Xander tried to place the location of the voice. Of course, location was a relative term. This place—if it was even a place; with no details and no point of reference, was that term accurate?—made it hard to tell up from down.
"Still here."
Xander thought the voice sounded like it was behind him. He turned his head toward the voice. At least, he started to turn his head. The rest of his body followed the motion until it rotated to face the speaker. He was a man with pale skin and dark, shaggy hair. He wore a black T-shirt, faded jeans, and Teva sandals. His age was hard to determine but he seemed youngish. His posture was that of a laid-back dude leaning against something, but since there was nothing around him, it looked a little strange. Xander looked down at himself. He wore a short robe-like garment.
"Why am I dressed like this?" Xander asked. "Why are you dressed like that?"
"Well, that's original," the man replied. "Most people ask where they are, or who I am. Tell you what, would you like it better if I looked like this?" He spread his arms. The T-shirt expanded until it was a baggy black kimono, the hem and sleeves decorated with embroidered red characters. The plume of black hair laid down slick against his skull and formed itself into a small ponytail. "How about this?" The kimono shrank and changed colors, turning into a white tunic trimmed in gold. His hair fluffed itself into a mass of ringed curls. "What about-"
"No, the first look is good." Xander took a deep breath as the T-shirt and jeans reappeared. "Why am I dressed like this?"
The man shrugged. "No reason. You feeling a draft?"
Xander thought for a minute. "No. To be honest, I don't really feel anything. This just isn't my usual look, you know?"
"Well, we can fix that." The man nodded. Xander's garment morphed into new, dark blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Xander inspected his new clothing.
"Okay, kinda generic, but better than that Mama's Family housedress thing. Now, who are you, and where am I?"
"Now we get to the usual questions. Your minds all work alike." The man crossed his arms. "One day one of you will break the routine and I won't know what to do."
"I think there was an insult in there," Xander said. "Could you tell me where I am?"
"Which you?"
Comprehension crept over Xander's face. "This isn't me, is it? I mean, it's me, but not all of me, right?"
The man tapped his nose with an index finger and pointed at Xander. The boy thought hard. "Okay, I've got a little experience at this sort of thing, maybe. Let's see… Are you in control or am I?"
The man looked impressed. "That's an original question. Maybe you're not as clueless as you seem."
"The fact that you're not answering my question makes me think you're the driver in this chariot."
The man shrugged. "I wouldn't say that. I have an agenda, definitely, but there's some leeway for your input. This is more of a mutual exercise. Tell you what, as a sign of good faith, why don't you tell me something you'd like to see. If it's within acceptable parameters, I'll do it."
Xander held up his hand. "Not so fast. Another question. Am I dead and you're here to show me what my life meant, or am I still alive and you're supposed to teach me some sort of lesson to change my future self?"
The man looked thoughtful. "Let me get this straight. You're asking me if this is your It's A Wonderful Life or if it's your Christmas Carol. Is that right?"
Xander looked offended. "When you say it like that, it makes me seem like such a cheap pop-culture junkie. So… yeah."
"Interesting. You're really getting outside the usual box here. Color me impressed." The man walked over to Xander, although what he was walking on was not readily apparent. "Let's see something that will answer some questions and maybe give us a jumping-off point, okay?" He leaned toward Xander. "FYI, sometimes this makes people queasy, at least the first time."
The nothing around them bulged and then snapped back, coagulating into recognizable forms. Xander realized that he was in a hospital. He saw a semi-circular grouping of beds, divided by Plexiglas partitions and opaque curtains hung on aluminum rails. He became conscious of the fact that he was looking down on this scene. He looked down and realized that he was suspended in mid-air, not floating, but not on any solid surface, either. His stomach lurched.
"Do we need to go down?" the man asked. Xander nodded and they descended to the floor. As his feet touched the floor, Xander looked at the bed in the unit.
"That's me, isn't it?" he asked. The man started to nod; Xander held out a hand. "Rhetorical. I recognize myself." He turned to the man. "Why am I in the hospital."
The man jerked his head toward the bed. "Your chart's right there. Go read it yourself." His face became concerned. "You are literate, aren't you?"
"Ha ha," Xander said. He crossed the room and turned back. "I'm assuming I can't pick up things." The man nodded. Xander squatted at the foot of the bed and read the chart hanging there.
"Ha!" he said, rising to his feet. "Right there. Concussion."
"You're happy about that?"
"Concussion means I bounced my brain around." Xander paused, frowning. "I actually kinda remember that. It hurt." He shook his head and looked at the man. "But that means this whole thing, you, everything, it's not necessarily real. The whole thing could just be brain damage."
