No Rest for the Wicked—Part 2: Unchosen
6: The End
"Another night, another graveyard," said Lilah, strolling through the close-mown grass.
The boy didn’t answer. He sat cross-legged with his back to the upright gravestone, gazing down the long landscaped slope toward the gates. It was one of those cemeteries that’s manicured like a golf course and cuts off your view of the horizon—but that was just as well, Lilah thought, given the cookie-cutter tracts lurking beyond. Walking through this place at night, between the stick-straight poplars and the wafting magnolias, you might think you were out in the sticks, miles from anywhere and anyone but the peacefully sleeping dead. And that was the point.
She came up behind him, lifting her feet carefully so as not to catch the heels. He sat with his elbows on his knees, bent a little forward, very still.
"Smart boy. You cracked the code."
He didn’t answer. She picked her way around the headstone so as to read the inscription, but it was too dark. She bent, reaching over his head, and traced the letters with a long cold finger that could still feel the scratchy texture of granite.
ANNA KREVAC, BELOVED DAUGHTER. 1984-2003.
"Well, that’s certainly not a chip off the old block. Brooding over our sins, are we?"
That did make him speak up. "Do you?"
"Do I what? Dwell on the people I’ve killed or had killed? Why?" She leaned on the headstone and canted her hips to the left, feeling the weight of her awkwardly animated body. "Someday you’ll learn there aren’t enough hours in the day."
There was a roomy silence before Connor spoke again. Lilah wondered if the memories had reverted him to difficult mode. Whatever you might say about the wipe, it had done small wonders for his vocabulary and social skills.
"I didn’t for a while."
"You didn’t what?" It was like playing one of those annoying party games where you fill in blanks in a sentence, or try to guess the identity of someone’s bad sketch.
"I didn’t mind about her for a while. We had to use her to get Jasmine."
He shrugged—a resigned, slightly ironic gesture, as if he were saying, I know how that sounds. "The ends justify the means. Once I had a dream where she—that girl— walked into the lobby of the hotel. She came to me and took my hands and thanked me for the perfect peace Jasmine had given her, only she said I did it. But then I woke up and she wasn’t there. And neither was Cordy. And I remembered how the girl—Anna— begged and said she didn’t want to die, and I didn’t believe it anymore about the peace. But I never knew her name."
Lilah shifted her weight again. She knew the script she was supposed to read, but she felt like playing with him. "Maybe Cordy begged too, underneath. Only you couldn’t hear."
Again a silence. He cupped his face in his hand, still not looking at her. "Does Angel know what you did to that boy?"
"What boy?"
"The one you killed to take my place."
"Oh, that boy. Well, he knows now. He wasn’t exactly a happy camper, but my associates gave him a mini-lecture on the expense of trying to wipe a banner event from the collective memory of an entire city, and he came around. I believe they were forced to point out that it was your fault for making the whole circus so public."
Silence. She went on, "And of course we informed dear old dad that Trent Nichter had been pinpointed by our psychic as a poor S.O.B. who had every intention of purchasing a .38 in that store and blowing his brains out before the evening news."
"That’s a lie." He paused, clearly wishing it weren’t. "That store didn’t sell guns."
"Maybe we caught him on his way to a store that did. Maybe we gave him exactly what he wanted." She paused and craned forward, trying to see the expression on Connor’s pale face. "Uncertainty. It’s hell on the conscience, isn’t it?"
"My conscience. Not yours." He snapped a blade of grass, taller than the others, and wound it around his finger. "I feel like being alone for a while, if you don’t mind. There’s just one thing I need to ask."
Lilah crossed her arms on her chest, pretending to be curious. "Shoot."
"I want you to put my family back the way it was." The boy pulled the blade tighter, then slowly unwound it. "Without me, I mean."
"The Beckfords?" She made a clucking sound. "Are you sure, Connor? Seems kind of ungrateful to drop them like last year’s fashions after all they’ve done for you."
"I’m not dropping them," said Connor, very low. He tossed the mangled blade of grass away. "But I have to leave. And it wouldn’t be fair to them to let them look for me."
