No Rest for the Wicked—Part 2: Unchosen

5: The Reveal

His sister answered the phone. "Beckford residence."

"Look. ‘s me. Is Mom there?"

"Connor? You sound weird. And you’re in seriously major trouble."

"Look, Merce, please…"

"’kay, ‘kay."

Some walking and Mercy’s yammering in the background, and then his mother came to the phone. "Connor? Where are you?"

He took a deep breath, to get it all out as fast as possible. "Look, I’m OK. I wanted you to know. I’m coming back tomorrow. There are just a couple things I need to do here first. So don’t worry, ‘kay?"

She took a deep breath, and he could feel her trying to slow everything down. Be here now. Make this moment the only moment—and other crap she’d read in books. None of it ever really worked, because she was a ball of nerves. "Connor, that’s not enough. I need to know—"

"No you don’t, Mom." (Thinking: believe me, you don’t.) He lied, "I’ll tell you everything when I get home. Tomorrow. I promise."

"Tomorrow?" Now he could hear her trying to make her voice steely, so he would know she was seriously pissed this time and wasn’t going to go all mooshy. It didn’t work either. "Fine. You got it, kid. We’ll talk tomorrow. But wait, how ‘bout just telling me where you—"

He hung up.

* * *

What he had to do before he went back was simple. Research. Fit at least some of the mismatched pieces together. So that he had a notion of what to go on, and what he had done.

It had taken him a while to find his way home last night—tracking faint scent-imprints—and he hadn’t slept more than a few hours before the sun cut through the blinds and woke him. He rolled over and dozed, nursing aches in places he hadn’t known you could have them—pleasant aches because of the sense-memories attached to them. He fell into a turgid sleep, clutching the pillow as if it were her, as if he could still feel her hair against his face—and woke to find it was nearly two.

It was a glaring grey-silver day. The water in the pool looked gangrenous. His hand was dry and felt perfectly whole, but he kept the dressing on just in case.

The nearest public library turned out to be in the next town. He drove there and snuck his take-out coffee into the characterless brick building. There was no one else around but a guy who smelled like a bum, browsing today’s papers. The librarian didn’t glance up from her magazine as he found his way to the row of four boxy Clinton-era computers.

They were slow, but they did the job. The first part was easy. He typed in Lilah Morgan.

He typed in Wolfram and Hart. There was a slow-loading photo of an impressively ugly building, but the site devoted to the firm said nothing about evil, and very little about anything else. You needed a password even to see the list of partners and personnel.

He backtracked and tried another one of his hits. Massacre at Downtown Law-Firm: Epicenter of the Rain of Fire?

It was an item from a lurid local tabloid, part of a two-page spread entitled Mysteries of L.A.’s Cruellest Month.

This Connor knew already. Perhaps he had seen it on KALX news. He skimmed the description of dead lawyers—no mention of Lilah—and let his eye jump to the next item:

You could spend all day reading the gory tales of that one month, served up to you in yellow-journalism style with a hefty side of glad-it-wasn’t-me.

He hopped back to his search page, face flushed with anger he couldn’t really explain. Or could only explain by reminding himself that such a hideous deed could never, should never be compared to what Jasmine did when she was forced to replenish herself. That was a deed of love; it glowed, it was…

He flexed his right hand, seeing it suddenly for just what it was. The strong devouring the weak. With love, maybe, but still devouring. Even him she had tried in a sense to devour, swamping his will.

But it was hard to think about that and suddenly easier to do what he had been putting off, which was to type in hostage crisis Century City Mall.

Hosts of articles came up. The press had had its usual field day with this incident, so much easier to explain and cluck over than the rest of the Jasmine mess. He stuck with the coverage in the L.A. Times:

There was a fuzzy photo of the boy, maybe a yearbook picture. Glasses, long straight nose, thin sarcastic lips. Is that who I am? Connor thought, feeling more and more confused. Or who I was?

As he stared at the photo, it dissolved into an arrangement of pixels and came together again to form an image.

This time the image moved. It looked shocked, the mouth squinched to the side with panic. "Holy shit!" it said in a squeaky voice. And then: "Look, I’m putting it down, OK? Don’t hurt me. I’m putting it down. You’re not on tape."

He hit the Back button and rested his head in his hands, rocking back and forth. That felt better. In the dark behind his eyelids the images stopped coming, and he was left with a sort of calm dread. It had been that night, hadn’t it? May 7^th. His nightmare.

His hand was wet and brightly itching again. He moved instinctively to put pressure on the bleeding, his eyes running down the paper’s online index in search of something different to think about. All this talk of tragic events and dark moments. What had they found to say about Her—the one for whose sake it had all happened?

Nothing, apparently.

There was a gap in the index from April 22^nd to May 5^th, with no explanation. The page-one leader for April 21^st read Hundreds Seek Solace at Home of Inspirational Speaker. For May 6^th it was Riots in Streets Follow Cult Leader’s Disappearance. What had happened in between?

"They want to forget," piped up a voice behind him, followed by the unmistakable crack of a piece of gum.

