “Can you get out?”
“Nnooo-oo,” Elisabeth said, giving him the full-barreled you-dumbass tone.
“Oh God,” Rupert said. “Wh-what are you doing there?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing here? I came here to pick up the picnic. You could warn a girl, you know. This isn’t Mr McGregor’s garden. All you would’ve had to say was, ‘Elisabeth, dearest, the house is gone around the twist. Stay away till we figure out what to—”
“No,” he cut in, “I mean, what are you doing to protect yourself?”
“I made a circle,” she said, “with bread and wine and holy water.”
He blinked. “Bread and wine, and—”
“It’s what I had on hand, okay?”
“Right. Well, is it working?”
“Seems to be.”
“What’s happening?”
“Lots of wind and shadows and crazy shit like that. Rupert, I hope you don’t mind my saying this isn’t my idea of fun.”
“I’m sorry,” he said miserably. “Look, stay in the circle. Don’t let anything tempt you out of it.”
Elisabeth snorted generously, but he could hear the tremor in her breathing.
“I’ll make some calls. There’s got to be somebody nearer than I am who can get you out of there.”
She was silent.
“You there? You all right?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice shaking a little.
“Right. Stay in the circle. I’ll get help.”
He clicked off the call, and thumbed around shakily for Buffy’s number.
“Giles,” she said instantly on answering. “How did it go?”
“Nevermind bloody Andrew,” Rupert said. “Elisabeth is trapped in my house, and I’m trapped on a bloody train that’s barely breaking fifty, thanks to you.”
“What’s Elisabeth doing in your house?” Buffy demanded, as if Elisabeth were deficient.
“She went to clear up our picnic,” he groaned.
“Doesn’t she know better than to go to a haunted house alone?” And when Rupert didn’t answer her, she added, “Or didn’t you tell her?”
“I meant to tell her when I got home, but instead I got called off on this—”
“Giles, what is your major malfunction? What was stopping you from picking up your cell-phone and saying, ‘Hey, honey, don’t go to the house today, it’s kinda haunty?’ I’m not taking responsibility for your stupidity. Why are you calling me anyway? It’s not like I’m closer to the house than you are.”
Rupert very nearly hung up on her. But instead he sat and breathed for a minute before enunciating hoarsely: “I’m stuck—on a bloody—train.”
Buffy
heaved a sigh. “I can call
“Please,” he said tightly.
“Right,” Buffy said, and clicked off.
As galling as it was to admit it, Buffy was right: he should have told Elisabeth about the house before he left. And now all he could do was sit trembling in his seat and wait till he could get free to help her.
Convulsively Rupert flipped open his mobile and started thumbing through the menu.
*
The house seemed to have figured out that Elisabeth couldn’t be touched. That didn’t mean, however, that she couldn’t still be scared to death.
From her seated position on the floor she couldn’t quite see what it was trying to show her in the mirror over the mantel—shadows flitted wildly in the glass, with no corresponding shadows on the opposing wall, and she thought she saw a figure, ill-defined, cross the corner. The maw of the fireplace darkened beyond normal absence of light, and a patter of crackles, like small footsteps, or wildfire, raced across the ceiling over her head.
But nothing really scared her until the burning started.
The study walls tanned and broiled before her eyes; then dark spots grew like some necrotic disease; then the burns spread over the walls until all around her was ribbed and charred….
“No!” she cried, unable to stop herself.
The paint peeled and cracked on the ceiling, turning briefly beautiful and giving her a glimpse of what might have been before crumbling in on itself and flaking to the floor all around her circle. The bookshelves, with their beautiful carved edges, developed water damage and sagged, rotten, with a chorus of groans.
“It’s just a glamour,” she told herself, gripping her cross. As if to prove it to herself, she shook her head and blinked hard.
The glamour disappeared, as if a dimensional shift had erased the damage sideways. The world seemed to live on a slant for one precise moment before righting itself and starting the process of dissolution all over again.
This time it wasn’t the illusion of destruction that frightened her: it was the all-too-familiar sense of unreality plucking at the edges of her vision. For a flash of a moment she was back in the infirmary, raving about shadows and mirrors; then she was back in the house again, gripping the carpet for dear life, a small animal cry issuing from her throat.
Over and over again the study destroyed itself around her; over and over she felt the vague half-loss of security that presaged a visit from her mirror image, so that she almost longed for the First to actually appear and remove the suspense.
She didn’t know how long this went on before there was a sharp rapping, interrupting her locked battle of minds with the house. She whirled from her sitting position to look at the French doors.
On the other side of the warped glass panes was a woman.
She startled almost to her feet. Was this another glamour? Was this a neighbor who knew nothing of the house’s state, who would possibly think her a trespasser and certainly think her mad, sitting in a circle of bread crumbs on the floor?
