No Rest for the Wicked—Part 2: Unchosen
3: The Basement
He thought about what Lilah had said in the morning when he was finally getting something in his stomach, and he thought about Lilah too.
Other people had seen her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hallucinating her some of the time, or most of it. She had told him Faith was a murderer, and he hadn’t cared. Even now, in the brassy daylight of a food court with date-palms in the middle, he found it hard to care. Faith was Faith. What she had done, she would live with.
Sunday afternoon and the place was packed. At the next table, a group of healthy blondes with identical haircuts were opening each other’s bags and holding the contents up for scrutiny, scrunching their faces and bursting into nervous laughter.
Despite what he’d told Lilah— what he’d told himself— he did remember about Violet. He remembered that he’d meant to choke her as she lay on the floor, her eyes blank and her pulse fluttering under his thumb. He remembered why.
He’d wanted to give her peace. His own brain that day had been full of thoughts like mismatched letters, forming psychotic ransom notes he could no longer read— but he knew that much. It was a refrain, an obsession with him: peace.
As Lilah said, there was more to life. It seemed oddly obvious now, and also oddly obvious that peace wasn’t his to give anyone, maybe not even himself. Whatever Violet had got herself into, she would just have to find her way out. (Like Faith, he thought now.) With power comes responsibility and all that crap. And is there peace in death anyway, or just nothing?
He had come to this mall, which was more like a terraced red-brick town, because he wanted a weapon. For reasons he didn’t fully understand, he was feeling increasingly naked without one.
A mall, of course, isn’t where you come for a sword or knife or gun, let alone a crossbow. But how is a middle-class kid from the boondocks supposed to know where to buy weapons off the street?
There was a big sporting goods store, an R.E.I. or something, but the place was lousy with families packing for Yosemite. He didn’t want to deal with that. After what felt like a five-mile hike up and down red-brick stairs, he found a smaller store called Golden Dragon, one of those nifty faux-Asian boutiques where you can buy Laughing Buddha figurines and ninja stars. They had a nice selection of knives, and the boy behind the counter was too busy reading a comic to stop him browsing.
It was quiet, too. He hung over a glass case, examining the knives through his own blurry reflection. He was trying to decide between a long curved one with wicked serrations that looked a little too much like something a pirate would wear and an elegant straight-edge, when a voice asked, "Who you gonna kill?"
"Huh?"
She was standing beside him, barely tall enough to peer down into the case. Asian, probably Vietnamese, with blue eyeshadow and a bubble-gum-pink streak dyed in her hair. Below that she wore a dirty white satin sweatshirt, a pink miniskirt and pink bobby-socks, and her face said Don’t mess with me.
She sidled closer to him. She was chewing gum, and her hair was caught in several snarly ponytails. "I know who you are, huh? Saw your picture on the internet."
He murmured, "Does everybody know?"
"Nah. ‘Least not everybody cares." She held out a small, moist hand. "They call me Mini. Not ‘cause I’m little— I’d hurt ‘em if they did— but like the car. I’m gonna drive one someday."
"I’m Connor. They’re cool cars." He stuck out his right hand without thinking.
He was sorry he had. Mini’s grip was punishing. He shook out his throbbing hand while she stared admiringly at the bandage. "You got cut up, huh? Wanna get back at the guy did it to you?"
"Who says it was a guy?"
Mini nodded, fidgeting with a charm bracelet, and glanced in the direction of the counter. "Wanna see something?"
"I don’t know. Do I?" She looked no older than sixteen.
Mini beckoned to him and moved so fast that at first he thought he had lost her. But then he saw her hovering out in the busy corridor, her mouth crinkling and her finger crooked again.
"Wait a sec, I—"
She was gone. He scrambled to the doorway and glimpsed her in among the stream of people. Small as she was, she twisted and dodged so quickly that he had to jog in order to keep up.
She made him feel huge and clumsy. But it was easier once he was used to her pace and her habit of weaving from side to side of the corridor, even when there was a clear path straight ahead.
He dashed down a flight of stairs and across a crowded terrace under a sullen white sky, keeping his eyes on the flitting pink skirt. At the end of the terrace, Mini vanished entirely.
Her candyish scent didn’t. He followed it to the left and found her tucked in the shadow of a storefront that rose in pseudo-Victorian arches over a display of loofahs and shower gels.
Mini signalled him to come closer. "You’re fast."
He started to answer, but she shushed him. "Get out of the light. Now watch."
He wiggled a little deeper in the alcove and followed her gaze next door.
It was one of those swanky clothing boutiques full of flowery dresses, tank-tops like lingerie and pointy shoes. There was a sidewalk sale going on, and racks of dresses and tiny trendy jackets had been pushed out to form a rectangle on the thoroughfare. A bone-thin bored-looking salesgirl stood at the angle of two racks, arms crossed on her chest and haughty eyes focussed on the distance. Now and then she deigned to glance at her only customer, a pasty-faced girl about Mini’s age who wore a school backpack and was flipping through a rack of peepshow blouses. The girl looked bored too. Judging by her sensible brown bob and baggy jeans, she was in no position to buy anything. Once she glanced up and surveyed the other storefronts with a sulky, put-upon expression.
Mini waved.
The girl caught the gesture, and the furrow between her prominent brows deepened. She glanced at the salesgirl, whose eyes were still on some faraway vision of a Paris runway. Then she shrugged and left the rack. Connor could hear her asking tremulously, "If this was originally twenty percent off and now it’s forty percent off the sale price, how much does that make?"
Mini snapped her fingers under his nose. "Now watch, right? You stay here. When you see me run, you run."
"Why?"
But she was already pattering off across the bricks, gliding under the velvet rope. Connor saw that the pasty-faced girl had the salesgirl examining sundresses now, with her back to the storefront. As he watched, Mini drew a small knife out of her purse and slashed the black straps that held two leather jackets to the rack. She slipped her arms first into one jacket, then into the other, and turned to ravage a row of handbags.
The salesgirl was still deep in blasé conversation with Mini’s friend. Before he knew it, Connor was standing beside the rope leaning in to Mini. "Put them back," he whispered.
She shook her head as if she didn’t understand. But the pasty-faced girl stopped talking and stood stock-still, staring at him.
That of course made the salesgirl turn to see what she was looking at. "Hey! Stop right there, chica. Yeah, you! I’m calling security."
She reached for something on her belt, and things began happening so fast that Connor could hardly keep track. He wondered if this was how his fights looked to other people.
Pasty-face kicked the cell phone out of the salesgirl’s hand. As it clattered on the bricks, Mini slid out from behind the rack, a filmy dress slithering off her arm. She darted into the center of the enclosure, where the dazed salesgirl was opening her mouth to call for help, and slapped the girl upside the head like a child.
The force of the blow made the girl totter on her skinny heels. Mini gave her a smart kick in the shins with her hightops. The girl crumpled to her knees, hands covering her mouth, her languid eyes bewildered.