Connor whipped round, letting his right hand slide under the desk. A peaky, perky girl with coral nails was gazing at him from behind tortoiseshell glasses over a stack of binders she hardly looked big enough to carry. He thought: She’s kind of like…

But no. He didn’t know anybody like that.

She said, "Don’t be scared. I’m the librarian."

"I know. You smell like books."

The librarian shrugged that off, her skinny face officious. "Are you looking for the Lost Issues?"

"I didn’t know there were lost issues."

"Of course there are. You didn’t think they stopped putting the paper out, did you?"

One of the heavy black binders thwacked down on the table, making him start. "What’s this?"

"My archive." The librarian peeled back the cover and flipped the first page with her index finger.

A grimy clipping with torn edges stared back at him. There was a picture of a quite beautiful woman, full-lipped, no one he had ever seen. And above it, words: Jasmine Gives Us Her Message of Hope in a Non-Exclusive but Unspeakably Beautiful Interview.

"There’s lots of good stuff in here."

Connor glanced from the page to the librarian. Her face was flushed with excitement and her eyes were sidelong and sly, as if she had been waiting months for someone like him to come along. Bursting at the seams with secrets and conspiracy theories: a little crazy. But after all this, he thought, who isn’t?

"All the issues of local papers from that week. Transcripts of the radio and TV interviews. But also other stuff you won’t find easily. Articles from the alternative press. From the tabloids. Anything that diverges from the official explanation."

"Which was what?" He frowned.

"That it was a cult, silly." She hooked the air with one of her coral talons, indicating the screen. "A cult is marginal by definition. Jasmine was mainstream. The folks who didn’t bow down to her—for as long as she lasted, they were the cult. But like I say, the corporate media want you to forget. A day after she’s out of the picture and they’re already revising history. Now, can I let you look at this, or are you going to spill coffee on it?"

He let her bear his half-empty cup away, her face primly reproving.

"Hey… thanks. But why are you showing me anyway?"

Back to him, she shrugged, shoulders stiff in her vintage dress. "Freedom of information."

* * *

The contents of the binder were depressing and told Connor little he didn’t know. To see Jasmine was to love her, and to see her true face was to unlove her. Beauty and ugliness: that was all it came down to, apparently.

He could see why the articles from that week had been left out of the archives. They weren’t news; they were fawning. The stock market, the Middle East, the rest of the country, sports, even celebrities—if any of these things appeared, they were bathed in the cloying glow of Jasmine. The reporters all sounded like columnists, and even the grouchiest columnists were full of rosy predictions. "We now know it is only a matter of time before the Middle East conflict is resolved peacefully and equitably. How hard it is to believe that just last week we were losing sleep over budget shortfalls and the crumbling of California’s infrastructure. In the new light that dawns on us, nothing seems easier than to spread the wealth along with the joy of knowing Her."

Or there were scathing asides directed at unbelievers, such as out-of-town journalists who had used the phrases "cult" and "mass hysteria" to describe the situation in Los Angeles."Who, in this day and age, can tell us that we do or don’t have free will? What IS free will if not an inner instinct that leads us to the Greatest Good?"

He soon learned that the beautiful woman in the pictures was supposed to be Jasmine. The grand pillared hall in which she was generally photographed was the lobby of a downtown hotel, and the people who stood in the background like courtiers, attending on her—

It was a shock to see Angel, not least because he hadn’t thought those creatures showed up on film. And beside him, Wesley the Warlock. Come to think though, it made sense—if Angel had destroyed Jasmine, as Connor knew somehow he had, he must first have gotten close enough to figure out how you did it.

By the time he had skimmed several days of fawning, he himself was wondering about the chink in the armor. Was it possible for people to be that happy all day, every day? And if so, wasn’t it a little wrong? At least a little boring?

"May you live in interesting times," his mom had said once. "It’s a traditional Chinese curse, Connor, did you know that? ‘Interesting’ can go either way."

And he had answered, "So ‘may you live in an incredibly boring small town where nothing ever happens’ is like, a blessing?"

He meant their town, of course. She shook out her hair petulantly. "For some people it might be."

And everyone in L.A., it seemed, had felt blessed. He remembered the feeling himself—like a memory of sunbathing you might have as you’re scraping the ice off your car. The light healed you; the light buoyed you up and made you feel you could float suspended between the two endless planes of ocean and sky. That’s the past now, always the past—while it was happening there was no past and no future, no ‘you’ and no ‘everybody else.’ All one. But now the world has shrunk to a cold dark shell, and you’re alone.

How did you send the sun away? The paper didn’t tell him. There was no mention of magic, of nefarious spells. No explanation. One day everything was glow and hearts and flowers and puppies, and the next…

Midnight May 7^th, 2003. Special Edition. SHE IS GONE. "NO WORDS."

By the evening of the seventh, they had figured out a way to talk about it. But this last "lost" issue was like a long rant or a moan.