The woman held up a quick hand, signaling her to stay put. She reached for the door handle.
“No, don’t come in here!” Elisabeth called, as the wind in the house rose again to a shriek.
Elisabeth wasn’t sure she understood what the woman was doing, but the door suddenly flung itself open and banged back against the wall. “It’s all right,” the woman said, in the most cheerful and normal voice in the world. She lifted a hand, and a pool of daylight spread on the floor toward her.
Elisabeth stayed where she was, staring suspiciously. Was this an incarnation of the First? “I’m not leaving the circle,” she told the woman.
The pitch of the house’s shriek rose as the light invaded the study.
“You can follow the light to the door,” the woman said.
Elisabeth raised her voice above the wind. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t.”
This in itself was not enough to decide her. But Rupert was on a train somewhere and his house was destroying and remaking itself and her mind was complicit with the evil and there was increasingly no point in staying put.
Elisabeth rose swaying, like a toddler learning to walk. She stood in her circle, eyes on where the pool of light was reaching to her, as if biding the moment to jump into a pair of swinging double-dutch ropes. She looked up: the woman was not, like the First in some of its incarnations, immaculate—she looked quite ordinary. Didn’t mean she was safe, but—
Elisabeth grabbed the handle of the picnic basket—no way in hell was she leaving what she came for—and broke for the door. Outside the circle, the gale nearly blew her off course and into the shadows, but she flung herself onward, her hair whipping into her eyes, her glasses slipping, her stomach roiling, until she was over the threshold, and the woman withdrew into the back garden with her.
The French door slammed shut, and everything went quiet. Elisabeth stood panting, with the sun warm on her shoulders and tranquil birdsong in her ears, and stared back at the house. Through the panes everything inside looked perfectly normal. “It was a glamour, then,” she uttered in a half-breath.
“Pretty standard,” said the woman.
Elisabeth turned to her. “Who are you?”
“Susan
Burnwell. Member of a coven that meets
in
The woman wasn’t wearing a stitch of all-natural, organically-dyed, free-trade fibers. She was wearing wide-legged jeans and an absolutely normal white cardigan. Her silver hair was cut like Princess Diana’s.
“…
Susan Burnwell, who had been observing Elisabeth’s study of her appearance with amusement, replied with a smile. “Yes. As I understand it, Mr Giles called the Slayer, who called Miss Rosenberg, who then called me.” She looked back at the house. “Poor fellow. It’s a lovely house; pity it’s been cursed.”
Elisabeth swallowed. “You don’t….” Her throat closed, and she cleared it. “You don’t think that…the First Evil is responsible for this?”
“The First Evil?” Ms Burnwell’s tone was mild. “No, the First wouldn’t have respected your Eucharistic circle. In fact, it’s rare that such things do; incorporeal evils have little truck with the bread and the wine, as I’m sure you know. No; I’m fairly certain this is a garden-variety haunting of human supernatural origin. No less tricky than the other kinds, though.” The witch’s gaze returned to Elisabeth’s face. “I did think it odd when I heard that Rupert Giles had taken a practicing Christian for a partner. But now I’ve met you it seems less so.”
Elisabeth said nervously, “The subject was under discussion?”
“Well, yes. We made him a conduit for some fairly strong magicks, you know. And ecumenical harmony has hardly been the norm for such relationships in the past.”
Elisabeth nipped a small smile in the bud. She rather liked this woman’s style of understatement. She shifted her picnic basket to the other hand and started round the flagstone path toward the front drive.
In the gravelled
parking area at the side of the house she was surprised to see that the woman
had actually arrived by car—a very ordinary-looking suburban vehicle, no older
than the car Rupert had purchased on his return to
“I’m an accountant,” Susan Burnwell said, without cracking a smile.
Elisabeth broke into a laugh—a laugh slightly edged with hysteria, but a good release nonetheless. She finished with a sigh and stared up at the house. “Poor Rupert,” she said. “He didn’t ask for a haunting. I guess it’s gonna be research-ho for us now.” She sighed again.
They were still standing there, Elisabeth breathing herself back into equilibrium (and nerving herself up to ask whether Ms Burnwell had been in Oxford at the time of Willow’s call, or if she had magicked herself and the car over from the Chilterns), when the sound of a distressed motor from the road made them turn.
A car Elisabeth recognized immediately as Brian’s raced up the curve, fishtailed into the lane, and shot a cloud of gravel dust behind it as it barrelled toward them. It lurched to a stop, and Rupert leapt out of it, gaze fixed on her. “Are you all right?” he demanded, and without waiting for a reply ran to her and grabbed her up in a crushing hug, knocking the picnic basket to the ground with a violent rattle.
“I’m fine—I’m okay—” Elisabeth found her face muffled in his sport coat, obscuring her attempts to reassure him. She squirmed. “Rupert—really, I’m okay. You can…um, Rupert, you’re starting to smush.”