"C’mon!"
Pasty-face grabbed a couple of dresses from Mini’s hand, and the two of them dove under the rope and set off full-tilt through the knots of murmuring shoppers. He followed.
At the mouth of the stairwell they met a big bald-pated cop with a shiny face and a gun on his belt. He blocked the way, spreading his rippled arms wide. "Mall Security, ladies. Got some kind of problem?"
Pasty-face jerked to a stop and looked as if she might try to talk her way out of the situation. Her faced was flushed now, and her eyes were wide and nervous. But Mini shoved her aside and took a long, sloping swing.
Connor stared, his back against the brick wall. Behind him he heard a woman say in a faintly miffed way, "Let’s go back around and take the other stairs, Brenda."
The cop went down. Pasty-face skittered out of the way.
But when Mini skipped over the fallen man as if he had been a particularly unchallenging part of a gym-class obstacle-course, she followed. Connor heard a manic giggle echo in the tunnel below.
The sign said Parking Garage Level Two. He stepped over the cop’s massive legs, feeling his stomach twist as he glanced at the man’s face. Blood welled from the nose, but the chest was still rising and falling.
He caught up with them beside a shiny Isuzu pick-up. Pasty-face had her back to him and was speaking rapidly into a cell, something about pick-up and getaway. Mini nudged her in the ribs, and she snapped the phone shut and wheeled round. Her eyes were wide with outrage, as if he had threatened her.
He held up his empty hands. "So, are all of you criminals? Or just the ones I’ve met?"
Mini tipped her chin proudly. "We’re not criminals. We’re Angels." She chewed her lip. "Only we don’t got a Charlie. More like a Charlene."
The other girl’s eyes were edging toward the stairs. She said softly, "Come with us if you want, but you can’t stop us."
Mini frowned and tossed her hair. "It ain’t that simple. She said if we saw him, get him."
"We don’t even know he’s the one," said the other girl in a strangled voice. "We gotta go, Mini!"
Without waiting for an invitation, Connor followed them down two flights of clattery metal stairs. At the bottom, an attendant in his glassed-in booth was counting change while nodding rapidly into his headset.
"Security called him," the pasty-faced girl wailed. "What if he…"
Mini leapt the last four stairs, her face grim, and barrelled through the swing-door. Pasty-face whimpered as the door clipped her in the nose, but she followed. An instant later they were all three pelting down the narrow access road in dishwater-blond sunlight.
Connor found he actually had to push himself in order to keep up. Pasty-face wailed again, because she was trailing an unwieldy bundle of dresses and handbags. "’kay!" yelled Mini and veered into the alley between two peeling peach stucco buildings.
There was concrete in there, and some fences further down that looked like they might give onto people’s backyards. Mini stopped and bent over, panting. "Did you tell her—"
"I said here. Along here."
Now that he had caught his breath, Connor had no choice but to wonder why he had followed them. There had to be a reason he kept meeting supercharged bad girls. Maybe it was so he could plead the cause of law and order, which didn’t seem to appeal to your average Slayer. And could you entirely blame them?
Maybe. He turned to Pasty-face. "Hey. If you dump that stuff here I won’t tell anyone. Is it your first time?"
She scowled. "I know it’s not just shoplifting, numbnuts. It’s assault. If they catch us they’ll put us away, so why shouldn’t we hang onto the goods?"
"He just wants to start somethin’, Emily," Mini growled. "Boys always do."
She squared on him, stiff-shouldered as a goalie in her three jackets. "So what you say, homeboy? Want to go right here?"
He shook his head, feeling a smile creep across his face. "I don’t hit girls unless they hit me first. So where’re the vampires you two are supposed to be slaying?"
Emily looked stricken.
But Mini only grunted, "Here, maybe. ‘Cept you ain’t burning." She took a step back and pivoted on the ball of her left foot, the other leg whipping round so fast you could hear it.
He blocked it, only just, and staggered backward. She danced in place with her hands at her sides, grinning. "I hit you first, freak. What you gonna do now?"
Connor glanced at the near end of the alley. It was empty. "Nothing."
"He’s gonna bolt, Em!"
Then he stopped thinking rationally, possibly thinking at all. Emily dropped her bundle on the pavement and made a grab for him— a random, sloppy grab, but one that sent shudders of pain up his arm. He wrenched her off, and Mini came at him.
The next few moments were a confusion of fists and feet and impacts that splintered deafeningly in his head. Faith had been playing with him, he realized. These girls were ragged, seat-of-the-pants fighters, but they were not holding back.
His ribcage felt like someone had swung a jackhammer at it, but he managed to get Mini down for a few seconds with a roundhouse kick to the throat. Emily, whose punches were less vicious but more accurate, veered toward him, her eyes all business.
You can stop. You can just stop. He dodged the punch, rolled a few feet and came up not far from the end of the alley. Run for it, why not? Act like a normal human being.
He turned his back on Emily and heard her make a surprised noise. He picked up the pace, clutching his right hand against his side.
He would track them after dark. He would find out where they lived when they weren’t busy robbing malls. And then he would…
What? The words Slayer slayer came to him in Lilah’s voice, though she hadn’t said that: he had.
Something took form from the sunlight at the end of the alley, striding purposefully. It was a tall black girl with a long braid, her shoulders hunched in an Army jacket like his own.
"Hey Helena! Watch out, he ain’t normal!"
To stay normal he would have to get past this last girl, into the sunlight. But she reached out and hooked him by the elbow as he came, swinging him hard against the wall.
He lurched forward again, his shoulders tingling, and clipped Helena just below the ear. She stumbled and bounced herself off the wall the way he had done, her eyes intent on something behind him.
Just as he was about to follow her gaze, pain thin as a needle wedged itself between his shoulder-blades, making him stop in his tracks and jerk spasmodically back and forth. He snaked his arm round, reaching for the spot, thinking maybe one of the other girls had stabbed him.
But the pain was too localized, and now the light was going grey. He felt his legs fold; was just conscious enough to tuck in his head as he fell.
Above him somewhere Emily’s voice said, "So Mini, you’ve actually done one smart thing today?"
Mini answered, but her angry voice was only a distant ringing. His cheek rested on concrete. The darkness, oddly familiar, closed in.
* * *
Nothing had changed. His cheek was still against concrete, and the concrete was cold. Maybe they had left him in the alley until night fell.
He opened his eyes. He was not outdoors.
The room was black-dark except for a smudge of orange light high up in one corner. The cold was the musty cold of basements, and it smelled like a basement too—like rusty pipes, cold dust, mouse-droppings. I was raised in a place like a basement, he thought.
That didn’t make any sense. But alongside his regular memories he found that he had a dream-like memory of life in a place that was always too hot or cold. There were groves of black icicles that grew into the soupy sky, their tops invisible, and the person who walked with him called them trees. But they weren’t trees.