The man pursed his lips. "'More of gravy than the grave,' huh? Never mind," he said, seeing Xander's blank look. "Go on."
"I made you up. This is all from a bruise on my brain."
"Maybe." The man nodded in a reasonable manner. "But there's still things to be done."
"Like what?"
"You need to see some things. You need context. Details to complete the picture."
"What picture?"
The man held up his hands. "Just remember this. If this is all in your head, then you already had the information. We're—or I guess you if your theory's right—just putting it together in a different way. So, you ready?"
"For what?" Xander asked.
The man winked; there was the sensation of space expanding and contracting. Xander's stomach flipped.
"So his life's not in danger," Buffy said. She had gone to the library immediately after school, along with Oz and Willow.
Giles shook his head. "Apparently not. His injuries are severe, but apparently not life-threatening."
"And we can't go in and see him?"
"The nurse was very clear about that."
"What do you think happened? Did Mr. Trick beat him up, or did they set a trap for him?" Willow leaned forward, her forehead wrinkled in concern.
"Nah," the Slayer said. "If that's what happened, he'd be dead or we'd be getting notes with the letters clipped out of magazines."
"The nurse said that it appeared that Xander might have fallen from a train." Giles pushed up his glasses. "He was found out at the rail yard."
Buffy and Willow exchanged glances. "That sounds like Faith," Buffy said. She stood up. "I'll go by the ValleyView, see if I can find Miss Thing and figure out what happened."
Willow stood up as well. "I'll come with."
Buffy looked at her best friend. "You don't need to, Will. Faith might be… touchy."
Willow lifted her chin. "Yeah, well, your fuse can get pretty short too. Somebody needs to be there who wants to talk first and punch later."
A slow smile spread over the Slayer's face. "Okay. Let me call my mom and tell I'll be later than planned."
They stood in a bedroom, a girl's bedroom to judge by the colors and décor. Xander turned and saw a girl, maybe eight or ten years old, sitting at a desk in front of a window. "Gah," he yelped as he jumped back.
"Oh, man up," Simeon snapped. "Standard rules apply. She can't see or hear us, blah blah blah, A Christmas Carol, blah blah blah."
Xander took a step forward. The girl was bent over a piece of paper. Colored pencils littered the desktop. The girl looked up at an indistinct noise. Xander's eyes widened.
"Cordelia?" he said. He turned to the man.
"You recognize her?" the man asked.
Xander snorted. "We've gone to school together since kindergarten. Of course I recognize her. Once I saw her." He turned back. Young Cordelia continued working on her picture. Xander leaned over to get a better look. She was drawing a picture of a house, a house with a man, a woman, and a girl beside it.
"Well, I already knew Cordy wasn't much of an artist, so I don't see what this is-" Xander stopped as the man cut him off with a wave of his hand. Xander glared at the man. As he did, a rumbling noise grew louder. He opened his mouth to speak, but the man pointed behind him.
Xander turned. The young Cordelia pressed her hands to her ears. Her eyes were closed, picture and pencils forgotten. The rumbling grew more intense.
"What is that?" Xander asked.
"Sorry, I really can't do anything about the audio. Besides, it's about time to go?"
"Really?" Xander cocked his head. "I'm supposed to learn something from this? What?"
The man shrugged. Space expanded and contracted.
"Well, that doesn't look good." Buffy and Willow stood in the gravel lot of the ValleyView and surveyed the broken door of #6. The Slayer turned to her friend. "Let me go in first, just in case there's something big and bad in there, or in case it's really… gross. OK?"
Willow nodded. "Extremely OK. I'm here to mediate conflict, not initiate it."
The Slayer approached the door. She reached around to the small of her back and extracted a stake from the waistband of her red-and-black plaid skirt. She paused in front the door, then kicked it off its remaining hinge and leaped into the room.
Willow took a sharp, involuntary breath and shifted from one foot to the other. Her eyes grew wide and round. Buffy appeared at the door, clothing straight and stake unstained. She shook her head.
"Nobody here," she said. "No sign of a struggle, either. And both bags are gone."
"Faith's gone?" Willow asked.
"Looks like it to me," Buffy said.
"What do we do?"
The Slayer shrugged. "I don't know."
Willow squinted. "What about Cordelia?"
"What about her?" The Slayer slipped her stake back into her waistband.
"If Faith beat up Xander, she might go after Cordelia." Willow's eyes opened wide. "She wasn't at school today, either!"