He let go of her, leaving her sense of gravity slightly disturbed, but immediately took her by the shoulders and looked her in the face. Through her glasses (knocked askew by his abrupt embrace), she could see his eyes, hardly less frightened at the sight of her alive and perpendicular, searching hers avidly, pupils wide. Her hands came up instinctively to touch his where they gripped her. “Really. It’s okay.”
At last his gaze moved over her shoulder to Susan Burnwell. “Thank you,” he said.
The witch moved a hand. “There was very little for me to do. Do you need me for anything else?”
Elisabeth turned to look at her, then at Rupert. They glanced at one another, then shook their heads.
“I’ll be going then,” she said, striding in her smooth fashion toward her car. “Do call us if you want to have an exorcism party.”
“Have fun storming the castle,” Elisabeth murmured, as Susan Burnwell ducked into her car and started the engine.
“Eh?” Rupert appeared not to have heard her. “Shall I take you home? I’ll feed you tea. Or something stronger. You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” Elisabeth said. “I’ll follow you to Brian’s so you can take his car back.”
“Oh,” he said, plowing his hand through his hair and making his sport coat sail out briefly. “Right—I’d forgotten. Right. We’ll do that. If you’re sure you’re all right.” He turned his distracted gaze to Brian’s car, which stood, door open, still running patiently.
“I’m sure I’m all right,” Elisabeth said. “Really.”
*
Brian insisted on seeing Elisabeth to make sure she was indeed fine. “It’s not a problem,” she said for the fourth time, exasperated. “I’ve been in much worse danger dozens of times, including when I was vagabonding in the States. Stop fussing.”
“Well,” Brian said in an undertone, with a glance at Rupert drinking a glass of water in the kitchenette, “he was in a right state, you know. I thought we were having an apocalypse in our back garden.”
Elisabeth shuddered lightly. “Don’t say the A-word, if you please.”
Brian continued in soft sarcasm: “But if all it is is a haunting, then blimey, what was my car martyred for?”
“Brian, please. Your car’s fine.”
“No thanks to him. But never mind,” he added, when he saw Elisabeth’s eyes going pink and wet. “You’re all right and there’s been no destruction of property and there’s no apocalypse and I got to cut my hours short to come home.” He chafed her shoulder. “It’ll be right. Go home. Drink something warm. Talk it over with him. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Elisabeth got hold of herself with a long sniff. “You don’t mind having a look around?”
“Honestly? I’m glad you’ve finally got something for me that I know how to do.”
“Okay,” she said. “Research party tomorrow, then.”
“Absolutely. I’ll bring the maps.”
“Thank you.”
Brian grinned. “You owe me ice cream. And possibly a tune-up.”
Elisabeth gave him a wavering smile.
*
Back at home, Elisabeth tried to unpack the picnic basket, to wash the dishes and dispose of the food, but Rupert wouldn’t let her. Instead, he made her a cup of chamomile tea and sent her back to the bedroom to rest while he did it himself. Disturbingly, she only gave him a long unreadable look before acquiescing without a fight.
He took his time clearing up the picnic mess before picking up his jacket from the chair where he’d parked it and determinedly going to join her.
She wasn’t lying down; she was leaning against the wall at the window frame, looking out on the bright day outside, the tea half-forgotten in her hands. She had removed her glasses, but not, apparently, to cry: her face in profile was calm, though a little somber.
Tentative, Rupert put the jacket down on the foot of the bed and reached to tug his tie loose. He cleared his throat, and she turned.
“We gonna have that talk now?” Her voice was soft wry corduroy.
He gave an aching sigh and tossed his tie down on the bed with the jacket. “I think I’m beyond apologizing,” he said. “I should have told you before. I don’t know what was stopping me.” He would have gone on, but he found himself out of words. Slowly he moved around the foot of the bed and sat down on its edge, on the side that was his.
She made no answer to him at first. Then: “Yeah,” she said.
They were silent again, Rupert’s eyes on his dusty wingtips.
For a long time neither of them said anything, and the air was thick with the irony of their “talk,” devoid of content. Then she said: “Things like this make me feel so useless.”
This brought his head up. “You?” he said. “Why would—”
“I’m not handy with a crossbow,” Elisabeth said, her eyes out the window on the outdoor street life. Her hands shifted around her tea mug. “I don’t know any spells. I have three reading languages if you’re generous. And I’m afraid of the dark.”
“That doesn’t make you useless,” he said quietly.
She turned, and her gaze hit him direct in the eyes. “Then why did you leave me out?”
For a moment, his breath ended. “I—didn’t—”
“You knew about the house. How long?”