Lilah put her head on one side and pretended to consider the request. Nothing that happened here would affect the Senior Partners’ plans in any way. Only a fraction of those plans was known to her, like the dusky corner of a map that fills an entire room. These days she was hired help, and it was possible that her only real function was to distract the boy into believing that he had some sort of choice in the matter.
She said, "It’s a tricky business playing with people’s memories. Not cheap."
"You want something."
The boy came to his feet so quickly that she found herself backing away, her brittle body wary of his fists. But he only held out his right hand. "You want this."
Lilah shrugged as if to say, What else?
She watched the struggle on the boy’s face. Being dead and out of things, consigned to hell like a letter in the post, she found it borderline amusing. Who knew what he thought was at stake?
At last he said, with visible reluctance, "I could give you a drop or two."
She drew herself up to her full height. "Wouldn’t that be a windfall."
"You don’t want it?"
He looked so crestfallen and so guilty about it that Lilah took pity on him. "It loses its virtue soon after it leaves the source. It’s tied to your will and desire, you know. More than you know."
Connor frowned. "How do you know that?"
She shrugged again—being honest, this time. The knowledge had appeared in her head as she spoke, making her suspect that the SP knew more about Jasmine’s gift than they’d let on.
Her instructions were always there, like a continuous current running under the skin: Let him think he’s figured us out. Let him feel powerful. Let him feel alone. They changed periodically, these commands from on high, but they didn’t come with whys and wherefores. She was left guessing, just as the boy was, about the final design. It tickled her a little to recall how naïve she’d been in life, thinking that death-in-good-standing was a promotion to the office where real decisions were made. If anything, it was the opposite.
Right now the faint pressure in her bones was telling her, Give him hope, but no certainty. She sighed—feeling the weariness of the rusty body, but at the same time the sweet shudder of the night air. "Tell you what, kiddo. It’s easier to write over a faux-memory than the real thing. Next board meeting, I’ll run your petition by them."
"You will?"
"I’ll try."
"Will he be there?" The boy’s expression darkened. "He wants to put me back."
Always harping on the father. Lilah answered honestly, "Angel doesn’t have any say in this."
The boy dropped his gaze, his sulk dissipating as quickly as it had come. He looked rueful and a little older. "I guess I knew that already."
* * *
"That’s kinda it," Faith said, tapping her heels against the glove-box. "All I got."
At first she’d been on her best behavior, because they were in the Viper. But Angel was pissing her off. First he’d nixed the idea of cruising by the pier, because he didn’t like even nighttime crowds now. Instead, he’d insisted they sit in the car on top of this cliff with a view of nothing but acres of black rolling water that made her nauseous. Then he’d started in on his favorite subject.
"How long have you known him? Where did you meet? What did he say? How did he look? How did he sound? When did he mention me? What did he tell you? What did you tell him? Did you remember anything strange?"
It kept going like that. It was like having a debriefing with a Watcher. And every time she tried to slip in a little question of her own, disarming it with a husky laugh—"So like, what’s the deal with this kid anyway?"—he put her off. He fell silent altogether, glaring straight in front of him at the distant waves, until she answered the question. Then he asked another.
By the time she’d told and retold him practically everything, Faith had had enough. She asked innocently, "So whaddya think, boss? Should I find out where the critter’s hiding and put it down?"
He was quietly seething, she could tell. Angelus-style scorn came off him in waves, mixed with plain old grouchiness. "I didn’t think you were still doing that to human beings."
"Yeah well, are you sure he is? Human?"
"Yes," said Angel.
"’Cause I ain’t an expert, but the whole de-Slayerizing thing seems pretty demon-y to me." She frowned. "Not to mention the fighting. And he’s got a sense of smell like you wouldn’t believe."
"I would."
"So anyways. Who’s to say he won’t go off and start collecting our scalps, like, so to speak? What if he gets on a plane for Cleveland, Angel?"
His voice was a little too casual when he answered. "You weren’t worried about that when you got however close you got to him."
"Close? Me?"
Faith brought her forearm up to her face and sniffed, as if she might detect some stubborn remnant of the boy’s scent on her sleeve. But she couldn’t, of course. He could. And she’d showered…
"I’m not saying," said Angel. He drew in his breath the way he did when he really didn’t want to touch something. "Well, I sure as hell hope I’m not saying. There’s a trace, is all. Like you touched him."