He was always anxious. He was always doing wrong. There was a cave somewhere that clung to a cliff hundreds, maybe thousands of feet high. Below was some roiling liquid, not water. He didn’t know how they had come there or how they would leave. There were noises further back in the cave: rustlings and wailings. He focussed all his attention on the profile that stood out against firelit rock with its brave nose, its determined chin and merciful eye. It made him feel safer. Like God in the Bible, it spoke of another place where life was good, and it called their place Hell. It understood his sins better than he did.
"You see what comes of your fretting and noise-making. The only safe place for us is here in this eagle’s nest."
Another day the sunlight was weak and green, as if it came through chlorinated water, and he remembered thinking this was an exceptionally fine day. Maybe almost an English day. The profile stood out against jagged rock and a clump of purple-black bushes, and the berries on the bushes gleamed. You couldn’t eat them.
There was a sort of catechism. "Where I come from, son, there are people who believe nature has no good or evil. They say only men make these things. Why is this wrong?"
He answered by rote, "Because this place is evil. Like my mum and dad."
"And you?"
"I may yet be good."
* * *
The dream-images were so vivid that for a while he sat letting them flow through him. He knew they came from the night of the sleepwalking. That night they had terrified him, the forest of black "trees" bleeding into the black sun and the man’s voice ranting at him, haranguing him. "Kill him! Or what are you?An accomplice to my murder?"
But now he only felt a little wistful, almost nostalgic. The profile on the firelit wall no longer made him feel safe. But neither did it make him feel like hacking off his own limbs or someone else’s, just to stop hearing the refrain of sin, sin, inborn, curse, free will.
It was always about killing his dad, though his dad had various faces, none his own. And his psych teacher had said Dr. Freud was full of it.
He was starting to feel an uncomfortable gnawing in the pit of his stomach. When he raised his right hand to scratch his nose, something clanked up with it. A chain, the heavy-duty kind. He followed it to a round metal ring that refused to come out of the wall, no matter how hard he pulled.
They had chained him to the wall by his right wrist and left ankle. The realization left him surprisingly cold—not scared or angry. Maybe even a little reassured.
A light flared to his right, blinding him. Shuffling footsteps came down the stairs.
He blinked, watching packing boxes and a big gas boiler detach themselves from the gloom. A nervous voice called, "Hey. Are you doing OK?"
It was Emily, the pasty-faced girl. She scuttled closer and snapped on another bulb, this one almost above his head. He saw that she was wearing one of the purloined jackets.
"Hey, kid. I brought you some stuff to eat."
She set a paper napkin on the floor and unfolded it to reveal a lumpy sandwich and a Nutri-Grain bar. He stretched out his hand. "Who’re you calling a kid?"
"I’m sixteen."
"I’m older." He took the sandwich from her and bit into it without looking. P B and J. "Shouldn’t you be like, out in a cemetery somewhere killing vampires? Or are you the kind of supergirl who just tests inventory control in stores?"
Her face had hardened, as if she were embarrassed about the stealing or the slaying or both. "They’re doing it. Mini and Helena. I got a cold."
"You don’t sound like it." He reached for the plastic cup of water, then the napkin. "So you’re a gang of badass J.D. Slayers holed up here? Squatters? Or is this maybe your mom’s basement I’m tied up in?"
She made a little grimace, gazing at him with her dark eyes. "I don’t have a mom."
"Me neither. She’s dead." He chewed and washed the pasty stuff down with water.
Emily was still gazing at him. "You do too. There was a picture of you with her on the Net. She has red hair. The article we read said she writes kids’ books."
"Who’s we? Just you and Mini and Helena? Which of your idea was it to kidnap me? Or is there somebody else who tells you what to do?"
He finished the sandwich and reached for the Nutri-Grain bar. But the girl yanked her hand away from his, her lax face suddenly drawn tight with disgust. "Eww! You’re bleeding."
"I am?" Connor held up his right hand. Sure enough, the bandage was soaked through, and new blood was welling up through the gauze. It was odd, because he felt no pain at all. "I guess I am."
Emily snatched the napkin and held it up to the light. "You bled all over this too. It’s wet. It’s disgusting."
"It’s an old cut." He remembered how small and shallow-looking the marks had been. "I didn’t think it would bleed like that."
"It’s gross is what it is." She swung herself up out of her kneeling position. "Are you some kind of demon that attacks by bleeding on people?"
"Wouldn’t be too effective." Connor held his hand by the wrist and let the blood drip slowly on the concrete floor. It wasn’t the scary, uncontrollable kind of bleeding. He thought he might even get used to it.
"Or maybe you cut yourself to make me unchain you. Anyway, I won’t. I’m getting Justine. She can do the nurse-thing if she wants."
"Is Justine the one in charge here?"
Even as he asked the question, he forgot it. Somehow seeing her rise to her feet had made a gear click in his brain.
He asked, "Hey, Emily. Is your dad a professor?"
She stood holding the bloody napkin at arm’s length, her face in shadow. "I don’t have a dad."
"OK. But you’re from Orange County, aren’t you? Irvine? And your last name’s Aiken?"
"Eigen," said Emily between clenched teeth. She tucked the cup under her arm and marched to the stairs. "Whatever you know about me, freak, just remember I know things about you too."
He called, "I know something you probably don’t."
But she was gone.
She’d left the lights on at least. He folded his knees and tilted his head back against the concrete, putting pressure on his right palm to stop the bleeding. If Jasmine had really left him this dribbling wound, what on earth had She been thinking?
It didn’t take long for the stairs to shudder under two sets of feet. Emily’s voice rose in a tremulous complaint, but a lower, firmer one shushed her.
It was a voice adult and hard enough to make Connor feel a chill at the base of his spine. He realized he hadn’t been taking any of this seriously. What if they decided not to let him go?
"OK, so where’s this demon?"
Justine marched into the center of the basement, her steel-toed boots ringing. She had blunt-cut red hair and looked like somebody’s soccer mom, except for her tight denim clothes and the set to her mouth. Somebody’s butch aunt, maybe.
Connor stumbled to his feet, bracing himself against the wall. The chain was long enough to let him stand. "Are you in charge? What did they shoot me with to bring me here?"
Justine scarcely glanced at him. "Is this the gaping wound?" She seized his wrist and began to unwrap the gauze. "Doesn’t look like it to me. Em, you’re way too excitable."
"It was gushing," said Emily, hanging back.
"You’re gushing."
She tore open a sterile wipe and began to clean his hand, her touch brisk but not ungentle. "What the hell was Mini thinking when she dragged this one home? We’re going to have to wipe its memory clean, and God knows I’m sick of calling Wes for favors. It’s embarrassing."
Emily hopped from foot to foot, her white face unhappy. It was clear that she was used to getting things wrong. "But you said for us to bring him if we saw him. This is the one who busted up that school in the mountains, remember?"