Most of it was simply a letter from the paper’s Executive Editor, "begging the reader’s pardon for being party to one of the most extended and successful deceptions ever visited on mankind." From there it got less coherent. "But was there ever a Jasmine? Was there ever a Santa Claus? Is there a God? Is the flaw in the world itself, or only in our way of seeing it? Is it we who are too flawed to love, too flawed to trust? Is She the face of death, or is she only showing us ourselves?"

There were a few sidebars in this one-sheet that qualified as articles, but they were not very informative. In one, a woman begged for news of her missing daughter. "I know all she ever wanted was for Jasmine to choose her. That’s why she hung around the Hyperion. I guess I knew that when you’re chosen you don’t come back. But somehow it never bothered me till now."

Another, by a columnist, was headed, Suicide Is Not a Cop-Out. Yet another: Transcendent Mother Missing.

That was too much. Connor shut the binder and closed his eyes.

But the yellow paper and crawling black letters were still there, and the pain and anger and confusion and betrayal backlit them like the horizon of some place he never wanted to go again.

It had taken them one whole day to "forget" all that; to stuff it into a box marked cult and mass hysteria. One day later and people were saying, But it wasn’t me. I always knew she was a fraud. I just played along. One day later and people were shopping in malls, buying fishing lines and soccer balls and overpriced workout gear. He’d seen it. How do people bounce back like that?

He didn’t want to think about it, so he opened his eyes and flipped the binder nearly to the end.

Most of these articles from the "alternative press" were rehashing the crisis. But they seemed to be speaking in riddles, and they made little sense to Connor. He stopped at one, a long curmudgeonly political column that had the words hostage crisis in boldface.

There was more, but Connor didn’t bother. He already felt healed of his drowsiness and stiffness, ready for motion. For action.

He thrust his bloody hand in his pocket, knowing it would clot soon enough, and dumped the binder on the librarian’s desk. "Thanks. It helped."

She looked flustered, one barrette slipping out of her bangs. "Don’t you want your coffee?"

"Nah." He rested his good fist lightly on the desk and leant in toward her. "Why do you keep all this stuff anyway? Are you sorry She’s gone?"

The librarian flushed. "I used to be."

"Me too."

"Not now. But I don’t want to forget it."

"Me neither. Hey." He peered at her, wondering how much she had forgotten without knowing. Surely not as much as he had. "You can help me a little more. How do I get to Van Nuys?"

* * *

It was after five, but the Casales Cleaners all stayed open till nine. At the first one he found, they told him to go to the one on Garnet Ave. At the one on Garnet Ave., they told him to go to the one on 11^th Street. At the one on 11^th Street they said, "Who’s asking?"

"I’m a reporter from the L.A. Times."

The leather-faced woman squinted hard at him, so he amended,"Reporting intern. They assigned me to do a story on his complaint."

She pursed her lips and looked as if she might tell him to run along home, but instead she pushed aside a curtain and vanished into the back room. He waited, watching the plastic-covered garments sway on their oval conveyor belt like cadavers in a medical school’s locker.

"Yeah, you can go back there if you want. He says you oughtta have made an appointment, though." She unlocked the half-door in the counter and let him through.

Eduardo Casales was a young man with a long dour, handsome face and a nonchalant way of standing, as if he wanted to tell you you weren’t important enough to take his hands out of his pockets for. At the sight of Connor he snatched his hands out of his pockets and backed speedily against the wall. One gold-ringed hand fumbled toward the latch of a metal cabinet. "Trudy! Call the cops!"

"What, he got a gun?" quavered the woman. She sounded more likely to flee the premises and make the call from the safety of her own home.

"I won’t hurt you."

He raised his hands in the air, only half surprised by the look of abject fear on the man’s face. "I’m just here to ask some things. Don’t—"

Casales had popped open the cabinet, and Connor had a fair idea what was inside. He leapt forward and slammed the door, catching half the man’s hand in it.

Casales moaned and clutched the bruised hand to his side, sweat already tracking down his face. He was pressed into a corner now, his shoulders trembling. "What you want this time? Money?"

Connor shook his head, starting to sweat himself. Was this what it had felt like?

But for now at least, he had to stay in control. Face it, whatever it was. He took another step, forcing the man back into the corner. "You’re the only one who remembers? The only one who saw me?"

Casales seemed to understand the implications of this phrase better than Connor did. His face went grey.

"I need to know… listen. What you said about the Transcendent Mother. Was I going to hurt her?"

Casales shook his head, his knees weakening, his hands coming together as if in prayer. "What you did… it’s between you and me and God, right? They think I’m nuts. So you don’t need to—"

He was getting impatient now, a red curtain falling in his head, covering his eyes. "I don’t give a shit who you tell. I don’t care, get it? All I want to know is who saved her. Who stopped me. And if you don’t tell me now, this time I’ll do worse than break your arm."

Through the redness he faintly saw Casales’ mouth moving, though no sounds came out.

He took a step, clenching his good hand into a fist, speechless with rage because he already knew the answer. He had always known it. All he had needed to do to release it was ask.

