IV
Cordelia and I plummeted off the burning yacht together, and for an instant I was aware of nothing except the feel of her body in my arms and the rush of the wind whistling past my ears. Then we hit the water's surface, and the Pacific swallowed us up.
As I knew I would, I started to sink. I let go of Cordelia -- this time, I wasn't going to drag her down with me -- and let myself start to go under. The water was mild, even warm, but it grew rapidly cooler as I started to descend. I wondered what it would be like at the bottom. At least I wouldn't have to worry about sunlight.
Then I felt Cordelia's hand tighten around my arm. She was pulling me back to the surface, using the lifebelt to give her enough buoyancy to keep us both afloat.
"Let go --" I gasped as soon as my head was above the water.
"Haven't you ever been to vampire life saving class?" Cordelia asked. Her face was set with a determination I hadn't known she possessed. "Kick, dammit!"
"Cordelia --"
"I'm NOT letting go of you," she said. "So you'd better start kicking before you get me drowned."
I kicked. And kicked. And kept kicking.
What we were doing was hardly swimming -- we were barely floating, and sometimes it felt as if the lights of the shore weren't getting any closer, and once or twice I was afraid they were actually becoming more distant. When Cordelia started to tire, I pushed the lifebelt under her chin so her head was above the water, and tried not to drag her under the waves. It was difficult: my limbs were corpse-heavy, and I had to fight the urge simply to give in, to let myself sink to the bottom and settle into dark and silent rest. But I couldn't let go of Cordelia, and I wouldn't allow myself to pull her down with me.
"Did I -- say this -- was a good -- idea?" she spluttered, struggling to speak between desperately snatched breaths. "Really -- stupid --"
"Listen," I said.
"To -- what --?"
"I hear an engine."
We both listened. Somewhere in the darkness, he whining, high-pitched drone of a powerboat was rising above the ocean's dull roar. As it grew louder, I saw the waves near to us shine with reflected light.
Cordelia raised her arm out of the water and waved frantically. "Over here! Hey! Woman and vampire overboard! Hey!"
I shouted, too, and for a second the powerboat's lights seemed to veer toward us. But instead of slowing down, the boat accelerated past us, bouncing through the swell and disappearing rapidly back into the night.
Cordelia shouted until her voice hoarsened and exhaustion forced her to stop waving. I saw her look toward the still-distant lights on the shore, hope draining from her. Her head started to bob lower and lower in the water. "It's too far. We're not gonna make it."
I kicked harder, but even with the lifebelt's buoyancy to help me, I couldn't keep both of us above the water. The truth was, I needed Cordelia. I just hadn't let myself acknowledge how much until now.
I struggled to keep my head above water, so I could speak. "Cordelia," I said. "Cordy, listen to me. I needed you and Doyle, and now Doyle's gone -- I need you. I thought -- when I came to L.A. -- I could make it by myself. I can't. I don't want you to go. I was wrong."
"Well, of COURSE you were wrong," Cordelia said as we bobbed up and down together on the swelling and subsiding waves. "But jeez, Angel, you couldn't have admitted it BEFORE we got enchanted, chased, kidnapped, beaten up and nearly drowned?"
She was trying to look annoyed, but there was something in her voice that told me she wasn't. "I'll keep that in mind for next time," I said.
Cordelia made a snorting sound that was clearly meant to convey her firm intention that there wasn't going to be a next time, and we started swimming again. This time, our progress was significantly easier --- the incoming tide had caught us and was bearing us swiftly toward land. When at last I heard the sound of waves breaking on the shore, I gave one final kick, and felt sand under my feet.
I staggered forward, walking now instead of swimming. Cordelia was near-exhausted, and for once our need for physical closeness actually had a purpose, as she hooked her arm over my shoulders and I put mine around her waist, giving her support. We made our way through the surf toward the beach, the waves reaching first my chest, then my waist, then my knees, until finally Cordelia and I were standing in water that was barely ankle-deep, while tiny wavelets lapped around our feet.
I let the lifebelt drop. It sat for a second on the damp sand, before an advancing wave lifted it and carried it back out to sea.
"We made it," Cordelia said at last. She sounded almost as amazed as I felt.
"We made it," I agreed. "But -- I don't think I'm going to take up swimming any time soon."
Cordelia looked at me, her face serious. "That's a shame. 'Cause, you know, I can just picture you in a pair of little red Speedos --" She broke off, unable to keep a straight face any longer, and started to giggle. Her joy was pure and infectious, and I smiled back at her. Cordelia moved around until she was hugging me with both arms, and I embraced her in turn. We stood that way for some time, the cool ocean stealing the sand from under our feet while the moonlit, empty beach rang with the sound of Cordelia's joyful laughter.
A larger wave broke around our feet, spraying us with seawater. Californian winters are mild, but even L.A. can be cold in November, and the night air was chill and dry. Cordelia hugged herself closer to me, and as welcome as the sensation of her body pressing against mine was, I knew there wasn't much I could do to warm her up -- I was cold to the core, stripped of even minimal warmth by the sea. Cordelia shivered violently in my arms.
"We need to get you warm," I said.
She stammered her agreement through chattering teeth.
The moon was almost full and the sky was cloudless, and there was sufficient light to see some distance in both directions along the beach. Cordelia and I were the only people on it -- not surprising, since it was the middle of the night -- but just above the tide line I saw a small, windowless wooden hut, timbers bleached from long exposure to the sun.
"This way," I said, and helped Cordelia toward it.
The hut's door was padlocked, but the chain it hung on was rusted and brittle, and I was able to break it without difficulty. Inside, the walls of the hut were lined with shelves piled high with towels, and boxes of neatly rolled beach mats on the floor. Stenciled lettering on the sides of the boxes informed us that everything we saw was the property of the Pacific View Hotel, and the management would take an extremely dim view of anyone who wasn't a patron of the hotel using it.
I decided the management of the Pacific View Hotel could take a leap, and lifted down a bundle of towels from the nearest shelf. I handed them to Cordelia, who wrapped them around herself, cloak-like, while I continued to dig through the contents of the boxes. It wasn't long before I found an even better prize -- matches, probably kept down here to light the hotel's beach party barbeques.
I lifted an armful of beach mats and carried them outside. They were made from roughly woven cloth, and lit easily when I put a match to them. Within a couple of minutes, sparks were rising high into the air from the fire I'd made in a hollow in the sand. The flames rose, banishing the darkness and creating a circle of warmth and light with us at its center.
When I looked around, Cordelia was kicking off her wet jeans, letting them fall into the pile on top of her sea-sodden blouse. In place of her clothes, she had draped Pacific View Hotel towels around her waist and shoulders, neatly rolling and tucking them so they stayed in place. She looked like she was wearing a fluffy white kimono.
