Cordelia made her way to the Girls' Room. Might as well check it out first, she thought. It was a logical place for Willow to have gone. Plus Cordelia hadn't retouched her makeup for several hours, and her glimpse of herself in the compact mirror earlier had told her that she was way overdue.
Harmony and the cabal were inside, dishing heavily. Their giggling hushed when Cordelia walked through the door. She wavered a bare moment before their expressionless stares, but thankfully managed to nip that hesitation in the butt before it showed.
"So Cordelia," Harmony said -- and Cordelia made note of who was doing all the talking in the group these days -- "are you going to Devon's Fourth of July party? We're going to do shopping for it next week."
In the middle of redoing her lipstick, Cordelia considered. What were they up to? Were they really willing to welcome her back into the fold, lame boyfriend and all? Harmony seemed to be relishing her newfound trendsetter status way too much to want to step aside.
"Gee, I don't know, Harmony," she hedged. "Devon and his crowd are really into that grungy come-as-the-back-of-your- closet thing."
"They're musicians. Guy musicians," Harmony said with a pout. "Whatever they wear is automatically cool."
"Okay, Harmony," Cordelia said as she carefully drew liner across her lower lid. "Let musicians wear whatever they want. And tomorrow we can let the gymnastics club off the hook, and the day after it's the debate team --"
"And who's going to be Sunnydale's fashion trendsetter then? Your honey?" Harmony and the Harmonettes giggled.
Cordelia quelled a frown as she decided how to handle this. It was a little late in the game to be refuting Xander, but she couldn't in good conscience come to his fashion defense either. And she wasn't about to lie and say that it didn't matter to her -- Damn him anyway, would it choke him to at least let her tell him what to wear to the Bronze?
Mercedes Heinz provided her with a respite by wandering in. Harmony and cabal watched the girl as she moved past them to the sinks.
"What diet pill is she on?" Aura snerked.
"Come on guys," Harmony decided. "This 'downward mobility' thing may be catching." As a group, they trooped out.
Cordelia scowled after them. She's been preoccupied the past few months, and it had lost her major points. She was definitely going to have to do something fast about this situation. And what was the trip with Mercedes anyway? The girl was standing over the sink, the water running, staring at the mirror in front of her.
"Hey, Mercedes," Cordelia tried, "the outfit isn't that bad, well it wouldn't be if you'd color coordinated it a bit better. And your hair just needs a little work, and okay the makeup needs a lot --"
The girl smiled at her. "Thanks, Cordelia. Can you help me with it? I seem to be having trouble with mirrors tonight."
Cordelia looked at the mirrors over the sinks and took a step away. "Silly mirrors," she laughed. "Guess these are broken. I'd better let the manager know."
Mercedes pouted. "I mean, how can I tell if my lipstick's on straight?" She pulled a lipstick from her purse. "Would you do my lipstick, Cordelia?"
"Oh, I don't know, Mercedes," Cordelia said nervously. "Your lips -- and teeth -- are such personal things, don't you think? Tell you what! Wait right here and I'll go get a mirror that works."
"Can you?" Mercedes grinned, apparently unaware that her fangs were showing. "Gee thanks, Cordelia! I don't know why people keep saying you're such a --"
Cordelia was out the door before she had a chance to hear the end of that. Not that she couldn't fill in the blanks as well as the next bitch.
"I had to go playing 'Stand By Your Man' and give Xander my vampire kit," she muttered to herself. She pulled out a note pad and eyebrow pencil from her purse and wrote 'Out of Order -- Really Gross Mess Inside' on a piece of paper, which she then fastened to the rest room door with a safety pin. She then hurried to the front door of the Bronze.
No sign of Xander, Giles, or Willow anywhere outside. "Hey!" she said to the female bouncer at the door. "Did you see this cute guy in this really ugly jacket come out recently?"
"Ugly polyester, ugly retro '60s, ugly tweed, ugly grunge, or ugly ugly?" the girl inquired, popping her gum.
"Oh," Cordelia said and considered. "Well, ugly ugly I think. And tell me where the ugly tweed went to as well."
"You'll do better if you concentrate on one guy at a time," the bouncer advised. "Ugly ugly went that-away --" she pointed to the right. "So did ugly tweed."
Cordelia looked at her. "How many cute guys come through here on any one night anyway?"
"Tonight?" the bouncer consulted a clipboard. "Lessee: eighteen '6's, eleven '7's, ten '8's, five '9's, one '9.5', and three '10's. One of those '10's should be an '11', except that I'm saving that for Antonio Banderas."
"Wow," Cordelia said. "And you actually get paid for this job?"
"I have to kick ass occasionally," the bouncer said. "'Course that can be fun too. You want me to put a word in for you with the manager?"