Casales straightened and mopped the sweat off his cheeks, as if he were determined to face this with dignity. "Hey, I dunno if he saved her or what, but I saw him pull you off her a couple times. It was the big guy in the black coat. The one in the pictures with Jasmine. He owned that hotel, but people don’t want to talk about him anymore. They called him Angel."

* * *

Faith was busy beating up a snitch when the boy came out of the woodwork, looking like he’d slept in yesterday’s clothes when she knew for a fact he hadn’t. She grunted, "Hey, beat it, kid. Trying to work here."

He stood light on his feet, the big dark-looking eyes darting from her to the struggling translucent pin-mouth demon. "I’m helping you. You don’t need him."

"Hell I don’t," said Faith. She yelped as the pin-mouth’s eponymous feature clamped down on her wrist. "Hey, and you! I wasn’t gonna kill you or nothing, spiky. Just thought we had a deal."

"Eighth and Valjean. That’s where he is. If you don’t get there pretty soon, you might just find a pile of dust."

That made her lose her grip again. She swore like a sailor as the pin-mouth broke free and made a break for the mouth of the alley.

Connor stood by and let it go with that old creepy half-smile on his face, which made her swear again. "Hey you. Sweetheart. Wherever you got this intel, it better be better than what you just made me lose. Or I go to town on you, and this time I don’t mean the way you’d like it."

"It is better." His hair was stringy and tousled, as if he’d been doing some fighting himself, but his voice was strangely calm. "I mean it. We better go now. It took me long enough to find you."

"Yeah, and how’d you do that?"

"Tracked you."

She was walking beside him down the deserted street now, and that felt all right. The kid kept up a nice pace. She could tell through his deadpan that he was all wound up about something: it was in the glitter of his eyes and the way his hands worked, fisting and unfisting. He was so intent on forward motion that he was leaning a little, hunching his shoulders as if a strong wind were at his back.

Faith hoped it wasn’t last night that had given him the mother of all chips on his shoulder. Fuck it, what did he have to complain about?

"We should stop at your room. We need your weapons."

She actually had to skip a few steps in order to catch up. "So who’s gonna try to dust Angel?"

He said through what sounded like a clenched jaw, "The ones you’re looking for. Your Chosen."

"Hey, they didn’t ask to be. And who put them onto Angel anyway? You?"

He shook his head. "They’re Slayers. He’s a vampire."

"He’s got a soul." But as she said it, she had a feeling Connor already knew. He just looked ornery that way, and even more ornery as he answered:

"So do I. So do you."

* * *

"So Mr. Masterplan, what d’you say? Is something gonna go down like, in this century?"

They were skulking on the roof of the house opposite the Church of the Transcendent Renewal. Faith thought she had never seen a building look so asleep, or possibly even deserted. A single orange guardlight gave star treatment to a trash can. Connor’s crouching body still felt tense beside her—maybe he was always like that—but she couldn’t stop herself from yawning. "Hey, maybe I should just break in."

He shook his head, balancing her sword on his knee. She hadn’t wanted to give it to him, but he handled it surprisingly well. "He’s not here yet."

"How do you know?"

"No scent," said Connor very low. He added a bit more loudly, "But they are… you do know? They’re waiting too."

She swung her head around, almost startled off her guard. "Where?"

"Across the street, behind the big juniper bush. That’s why I had us stay over here."

Faith peered at the juniper bush. It stood massive and motionless, betraying nothing, but after a moment it seemed to her she heard a shiver of sound. Maybe a girl’s voice whispering. Maybe her imagination. "Hey, I’m taking a lot on trust here. So, do they know where we are?"

He shook his head. "Not if they’re like you."

"Hey, you trying to burn me or something? Is this Bait-the-Slayer Day?"

She reached for his hand, wanting some company in the dark and also wanting to jerk his chain a little. But he yanked it away.

Fine, be that way. She could still hear his breathing speed up every time she leaned in a little, while hers stayed even. He was really still just a kid, and kids are easy. Even ones who move like that. She inched sideways on the slippery slate shingles and rested her back against him as if he’d been a chair. "So how long’d you know the pop-tarts were gunning for Angel?"

He had caught his breath. "Not long."

"Yeah? You sure? Last night you didn’t seem to give a fuck what happened to him either way. You have a change of heart or what?"

"Something like that."

Cryptic and a little smug about it. Like he was used to leaving people guessing and liked it that way.

She had a sudden fleeting memory of her younger sister Claire, who hadn’t reacted to their mother’s liquory rants and accusations by mouthing off. Faith was confrontational that way. Claire not so much. She would walk around the apartment with her lips pursed and her brow frownless and angelic, doing chores. If Mom said to bring the bottle or some pills and a glass of water, Claire would do it. But if you asked her an innocent question about herself, about how her day had been, she would clam up and give you a look that said, Why would you want to know? Faith remembered that sometimes it drove Mom so nuts trying to get words out of Claire that she smacked her, and then Claire smiled and turned away.