That made Faith mad, especially since she was already pretty cranked at herself for having done it. But why should Angel give a fuck?
She shrugged. "Sure, I did him. But that was before I knew."
Angel hunched in his duster and said absolutely nothing. From outside the car came the dull regular noise of the surf. Faith was pretty sure it wasn’t her he looked all consternated about.
She shrugged and sucked the last bit of her chocolate shake out of the In ‘n Out cup. "Whatcha going all PTA on me for? He was willing, and I’m pretty sure he was eighteen."
"He’s… breakable," said Angel in a very low, brittle voice.
She shrugged again. "Coulda fooled me. I got a weird vibe off him sometimes, like he was just playing a game with the whole innocent-kid-from-the-sticks thing. And was I right or was I right?"
"Playing a game?"
"Well, yeah. He had this power the whole time."
"Maybe he didn’t know."
"Maybe." Faith tossed her hair off her shoulder. In this dark she couldn’t see his face at all, only his tense, hunched shape. "I think he knew a lot of things he didn’t let on."
"How much?"
There was a rough grain of misery in Angel’s voice now. It was enough to make her stop baiting him. "Well, I dunno. Sometimes when he’d go on about crap like the Dalai Lama, I thought he was for real. Sometimes not."
"You don’t think maybe…"
She could feel him gathering all his strength to ask something that would make him look weak. Pathetic, even. It made her want to help him, just to get the moment over with."Like, what?"
"You don’t think he was maybe…" In the dark he spread his hands and pulled them together, clamping them hard, as if to trap some invisible gas. "Well, maybe happy?"
"Mmm. Happy?" It was the last question that would have occurred to Faith. "Well, he wasn’t exactly chipper or anything. He was pretty damn pissy most of the time."
What could she say? In the back of her mind she was already preparing the questions she would ask him once she’d finally gotten him off this hobby-horse. Questions about his smokin’ cars, about how you managed to run an evil law-firm without being evil, about leaving the L.A. Slayers in Justine’s care, about why he hadn’t sent anything but a postcard for the last eleven months. Nothing about Connor.
She sighed, not wanting to lie, because he knew her too well. "First couple times I saw him, I thought, yeah, this kid comes from a good home. Like, happy and everything, ‘cause he had all these goofy ideas and you couldn’t shut him up. I figure if your folks aren’t pretty cool, you get the goofy beaten out of you fast."
Well, that didn’t explain the existence of Xander Harris, but it was getting easier to talk. Faith actually kind of believed what she was saying, and she could tell Angel was eating it up. He’d gone very still, like he always did when a good mood was tempting him.
"And then, I dunno, like I said, later on I could tell he had his problems." She remembered the stoic look on Connor’s face, the Claire look. "But he really wanted to save you from getting dusted. I could tell. I don’t know why, and I guess you ain’t gonna tell me, but I could tell he did."
"He’s saved me before," said Angel a little bleakly, as if to himself.
"Yeah, well he seems pretty interested in you. And vice versa, I guess." And there are questions about that whole scenario that I won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, she thought, reaching for a last innocuous thing to say.
What she came up with was exactly the opposite, but somehow it slipped out anyway. "He wanted to know how you deal after you’ve killed somebody."
"How you deal?" He sounded scandalized.
"Yeah, that’s exactly what he said. I said you don’t, you just kinda keep on trucking and don’t do it again, maybe try to make up for it any way you can— but you never really can, right? And anyway, you might as well stick around and do a little good while you still can, wherever you’re headed afterwards. It doesn’t do any good to snuff yourself, it doesn’t change anything. And I think he agreed with me."
"He agreed?" said Angel.
Faith couldn’t read his tone. There was an edge on it that might have been sarcasm or something sappier. She was too busy wishing she really had said all those things to Connor, because she didn’t think they sounded half-bad. And who knows, maybe the kid would’ve agreed.
"That’s something," said Angel at last.
He didn’t sound happy exactly, but he sounded normal. The seething had retreated, and Faith knew she’d have to make her move.
"Hey, y’know, I’ve been wondering about some things too."