We sat down together by the fire, leaning against each other and the outside of the beach hut. Here, we had shelter from the cool breeze coming off the ocean, and the hut's timber proved effective at trapping the fire's warmth and reflecting it back on us. It wasn't long before the color started to return to Cordelia's lips and cheeks.
"Warmer now?" I asked.
Cordelia nodded. "Most of me. My hands and feet haven't gotten the memo, yet, though."
I took her hand; her fingers felt cold in mine. Gently, I started to rub them between my palms, hoping to use the friction of the motion to warm her in place of the body heat I didn't have. My reward was a small noise of satisfaction from Cordelia. "Mmmm. That's nice. Keep doing that."
Encouraged, I moved on to her other hand, and then to her wrists and arms. Her skin was porcelain-cool, and as smooth as fine china. The more I touched her, the more I wanted to keep touching her, and it felt natural to keep working my way up her arm until my hands were underneath the towel, caressing her shoulders. It was difficult to reach her other shoulder where I was sitting, and so, without really thinking about what I was doing, I repositioned myself so I was straddling her.
A sudden, loud crashing noise snapped both of us back to our senses.
Cordelia looked up sharply. "What was that?"
"It came from the ocean." I concentrated on listening, but apart from the crackling of the fire and the breaking waves, I couldn't hear anything.
"Maybe it was the noise of the Delilah sinking."
"Maybe," I said doubtfully. The only noise the Delilah would have made as she sunk under the waves would have been a hiss as the water extinguished the fire which had destroyed her, but what I had heard had sounded like the crash of a high-speed impact.
My hands were still on Cordelia's shoulders, her face still close to mine. I was kneeling in the sand, her legs resting in the gap between mine. The only polite way of describing our position was 'compromising'. There were a lot of impolite descriptions for it, too. "I'm sorry --" I began.
Cordelia put her hand lightly on my arm, and suddenly my absolute intention to get off her dissolved like the foam on the waves breaking down the beach. In a quiet voice, she asked, "Angel, what are we gonna do?"
I didn't answer straight away. I'd been hoping to avoid this question at least until we'd both had a chance to rest. But it wasn't going to go away, and we might as well confront it.
Finally, I said, "We have a couple of options. We could go looking for Jameela. Or we could go back to Sorcha and ask her if she knows any other way of undoing the magic." I tried to sound upbeat as I added, "There's usually a ritual for this kind of thing."
"Involving entrails?" Cordelia asked.
"Probably. But not ours. I hope."
Cordelia looked at me. "You don't know how we're gonna fix this, do you?"
"No," I admitted.
I felt a stab of guilt as I remembered that it had been my hesitation back on the yacht which had allowed Jameela to escape. Just for a moment, I'd listened to the selfish inner voice that wanted to keep Cordelia close to me, and in the process I'd only caused her more distress -- and maybe ruined our chances of breaking the enchantment, ever.
"I'm sorry," I said again. "I know how tough it must be for you, being tied to me like this --"
Cordelia made a sound that was more like a moan than a sigh. "It's not that. When we were apart on the yacht I kept thinking it'd just be okay if I could see you and touch you again, but it doesn't matter how close we are, I just want to be closer. It feels like I'm fighting, fighting, fighting all the time -- I don't think I'm gonna be able to stand another five minutes of this, and it might be five days or weeks or even longer --" She broke off. "Being close to you isn't the problem, Angel. The problem is I can't get close enough."
She looked up at me, her face aching with a frustration and longing that perfectly mirrored my own.
In that instant, I knew I would do anything, anything at all, if it would make her happy.
I kissed her.
Her lips were still cold, but the inside of her mouth was warm like the heat radiating on to us from the fire. A faint flavor of seawater still clung to her, but the more deeply we kissed, the purer her taste became, until I felt as if I were kneeling at the clearest spring.
I forced myself to stop kissing her long enough to say, "I don't want to take advantage --"
"You're not," Cordelia whispered, tipping back her head so I could kiss her throat, starting under her chin and working my way down to her breast bone.
"You're not in control of yourself," I murmured into the hollow between her breasts.
"And you are?" When she spoke, the vibrations from her chest tickled my lips. "If you want, we can stop and both sign waivers."
She curled one arm around me, and I felt her index finger tracing a pattern of lines and curves on my shoulder. C, O, R... I realized she was signing her name on my skin.
"I don't want to stop," I said, and lifted my head just enough to look her in the eye. She looked back at me, her gaze a heady mixture of excitement and certainty.
"Me either," she said.
She slid downward, so she was no longer sitting but was instead lying beneath me. She reached up, looping both arms around the back of my neck, and the towel which had been draped around her shoulders slid off her and on to the sand. The second towel she was wearing covered her upper body, tucked so that it stayed in place just below her arms, and the third was rolled around her waist. Slowly, deliberately, I unfolded them, opening out each one in turn. I felt as if I were unwrapping a perfect, priceless gift.
When I had finished, Cordelia was lying naked under me on a soft white bed of hotel towels. I could feel the heat rising off her, see the slow ripple of gooseflesh moving across her as the cold air caressed her skin.
"Touch me," she said. Her voice was low and husky and slightly breathless. I could hear the hunger in it.
"Where?"
She arched her back, lifting her chest toward me. "Everywhere. Oh, God, just -- everywhere."
I put my hands on either side of her waist -- my thumbs almost met just above her belly button -- and slowly brushed my palms upward, marveling at the way her body seemed to hum and tremble under my touch. I cupped her breasts, one in each hand, their cool softness a contrast to the tiny, hard knot at the center of each. I ducked my head and let my lips brush each one in turn; when she cried out in response, I felt something rise within me, a swell of water becoming a wave, starting to move toward the distant shore.
I worked my hands over her body slowly, methodically, thoroughly. I marveled at how every part of her felt slightly different. Just under her breasts was as delicate and yielding as fine silk, but when I put my hand on her hip I could feel the solid resistance of muscle and bone working together as she changed her position. I wanted to know every inch of her, leave nothing unexplored.
When I had visited every other possible destination on her body, I tracked my fingers upward, along the inside of her thigh, burying them in the soft, dark mat I found there. The triangle of hair was as dark against her pale stomach as the hair on her head was as it fanned out against the sand. I worked my way deeper, until I was touching the source of her warmth, the furnace burning at her core.
She gasped and raised her hips, pushing against me, tightening her thighs, squeezing my hand between them.
Then she unhooked her arms from around my neck and started to unbutton my shirt. It was a relief when she tugged it off -- the warmth of the fire and her fingertips on my bare skin were infinitely preferable to clammy, damp material. "I want to touch you," she said, starting to undo my belt.