He almost jerked his hand away. "I didn’t bust up the school, I stopped somebody from doing it. And she was a Slayer like you. Is every one of you some kind of felon?" He wheeled on Emily, who at least seemed to be paying attention. "Because if so, what’s the freakin’ point?"
"Who told him about Slayers?" said Justine sharply, while Emily grumbled, "I’m not a felon."
"Nobody told him. I didn’t tell him. He just knew." She watched Justine wrap fresh gauze around Connor’s hand, her eyes dark slits. "How come you forgot? You were talking about him all day after you read the article. You said we should get him here and test him to see if he was some kind of boy Slayer."
"I didn’t forget," Justine snapped. "I changed my mind." Her eyes rose to Connor’s for an instant, and he had the feeling that she was trying not to see something. "This boy’s gotta have parents somewhere."
Emily frowned. "I have parents somewhere."
"Yeah, but you’re good for something here." She folded the strip of gauze under and patted his hand absently. "There. All better. Sorry about the…" Her hand fluttered at the chains. "We’ll get you a sleeping-bag. Better’n nothing."
Connor yanked his hand away. Faith’s inattention hadn’t bothered him—she was just that kind of girl—but somehow Justine’s did. He asked, "When’re you guys gonna get it together to kill Angel? He’s a vampire, isn’t he?"
Emily looked bewildered, but Justine stiffened. "Who told you about Angel? Did Helena?"
"I saw him."
"Well, you shouldn’t have. He’s dangerous," she added, as if as an afterthought. "It sounds like you’re one of those kids who has a way of getting himself into situations he can’t handle. For your own good your folks oughtta be locking their doors at night."
Connor opened his mouth to tell Justine what he thought of her nest of Slayers.
But she was already turning from him, grasping Emily possessively by the shoulder. "You get the bag and bring it down, ‘kay Em? It’s in the crawlspace under the eaves. I just don’t want to talk to him any more than I have to."
* * *
Connor slept poorly in the basement. Sometime after midnight the other two girls came home: their feet made the boards above his head rattle and clap. Mini was excitedly demanding something in a shrill voice. He could hear Justine scolding, and after a while there was silence.
He closed his eyes and dreamed that he was walking down dusky stairs into a basement like this one. Only at the bottom was the man in the cage.
"You’re back, son!" said the man in the cage. He had a sharkish grin.
He stepped off the bottom step, onto the floor. "I never meant to leave."
The air was red-dark and seemed to fizz around him. The only thing that stayed quite clear was the man’s face.
"Well, you’ve got on like gangbusters," said the man—man, demon, whatever it was. He talked in the insinuating-with-a-sledgehammer way that Connor remembered. "Doing the old man proud."
He stepped closer, toward the dusty red line someone had taped to the cement. The closest you could come. "That’s not why I’ve come. I don’t need you to tell me I’ve done wrong."
"Blood of the innocent— eats you up inside, don’t it? You feel the whinging in your innards, don’t you, son? Or did they take it out while they had you cold on that table?"
He shook his head, knowing somehow in a dream way what the man meant. His soul.
"Pity." The face sneered in a faint facsimile of that emotion. "Better off without it. More fun."
Connor had it now: what he wanted to ask. He had been meaning to ask it all along, but things got in the way. "Would you have liked me that way? Like you?"
The man’s face went slack, the dark eyes as blank and glassy as those of a gutted fish. "Didn’t make a whole lotta difference soul or no soul, did it, son?"
Then he blinked rapidly, and his face transformed itself into something crumpled and soft: an exaggerated tragic mask. "What’s this— more of the you didn’t love me, daddy crap? I loved you when I was killing you and selling my soul to evil lawyers to retrofit you, huh? What more do you expect: a kidney? A liver? My duster?"
Connor shook his head. "I didn’t come to talk to him. I came to talk to you."
"Oh, right." The creature rolled its eyes, and the maudlin look vanished as quickly as it had come. "Yeah, I got your number. I’m forced to wear him, so you think I can tell you how he feels deep down inside, and then your quest to heal the inner child will be complete. Give me a break, kiddo. I fucking hated you."
The darkness seemed a little darker, yet somehow it was satisfying to hear the words. There is nothing so irritating as telling someone I hate you and hearing I love you no matter what, I will always love you, I am above hating you, again and again.
Without thinking he asked, "Why?"
The pinched, cynical face looked genuinely befuddled for a second. "You’re an abomination. You smell pretty appetizing, and lord knows I don’t have a problem eating kin, but there’s this pesky little voice in my head telling me you’re closer to me than any kin my flesh-sack ever had. Flesh and mind and demon-force— that’s mine. And eating me—that’s even against my rules. ‘Course, rules are made to be broken."
"There’s more."
One of the creature’s long white fingers darted out and twined itself around a bar. He was barely holding his seething in check, his jaw set and his eyes focussed somewhere over Connor’s head. "Well, duh. You made me— you made him happy. Diaper-pins and little hockey sticks and hugs and kisses and fucking lullabies. Worst tease I’ve ever had. I kept waiting for him to go over the brink, but no. The bastard tried his damnedest without knowing it, but he couldn’t uncurse himself. Know why?"
Connor didn’t know where the red tape was anymore. It was very dark, and he seemed to be floating in the narrowing space between them.
The man in the cage tilted his head to the side and leered, as if trying to make himself understood by someone very dull. "Because underneath he always suspected you were as much mine as his. Proved him right, didn’t you?"
* * *
This time he woke with his head heavy and pounding. The girl named Helena stood over him, her dark eyes frowning under her crown of thick braids. "You were talking in your sleep."
He nodded, still separating this room in his mind from the other one.
"I’m gonna unchain you so you can use the bathroom over there." She pointed to a sort of plywood closet in the far corner of the basement, her gesture restrained and a little contemptuous. "I’ll stay right here, but if you try anything you’re gonna wish you didn’t. Got it?"
He nodded again, but she still looked mistrustful.
It felt good to lose the restraints and walk; he hadn’t realized how stiff his legs were. He nearly got them tangled taking the first few steps, and Helena frowned again.
The "bathroom" had its own light bulb. There was no sink, but he managed. He examined his right hand with a flash of trepidation, but it was all right. A few old brown stains were visible through the gauze.
There was nothing in the closet but a roll of paper and a mangy plunger. He picked that up and tested its weight in his hand, asking in order to buy time, "Have you ever seen this Angel?"
Helena’s voice sounded more wary than ever. "Hey, c’mon out of there. Who told you to ask that?"
Connor put the plunger back. It wasn’t much of a weapon. Besides, when he thought about walking up the stairs out of the basement, he found to his surprise that the idea didn’t appeal.
That was probably because there were still things to learn and do here: things for Faith. When or why he had become Faith’s right-hand man he didn’t know. Still, he decided that from now on his questions would be the ones she’d ask.
He walked stiff-legged back to the wall and sank down against it; held out his wrist. "Nobody told me. I was just curious to know if the vampire’s controlling your operation too."