It was the smile of a person surrounded by wild animals with which there is no reasoning, only survival. It was the dead-eyed smile of a martyr or an avenger, and it was like Connor’s.

So maybe she’d been wrong about the From a Good Home part. She said, "Hey y’know, you can talk to me. I’m not your old man."

Connor didn’t answer—he was gazing across the street, apparently absorbed by patterns in the shrubbery. Faith pivoted a little and let her hair graze his face, her left foot sneaking under his bent right leg. "Hey? You here?"

He leant into her and let out his breath—a strange motion, half request and half surrender. "You’re gonna change your mind."

"Who says I made up my mind about anything?"

She turned to face him, opening herself to him—for now. His lips felt good and strong and so did his arms, and when he thrust his tongue into her mouth and nipped the corner of her bottom lip she had a hint of something wilder, deeper. As if he might break his silence.

They came apart. She could feel him trying to bring his breathing down to normal, trying to bring his voice back down to that monotone before he spoke. He rested his forehead against hers.

"You took off, huh?" She snuck her hand up his thigh.

"Sorry. I…"

Instead of finishing, he lowered his face into the hollow of her neck and held it there, his head bowed so deeply that it was his hair and not his lips she felt against her collarbone. It was a funny gesture, like one animal seeking comfort in the warmth of another, and it made her feel embarrassed and at the same time, well, comforting.

She murmured, "No worries. It’s just that skipping the morning after’s supposed to be my gig."

Connor lifted his head. "He’s here."

From below, Faith heard the sweet ring of breaking glass.

* * *

They got down the same way they’d got up: via a big pine with scrappy bark that left obscene-looking stains all over her last good pair of leather pants.

From the direction of the Church, Faith could hear a man’s voice raised in anger. "Tell me… mangy warlock… stories about runaways!" it rasped.

"You’re right… it is Angel." She could feel a goofy smile cracking her face. Angel was always a cool one to watch when he was pissed, even when he was pissed at you. It gave him a chance to be a bad mutha.

"They’re coming," said Connor in a low, tense voice.

Sure enough, the formerly innocent juniper bush was thrashing. He’d been right about that too. Faith leapt the curb and dove across the empty street, too late to intercept the tall loose-jacketed girl who veered out of the bush into the orange circle of guardlight. The next moment there was no one there. From the house, they heard a muted crunch of glass as if someone had stepped on the remains of the totalled pane.

"I thought you said there was another one."

"Mini got out first. While you weren’t looking."

He was clenching his jaw, his whole body tight as a wire. Faith wondered fleetingly if he had the hots for one of these rogue Slayers. She reached out blindly and patted his arm. "Don’t worry. You can hit ‘em—they mend real good. It’s tough love as far as I’m concerned."

Connor shook his head. They were halfway across the garage courtyard now, and Faith could see yellow light swelling from behind the naked window-frame. There was a sound of fist on flesh, thwack, and a confused shadow-play. She quickened her pace, her fists already clenching in sympathy. Where did these little newbies get off deciding to snuff Angel?

Connor had veered to the left and flattened himself against the side of the house. "Can’t go in there."

"You can’t what?"

She tried to glare at him, but the sounds from inside made her twitch her head back that way. "Thought you were game, kid."

He had gone so far into the shadows that she couldn’t see his expression. "I can’t, OK? Can’t be there this time. You two can take ‘em."

"Yeah? Well, damn straight we can."

She whipped round and made for the window without a backward glance, to show him exactly what she thought of his pussying out. True, he’d sounded more pissed than scared, but she wasn’t going to stick around to find out why. It was just like the kid to make some decision in his fucked-up non-communicating head when there was no time to argue.

But by the time she had one boot over the sill, thoughts of Connor vanished. The room was hers, like a ring waiting for a prizefighter, and she surveyed it in a glance.

An upright desk had just crashed to the floor, scattering books and files and what looked like dozens of little brass ashtrays. A man with a long cunning face crouched beside it, his hands fumbling on the floor as if he were trying to find something among the debris.

But that wasn’t the main event. Faith jerked her eyes up and saw Angel backed into a corner of the glittery-dim room.

At first she thought he was pulling his coat on, with his shoulders up around his ears that way. But then she realized that he was straining to pry a long arm off his throat. The tall girl had him pinioned from behind. A step or so away from Faith, the little girl in a chi-chi leather jacket took a cantering step and raised her stake.

Faith step-turn-kicked without thinking, sending the stake on a low sloping arc into the nearest mirror. It bounced off. "Didn’t your mama tell you not to go two against one?"

"Vampire," gasped the girl behind Angel—though this room was one of the few places where Faith would have thought the fact was obvious.

The girl made another gasping sound as Angel finally got a good hold, hoisted and tossed her feet-first over his shoulder. The little Slayer skittered out of the way of her friend’s flying boots. The next moment she was driving back into the fray again, quick and fierce as a yellowjacket.

"Hey, it’s me you’re fighting now, bitch." Faith grabbed the collar of that eggplant-colored jacket and pulled.