A second later I felt the fire's heat on the backs of my legs. Then her hands were on me, squeezing and compressing me in exquisite, unbearable tightness. At the same time I could feel her working herself against my trapped hand, chafing against my palm. The growing wave inside me surged forward, threatened to break. I extricated my hand from between her thighs and used it to break her hold on me.
Cordelia gave a moan that was thick with raw need and desperation. The sound of it was almost enough to do what I'd been afraid her touch would. But not quite.
"Not close enough," she said. "Closer."
Her legs parted and slid outward, making ridges in the sand. I planted my hands on either side of her and lowered myself so that we were chest to chest, belly to belly, skin against skin. We were as close as it was possible to get. It still wasn't close enough.
Cordelia slipped her hand between our bodies and took hold of me again, but this time it was to guide me into her. As I entered her, I felt a sense of completion; we fitted each other, two halves of a whole, entire only when joined. It felt so right, so essential, that I took a second to wonder why we'd ever believed we had to fight this.
I slid in and out of her slowly, savoring the intimacy of the touch, the intensity of sensation. As we moved together, the sand underneath the towels shifted to accommodate us, molding to fit our bodies. In this position, I could look down at Cordelia; her eyes were closed, her lips parted, her face tight with arousal and need. I quickened the rhythm of our movement, and saw her bite down on her lower lip in an effort to control her mounting pleasure. The sight of it excited me, made it harder to keep control myself.
Then she opened her eyes and looked up at me. Her gaze was piercing, clear, accepting. My oldest memories tell me that when humans look deeply into another person's eyes, they see themselves reflected there. I didn't reflect in Cordelia's pupils any more than I reflect anywhere else, but when I looked deep into her gaze, I saw something much better than myself. I saw her.
I pushed into her, more deeply than before, as deep as I could go. Finally, we were close enough.
"I'm gonna, I'm gonna --" She broke off, gasped, and then I felt a long, sweet shudder pass up through her body, making her tremble from feet to fingertips. She gasped, then shouted, her voice rising above the distant sound of the waves breaking on the shore. I felt her clench around me, as a dam deep, deep within her burst, releasing a euphoric tide. And I saw the tension in her face dissolve as bliss overtook her.
Her body became liquid against mine, fluid and pliant. As she relaxed, limbs loosening, the last spasms deep inside her carried me onward, a rip-tide I was helpless to resist. I felt the wave breaking inside me, starting at the point where our bodies met and spreading outwards, washing away everything in its path.
When the wave finally subsided, I lay still for a moment, exhausted and grateful, like a shipwrecked man washed up on a welcoming shore after the storm. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the Pacific breaking on the beach, over and over, the ocean caressing the land with the gentleness of a lover's touch.
I rolled off Cordelia, and made a hollow in the sand beside her. Then I pulled the towels over both of us like blankets, so that we were swaddled together in a cocoon made warm by the fire and her body heat.
"Shoulda done that way sooner," Cordelia said, smiling drowsily at me.
I wanted to agree, but before I could we were both asleep.
***
I was woken up by cold water lapping at my feet.
I sat up. The sky was still dark, although the moon was setting and the buzz at the back of my head told me dawn was not far off.
The fire had gone out, although the ashes of the Hotel Pacific View's beach mats would smolder for some time yet -- if the incoming tide didn't swallow them up first. That was what had woken me; while Cordelia and I had slept, the sea had crept up the beach, and now the most far-reaching of the advancing waves had reached my feet. Cordelia, still wrapped up in the towels, had curled up next to me, fetal-style. She was still dry and warm, and slept on, in blissful ignorance of the advancing ocean.
I put out my hand to wake her up and tell her she needed to move, then thought better of it when I saw the look on her sleeping face. She was smiling faintly, immersed in some pleasant dream -- one, I hoped, where she lived in a world without enchantments or evil demons, where Doyle was alive and there were plenty of shoes. I didn't want to have to bring her back from that place before I absolutely had to.
Very carefully, I got up and lifted her in my arms. Then I carried her to a spot above the tide line, and set her down gently, still swathed in the towels. I pulled on my shirt and pants -- they were dry now, and stiff with salt -- and sat down next to her, bending my legs and resting my arms on my knees and looking out at the ocean. Next to the Pacific's vast and timeless expanse, I felt mortal.
After a while, I noticed that the incoming tide was washing something on to the beach -- some kind of debris. Curious, I got up and walked the short distance down to the water's edge. I found some shattered wood and fiberglass panels, of sufficiently different sizes and shapes to convince me I was looking at the wreckage of not one but two small vessels.
Another wave broke over my feet, carrying more pieces of wreckage. But these were different. When I reached down into the surf and picked up an item at random, I found I was holding a small plastic package. The package had been punctured by the ocean, and was now little more than a shriveled husk, but a small amount of white residue still clung to its interior. It looked like flour-and-water paste and was probably about as valuable.
I turned the package over in my hand -- and froze.
A single, iridescent scale was sticking to the underside of the plastic. It glittered harshly in the moonlight.
The water lapped around my ankles, and I looked down. All around my bare feet floated a collection of empty plastic packages and shimmering, reptilian scales.
I remembered Jameela gloating as she made her escape in the Delilah's tiny dinghy, taking Michael Hunter's shipment of illegal drugs with her. I remembered the powerboat that had sped recklessly past Cordelia and myself as we swam to safety. And I remembered the crashing noise we had heard once we reached the beach.
I held the scale up in the moonlight, hardly daring to believe in the string of coincidences required to make what I thought had happened possible. The scale was sharp, and I cut myself on it as I examined it. Even dead, Jameela was still dangerous.
But she was dead.
I looked to where Cordelia lay sleeping. As an experiment, I walked along the water's edge, away from her. I looked back several times, but I didn't feel a compulsion to return to her. I didn't feel unreasoning panic when I deliberately walked behind a sand dune, blocking her from my sight for a minute or more.
I walked ten yards further along the sand, twenty, forty. I was further away from Cordelia than I had been in days, and I was okay. Jameela was dead; the magic that had bound Cordelia and myself together had been broken.
It was over, I realized with a growing sense of relief. The part of the enchantment that had kept us physically tied to each other had already dispersed; pretty soon I could expect the confusing, conflicting emotions I'd been feeling about Cordelia in the past few days to dissolve away, too.
Pretty soon.
Any time about now, in fact.
Any time.
And then I remembered something else. If the crash we had heard had been the sound of Jameela's dinghy colliding with the powerboat, that meant the Siren had been dead, and the spell broken, for hours. It also meant that when Cordelia and I had made love, we'd already been free of the enchantment.
I recalled Jameela's last words to me: When I die, she won't want you any more. Well, Jameela had been wrong.
And so had I.