Helena clicked the manacle abruptly to, pinching him in the process. "A vamp running us?"
He shrugged and gave her his ankle. "I just wondered. Who does Justine work for?"
Helena glowered. She was older than the other girls, perhaps in her early twenties, with a soft, curvy figure and a grim, practical face. "She don’t work for nobody. We don’t either, except maybe for the people. For the city, even if we aren’t exactly on the payroll. Not for her."
"Justine’s not your boss?"
Helena knelt for something she’d left on the floor. Connor saw that it was his breakfast: a hot cup with the Trader Joe’s logo and another cereal bar.
"She’s not my boss. But when it comes to you I’m gonna act like she is, so don’t start trying to play mindgames. Got it, kid? Make my own choices."
She shoved the food toward him and straightened to tug the pullcord over his head, throwing his corner of the room into shadow. As her face disappeared, her hair stood out around her head in an uneven nimbus, and he could almost feel the tension in her long, strong limbs.
"Don’t turn the other one off." He inched himself up into a squat, realizing he didn’t like the dark. "Hey, listen though. What if Justine made the wrong choice about me? What if I’ve got something you can use?"
Helena was halfway up the stairs, but he could almost hear her shrug. "Do you?"
* * *
It seemed like days rather than hours before Emily came down, bearing a tray with yet another soggy sandwich and a can of Coke.
"Do you guys even go to school?"
It was the kind of thing he’d had plenty of time to think about while he sat here listening to the uninformative noises upstairs; staring at the postage-stamp window that showed him nothing more than the legs of a prowling cat.
Emily knelt and set down her burden, her eyes averted. "Nah. Helena still telemarkets part-time. Mini dropped out of school; she caddies over at the country club. She only likes jobs where she can show off carrying heavy stuff. Me, I stay home with Justine and do research."
He propped himself up on his elbows and began trying to flex his legs, one by one. "Justine doesn’t have the powers, does she?"
"How can you tell?"
"I dunno. The way she moves. And all the Slayers I’ve met were young."
"That’s because we die young," said Emily.
She pushed her heavy dark bangs out of her face as she spoke. Her voice was flat, and he couldn’t tell whether she was trying to impress him with her fatalism or only stating a fact.
"How did you know you were one?"
Emily glanced at the stairs, her face even paler in the patch of anemic sunlight. "Go on and eat. She’s at the store right now, but she’ll be back soon. And in a couple hours the Warlock will come, and after he’s done with you you won’t remember anything. So I guess it doesn’t matter what I tell you."
He shrugged. "I guess it doesn’t."
The girl nodded and propped her elbows on her knees, hair dangling in her eyes again. "It was kinda like with you. I messed up at school. Only you probably knew you were different before it happened, and me, I didn’t. All I knew was everything was going screwy.
"It was back in May, right after Jasmine, and kids were coming into school crying. I didn’t get what the big deal was, because my folks don’t believe in TV. But all of a sudden they were having these suicide prevention workshops every day after school. There was this guy Trent—I didn’t know him well, but he was kind of shy. Some people called him Trenchcoat Mafia, but I didn’t see it. I used to talk to him in English ‘cause him and me were the only ones that finished Crime and Punishment.
"Anyway, Trent was the kid who took hostages in that mall. You remember. Everybody saw it happen on CNN but me. When I got to school that morning they told me how he’d let the people go and done a number on himself, so there was nothing left but bone-fragments. And at first I told them No, I don’t think so, and they said he was on the security cameras. I was having like, nightmares about it for a while."
She drew her knees closer to her chest, still not looking at Connor. "So about three weeks after that, most people are back to normal but I guess I’m not, you know? There was this girl Susannah, and during this pep rally she was out there doing the spirit thing with the pompoms, and I was in the first row, and somehow my foot got in the way—it was an accident—and she turns to me and says, ‘Like, watch out, freak.’ And I think by freak she means Trent, not just me. So I get up and I dunno, I figure what I did is just bitchslap her. Only it turns out afterward I detached her retina. There was blood."
She glanced slily up at him now, gauging his reaction. "Everybody thought I must’ve hit her so hard because I was nuts. But I wasn’t. I was just strong. They made me go to the psych ward overnight for observation, and that’s when I freaked for real. I couldn’t stay there, so I broke out. It was night and I was running along the I-5, trying to decide whether I should hitch a ride home when they were just gonna send me back. Then a car stopped, and it was Justine."
"How did she know you were out there?"
"She lied first and said she didn’t. She said she just happened to see me. But I found out later she used a spell the Warlock gave her, something Watchers used to use to find us. She told me I could either go home and be treated like Psycho Girl till I died, or I could stay here and be a Heroine helping People in Need. So anyway, I figured the second thing sounded better."
"You haven’t seen your parents in all this time? Bet they’re looking for you."
Emily shrugged a bit too flippantly. "Bet they are."
"Maybe you’d be better off getting trained by a real Slayer. Somebody who’s been at it for years. Maybe then you wouldn’t spend your afternoons punching cops in the nose."
Emily got up restlessly and went over to the window. "Mini gets out of control. That’s not Justine’s fault. Anyway, she says if we protect people, maybe they owe us something."
"And you believe that?" Even as he said it, he felt PSA-preachy.
Emily ignored him. "The Official Slayer Training Camp is way far away somewhere like Iowa, and it’s all about learning to have a normal life with the powers. They don’t let us be what we are, which is special. Superior. I’d rather be here."
"But you hate it here."
Silence. Peering closer, Connor thought he saw the girl flick something out of her eye, her face so blanched by sunlight that it was impossible to say if it were a lash or a tear.
When she answered at last, it was in a subdued voice. "I gotta go. Justine’s car’s coming, and I think she’s got the Warlock with her. He doesn’t like to come in his own car."
"Who’s this Warlock?"
Emily pulled away from the window; swooped in her awkward-graceful adolescent way and began to gather the remains of his meal. "Just this English dude. He used to be a Watcher, so he acts all high and mighty. Justine says he thought he was too good for her till she found Mini and Helena. Now all he thinks about is finding some way to take us away from her so he can experiment on us."
"Experiment on you?"
He wanted to ask whether the Warlock was also the Priest of Jasmine. But somehow the word Jasmine refused to come out of his mouth, and anyway Emily was on the stairs. Above, a door banged and a low female voice swore.
"There’s a girl named Faith," he said in desperation. "She’s here in the city, and I think she’s looking for you. I could bring you—"
Emily’s voice came to him in a furtive hiss that reminded him of Violet, that day in the choir room when she had tried to make him understand her fear of her own powers. But he didn’t know if the fear in this girl’s voice was for her or for himself.
"After he does his spell you won’t want to bring me anywhere. Hah! You’ll be normal again. You won’t be able to get away fast enough."
* * *
The spell did not work.
Connor wasn’t particularly surprised. Despite the false priest’s success in making him remember Jasmine, he had little faith in the braziers and dusty herbs and multisyllabic Latin invocations that the Warlock had assembled in an attempt to make him forget the past two days.