Lining up a punch, she took a second to glance over the girl’s shoulder at Angel. He looked a little puffy and he had a new duster, but otherwise she wasn’t disappointed. No signs of corporate evil, despite the word on the street. "Hey."

An apologetic grimace in her direction was all he managed before the tall Slayer dervished to her feet and came at him. She had a long-limbed elegance in motion and a streetfighter’s instinct for the unguarded side—Faith couldn’t help admiring. The little girl was more ruthless, but half her blows were easy parries. Faith tried to maneuver herself into a position where she and Angel could trade places. The slower part of her brain was fumbling, trying to figure out what Buffy or Giles would do in this situation. Slow down and talk?

Well, probably not Buffy. Not when it was Angel. She tried it anyway, since they were only trading fisticuffs. "Hey fashion victim. What the hell d’you think I am?"

She pivoted to the wall and kicked hard with a heavy boot, sending the girl staggering backwards. "If I say don’t dust him, you don’t dust him."

The little girl bounced off the frame of a mirror and came back, her face tight with rage, to clip Faith brutally in the ribs. "Who says?"

"I say." From the corner of her eye she saw the fallen human scuttling to his feet, moving. "Number Two in the world, pipsqueak. So get your friend off him. He’s mine."

The girl danced backward and leered, bouncing from foot to foot. "Yours like how, Morticia? You with him, huh?"

She thinks I’m a vamp, Faith realized. It took her a fraction of a second to marvel at the denseness, and another to pull her fist back and level it at the girl’s advancing face.

Something thumped her hard from behind, knocking her forward. She crumpled, her knees softening, her head full of a burn like saltwater that made her want to rub her eyes. Through the pain she saw Angel turn to look, distracted, his eyes black and low as if he were about to go into game-face. The tall girl took advantage of the moment to blindside him with her sneaker, sending him straight into a mirror. It broke with a dull crunch.

Faith wheeled, her head still full of that strangely empty mirror—it was like a limpid pool that rippled with hairline fractures as Angel hit it—and came face to face with the cunning-faced man.

He didn’t look particularly dangerous. He cringed away from her, trying to hide something behind his back that looked like an ordinary walking stick.

"What the…?"

She wrenched it from him, and the prickly saltwater-sensation bloomed behind her eyes again. It was in her nostrils, all her sinuses. Whiteness ballooned outward— like the twin of that mirror— and pressed against her temples, making her head feel so big it might explode. Through the din of her ringing ears she muttered, "Witch?"

The man had stopped cowering. He took a little bow. "Rowan. Stings, doesn’t it? It doesn’t like demonic forces. Do you know what you’re saving, Slayer?"

Faith let the stick clatter on the floor and shook her head impatiently, the way she did when she had a headache. Pigheaded refusal to feel anything: it was cheaper than aspirin. The man bent to scoop up the stick, and she tugged him by his collar and slapped him, hard. "You’re in the way."

"Just long enough."

The witch smiled his thin-lipped smile, though a thread of blood was trickling down his chin. Faith rolled her eyes and whipped back to the shattered mirror. At first she thought the spell was still working in her head, clouding her vision, because all three of them were gone.

A deadpan voice behind her said, "You know what this does. Don’t try."

Faith jerked her head to the left and saw Connor silhouetted against the broken window, standing just inside the room.

About time, she thought—then realized that he was weaponless, his right arm raised above his head and bent at the elbow. The messy bandage he’d had on his hand was gone, and it was oozing blood again, black on white in the shadow.

Somehow Angel had got himself into the opposite corner from the broken mirror. He seemed to be recovering from a hard fall, shaking his head clear and bracing his hands on the floor to rise from his knees. Had Connor hit him?

Nope. The tall Slayer was closing in now, and it was clear she’d driven the quarry to ground. She raised the stake to chest-level, straightening her back, her shoulders aligned and her mouth tense with irritation. "Outta the way."

"No."

Connor sidestepped to the left, putting himself squarely in front of Angel, and thrust his wounded hand out towards them. His other arm hung limp at his side, as if he hadn’t given any thought to his next move.

Faith couldn’t imagine that would hold the tall girl back. She threw a warning glance at Angel. But the big schlub had frozen halfway to a standing position and was staring into space, his eyes glassy as if he had a fever. Was he having some sort of Slayer-fighting flashback?

"What you waiting for, Helena?" That was the little Slayer. "Take ‘im now!"

When Helena—that must be the tall one—didn’t move, Chi-Chi Jacket skipped toward them with her own stake in hand. The other arm jutted back and cut forward so fast Faith could hardly see it. Connor blinked.

The little girl yelped. Faith saw that the tall one had caught her arm in midstrike and twisted it behind her back.

"Not him, girl. Don’t touch him."

The little Slayer swore, writhing in her friend’s unyielding grip. "You know I can take him."

"You want to end up like Emmy?" The tall girl had a voice almost as flatline as Connor’s. "He’s the one did it to her. His blood. I heard the Warlock say so."

"You crazy bitch. His blood?"