I'd told myself it I could make love to Cordelia because I didn't love her. That I was safe from the curse because what I was doing was for her happiness and not my own. That I was acting under the influence of powerful magic, and not on my own desires at all.
In the face of all the available evidence, I'd somehow convinced myself I wasn't in love with Cordelia.
Like I said, I can be really stupid sometimes.
Slowly, like a man in a dream -- or maybe a man waking from one -- I walked back up the beach to where I had left Cordelia. She was still asleep, and I knelt beside her, taking care not to disturb her. There was sand sticking to her cheek, and seaweed in her hair. She was beautiful.
But she wasn't going to stay asleep forever. Sooner or later she'd wake up, and I had to decide what I was going to tell her when she did.
With sudden clarity, I saw a number of possible futures branching out from this moment. There was one future where I told Cordelia how I felt, and she responded in exactly the way you'd expect someone to react to a confession of love from a guy whose last serious relationship resulted in multiple homicides and a near-apocalypse. There was another possible future where she felt the same way about me -- but I already knew how that future turned out, because it was my recent past. I'd played out that story with Buffy, and I knew how it would end -- in bitterness, with me walking out of Cordelia's life before she hated me for everything I couldn't give her.
Then there was another future, one where I couldn't be Cordelia's lover, but I remained her friend. In that future, I saw her every day, shared her problems and her triumphs, and my life was better because she was part of it.
I knew which future I preferred.
Cordelia stirred and blinked sleepily. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Hi," I said.
She looked at me suspiciously. "Okay, I gotta ask -- are you evil?"
"No," I said. "Never further from it."
Cordelia gave a relieved sigh. "Oh, good. 'Cause I thought I was gonna have to remind you of something bad if you looked like you were getting too happy. Like death or taxes."
"I'm already dead," I pointed out, "and I don't pay taxes."
Cordelia sat up, pulling one of the towels around herself. She took a deep breath and then exhaled. "Well, I guess we'd better head back to my apartment. We'll get Sorcha's number from Doyle's address book, give her a call and ask if she knows anything else about enchantment breaking."
"No need," I said. "Jameela's dead."
Cordelia stared at me, the look on her face one of almost comical bemusement. "What? When? How?"
"She -- ah, she --" I hesitated, then made a decision. It would be easier on both of us if Cordelia believed, and kept believing, that what had happened between us had been purely the result of magic, and nothing else. "She landed on the beach in the Delilah's dinghy just a little while ago. We fought and -- well, and I won. She's dead."
"You had a fight to the death -- and I slept right through it?" The look on Cordelia's face was a mismatch of hope and skepticism.
"You were pretty exhausted," I said, aware of just how lame my version of events sounded.
Cordelia was silent for a second. Then: "She's really dead?"
"She's really dead," I said, and held up the scale I'd found in the water as proof.
"Then we're -- disenchanted." A wide smile lit Cordelia's face. "Angel, you're my hero!"
She threw her arms around me and hugged me fiercely. The towel she'd pulled around herself slipped down, and I hugged her back stiffly and a little awkwardly, not sure where to put my hands.
Cordelia pulled away from me, and frowned. "What's wrong?"
Unconvincingly, I said, "Nothing. Nothing's wrong."
She eyed me. "You're not gonna go all When Harry Met Sally on me, are you?"
I got up and fetched Cordelia's blouse and jeans. They were wrinkled and salt-stained, but they would do until she could change into clean clothes.
As I handed them to her, she said, "Angel, you're not answering the question."
"I'm still trying to work out what the question is," I said.
"AN-gel. You know -- When Harry Met Sally. Classic romcom, Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, the restaurant scene, 'I'll have what she's having.' Don't tell me you've never heard of When Harry Met Sally."
"I've never heard of it," I said. "Is it a movie?"
"Yes, it's a movie." Cordelia looked at me, her voice and face uncharacteristically serious. "It's about a man and woman who are best friends, then they sleep together and it nearly ruins everything."
There was that word again. Friends. I liked the way it sounded when Cordelia said it.
I took hold of Cordelia's hand -- this time by choice rather than compulsion. "Real life is not like the movies."
She smiled at me, and I could see the relief in her eyes. "No," she said. "It's much, much weirder."
Then she got up, and I went back to watching the ocean while she got dressed. When I looked around, she was trying, unsuccessfully, to undo the damage that a swim in the ocean and a night on the beach had done to her hairstyle. "I have never needed conditioner as much as I do right now. The first thing we're doing is going to my place."
"Actually," I said, eyeing the lightening sky, "the first thing we have to do is get the car. It's still parked back at the marina."
"Is there time to walk there before the sun comes up?"
"I don't know," I said. "I'm not sure how far along the coast we are."
"I vote we don't take the chance," Cordelia said. "I'll get the car and drive it back here. If it gets light before then, you've got somewhere to go to avoid going crispy."
The Pacific View's beach hut wouldn't be roomy, but I wouldn't have to stay in it for long. "Okay. We'll do that," I said, and threw Cordelia the keys to the Plymouth.
She caught them, and started to walk up the beach. But she hadn't gone more than a few yards when she hesitated and looked back.
"Feels kind of weird," she said. "Walking away, I mean."
"You're coming back," I said.
"I am," Cordelia said. Then she turned around and walked over the first sand dune, and out of my sight.
Dawn was still some minutes away; I didn't have to retreat to shelter just yet, and so I walked back down to the water's edge. The stars were becoming less visible in the brightening sky, and the ocean was slowly turning from a black expanse to a blue one.
Sunrise was Buffy's favorite part of the day. Although she never said so, I think it was because every new day she saw was proof she'd emerged victorious from the night that preceded it. It's been two and a half centuries since I last saw the sun come up; when I briefly wore the gem of Amarra, I watched the sun set, then destroyed the ring before it rose again. Fear of the sun's light is as much a part of me as constant thirst, and what I was seeing now -- a lightening of the sky from black to gray, the faintest blush of color in the sea -- was as much of the dawn as I would ever experience.
Unconsciously, I put my hand in my pocket, and was surprised when I found something there. When I took it out, I saw it was a scrap of paper, brittle and fragile and almost unrecognizable. Then I saw Doyle's faint handwriting, and realized it was the lottery ticket Cordelia had found in his apartment. The blurred word JAMEELA was the only part of his last message which was still legible. I couldn't help thinking we could have avoided a lot of trouble in the last couple of days if he'd just taken the time to write something a little more prescriptive, like KILL JAMEELA.
The other side of the ticket had been erased by the sea; Doyle's lottery numbers had been washed away. The drawing would have been yesterday, I remembered, and I wondered for a second if he'd won anything, and if, by a capricious turn of fate, I was holding a dead man's winning ticket.
But coincidences do happen; fate does intervene. Coincidence had killed Jameela, and fate had brought Cordelia into my life.