Cordelia actually envisioned it for half a second. Then she shook herself. "Uh, no thanks," she said. "I spend too much time here to work here. But thanks for the directions!" She hurried off before the bouncer could dangle more temptations in front of her.
Besides, she thought, when you get right down to it, I totally suck at kicking ass. She saw a figure standing near the corner of the building, halfway in the street light there. "Xander!" she called out, running to catch up.
He turned.
"Sorry," she said, halting in her run. "I thought you were somebody else in a really ugly jacket."
The boy smiled. "I can be him if you like."
"No, I really need to talk to him," she said. "Did anybody come around this way besides you?"
"Nope." The boy stepped towards her. "It's just the two of us, beautiful."
Oh, great, Cordelia thought irritably. I so do not have time for this. "Tell you what," she said. "I'm going to make it just the one of you. Why don't you practice your lame pickup lines, and maybe I'll be back."
He moved to block her way. "Gotta have somebody to practice my lines on."
"If it's feedback you're looking for then: You're pathetic. Get a life, some friends. Or at least a new wardrobe," she said impatiently, pushing past him.
"Think I'll settle for a nibble," he said, grabbing the side of her neck. Sharp talons dug into her flesh.
Cordelia shrieked, and jumped backwards hard into him. Unprepared for that reaction, he stumbled and let loose of her neck. She whirled, took a look at him shifting into game face, turned and ran.
She heard him snarling as he took out after her. Cordelia grabbed a trash can as she fled past it and shoved it to the ground. A horrible resounding crash testified to the success of that delaying tactic, but she knew that, barring other developments, it wasn't going to save her.
"Xander!" she screamed, even as she rounded the corner of the building.
A dark figure jumped out, latched an arm around her waist and yanked her off her feet into the shadows of the back alley. Cordelia tried to scream, but a hand clamped down over her mouth.
The vampire came running around the corner and immediately spotted them in the shadows. He stumbled back a step, snarling furiously.
Willow stepped out of the shadows towards him, brandishing a cross.
"Don't get too close, Willow," Giles said. He let loose of Cordelia and pushed her behind him. The vampire tore his gaze from Willow and the cross towards Cordelia.
Giles moved sideways behind Willow's back, stopping when he stood at center of the alley in the bare light that fell through from the street. The vampire turned, watching him.
Without looking at Giles, Willow moved in the opposite direction, her cross still held ready, until she stood directly in front of Cordelia. Everybody stood silently for a moment. Cordelia darted a nervous glance in Giles' direction. He waited at the alley center, hands in his pockets, unprotected except for an utterly contemptuous expression of casual amusement on his face.
Though obviously young, the vampire couldn't miss the self-assurance in that look. He took a step backwards, scowling.
"Go for it, fang face," Cordelia heard Willow mutter under her breath.
The vampire lunged towards the two young women. Cordelia screamed even as Willow shoved her back and swung the cross directly in front of them. The vampire whirled and leapt lightning fast at Giles, who was closing in behind him. Watcher and vampire tumbled into the gravel of the alley. The vampire slammed Giles' right arm against the ground, knocking away the wooden stake that Giles had been pulling from his pocket.
Willow darted forward, and swept her cross at the left side of the vampire's head. The vampire wrapped one hand tight around the Watcher's neck, pinning him hard against the ground, and twisted to strike out at her with his left arm. Willow back-pedalled until she was directly behind them out of line of sight, pulled a stake from behind her back and tossed it over the vampire's head towards Giles.
The Watcher twisted in the vampire's grip, snatching the stake before it hit the ground. Willow darted around to the right, circling the combatants. The vampire turned to watch her, totally missing the stake as Giles drove it up into the left side of his chest.
Dust exploded all over Giles and Willow, and sparkled faintly in the street light as it settled to the alley.
"Ow," Cordelia complained, as Giles dabbed at the scratches on her cheek and neck with a water-soaked handkerchief. "That stings!"
"The wounds don't seem to be very deep, but they're bleeding heavily," he said. "Are you sure he didn't bite you?"
"Believe me, I didn't give him time," Cordelia said. She accepted the handkerchief and held it pressed against the scratches. "Why am I always the one getting my face marked up? If it isn't loony invisible girls or loopy snakes, it's vampires. I bet he had dirty fingernails too."
"I can't find Mercedes anywhere," Xander said as he came back to the table. "She must have gotten tired of waiting for a mirror."
"Not good," Giles said. "We can't afford to let any of them run loose for any period of time."
Xander pulled the handkerchief from Cordelia's face and neck to look at the scratches. He looked grim. "Wish I'd had a chance at him."
"He was pretty wiry," Cordelia said. "Like maybe he was into gymnastics or something. Except that I didn't know him. But Mercedes was walking around the mall yesterday afternoon!"
"His name was Clark," Willow said. "He is -- was --one of my summer-school students."
"They were both made very recently then," Giles said.