"It’s quite true," said an enervated British voice from the far wall. "I did a few tests on my sample. Powerful stuff when it comes straight from the wound. Cures all your ills. Jasmine herself would do no less."

The tall girl’s dark-fringed eyes darted from Connor to the Englishman. She looked as if she smelled something foul. "Slaying’s not an ill."

The Englishman curled his lip. "You’re full of demonic energy, you realize? It’s what lets you fight them. Or perhaps you thought God had Chosen you?"

"Shut up." It was a deep-in-the-throat sound, almost a snarl.

Faith jerked her head up and saw that Angel was out of his daze. He was glaring at them. "Leave us alone."

The tall Slayer lifted her chin and appealed to Connor, who was still brandishing his bloody palm like someone in a very slow horror movie. "You know what he is. Thought you wanted it too."

Connor shook his head, and for an instant Faith thought he was going to lose his composure. But his face settled back to its old mask, one corner of the mouth twisting ever so slightly. "He saves people."

The tall Slayer took an impatient step. Connor jabbed his head to the side, making her look at his hand. The blood was coming a bit faster now, leaving a slimy trail down his arm. He shook it quickly two or three times from the wrist, scattering drops on the thick patterned carpet. Faith felt her face screwing up.

The tall girl flinched a little too, scowling. "Even if he is a vamp that saves people, what’s he driving Wolfram and Hart’s rides for? And living in their penthouse?"

"Faith," said Angel. She could almost hear him grinding himself into some expensive dental work. "Do me a favor. Get them out."

Faith glanced from his dire, lowering expression to Connor’s blank one. Funny how they never looked at each other. Wolfram and Hart? she thought. Was it really true?

And then: could it be true about the blood? Did it really drain Slayer powers? Had he touched her, slept with her, knowing that he had the power to turn her into a spineless little creature that scurried down dark streets?

She let her eyes dart to the tall Slayer, searching for a sign that Connor and the girl were in on it together. But the Slayer was looking daggers and cutlasses at the boy. Whether it was true or not about the Slayer-B-Gone, she seemed to believe it.

Since all of this was on her shoulders now, Faith glanced back at Angel. What she saw on his face made her twitch her boot and curse under her breath.

Then she actually twisted her head to make sure there was no five-foot-two blonde cupcake standing in the doorway. Who else ever got that look from him, the steady wet-eyed look that said Love me, don’t judge me?

Well, whatever, whoever was making him into a big bucket of brood when he ought to be fighting, Faith didn’t want to think about it. Or to see it. She reached out and clamped her nails on the soft part of the tall girl’s arm. "C’mon. Outside. We ain’t really been introduced."

The girl came, but not without a lingering look at Angel and a reproachful glance at her captor. "You’re one of us. You heard what this kid can do. Want Wolfram and Hart getting hold of that?"

"They won’t," said Connor. Though he spoke under his breath, they all turned to look at him, even—Faith suspected—the Englishman.

"You." Faith had a fleeting memory of feeling him press against her while she dozed, his finger tracing her shoulder-blade, his oozing wound no doubt almost touching her skin. He’d been playing with her, flirting with doing it, maybe waiting to see how she answered his questions. He’d wanted to be in control, and for a second he had been. The thought of him deciding what to do—unmake her or leave her—made her feel a knot of sick vulnerability in her stomach. Well, that’s a first and a last, she thought.

She snagged the collar of the little Slayer’s chi-chi jacket and tossed the boy a last glance. Whatever was between him and Angel, she’d let them take care of it. The hell of it was that Angel looked almost as sucker-punched as she felt.

"You," she said again—wanting to stay, but settling for being vaguely menacing. "You and me, we got some stuff to discuss."

"You and him? No. You don’t," Angel said.

He sounded so startled and then so pissed that Faith was relieved. Angel knew she was better than this fear, this freefalling sensation she got when she thought about losing the powers. He knew her. Maybe he’d got his juice back, and in a second or two he’d give the boy hell.

Someone had to. She shrugged flippantly and yanked both Slayers forward, toward the windowsill. The tall girl pulled free with a baleful look, but came along.

"C’mon. Let’s let the boys talk football and babes or whatever they wanna do. I got all kindsa questions for the both of you. And you—"

Faith glanced back. The boy for some reason hadn’t moved, though they were now all standing behind him. It made him look like he was alone on the edge of a stage. Angel’s eyes were glued to a spot about five inches from the kid’s left heel. Faith sighed. "Later."

* * *

There was too much light.

He reached for the stick that lay on the floor—the Englishman gave a little irritated gasp—and used it to smash the six-sided lantern that dangled in the center of the room like a pinata.

The rug muffled the shower of glass. Shadows rushed in, a soft bandage over the eyes.

He dropped the stick and turned to face the corner, gesturing curtly back at the false priest. "You work with people like this now?"

His father gazed at him.

Connor had seen the expression before, the almost-blankness of rage.

He dropped his eyes to the side and watched the false priest creep closer. The Englishman was swiping blood from his lip almost jauntily. "I’m guessing you two lads know each other?"