Suddenly I remembered something Cordelia had said about Doyle when she found the ticket. She'd said he never stopped believing he'd get lucky, if he just waited long enough.
That sounded like a pretty good philosophy to me.
The sun was about to come up. I went into the beach hut, closed the door, and settled in to wait for Cordelia.
END
Cordelia and I plummeted off the burning yacht together, and for an instant I was aware of nothing except the feel of her body in my arms and the rush of the wind whistling past my ears. Then we hit the water's surface, and the Pacific swallowed us up.
As I knew I would, I started to sink. I let go of Cordelia -- this time, I wasn't going to drag her down with me -- and let myself start to go under. The water was mild, even warm, but it grew rapidly cooler as I started to descend. I wondered what it would be like at the bottom. At least I wouldn't have to worry about sunlight.
Then I felt Cordelia's hand tighten around my arm. She was pulling me back to the surface, using the lifebelt to give her enough buoyancy to keep us both afloat.
"Let go --" I gasped as soon as my head was above the water.
"Haven't you ever been to vampire life saving class?" Cordelia asked. Her face was set with a determination I hadn't known she possessed. "Kick, dammit!"
"Cordelia --"
"I'm NOT letting go of you," she said. "So you'd better start kicking before you get me drowned."
I kicked. And kicked. And kept kicking.
What we were doing was hardly swimming -- we were barely floating, and sometimes it felt as if the lights of the shore weren't getting any closer, and once or twice I was afraid they were actually becoming more distant. When Cordelia started to tire, I pushed the lifebelt under her chin so her head was above the water, and tried not to drag her under the waves. It was difficult: my limbs were corpse-heavy, and I had to fight the urge simply to give in, to let myself sink to the bottom and settle into dark and silent rest. But I couldn't let go of Cordelia, and I wouldn't allow myself to pull her down with me.
"Did I -- say this -- was a good -- idea?" she spluttered, struggling to speak between desperately snatched breaths. "Really -- stupid --"
"Listen," I said.
"To -- what --?"
"I hear an engine."
We both listened. Somewhere in the darkness, he whining, high-pitched drone of a powerboat was rising above the ocean's dull roar. As it grew louder, I saw the waves near to us shine with reflected light.
Cordelia raised her arm out of the water and waved frantically. "Over here! Hey! Woman and vampire overboard! Hey!"
I shouted, too, and for a second the powerboat's lights seemed to veer toward us. But instead of slowing down, the boat accelerated past us, bouncing through the swell and disappearing rapidly back into the night.
Cordelia shouted until her voice hoarsened and exhaustion forced her to stop waving. I saw her look toward the still-distant lights on the shore, hope draining from her. Her head started to bob lower and lower in the water. "It's too far. We're not gonna make it."
I kicked harder, but even with the lifebelt's buoyancy to help me, I couldn't keep both of us above the water. The truth was, I needed Cordelia. I just hadn't let myself acknowledge how much until now.
I struggled to keep my head above water, so I could speak. "Cordelia," I said. "Cordy, listen to me. I needed you and Doyle, and now Doyle's gone -- I need you. I thought -- when I came to L.A. -- I could make it by myself. I can't. I don't want you to go. I was wrong."
"Well, of COURSE you were wrong," Cordelia said as we bobbed up and down together on the swelling and subsiding waves. "But jeez, Angel, you couldn't have admitted it BEFORE we got enchanted, chased, kidnapped, beaten up and nearly drowned?"
She was trying to look annoyed, but there was something in her voice that told me she wasn't. "I'll keep that in mind for next time," I said.
Cordelia made a snorting sound that was clearly meant to convey her firm intention that there wasn't going to be a next time, and we started swimming again. This time, our progress was significantly easier --- the incoming tide had caught us and was bearing us swiftly toward land. When at last I heard the sound of waves breaking on the shore, I gave one final kick, and felt sand under my feet.
I staggered forward, walking now instead of swimming. Cordelia was near-exhausted, and for once our need for physical closeness actually had a purpose, as she hooked her arm over my shoulders and I put mine around her waist, giving her support. We made our way through the surf toward the beach, the waves reaching first my chest, then my waist, then my knees, until finally Cordelia and I were standing in water that was barely ankle-deep, while tiny wavelets lapped around our feet.
I let the lifebelt drop. It sat for a second on the damp sand, before an advancing wave lifted it and carried it back out to sea.
"We made it," Cordelia said at last. She sounded almost as amazed as I felt.
"We made it," I agreed. "But -- I don't think I'm going to take up swimming any time soon."
Cordelia looked at me, her face serious. "That's a shame. 'Cause, you know, I can just picture you in a pair of little red Speedos --" She broke off, unable to keep a straight face any longer, and started to giggle. Her joy was pure and infectious, and I smiled back at her. Cordelia moved around until she was hugging me with both arms, and I embraced her in turn. We stood that way for some time, the cool ocean stealing the sand from under our feet while the moonlit, empty beach rang with the sound of Cordelia's joyful laughter.
A larger wave broke around our feet, spraying us with seawater. Californian winters are mild, but even L.A. can be cold in November, and the night air was chill and dry. Cordelia hugged herself closer to me, and as welcome as the sensation of her body pressing against mine was, I knew there wasn't much I could do to warm her up -- I was cold to the core, stripped of even minimal warmth by the sea. Cordelia shivered violently in my arms.
"We need to get you warm," I said.
She stammered her agreement through chattering teeth.
The moon was almost full and the sky was cloudless, and there was sufficient light to see some distance in both directions along the beach. Cordelia and I were the only people on it -- not surprising, since it was the middle of the night -- but just above the tide line I saw a small, windowless wooden hut, timbers bleached from long exposure to the sun.
"This way," I said, and helped Cordelia toward it.
The hut's door was padlocked, but the chain it hung on was rusted and brittle, and I was able to break it without difficulty. Inside, the walls of the hut were lined with shelves piled high with towels, and boxes of neatly rolled beach mats on the floor. Stenciled lettering on the sides of the boxes informed us that everything we saw was the property of the Pacific View Hotel, and the management would take an extremely dim view of anyone who wasn't a patron of the hotel using it.
I decided the management of the Pacific View Hotel could take a leap, and lifted down a bundle of towels from the nearest shelf. I handed them to Cordelia, who wrapped them around herself, cloak-like, while I continued to dig through the contents of the boxes. It wasn't long before I found an even better prize -- matches, probably kept down here to light the hotel's beach party barbeques.
I lifted an armful of beach mats and carried them outside. They were made from roughly woven cloth, and lit easily when I put a match to them. Within a couple of minutes, sparks were rising high into the air from the fire I'd made in a hollow in the sand. The flames rose, banishing the darkness and creating a circle of warmth and light with us at its center.