She needed a new topic. Wolfram and Hart? Nah, bring out the big guns later. Justine and the Slayers? Same. She had a feeling he wouldn’t agree with her intuition that the redhead was a pretty decent Watcher—and that was understandable, since Justine had sunk him to the bottom of the ocean.
Maybe she should try some small talk. Start with one that probably had an easy answer like "shopping on Rodeo with the company card."
"Shoot." He actually sounded borderline relaxed.
Faith shrugged. "Well, for instance… what’s Cordy doing with herself these days? How come I ain’t seen her?"
* * *
It was dinner-hour when he came. The long dusk had ended, and the blue shadows had turned black. The deep-set window cast its coppery light on the drive.
The lumber truck had dropped him off in town, and he was hot and dusty from the long walk up the hill. The whole place smelled like digger pines and blue spruce— clean and prickly. It made him breathe more easily as he stole across the driveway and flattened his back to the wall.
The window was cracked open. Even without that he could have heard them.
His sister was belting out one of the songs from the musical she’d been rehearsing for weeks. No one was telling her to stop singing in the middle of dinner. "’Cause wrong’s right today/ And black’s white today/ And day’s night today/ And most guys today, that women prize today/ Are just silly gigolos."
"Do you even know what that word means, Mercy?"
"’Course I do."
"She’s met some at school," Mom said.
Mercy made a huffy noise. "The guy you like from The English Patient is a silly gigolo."
"Oh, now that is sacrilege. Thirty lashes with a wet napkin."
Brief wild giggling, as if Mom were trying to carry out the sentence. Dad said, "You’re still a little sharp."
"Yesterday you said flat."
"No, Mercy. Sharp."
"Mrs. Van Vechten wants me to wear a slutty corset-thing."
Sighs. "Is that really necessary? The play’s set in the twenties."
"But I’m supposed to be a floozy."
"Even floozies bound their breasts in the twenties, Merce. Corsets are so Gay Nineties."
"Why were the nineties gay anyway?"
And so on.
He listened until the chairs were scraped back and the dishes clinked. Mercy’s feet pounded upstairs. In the kitchen the old dishwasher began to chug.
He pushed off the brown-shingled wall, avoiding the rectangle of light, and turned to go. But soft voices from inside drew him back.
"Maybe I should call the Kleinstadts, Ben." It was his mother, speaking in a very different, subdued voice, as if she didn’t want Mercy to hear. "They live in Brentwood."
"Why on earth would he go crash at the Kleinstadts’? They’re in their sixties."
"I want to cover all the bases."
"You talked to him two days ago, Amy. You know he’s all right."
"Do I?"
That was enough. The dew had fallen, and if he stayed any longer he would go in. He slid away from the house, across the driveway, and forced himself to march down the road without looking back.
* * *
He hitched or walked now. He couldn’t use his car anymore.
Faith’s new motel was a hole in the wall in Echo Park with a Rooms by the Hour sign propped in one window. It wasn’t very pleasant, but it was probably a good place for her to disappear. Once a sleek black sportscar had picked her up, looking as out of place on the grungy street as a marble Venus in a hovel.
Connor had ducked behind the building, because he had an idea who was in the car. After it drove off, he let himself in through the window and got a look at Faith’s spanking-new airline tickets, which she had hidden in the dresser under the Bible along with the other tools of her trade—forged passport in a false name, driver’s license ditto. She was going to Saskatoon next Wednesday, of all places. A note scrawled on a tattered L.A. Weekly said First farm on right Rte. 44N, off 93. Caitlin Cray.
He would find a way to get there, and then to get other places. He would steal cars from junkyards and drive them till they gave out. He would ride buses, stow away in freight trains and the cargo holds of planes. He had thrown away his driver’s license and his passport, his school ID and his class ring. He would keep only one photo. One day it would vanish too, if the spellcasters at Wolfram and Hart decided to go with the re-revision.
But he had his life, which they had given and couldn’t take back, and he had his strange new power. And he would shadow her. Where she stopped he would stop and where she went he would go, even if it were halfway around the world. He would see things, places and people he had never seen, but he would not let himself be distracted. Wherever she was he would be too, and wherever she offered guidance and training, he would be there to offer the other choice. The choice to give up the burden. The choice of peace.