Angel made a small move as if to go, a blur of darkness. But he stayed where he was, his eyes still.

"You’ve turned," said Connor.

But he knew perfectly well it wasn’t the other one he was looking at. The other one would have laughed and knocked him to his knees. Possibly torn out his throat.

"And it’s still you. People who act as if the world was as it should be," he said dryly, ignoring the ache in his throat.

Finally Angel spoke. "You remember."

"Pretty much."

That was a lie. He remembered everything.

More than one person should. The life he had thought was his was still there, spreading out to the horizon where memories of splashing in a kiddie pool and watching Fourth of July fireworks melted into vagueness.

It still felt real, textured and solid. Maybe it always would. But now he could turn his back to it and see another horizon of jagged peaks cutting into the sky.

As soon as he looked at them, he was there, in that tormented landscape where the ground rose and fell so quickly that there was no horizon at all. It took your breath away, reliving those memories, no matter how fast it happened. He saw a bloody fist, a concrete floor spattered with blood, the bloody nail-prints on his own palm, a severed ear. Each part of the story was marked by blood. At each stage there was a woman, with long hair and soft hands and clothes—beckoning to him, caressing him, warning him, or again hurting him. At each stage there were the wages of sin, the inborn sin— rage and cruelty. His sin. And again at each stage there was his father.

When you got to the other side of those sawtoothed, wounding peaks, it was almost a relief to find yourself in the desert that lay beyond. Nothing but miles on miles of black twisted trees and green-tinged sunlight and pain and duty and a constant soft haranguing voice. And that desert stretched out to its own horizon—past tests and trials and curiosity and resentments, into a healing vagueness.

Once upon a time, too long ago for him to remember, someone had loved him. The two horizons that were two lifetimes came together at that point. He was whole.

And it helped him to see. He looked at his father and saw that he was angry—not the seething, gleeful rage of the demon, and not the righteous anger of the good man fighting evil, but something dark and contorted and half turned inward. Something familiar. The demon/ man was furious at someone he never should have trusted, and furious with himself. But most of all, he was furious because his son was there. Was whole.

And could he really be blamed for that?

Connor kicked the rowan staff across the floor and turned to go.

"Wait."

A broken voice, without authority. He had heard it once or twice before.

Without turning, he gestured again toward the false priest, who was glancing from one to the other of them as if he were trying to decide how to take advantage of the situation. "Make sure he doesn’t feed those people to a chaos demon and tell them it’s Jasmine. You can still do that, can’t you?"

"We’ll put you back." Very low. "We’ll put you back, or I’ll go to the Senior Partners and show them what real chaos is."

"Wouldn’t advise it," said the Englishman, "wherever back is. The boy’s a prize, Angel. Jasmine pumped a whole perfume-shop of her essence into him. I can help you keep the secret if you like—"

Angel made a sound in his throat. "You don’t know what you’re dealing with, rodent warlock. Get out. Connor—"

But his voice had changed again, and it was unpleasant to hear. Like seeing something solid crumble, and knowing you were the hidden charge in the foundations. (You are, you always were.)

The long window stood shattered, the streetlight sparking its edges to yellow diamond. He took a step back for his leap. "Goodbye, Dad."

The hand was at his shoulder, wrenching him round, and just as quickly it was gone. Angel did not want to touch him. Almost as if he expected to feel death on the skin.

"I know you haven’t turned," Connor said. "But you shouldn’t touch the blood. If it gives people peace, it might just take away the thing you need."

Again he faced the window. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his father’s hand rise; hover in midair. "You’re going back?"

It was said in a tone of such abject hopefulness that he didn’t like to shake his head. But he did. "I can’t. I’m going to try and make sure they undo it so nobody remembers." (Thinking: except me.) "It’s not fair to them."

"You’re not safe on your own."

The broken voice again, but with an irascible edge on it. Angel was trying to decide whether to make him stay by main force. That was more like what he was used to, and it was almost reassuring.

"He’s right. You’re not," said the false priest. "You’ve got a dangerous power, boy. I could teach you things—"

Connor ignored him. "I’m going away for a while. If I come back," he added—something weak creeping into his own voice—"maybe I’ll find you back the way you were. Just you and Wes and Gunn and Fred and Lorne in the hotel. And Cordy."

"She’s still the way she was," said Angel bluntly.

He only nodded, because somehow he had known that all along too. "And the others… they forgot."

A deep breath, and then more anger than he had expected. "It was for you."

But it was anger with a tinge of despair. They weren’t going to fight again, it seemed. He answered politely, "I’m better now."

"That’s not enough."

Connor took a step. With his hunter’s senses he felt the strong hand moving again, rising into position to clamp itself on his shoulder with paralyzing force.

It didn’t fall. He leapt, not even grazing the edges of the broken windowframe, and landed crouching on asphalt. "Stop him, you great nitwit!" he heard the Englishman cry inside.

But nobody came after him, and there was no sound. Not even the shudder of a sigh.

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