When I looked around, Cordelia was kicking off her wet jeans, letting them fall into the pile on top of her sea-sodden blouse. In place of her clothes, she had draped Pacific View Hotel towels around her waist and shoulders, neatly rolling and tucking them so they stayed in place. She looked like she was wearing a fluffy white kimono.
We sat down together by the fire, leaning against each other and the outside of the beach hut. Here, we had shelter from the cool breeze coming off the ocean, and the hut's timber proved effective at trapping the fire's warmth and reflecting it back on us. It wasn't long before the color started to return to Cordelia's lips and cheeks.
"Warmer now?" I asked.
Cordelia nodded. "Most of me. My hands and feet haven't gotten the memo, yet, though."
I took her hand; her fingers felt cold in mine. Gently, I started to rub them between my palms, hoping to use the friction of the motion to warm her in place of the body heat I didn't have. My reward was a small noise of satisfaction from Cordelia. "Mmmm. That's nice. Keep doing that."
Encouraged, I moved on to her other hand, and then to her wrists and arms. Her skin was porcelain-cool, and as smooth as fine china. The more I touched her, the more I wanted to keep touching her, and it felt natural to keep working my way up her arm until my hands were underneath the towel, caressing her shoulders. It was difficult to reach her other shoulder where I was sitting, and so, without really thinking about what I was doing, I repositioned myself so I was straddling her.
A sudden, loud crashing noise snapped both of us back to our senses.
Cordelia looked up sharply. "What was that?"
"It came from the ocean." I concentrated on listening, but apart from the crackling of the fire and the breaking waves, I couldn't hear anything.
"Maybe it was the noise of the Delilah sinking."
"Maybe," I said doubtfully. The only noise the Delilah would have made as she sunk under the waves would have been a hiss as the water extinguished the fire which had destroyed her, but what I had heard had sounded like the crash of a high-speed impact.
My hands were still on Cordelia's shoulders, her face still close to mine. I was kneeling in the sand, her legs resting in the gap between mine. The only polite way of describing our position was 'compromising'. There were a lot of impolite descriptions for it, too. "I'm sorry --" I began.
Cordelia put her hand lightly on my arm, and suddenly my absolute intention to get off her dissolved like the foam on the waves breaking down the beach. In a quiet voice, she asked, "Angel, what are we gonna do?"
I didn't answer straight away. I'd been hoping to avoid this question at least until we'd both had a chance to rest. But it wasn't going to go away, and we might as well confront it.
Finally, I said, "We have a couple of options. We could go looking for Jameela. Or we could go back to Sorcha and ask her if she knows any other way of undoing the magic." I tried to sound upbeat as I added, "There's usually a ritual for this kind of thing."
"Involving entrails?" Cordelia asked.
"Probably. But not ours. I hope."
Cordelia looked at me. "You don't know how we're gonna fix this, do you?"
"No," I admitted.
I felt a stab of guilt as I remembered that it had been my hesitation back on the yacht which had allowed Jameela to escape. Just for a moment, I'd listened to the selfish inner voice that wanted to keep Cordelia close to me, and in the process I'd only caused her more distress -- and maybe ruined our chances of breaking the enchantment, ever.
"I'm sorry," I said again. "I know how tough it must be for you, being tied to me like this --"
Cordelia made a sound that was more like a moan than a sigh. "It's not that. When we were apart on the yacht I kept thinking it'd just be okay if I could see you and touch you again, but it doesn't matter how close we are, I just want to be closer. It feels like I'm fighting, fighting, fighting all the time -- I don't think I'm gonna be able to stand another five minutes of this, and it might be five days or weeks or even longer --" She broke off. "Being close to you isn't the problem, Angel. The problem is I can't get close enough."
She looked up at me, her face aching with a frustration and longing that perfectly mirrored my own.
In that instant, I knew I would do anything, anything at all, if it would make her happy.
I kissed her.
Her lips were still cold, but the inside of her mouth was warm like the heat radiating on to us from the fire. A faint flavor of seawater still clung to her, but the more deeply we kissed, the purer her taste became, until I felt as if I were kneeling at the clearest spring.
I forced myself to stop kissing her long enough to say, "I don't want to take advantage --"
"You're not," Cordelia whispered, tipping back her head so I could kiss her throat, starting under her chin and working my way down to her breast bone.
"You're not in control of yourself," I murmured into the hollow between her breasts.
"And you are?" When she spoke, the vibrations from her chest tickled my lips. "If you want, we can stop and both sign waivers."
She curled one arm around me, and I felt her index finger tracing a pattern of lines and curves on my shoulder. C, O, R... I realized she was signing her name on my skin.
"I don't want to stop," I said, and lifted my head just enough to look her in the eye. She looked back at me, her gaze a heady mixture of excitement and certainty.
"Me either," she said.
She slid downward, so she was no longer sitting but was instead lying beneath me. She reached up, looping both arms around the back of my neck, and the towel which had been draped around her shoulders slid off her and on to the sand. The second towel she was wearing covered her upper body, tucked so that it stayed in place just below her arms, and the third was rolled around her waist. Slowly, deliberately, I unfolded them, opening out each one in turn. I felt as if I were unwrapping a perfect, priceless gift.
When I had finished, Cordelia was lying naked under me on a soft white bed of hotel towels. I could feel the heat rising off her, see the slow ripple of gooseflesh moving across her as the cold air caressed her skin.
"Touch me," she said. Her voice was low and husky and slightly breathless. I could hear the hunger in it.
"Where?"
She arched her back, lifting her chest toward me. "Everywhere. Oh, God, just -- everywhere."
I put my hands on either side of her waist -- my thumbs almost met just above her belly button -- and slowly brushed my palms upward, marveling at the way her body seemed to hum and tremble under my touch. I cupped her breasts, one in each hand, their cool softness a contrast to the tiny, hard knot at the center of each. I ducked my head and let my lips brush each one in turn; when she cried out in response, I felt something rise within me, a swell of water becoming a wave, starting to move toward the distant shore.
I worked my hands over her body slowly, methodically, thoroughly. I marveled at how every part of her felt slightly different. Just under her breasts was as delicate and yielding as fine silk, but when I put my hand on her hip I could feel the solid resistance of muscle and bone working together as she changed her position. I wanted to know every inch of her, leave nothing unexplored.
When I had visited every other possible destination on her body, I tracked my fingers upward, along the inside of her thigh, burying them in the soft, dark mat I found there. The triangle of hair was as dark against her pale stomach as the hair on her head was as it fanned out against the sand. I worked my way deeper, until I was touching the source of her warmth, the furnace burning at her core.
She gasped and raised her hips, pushing against me, tightening her thighs, squeezing my hand between them.