Buffy thought about Willow's words. "It's worth a shot. If Faith's really gone troppo, she just might decide that Cordelia's got to pay. I'm not sure we'll be very welcome at her house, though."
"She might not know about Xander," Willow offered.
"Yeah, that's true. Okay, if Cordelia's okay, we'll tell her that we just wanted to make sure she knew about Xander. Then we'll be on our way."
"Sounds like a plan," Willow said.
"Let me go call my mom. She'll give us a ride." The Slayer hiked across the parking lot toward the office.
Delilah's knees shook so hard she could barely walk down the hall. She couldn't carry the box, so she'd drafted another vamp for that awful duty. After the delivery earlier in the day, she was pretty sure this wouldn't be good news.
It took her three tries to be able to knock on the door. No voice responded; this time Trick opened the door. Delilah tried to swallow the lump in her throat.
"A-A-Another box," she stammered.
Trick looked at her through hooded eyes. "Was this one left at the front door?"
She shook her head. "No, we were watching there. This one was at their old warehouse."
"So they were gone?" Trick's tone made it clear that he already knew the answer.
"Yes." She held out the box. Trick took it from her and placed it on his desk. The smell was stronger on this package. Trick slit the tape and opened the box. The contents were wrapped in blood-soaked towels. Trick placed the gory parcel beside the box and carefully unwrapped it.
Delilah's eyes grew wide and terrified. "Is that…?" she gulped.
"Yeah." Trick's voice was low and flat. "They skinned him."
"Thanks, Mom," Buffy said as she and Willow slid out of the Cherokee. "We shouldn't be very long."
"It's all right. I'll wait right here." Joyce had parked on the street. The long driveway to the Chase house turned right off the avenue, then curled away to the left. A low stone wall encircled the large lot; the wrought iron gates were open.
Buffy and Willow hiked up the drive, surveying the sprawling Craftsman-style house with its two stories of brick and stone façade broken up by huge windows. "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in," Buffy intoned.
"What?"
The Slayer shook her head. "I don't think Faith's been here. If she saw this house, she'd wig. It'd be a smoking pile of rubble."
"It's kind of funny," Willow said as they turned off the drive onto the flagstone-paved walk. "I've known where Cordelia lives all my life, but I've never been here."
Buffy looked at her friend and smiled. "It's her loss, not yours."
"You're just saying that."
"No, I'm not. It's true." They stepped onto the covered porch. Buffy looked at Willow. "You ready?"
Willow snickered. "No."
"Me neither." The Slayer rang the doorbell.
A tall, slender woman dressed in black slacks and a shirt with wide black-and-white stripes opened the door. Behind her the two girls could see a soaring, two-story foyer with a curved staircase sweeping up the right-hand wall. She looked down at them for an uncomfortable amount of time. The silence grew unnervingly long.
Buffy cleared her throat. "Uh, are you Mrs. Chase?"
The woman snorted and turned. Liquid sloshed from the heavy cut-glass tumbler in her hand. "I suppose your friends of Cordelia's," she said. The sibilant consonants were slightly slushy.
"Uh, yeah," Buffy said nervously, stepping over the threshold. Willow followed a step behind, darting quick glances around the Slayer. "I'm Buffy Summers and this is-"
"What the hell are you doing here? What are you doing in my house?"
Buffy and Willow looked up. The second story was open to the foyer. Cordelia stood on the landing, her hands gripping the railing like a drunk gripping a lamppost. Buffy noticed that Cordelia wore navy blue pajama pants with orange and yellow triangles and a white T-shirt. The erstwhile Queen C's hair was an unholy mess.
She came rushing down the stairs, her feet bare. "Get out! Get out!" Buffy and Willow backed up in the face of Cordelia's mad rush, unnerved by the shouting more than any fear of physical confrontation. As Cordelia reached the bottom of the stairs, they stepped back onto the porch.
Cordelia flew across the foyer, reaching for the door. As she grabbed it, her mother said, "Come again, girls" and laughed. The heavy door slammed in their faces. Buffy and Willow stood there, blinking.
"We never got to tell her about Xander," said Willow.
"No, we did not," Buffy said.
"We didn't ask her about Faith," said Willow.
"No, we did not," Buffy said.
"Should we ring the doorbell again?"
Buffy's head snapped around, eyes wide. "Willow, this is so not the time. Let's go."
They hustled down the sidewalk and out to the driveway. They were halfway to the street when Willow spoke.
"Y'know, I don't have a lot of experience with this, and so I could be wrong, and I hope I am, but… Buffy, was Cordelia's mom drunk?"