The Warlock was a different Englishman, it turned out—thin-faced like the priest but younger, with a tony accent and dark stubble crawling over his pale cheeks. When the contents of his brazier exploded with a soft piff, he looked even younger in his dismay.
"Whassa problem?" asked Justine. Throughout the ritual, she had remained at the foot of the stairs with her arms crossed and a sarcastic grin on her face.
The Warlock took off his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. His eyes seemed to work to avoid Connor, even though the two of them were sitting less than three feet apart. "I don’t know. There’s some sort of interference. I think somebody’s magicked about with this boy already."
"What do you mean, magicked about?"
"I mean to say there are already all sorts of things laid on him, and they’re so tightly woven you can’t grasp an end. Already some oblivio charms, I believe." He seized a bit of what looked like burnt sage from another brazier and rubbed it on the bridge of Connor’s nose. "I may have to undo before I can do."
"Hey!" He rubbed his nose with his free hand; it stung. "Nobody puts spells on me."
The Warlock and Justine seemed to have a tacit agreement to ignore anything he said. Neither blinked. The Warlock drew back a bit, watching smoke unfurl from the brazier, and plucked out another scrap of blackened herb. "Apage dissidie! I say, now this is interesting."
"What?" Justine was practically glaring now, as if she thought the Warlock were going through these contortions merely to amuse himself.
"It’s like two warring magnets."
The Englishman looked so self-satisfied that Connor thought perhaps Justine was right. He raised the herb to his own brow and rubbed it vigorously there. "Let’s see if this makes it easier. Disnodate. Insidiae apertae! Ah, yes."
He straightened his glasses and lowered his eyes to Connor. They focussed this time and did not dart away.
"What?" asked Justine again. She was inching closer to them, her arms still protectively crossed.
The Warlock glanced away from Connor and back. His eyes were flecked with gold, and a ropy white scar banded his throat.
"You can’t see him, can you? Well, you can in a sense, but only as something you know you oughtn’t to see. There’s a subliminal Go Away sign on him. A sort of magical camouflage."
Justine made an exasperated noise in her throat. "Can you make him forget us, Wes, or should I call crosstown and hire that annoying busty girl from Queens?"
The Warlock conjured a thin yellow flame of werelight on his palm and transferred it to the first brazier. "The Avoidance charm’s quite strong—it’s a wonder you could keep your attention on him long enough to bring him here. What on earth did you think you were doing?"
"Nothing. I didn’t bring him. Mini was on a manic streak." Justine leaned forward from the waist, watching the Warlock scatter a trail of ashes in a circle around Connor. "Maybe she liked his looks."
"The charm has made you forget the real reason," said the Warlock with academic detachment. "Now. Quod occultatus est, apparete. Fila manifesta, cantus apertus. If this works, it won’t be good for more than a minute or so, but it should be enough to show us why someone put an Avoidance on him." He flicked the last of the ashes into the brazier. "Detectus!"
No light flashed in Connor’s head; no scales fell from his eyes. He could tell that the two of them were still waiting for the spell to work.
All the same, things were different. His brain felt sludgy and sluggish: so sluggish he wasn’t sure he could come up with his own name. To know what he knew about a thing, he seemed to have to see it.
This made him feel stupid, since there was nothing much to know about the boiler or the basement walls. He glanced sideways, into the white-faced man’s gleaming eyes (who was he again?). And then down a bit, at the necklace of scar.
"She did it to you."
He raised his eyes to the woman’s staring, skeptical face and drew his finger down and around the curve of his own throat. (Where there should have been a scar too.) "You cut him. You left him to die in the street."
It was as if a single searchlight shone in his head, illuminating the memory. He knew it was true, even as he knew it was not something he had seen firsthand but rather a story he had been told by someone who kept changing his stories. Trust her. Whatever they tell you, she did the Lord’s work for you, the person had said.
But does a warrior for the good behave that way?
He turned to Wesley again, feeling outraged, though on whose behalf he didn’t know. "How can you trust her? You two should be enemies. You should fight a duel."
"Raving," Wesley murmured.
He heard rather than saw Justine’s shrug. "He could be further off. There were a few times I would’ve killed you, before…"
Connor looked up at her— at flat bronze-colored eyes, hardened by the sight of death. "And you killed Holtz."
Wesley drew in his breath. "Now we’re getting somewhere. He knows Holtz."
Justine’s face had stiffened, and Connor was surprised to see tears glint in her eyes.
She made a faint noise in her throat and rubbed a hand across her mouth. When she took it away her eyes were dry and murderous. "I did that. At his request. We were making a last pathetic effort to enlist this genius here—" with a gesture at Wesley— "so we could off the Souled One before his demoness sidekick did some demon sex mojo on him and gave birth to a feel-good goddess that nearly devoured humanity. Which you won’t deny was a good cause."
"I didn’t hear you complaining that day in the Hyperion when you got up and cried for Her Goddessness and made a little bonfire of your weapons," said Wesley archly.
"Yeah well, I came off my high and went to the sewers with the rest of you." She glared at Connor again. "And who told you anything about us, brat? Was it one of the girls, or are you in with Angel? Telling my girls things to divide them from me?"
She wheeled on Wesley, twiddling her hands at her sides like someone who needs a cigarette. "Hey, Wes. Maybe you know the kid better than you let on."
Wesley protested. Connor watched them scrap back and forth, wondering why on earth they were still talking and not hitting. And even as he wondered, the spell expired. The searchlight in his brain flickered and went out.
It was a relief, because now he could see everything the way he usually did. The memories of home and Violet and Faith were back in place. At the same time, he had an unsettling feeling that certain things he ought to know were hidden just out of sight.
He scrubbed his hand across his brow where the Warlock’s herb had been. "I guess somebody did put a spell on me before you did."
"Who?" The Warlock (had he had a name?) looked grateful for an excuse to end his bickering with Justine. "You know who charmed you?"
Connor cleared his dry throat. Now that someone was actually listening to him, he felt oddly uncommunicative. But there was no need to keep secrets, he told himself. These were not ordinary people who would put him down immediately as a nut. And he was, after all, the victim here: the one who hadn’t asked for any supernatural visitations. "I think it was Lilah."
The reaction was more than he had bargained for. The Warlock drew back, his eyes wide and affronted behind the glasses. "Lilah? Lilah Morgan?"
"I thought you said she was dead," said Justine. For no reason Connor could see, she was smirking a bit at the Warlock’s distress.
He nodded. "She says she is dead. But she appears sometimes."
"That she does." The Englishman brought a hand to his face. "She runs errands and such," he added in Justine’s direction. "With a contract like hers, you know, resting quietly is out of the question. But what on earth would she want with you?"
"I don’t know. But I think maybe she wants me to kill Slayers."