Then she unhooked her arms from around my neck and started to unbutton my shirt. It was a relief when she tugged it off -- the warmth of the fire and her fingertips on my bare skin were infinitely preferable to clammy, damp material. "I want to touch you," she said, starting to undo my belt.
A second later I felt the fire's heat on the backs of my legs. Then her hands were on me, squeezing and compressing me in exquisite, unbearable tightness. At the same time I could feel her working herself against my trapped hand, chafing against my palm. The growing wave inside me surged forward, threatened to break. I extricated my hand from between her thighs and used it to break her hold on me.
Cordelia gave a moan that was thick with raw need and desperation. The sound of it was almost enough to do what I'd been afraid her touch would. But not quite.
"Not close enough," she said. "Closer."
Her legs parted and slid outward, making ridges in the sand. I planted my hands on either side of her and lowered myself so that we were chest to chest, belly to belly, skin against skin. We were as close as it was possible to get. It still wasn't close enough.
Cordelia slipped her hand between our bodies and took hold of me again, but this time it was to guide me into her. As I entered her, I felt a sense of completion; we fitted each other, two halves of a whole, entire only when joined. It felt so right, so essential, that I took a second to wonder why we'd ever believed we had to fight this.
I slid in and out of her slowly, savoring the intimacy of the touch, the intensity of sensation. As we moved together, the sand underneath the towels shifted to accommodate us, molding to fit our bodies. In this position, I could look down at Cordelia; her eyes were closed, her lips parted, her face tight with arousal and need. I quickened the rhythm of our movement, and saw her bite down on her lower lip in an effort to control her mounting pleasure. The sight of it excited me, made it harder to keep control myself.
Then she opened her eyes and looked up at me. Her gaze was piercing, clear, accepting. My oldest memories tell me that when humans look deeply into another person's eyes, they see themselves reflected there. I didn't reflect in Cordelia's pupils any more than I reflect anywhere else, but when I looked deep into her gaze, I saw something much better than myself. I saw her.
I pushed into her, more deeply than before, as deep as I could go. Finally, we were close enough.
"I'm gonna, I'm gonna --" She broke off, gasped, and then I felt a long, sweet shudder pass up through her body, making her tremble from feet to fingertips. She gasped, then shouted, her voice rising above the distant sound of the waves breaking on the shore. I felt her clench around me, as a dam deep, deep within her burst, releasing a euphoric tide. And I saw the tension in her face dissolve as bliss overtook her.
Her body became liquid against mine, fluid and pliant. As she relaxed, limbs loosening, the last spasms deep inside her carried me onward, a rip-tide I was helpless to resist. I felt the wave breaking inside me, starting at the point where our bodies met and spreading outwards, washing away everything in its path.
When the wave finally subsided, I lay still for a moment, exhausted and grateful, like a shipwrecked man washed up on a welcoming shore after the storm. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the Pacific breaking on the beach, over and over, the ocean caressing the land with the gentleness of a lover's touch.
I rolled off Cordelia, and made a hollow in the sand beside her. Then I pulled the towels over both of us like blankets, so that we were swaddled together in a cocoon made warm by the fire and her body heat.
"Shoulda done that way sooner," Cordelia said, smiling drowsily at me.
I wanted to agree, but before I could we were both asleep.
***
I was woken up by cold water lapping at my feet.
I sat up. The sky was still dark, although the moon was setting and the buzz at the back of my head told me dawn was not far off.
The fire had gone out, although the ashes of the Hotel Pacific View's beach mats would smolder for some time yet -- if the incoming tide didn't swallow them up first. That was what had woken me; while Cordelia and I had slept, the sea had crept up the beach, and now the most far-reaching of the advancing waves had reached my feet. Cordelia, still wrapped up in the towels, had curled up next to me, fetal-style. She was still dry and warm, and slept on, in blissful ignorance of the advancing ocean.
I put out my hand to wake her up and tell her she needed to move, then thought better of it when I saw the look on her sleeping face. She was smiling faintly, immersed in some pleasant dream -- one, I hoped, where she lived in a world without enchantments or evil demons, where Doyle was alive and there were plenty of shoes. I didn't want to have to bring her back from that place before I absolutely had to.
Very carefully, I got up and lifted her in my arms. Then I carried her to a spot above the tide line, and set her down gently, still swathed in the towels. I pulled on my shirt and pants -- they were dry now, and stiff with salt -- and sat down next to her, bending my legs and resting my arms on my knees and looking out at the ocean. Next to the Pacific's vast and timeless expanse, I felt mortal.
After a while, I noticed that the incoming tide was washing something on to the beach -- some kind of debris. Curious, I got up and walked the short distance down to the water's edge. I found some shattered wood and fiberglass panels, of sufficiently different sizes and shapes to convince me I was looking at the wreckage of not one but two small vessels.
Another wave broke over my feet, carrying more pieces of wreckage. But these were different. When I reached down into the surf and picked up an item at random, I found I was holding a small plastic package. The package had been punctured by the ocean, and was now little more than a shriveled husk, but a small amount of white residue still clung to its interior. It looked like flour-and-water paste and was probably about as valuable.
I turned the package over in my hand -- and froze.
A single, iridescent scale was sticking to the underside of the plastic. It glittered harshly in the moonlight.
The water lapped around my ankles, and I looked down. All around my bare feet floated a collection of empty plastic packages and shimmering, reptilian scales.
I remembered Jameela gloating as she made her escape in the Delilah's tiny dinghy, taking Michael Hunter's shipment of illegal drugs with her. I remembered the powerboat that had sped recklessly past Cordelia and myself as we swam to safety. And I remembered the crashing noise we had heard once we reached the beach.
I held the scale up in the moonlight, hardly daring to believe in the string of coincidences required to make what I thought had happened possible. The scale was sharp, and I cut myself on it as I examined it. Even dead, Jameela was still dangerous.
But she was dead.
I looked to where Cordelia lay sleeping. As an experiment, I walked along the water's edge, away from her. I looked back several times, but I didn't feel a compulsion to return to her. I didn't feel unreasoning panic when I deliberately walked behind a sand dune, blocking her from my sight for a minute or more.
I walked ten yards further along the sand, twenty, forty. I was further away from Cordelia than I had been in days, and I was okay. Jameela was dead; the magic that had bound Cordelia and myself together had been broken.
It was over, I realized with a growing sense of relief. The part of the enchantment that had kept us physically tied to each other had already dispersed; pretty soon I could expect the confusing, conflicting emotions I'd been feeling about Cordelia in the past few days to dissolve away, too.
Pretty soon.
Any time about now, in fact.
Any time.
And then I remembered something else. If the crash we had heard had been the sound of Jameela's dinghy colliding with the powerboat, that meant the Siren had been dead, and the spell broken, for hours. It also meant that when Cordelia and I had made love, we'd already been free of the enchantment.