"Which means there's still another one about town." Xander frowned. "Do you think Spike's back?"
"If he is, he's been keeping a low profile. Why start bringing teenagers over now?"
"Mercedes didn't even seem to know what had happened to her," Cordelia said.
"Odd." Giles considered, then shook his head. "We don't have enough information."
"No book consultage tonight," Xander reminded him. "Remember? You guys fried the school's power."
"We'll stop by the library to pick up a few things." Giles stood. "If there's a new vampire in town, we're going to need to contact Buffy more than ever."
Cordelia looked up at him. "You guys handled the one tonight."
"He was very young," Giles said dismissively.
"But --" Cordelia frowned. "Not to 'dis' your usual vamp fighting style or anything, Giles, but you guys were pretty impressive. I mean, if I ever got my cheerleading squad that coordinated, we'd take the state finals easy."
"It was pretty strange," Willow said suddenly, looking at Giles. "Like I knew what you were going to do before you'd done it."
Giles looked on the edge of argument, then reconsidered. "Interesting," he said finally. "We were co-casting for a brief period of time tonight. It's possible it put us in 'sync' with one another."
Willow tossed a spoon at his head, and he caught it without a blink. "Q.E.D.," she said. "Wow!"
Xander shuddered. "That is," he said, "very wiggy. Now wait, are you saying that you and Willow are psychically linked?"
"Not consciously," Giles replied, "and only until the residual effects of the casting wear off."
"Which will be how long?"
"Twelve, maybe twenty-four hours. Probably."
"Until you do the co-casting thing again."
Giles looked at him in annoyance. "We're not going to repeat that particular mistake."
"Xander, relax," Willow said. "I think it's kind of funky. It's not like we're really reading each other's thoughts. And you've got to admit that it came in handy tonight."
"All right, I admit it," Xander said as he helped Cordelia stand. "But I'm going to hold you guys to not doing that co-casting thing again."
Giles sighed. "Xander, I can't promise that. If Willow gets into trouble again, I have to be able to step in and help her out on the spell. If I watch without being able to intercede, then I'm of no real use to her."
"We'll be careful," Willow promised. "I don't want another scare like tonight." She picked up her purse, and as a group they moved towards the door.
"Not to be too blunt about it," Xander said, "but what use are you to Willow if you're so in sync that you've lost your own perspective?"
"Good one, Blunt Guy," Cordelia said approvingly.
"It's not going to happen again," Giles said with certainty. "And I'll thank you to stop trying to second-guess me on matters on which you've no study, training, or experience."
"Game, set, and match go to the Watcher," Cordelia remarked to Willow. "They keep this up, and I'm going to be Tact Guy around here."
"It's okay," Willow said cheerfully. "Giles knows what he's doing. And Xander will keep him on his toes."
Drusilla wandered onto the high school grounds. The air was scrambled here tonight; everything had a fuzzy pink halo about it. It was a peculiar feeling, all exciting and irritating and filled with tension. She thought at first that the flesh was creeping off her bones.
"Somebody's been dancing tonight," Dru sang to herself.
The entire campus was shrouded in a lovely darkness that was only marred by that aggravating moonlight. She moved around to the building that housed the library and forced the door.
The halls of the school were dark and silent of everything but the small life that rustled about the building. Her quarry wasn't here just now.
Drusilla halted in front of a glass case, then turned to peer inside. She smiled. "Oh, you have been wicked and sent into the corner," she said, shaking a finger at one of the small statues inside. "Shall I save a piece of him for you? Would you like that? Or I could take you with us. Miss Edith would like someone to play at Charades with." She held the doll up to the case and pressed it against the glass.
She cocked her head, listening to the restless shiftings of the air about her. "Shhh," she said, pulling Miss Edith close to her chest. "We must call upon our host first. He's not here to provide us with tea and crumpets, but we shall present our card and wait."
Drusilla moved down the hall to the library doors. They moved easily to her touch; somebody had forgotten to lock up. She glided into the large room and stood for a moment at center, caught up like a moth in the whirl of moonlight and magic. "Oh. That's exquisitely hurtful," she whispered. "Musn't forget though." She fluttered out of it. "We have a table to lay."
She moved out of the moonlight to the small room behind the front desk, where she sensed his presence the strongest. She ran a hand over the spines of the books that were shelved there, curiously studied the odd objects on his desk and the pictures on the walls, rubbed a finger around the rim of a teacup that had been set on the desk top, idly flipped on the dead radio.
Miss Edith settled herself down on the desk top by the cup to wait, while Drusilla opened various drawers to the desk. One of the drawers was locked and warded. She drew her hand back from it quickly, then lost interest.
She wandered out of the office again and climbed the stairs to the upper tier of the library. "Such noise," she admonished the books there -- they all clattered incessantly. But it was an ordered kind of clatter, almost reassuring in its own way. Dru wandered curiously through the aisles, reading some of the titles. Could the Watcher really keep all of this noise straight? Amazingly clever. Acathla should be no match for him.