He sighed helplessly, meeting her gaze. “I suspected for some days. Last night confirmed my suspicions. But I didn’t leave you out—nobody knew except—”
“It’s got nothing to do with other people,” Elisabeth said. “You didn’t take me into your confidence. Why wouldn’t you, unless you didn’t think I was capable of handling it?”
An edge crept into Rupert’s voice despite himself. “It wasn’t you that was incapable of handling it,” he said.
Whatever was in his face made the angry lines in her expression dissolve into compassion, and she turned her face back to the window without answering him.
There was a silence, then she said: “You must have been so disappointed.”
His response came raw, before he could examine it for traces of the self-serving. “I wanted to make a safe place for you….”
She rounded on him sharply. She did more: she put down her tea on the windowsill and gave him a hard, uncompromising stare. “A safe place?” she repeated. “Rupert: a safe place? There’s no such thing.”
He recoiled; of all the ways she might have responded, he hadn’t expected this, and he wondered if he ought to have. “Well, it’s relative, of course,” he began.
“No,” she said, angrily, “it’s not. There’s no such thing as a safe place. You know better than to tell me a lie like that. No home, no fortress, no island, no grave, even. Do you think,” she said, and her voice shook, “do you think I stopped running because I found a place that was safe? No: I stopped because I finally figured out there’s no place to run to—”
She broke off and turned her face away again, breathing hard. She spoke again after a moment, more quietly. “I don’t expect safe places. I don’t expect you to make me one. If there’s not a haunting in the place you go to, there’s always the one you bring with you….”
He sat, voiceless, watching her throat slide in a dry swallow. Here were all the things Anne had mercilessly (or mercifully, take your pick) drawn out of him, and she knew them, and understood them, herself. He lowered his eyes to his lap. “I know,” he said hoarsely.
When she spoke again, her voice was firm once more. “I’m not going to be able to bring much firepower to this exorcism thing,” she said; “but I don’t want you to coddle me either.”
Something in Rupert’s chest relaxed a bit; but he kept his eyes down, and his throat still ached.
“Rupert: do you read me?”
He lifted his head so that he could meet her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I read you.”
“Okay,” she said, and he could tell she meant it.
She came to him then and reached to touch his hair. “I’m sorry about your house,” she said, bending to kiss the top of his head. “Don’t worry. We’ll fix it.”
She would have pulled away again, except he bent forward to rest his brow against her front for a moment, and his hand found hers, fumbling for a grasp. Willingly she touched his hair again, and stroked him for a moment before withdrawing to look down into his face.
“Did I hear you say something about Indian takeaway?” she said, with a small, dry smile.
*
Contrary to both their expectations, it was Rupert, not Elisabeth, who suffered nightmares that night. Thrashing, he jolted against her, and she fought in vain to stay asleep before realizing, dimly, that he was in distress. Before she could move to gather him against her, however, he bolted upright, and blearily she saw his outline begin to rock manically in the semidarkness, his breath half-voiced in his throat.
Urgently, she sat up. “Rupert,” she said quietly, reaching for him. “Are you awake? You’ve been dreaming. Are you awake yet?” She felt his muscles trembling under her fingers.
“N-no,” he uttered; she could not tell if he was answering her, or still locked in his dream.
“Rupert,” she said, more firmly, “you’ve been dreaming. It’s okay now.”
“Jenny?” he said, and Elisabeth actually sat back and took her hands away from him for a moment. She shook off the shock and touched him again, chafing his spine as he rocked. “No,” she said, “it’s me. You’re waking up now. You’re all right.”
He was waking. He stopped rocking under her touch and sat, breathing hoarsely in the darkness. She waited until his breathing slowed before she said: “You were dreaming. Do you want to talk about it?”
She felt him move, and knew he was shaking his head. “No,” he said thickly. “Too confused.”
Elisabeth knew all too well what that was like. She wondered if it was unworthy of her to feel relieved that he would not unburden himself. Masking the thought, she reached for the water she kept on her bedside table. “Here. Drink some of this.”
He obeyed, shakily; then gave the water back to her when he was finished, and lay back down as she was putting it back on the table.
“Y’okay?” she asked him softly.
“Mm,” he said.
She shifted back against the headboard and settled herself so that she could relax and still stroke his hair. He seemed to be accepting her touch, so she continued.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
“Don’t be,” she said.
He arched, breathing in deeply, and turned to lie on his side, facing away from her. She let him go, but when he had settled, let her hand light on his shoulder, stroking with her thumb. She felt no resistance in him to her touch, and did not know whether she felt thankful or grieved.
“No safe places,” Rupert muttered.
She moved her hand in answer, to smooth the T-shirt over his arm, and continued the motion until he was asleep again. When his breathing was deep and even, she took her hand away and slid down under the covers, turning away from him and putting her back to parallel the warm firmness of his. She closed her eyes.
But it was a long while before she could swallow the ache under her tongue enough to fall asleep.
*