It wasn’t much of a purpose, but it was the first one of his own he had ever had.
He would hide himself from her, skulking like a criminal, but it was inevitable that sometimes they would come face to face. They would fight then, and he would probably lose. But she wouldn’t kill him. For Angel’s sake, and maybe for his, she would stay her hand at the crucial moment, and he would escape to bedevil her footsteps again. Maybe one day she would even accept that his power was as essential as hers. Maybe she would touch his face again, knowing the truth, and see something more than a twisted off-shoot of his father. Maybe.
"And maybe one day you’ll get stronger than she is," said Lilah. She stood on the yellow grass barefoot, wearing something that looked suspiciously like a winding-sheet, her arms clasped around her shivering torso. Her outlines were pearly-vague this time. "Maybe one day you’ll beat her."
He gazed at her—through her to the glowing Pepsi machine—wondering if she was only his imagination this time. "I’m not doing this for you. I don’t work for you."
Lilah shrugged, and her aura crinkled at its edges, bleeding into the streetlight. "A freelance operator who doesn’t want a paycheck—music to my ears. Do your thing, kiddo, and godspeed."
"I won’t be killing anybody. I won’t be forcing anything."
"Just offering the choice to be a happy coward. Believe me, that one never goes out of style."
He shook his head. "Not everybody needs to be happy. Not everybody wants an easy way out."
"But everybody wants to think they’re doing the right thing, don’t they?" She gave a rueful little shake to her shoulders. "OK, maybe not."
"I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing."
It was true. For once he didn’t. He had to admit that the metaphysics of Slayers were too complicated for a boy who had only had twelve fake years of schooling. "It’s a choice I think they should get. That’s all."
"Everybody wants to think there is such a thing as choice," said Lilah.
* * *
And that should probably be the end. But it isn’t. The problem with being taken apart and put back together is that sometimes you end up having thoughts you don’t expect, and you don’t know where they come from, but they take hold of you and won’t let go.
My thought led me to Wolfram and Hart. It was harder than last time, because this time I didn’t want to be caught or even seen in that place. It looked different too—more cramped, with orangey walls like the inside of some big disembowelled beast. They’d redecorated, I guess. But I managed to get in without being noticed, except by the one I pushed up against a wall and started choking so he’d tell me what I needed to know. I didn’t kill him, so he can tell whoever he wants about me when he gets out of the storage closet. I’ll be far away by then.
I took the vents, because it was easier. I knew the general area I wanted. When I smelled her, I stopped and sat listening to the tiny noises that came to me from below, through the corkboard panelling.
Somebody was bending, then standing up. A squeaky voice said, "I brought her dahlias, ‘cause it just seemed like her, you know?"
"Beautiful." A deeper, professionally kind voice—the nurse.
"And I just wanted to make sure she knows that he’ll be coming soon. I don’t think he meant to miss two days."
"It’s not often he does," said the nurse, sounding bored.
Silence. Fidgeting. "Could we be alone for a sec?"
The door clicked, and I heard Fred slump and sigh.
Then she started to talk. It was a flood of words with nervous little catches of breath in between. When I lived with her, I tuned her out because I could never keep up with what she was saying, but it was easier now. Not that there was any reason. She was talking about different things from her life, like what she’d had for lunch and what someone named Knox had said about someone else, as if she’d long ago given up on finding things to say to what lay on the bed.
All at once her voice went stuttery.
"And Cordy, I think it would be so much easier if I knew why we were here. Because then at least I would know what to feel guilty for, and the problem is I really don’t mostly— feel guilty— because there’s always something going on and there’s so much money and so many particle accelerators and electron microscopes and nanotech prototypes and Charles in a suit and Wesley acting funny and Knox and well, things. But when I think about why, sometimes I think I don’t really know, and I wonder if this is how you felt when you were, you know, evil and all— but then I think I really shouldn’t think about that, and then I start wondering if there is such a thing as fate and only one way things can turn out, and I wonder if the Powers are analogous to the Laplacian intelligence, which quantum theory makes look kinda stupid, obviously, and then I wonder, what is it all for?"