Drusilla stopped suddenly, her head cocked. Someone was coming. She moved behind a bookcase and leaned against it, watching through the gap between books and shelf.
The library doors opened and he stepped inside, pausing briefly to switch on an electric torch.
One of the young ones was with him. Her auburn hair gleamed faintly in the moonlight. She held a torch of her own. "Can I get anything?" she was asking.
The Watcher shined the torch at a piece of paper he held in his hand. "There's a vial of quicksilver in the third drawer down of the file cabinet in my office. I'll get the books I need. The rest of it can wait."
He moved quickly up the stairs and to the stacks. Drusilla walked quietly behind him along her side of the shelves. He looked up suddenly and she froze. "There you are," he murmured and reached up to pull a book from its shelf. He aimed the torch down at the pages as he braced the book against a shelf to leaf through it. He was so absorbed in its contents that she was able to creep back to the end of the shelves, where she could see him unimpeded by the clatter of books between them.
"Giles?"
"One moment," he called out, still leafing through the book.
Drusilla stepped around the bookcase, close enough almost to touch his shoulder. She reached out, then froze, her eyes fluttering shut. He reeked of moonlight and magic and destruction. She drew back to regard him quizzically. She hadn't sensed this about him the last time that she'd seen him.
Somebody new and annoying was coming up the stairs. "Giles, you'd so better not be doing research up here now."
Drusilla moved back around into the shadows, watching in fascination. This young one also had the faintest smell of destruction about her, as well as the fresher scent of living blood.
The Watcher shut the book and moved back along the shelves, past where Drusilla stood quietly in the dark. She was rocked back on her heels by the 'glamour' he was projecting. She thrust a steadying hand behind her, jostling the bookcase ever so slightly.
"Can we go now?" the young annoying one said from the head of the stairs. "This whole library is always wiggy enough with the lights on and wiggier with them off, but tonight it's going beyond wiggy to seriously creep-me-out."
"That's the Hellmouth you're sensing, not the library," he said, and handed her the book. "We may have stirred it up somewhat more than usual with our activities tonight."
The girl blew a thin layer of dust off the book. "Well, all this dirt doesn't help." She trailed the Watcher further down the stacks at the other end, book held gingerly away from her body. Drusilla cautiously followed them. "What are we looking for?"
He flashed the torch across the stacks. "A volume, I had somewhere here, on the alchemical effects of the lunar cycles. Ah --!" He pulled a book from the shelf and opened it.
"Alchemy -- isn't that like turning cheap stuff into gold?" The girl leaned close to look over the pages as he turned them.
"One of their interests," the Watcher murmured. "Did Willow find the quicksilver?"
"I think so." The young woman stopped him turning the pages. "Euww, what's that supposed to be?"
"Homunculus." He shut the book and put it on top of the first in her hands. "Don't ask if you don't want to know."
"Euww," she said. "Never mind, then." They started down the stairs. ". . . Is it really disgusting?"
"Very."
At the bottom of the stairs, he turned to flash the torch light back up towards the upper stacks. Drusilla, who'd been quietly following them, pulled quickly back.
"What is it?"
"Mice, probably. I've been seeing them about. I'm going to have to ask Mr. Riley to arrange for an exterminator."
"Got the quicksilver, Giles." The red-headed girl emerged from the shadows of his office. "Is this is all we'll need for tomorrow night?"
"That's the only addition we need to the basic setup."
"What's tomorrow? What are you guys planning now?" a second annoying young one interceded. Drusilla knew this boy: she'd harbored a brief inexplicable crush on him one night. She scowled at the memory.
"It's essentially the same scrying spell we did tonight. Without Willow's more radical adaptation, of course," the Watcher was saying as the group moved towards the doors. "But we need to set up at the physical and temporal high tide."
"Beach party!" the little redhead exclaimed. "Where are we going?"
"Now wait," the younger man protested. "You blew out the entire power supply for the school and K.O.'ed Giles with the spell you tried tonight. . ."
"Pinson's Point is at high tide mark," the annoying brunette remarked. "We could do a double star-gazing, spell- casting and picnic thing."
"Giles," the younger man said. "If I apologize for every crack I ever made about your being 'Caution Man', and for all the Watcher limericks and Librarian jokes --"
"Watcher limericks?" the Watcher said.
"You never heard any of Xander's Watcher limericks?" the redhead said. "They're really funny."
"We're forgetting them now, okay? As of this moment, I never made them up. In fact, I really look up to Caution Man. Now will you and Willow please get a clue, and cut this out?"
"It's okay, Xander," the girl said as she led the way out the doors. "You can be Caution Man for a while. We'll even let you drive us to the Point tomorrow."