Upstairs a door banged. Footsteps trampled in from the night. One high-pitched voice was emitting a continuous stream of complaint, another jeering. Below them hovered a steady counterpoint of alto scolding.
Justine got to her feet. "Speak of the devil. Sometimes even I have passing thoughts about strangling the hormonal little prodigies."
"Kill Slayers? You?" the Warlock asked Connor, while Justine raised her head and bellowed at the ceiling, "We need some peace down here, for God’s sake!"
The door scraped open and Mini skipped down the stairs, Creamsicle-coordinated in orange track shorts and a white hoodie. She paused at the bottom and hugged the banister, grinning excitedly. "Emmy won’t fight!"
"I will so! But I can’t!" Emily moaned.
She dodged around Mini and stumbled into the basement, coming up short at the sight of the Warlock. Her cheeks were red and her eyes wet—with tears or only excitement, it was hard to say. She shook her bangs out of her eyes and spoke with false meekness, as if to a teacher. "Oh, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. Maybe you can help. It’s like I’m jammed. I know what to do, I know how to move, but I can’t. I can’t even run. Is it a spell?"
Mini fidgeted from foot to foot. "I had to save her. She couldn’t even stake a little one. His fangs were right here, almost in her neck, like this!" She mimed convincingly, throwing her head back and rolling her eyes to imitate the terror-stricken victim. "She wouldn’t even try!"
"I did so try! He was stronger than me."
"Take a chill pill both of you," growled Justine, shepherding them back up the stairs. "She was just having a bad day."
Connor could tell she was embarrassed to have the Warlock see "her girls" this way. All the same she turned to him, a new furrow shortening the space between her brows. "Just in case, Wes, would you mind taking a look? She hasn’t been this way since the first week."
"This is different, I swear. I’m not faking!" wailed Emily.
From the top of the stairs, Mini leered down with a Halloween-mask grimace. Justine gave her a swat and a shove, as the Warlock got to his feet and stretched.
He followed the others reluctantly, leaving his magical implements and casting a last glance at Connor. "I need more time with this boy, Justine. If he’s seen Lilah, he might just have a clue as to what she used to make Angel sign."
Justine snorted. "Still trying to whitewash the boss after all this time?"
The boss. Connor rose in one movement, jerking impatiently at the leg-chain. "If you’re working for him, don’t expect help from me."
* * *
A nice gesture, but wasted. The Warlock was already out of earshot.
But while they might not be able to hear him, he could very clearly hear them carrying on their argument through the thin boards. Emily was demanding that they "test" her. Her strength had slid out of her like milk from a tipped carton: she could feel it. She hadn’t known there was a finite amount of it, but apparently there was. She felt weak, helpless, scared. Nothing in there anymore but a normal girl.
Justine objected that what Emily felt was irrelevant. As for a test of her powers: pointless. She could act as weak as she chose.
"I’ll strangle her till she gives in and pounds me!" Mini shrilled. She seemed to be finding the whole situation entertaining.
"Do it! I’ll die if I have to in order to prove it to you."
Emily was sobbing now, by the sound of it. It was overwrought sobbing that reminded Connor of his sister Mercy when she wanted your attention— but it bothered him.
The Englishman must have been taking Emily seriously too, for he offered a long-winded theory. It was not unknown for a Slayer to lose her powers due to a "depotentizing" spell: part of a rite of passage devised by ancient Watchers in order to test the Slayer’s resourcefulness in the absence of her strength. While it seemed unlikely that anyone in the L.A.-area would deploy such a spell, given the fact that Depotentizing had been a closely-guarded secret even in its heyday, nonetheless it was not impossible that…
And so on. Justine interrupted the lecture and the battle began again, Mini jabbing and Emily wailing while Helena’s calmer voice chimed in with details.
In the end, the door clicked and they all swept outside onto the lawn, presumably in order to perform the "test." In the half-light, Connor sank back onto the floor and hugged his knees.
The searchlight in his brain was off. But all the same, certain places that had been pitch-dark were now only in shadow. When he looked at them without really thinking about it, he could see the outlines of solid objects.
For instance, Trent.
He had only a vague memory of the TV coverage. But when he thought about it, he could see just how Trent had gone about rigging up the people in that mall. He hadn’t needed a gun. There’d been all kinds of equipment already on hand. Coleman propane canisters, to start. It was almost like that store was inviting someone to make trouble.
There was more. He could hear a child crying and a man pleading, "Please, if you believe in God, please," and his own voice answering, "She’s a fake, your god."
The people didn’t seem real. They were pawns: victims in some sort of sacrifice he didn’t understand because there was nothing left to sacrifice to. None of them, including him, were really worth sacrificing anyway, but together all of them might approach something that approached perfection.
He remembered one face in particular: a girl who looked like she had been sleeping for years. (Had he knocked her unconscious? Maybe so, because she made him feel guiltier than the others.) He remembered how it felt to cinch a bomb around your waist. After that, pure confusion.
Trent hadn’t released the hostages himself, though in the end he hadn’t cared one way or the other. Connor supposed the S.W.A.T. team had done it, before or after they killed him. There had been killing, not suicide. Mercy-killing no doubt, given the state of things inside his head. But who had done all the talking first? A hostage negotiator?
"Back on this mortal coil," Lilah had said. (When? To whom?)
Who had made him so angry? Who had made him feel so small and cruel that it ached in his bones, and at the same time so vast, so victorious that he thought the whole world would die with him?
Who had put him here?
* * *
"See here now. Are you all right?"
It was the Warlock, worrying at his shoulder. He had a bunch of herbs in one hand and a look of antsy distaste, as if he were trying to decide whether it was safe to treat Connor like a human being. He asked in a carefully modulated voice, "You do have a name?"
He shook his head. "I don’t remember."
"It must be the effect of the spell," said the Warlock in the same cautious way.
Connor remembered his name— both of his names—in the next instant, but didn’t bother saying so. "How did the test go?"
"Uh… not badly." With a quick glance up the stairs. "Or badly, depending. Actually, the girl appears to be quite disabled."
He shrugged. "Can you let her go home now?"
"Go… home?" The Englishman wet his lips with his tongue. It was clear that he had other things he wanted to ask.
"She doesn’t say anything about you or your Angel," Connor said. He meant Lilah.
But the Warlock didn’t seem to have heard him. "Heavens. You’re bleeding."
He seized Connor’s hand and brought it to the light. Sure enough, new blood had oozed through the gauze.
"It does that sometimes." By now he was almost blasé about it.
"It ought not," said the Warlock softly. He drew a pair of gloves out of his bag and skinned them on, then began to peel off the layers of dressing—some caked with old blood, others soggy with new. There was a new expression on his face: half curious, half repulsed. "How did you come by these wounds?"
He answered with a half-truth: "I don’t remember."
"Clearly of magical origin. Perhaps this was where the weaving was initiated—the point of origin of the spell on you, as it were." He gazed at the red half-moons on Connor’s palm, no longer swelling with new blood. "What causes the reaction?"