Cordy, as was her wont, didn’t answer.
"I don’t know why I come and say these things. They say you’re supposed to play soothing music to people in comas—or is that babies in the womb? I don’t know. It’s funny how I don’t even think of these things until I come here, and then it’s all guilt and gloomy forebodings and I must be the worst part of your day."
For the first time in my life I thought I knew how Fred felt. And it wasn’t because of what she was saying, but because of how I had changed—something I was realizing only now. When I last saw this girl, most people’s feelings had been a foreign language to me. I puzzled them out based on the few words I knew. Now I spoke that language—for better or worse—and I would never unlearn it.
But regardless of how Fred felt, I had something to do, and suddenly I didn’t care if she saw. I slid back the panel and hoisted myself down into the room.
Fred held her ground, though her eyes were wide with fear and her hands at her sides were clearly trying not to flutter. She fumbled for something in the pocket of her lab coat.
I took hold of her wrist and twisted it as gently as I could so the thing fell on the floor. A kind of tiny phone. "Don’t," I said. "Don’t call security or the nurse. I won’t be here long."
She backed to the wall and stood with her thin arms crossed on her chest, staring. Her long face was very white. "Who are you?"
"No one." I tore at my bandage and got one end unhooked. The rest came easily.
Now that Fred was standing well away from the door, I had no excuse not to look at Cordelia. Which, really, wasn’t something I wanted to do. I had been thinking about her ever since Lilah’s comment about her begging underneath, so you couldn’t hear, and what I had been thinking wasn’t good.
I looked. She looked the same as when I had last seen her, more or less. Thinner.
I didn’t want to reconsider or even think. I came to the edge of the bed and pulled apart the collar of the fuzzy pink robe they’d given her, baring her neck. It could have been anywhere, but that seemed like the right spot. I wouldn’t have to break her skin the way they’d done to me.
"What are you--?" Fred’s voice was low, and steadier than I would have expected. "Is that--? You can’t—"
"Maybe waking her up. Maybe killing her. Maybe nothing." Maybe it’ll even neutralize me, I thought, but didn’t say so. We had some of the same stuff in us, Cordy and I, and you never know how Jasmine will react with Jasmine.
"You’re bleeding!"
I put my palm in the cool hollow of the still woman’s neck and felt it flow, closing my eyes for a second. The demon doesn’t like it.
There was a demon in Cordy. Lilah had reminded me. I’d wanted to believe she was real, with her soft touch and the words that made me feel strong and right and necessary, but she wasn’t. The real Cordy was someone I didn’t know, and maybe she was as innocent as Anna. All this time I hadn’t wanted to believe she was under a spell from which she could awake—the way her blood had awoken them but not me, leaving me alone.
But maybe it was true. And even if I didn’t know her, it was wrong not to give her back the life she deserved. Or at least to try.
Fred was plucking at my sleeve, trying to pull my arm away. "Stop it! You’re raising her heart rate!"
I brushed her off and stood up, closing my hand on the blood. I could see faint smears of it on Cordy’s throat, just as clearly as I could see that she was fluttering her eyelids.
Fred backed away. I could feel her eyes jumping between us, and tell that she was too startled now to call for the nurse. "What did you do?"
"Nothing."
Cordy was making little jerky motions under the blanket. Her eyes kept threatening to stay open.
"Take care of her." I got a leg up on the dresser and grabbed the rim of the gap in the ceiling, levering myself up.
"Wait! Who sent you? Was it the Senior Partners?"
But she couldn’t stop me from leaving, and she was too shaken to call for help. The last I saw, glancing back through the gap, was her shiny dark head bending over the bed as if she were trying to decide whether or not to perform CPR. Why I don’t know, since Cordy appeared to be breathing fine on her own.
Her eyes were still open and staring straight up at me. A person she didn’t know, who had done something to her she didn’t understand. For better or for worse, she was awake now with the rest of us and not resting with the dead and soon-to-be-forgotten. And whatever this charade was that Angel had going, she wouldn’t be part of it.
"Goodbye, Cordy." I notched the panel back into place.
From behind it I heard her ask, "Where’s Connor going?" And Fred answer, "Who?"