He shrugged, knowing perfectly well it was the memories.
The Warlock leaned closer, his urgency hot on his breath along with some musky cologne. "Can you say why? Have you seen something you shouldn’t have seen?"
Connor shrugged again and tugged his hand back to his side. "Why do you work for someone like Angel? And why should I trust you?"
"Who’s told you about Angel?"
Justine’s voice rasped from upstairs, "Wes! Need you to finish this draught, unless you want me to just give her a Xanax!"
"Yes, well." Wes finished sweeping his paraphernalia into the black morocco case and stood up. He was so tall that Connor, sitting, had to tilt backward to see his face. He started to speak, stopped; began again, fiddling with his glasses. "Is it true that you saw her—" pointing at the ceiling—"slitting my throat?"
"I see a lot of things."
The Englishman turned to go; turned back. He looked apologetic now. "I don’t know why I want to ask this. Perhaps it’s part of the baggage of that Avoidance I only half took off you. But… you do have a family somewhere?"
"Of course."
He nodded firmly, remembering, and only then realized that it was nearly Tuesday. He was missing school.
* * *
Upstairs, Mini and Emily had been packed off to bed. The quarrelling voices of Wes and Justine replaced them.
"Mini said she was down there for a full hour, just chatting with the kid. Who’s to say he didn’t put it on her?"
Wes demurred. "A depotentizing spell is quite advanced magic. The boy doesn’t appear to have any powers of his own."
"Maybe he’s not a boy, have you thought of that? I mean not human. The girls were carrying on about how tough it was to subdue him. I thought it was just the standard overhype, but now I wonder."
"You were affected by the Avoidance," said Wes thoughtfully. "Perhaps the girls weren’t. But why would that be? Avoidances are generally global. And then there’s the odd part about the blood."
Justine had forgotten binding Connor’s wound. Wes explained. "Pity I don’t have the instruments to take a sample."
"Pity my Slayer’s out of commission indefinitely, due to something that may or may not have been orchestrated by your ex."
"She’s really not my…" The Warlock sighed, his voice going a little milder. "Let’s not speak ill of the dead, Justine."
"My dead lover doesn’t rise from the grave and go on evil law-firm business. Does yours?"
This reduced Wes to mumbling for a few seconds. He changed tack and began talking about bringing someone named Fred to the house, "and just one or two of her research assistants. We simply don’t have the resources here otherwise. It’s devilishly complex work that’s been done on the boy, and as for Emily, I can’t even begin. There’s no residue."
But Justine was having none of this Fred, so the debate stalled. Connor gathered that Fred was Wes’s colleague, and that the organization they worked for made Justine nervous. She was afraid she might lose custody of her Slayers to the Magic Branch of the Mob, no doubt.
There was more carping on both sides. But Connor’s eyelids were getting heavy. He clutched his right hand to his side, wondering if the Englishman had meant to come back with a fresh dressing. It didn’t matter. Now that he knew what turned the strange steady painless drip of blood on, he had a notion of what turned it off. Shortsightedness, indifference, forgetfulness, perfect acceptance of the present moment. Sleep.
* * *
He fell into a sludgy black doze with no dreams this time, and that was a relief. When Helena nudged him awake, repeating, "You got to go, you got to go," he ignored her as long as he could.
But he wasn’t really asleep, and it was hard to pretend. He opened his eyes into the dark and saw a flashlight-beam swing across the wall, revealing a loop of clothesline and a small pyramid of cinderblocks.
"Whatcha doing?"
He could feel her fumbling for the manacle on his wrist. "Stay still. If I let you go, will you really take off? Or will you come back hanging round here?"
He shrugged, suddenly excited at the thought of moving freely. "Won’t Justine freak?"
"Too late to worry about that," said Helena. She propped the flashlight in the crook of her elbow and opened her right hand to reveal a tiny key. "She can tell the kids what to do but me, I’m a soldier in a bigger army. I do what I need to. You gonna come back?"
He shook his head, though he honestly wasn’t sure. "How come you’re doing this? Is it because of what the Warlock said—how he’s gonna come back here with Angel’s crew?"
"I said stay still." She was jiggling the key into place. And now, unbelievably, his hand was free. He drew it close to him and rubbed the wrist, while Helena crabwalked over to his outstretched foot. "Angel’s not some kind of gangbanger. He’s a vampire, but they say he’s got a soul. Whatever that means."
"Souls are overrated," said Connor.
In the darkness, he felt Helena smile tightly. "That’s how I think. That’s why we’re gonna take him out."
"You are? But Justine—"
"Justine’s in bed with Wesley," said Helena grimly. She pulled the chain out from around his calf with a musical clink. "I mean, not that way. She needs him, is all. That’s why we’re gonna do it without an executive order. Tomorrow night, when he comes to that old house on Valjean they’ve turned into a church. I’m only telling you ‘cause you mentioned about how we should’ve dusted him already. I can tell he scares the bejeezus out of you too."
* * *
She made him carry his shoes. The backdoor creaked, and Connor followed her down the asphalt steps onto a postage stamp of cool wet lawn.
"Put ‘em on here and then go through the neighbor’s yard. Stay away from the front."
It was one of the older neighborhoods with Eastern-style houses, two or three stories high. In front of him, a whole series of slanting roofs stood sawtoothed against violet-brown sky.
He sank into a squat— legs still rubbery—and began to pull the sneakers on. "Hey, Helena. Do you think Emily’s faking it about her powers?"
"Shh." She came a step closer—her tall form alert, her dead flashlight aimed at the grass. "What do you care?"
"I just want to make sure she’ll be all right."
"She’ll be all right, don’t you worry."
Connor reached for the second shoe, unable to shake an obscure sense that whatever happened, he was responsible. Justine had thought so. But maybe he only felt this way because of Violet, the other Slayer he had put out of commission.
"She’ll land on her feet," said Helena, watching him. "Better already."
"Better? What do you mean, better?"
She shrugged philosophically, silhouetted against the pale urban night. "That girl never wanted it. Me, I been waiting my whole life for something I could call a mission. I was saving for college. Worked at the DMV, came home and took care of my sister’s kids. I always figured I was called by the Lord to do something different. But I never thought it’d go this far."
She paused for a moment, watching him rise shakily to his feet, then went on, "And Mini. She looks like a badass kid right now, but you gotta give her time. She ran away from her folks when she was fifteen; Justine found her on the streets stealing for a living. And there’s nothing on God’s green earth that girl loves more than dusting ‘em. If you could’ve seen her make her first kill, you’d know it’s in her blood. She’s just gotta settle down. But Emily…"
Connor nodded, feeling an odd contempt rise in his throat. "She had good parents. A nice life. She just wants to be normal again."
Helena sighed, and he thought he could hear her life there. The mind-numbing desk-jobs, the adrenaline rush of power and danger, the constant gnawing nearness of death. "Can you blame her?"