I recalled Jameela's last words to me: When I die, she won't want you any more. Well, Jameela had been wrong.
And so had I.
I'd told myself it I could make love to Cordelia because I didn't love her. That I was safe from the curse because what I was doing was for her happiness and not my own. That I was acting under the influence of powerful magic, and not on my own desires at all.
In the face of all the available evidence, I'd somehow convinced myself I wasn't in love with Cordelia.
Like I said, I can be really stupid sometimes.
Slowly, like a man in a dream -- or maybe a man waking from one -- I walked back up the beach to where I had left Cordelia. She was still asleep, and I knelt beside her, taking care not to disturb her. There was sand sticking to her cheek, and seaweed in her hair. She was beautiful.
But she wasn't going to stay asleep forever. Sooner or later she'd wake up, and I had to decide what I was going to tell her when she did.
With sudden clarity, I saw a number of possible futures branching out from this moment. There was one future where I told Cordelia how I felt, and she responded in exactly the way you'd expect someone to react to a confession of love from a guy whose last serious relationship resulted in multiple homicides and a near-apocalypse. There was another possible future where she felt the same way about me -- but I already knew how that future turned out, because it was my recent past. I'd played out that story with Buffy, and I knew how it would end -- in bitterness, with me walking out of Cordelia's life before she hated me for everything I couldn't give her.
Then there was another future, one where I couldn't be Cordelia's lover, but I remained her friend. In that future, I saw her every day, shared her problems and her triumphs, and my life was better because she was part of it.
I knew which future I preferred.
Cordelia stirred and blinked sleepily. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Hi," I said.
She looked at me suspiciously. "Okay, I gotta ask -- are you evil?"
"No," I said. "Never further from it."
Cordelia gave a relieved sigh. "Oh, good. 'Cause I thought I was gonna have to remind you of something bad if you looked like you were getting too happy. Like death or taxes."
"I'm already dead," I pointed out, "and I don't pay taxes."
Cordelia sat up, pulling one of the towels around herself. She took a deep breath and then exhaled. "Well, I guess we'd better head back to my apartment. We'll get Sorcha's number from Doyle's address book, give her a call and ask if she knows anything else about enchantment breaking."
"No need," I said. "Jameela's dead."
Cordelia stared at me, the look on her face one of almost comical bemusement. "What? When? How?"
"She -- ah, she --" I hesitated, then made a decision. It would be easier on both of us if Cordelia believed, and kept believing, that what had happened between us had been purely the result of magic, and nothing else. "She landed on the beach in the Delilah's dinghy just a little while ago. We fought and -- well, and I won. She's dead."
"You had a fight to the death -- and I slept right through it?" The look on Cordelia's face was a mismatch of hope and skepticism.
"You were pretty exhausted," I said, aware of just how lame my version of events sounded.
Cordelia was silent for a second. Then: "She's really dead?"
"She's really dead," I said, and held up the scale I'd found in the water as proof.
"Then we're -- disenchanted." A wide smile lit Cordelia's face. "Angel, you're my hero!"
She threw her arms around me and hugged me fiercely. The towel she'd pulled around herself slipped down, and I hugged her back stiffly and a little awkwardly, not sure where to put my hands.
Cordelia pulled away from me, and frowned. "What's wrong?"
Unconvincingly, I said, "Nothing. Nothing's wrong."
She eyed me. "You're not gonna go all When Harry Met Sally on me, are you?"
I got up and fetched Cordelia's blouse and jeans. They were wrinkled and salt-stained, but they would do until she could change into clean clothes.
As I handed them to her, she said, "Angel, you're not answering the question."
"I'm still trying to work out what the question is," I said.
"AN-gel. You know -- When Harry Met Sally. Classic romcom, Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, the restaurant scene, 'I'll have what she's having.' Don't tell me you've never heard of When Harry Met Sally."
"I've never heard of it," I said. "Is it a movie?"
"Yes, it's a movie." Cordelia looked at me, her voice and face uncharacteristically serious. "It's about a man and woman who are best friends, then they sleep together and it nearly ruins everything."
There was that word again. Friends. I liked the way it sounded when Cordelia said it.
I took hold of Cordelia's hand -- this time by choice rather than compulsion. "Real life is not like the movies."
She smiled at me, and I could see the relief in her eyes. "No," she said. "It's much, much weirder."
Then she got up, and I went back to watching the ocean while she got dressed. When I looked around, she was trying, unsuccessfully, to undo the damage that a swim in the ocean and a night on the beach had done to her hairstyle. "I have never needed conditioner as much as I do right now. The first thing we're doing is going to my place."
"Actually," I said, eyeing the lightening sky, "the first thing we have to do is get the car. It's still parked back at the marina."
"Is there time to walk there before the sun comes up?"
"I don't know," I said. "I'm not sure how far along the coast we are."
"I vote we don't take the chance," Cordelia said. "I'll get the car and drive it back here. If it gets light before then, you've got somewhere to go to avoid going crispy."
The Pacific View's beach hut wouldn't be roomy, but I wouldn't have to stay in it for long. "Okay. We'll do that," I said, and threw Cordelia the keys to the Plymouth.
She caught them, and started to walk up the beach. But she hadn't gone more than a few yards when she hesitated and looked back.
"Feels kind of weird," she said. "Walking away, I mean."
"You're coming back," I said.
"I am," Cordelia said. Then she turned around and walked over the first sand dune, and out of my sight.
Dawn was still some minutes away; I didn't have to retreat to shelter just yet, and so I walked back down to the water's edge. The stars were becoming less visible in the brightening sky, and the ocean was slowly turning from a black expanse to a blue one.
Sunrise was Buffy's favorite part of the day. Although she never said so, I think it was because every new day she saw was proof she'd emerged victorious from the night that preceded it. It's been two and a half centuries since I last saw the sun come up; when I briefly wore the gem of Amarra, I watched the sun set, then destroyed the ring before it rose again. Fear of the sun's light is as much a part of me as constant thirst, and what I was seeing now -- a lightening of the sky from black to gray, the faintest blush of color in the sea -- was as much of the dawn as I would ever experience.
Unconsciously, I put my hand in my pocket, and was surprised when I found something there. When I took it out, I saw it was a scrap of paper, brittle and fragile and almost unrecognizable. Then I saw Doyle's faint handwriting, and realized it was the lottery ticket Cordelia had found in his apartment. The blurred word JAMEELA was the only part of his last message which was still legible. I couldn't help thinking we could have avoided a lot of trouble in the last couple of days if he'd just taken the time to write something a little more prescriptive, like KILL JAMEELA.
The other side of the ticket had been erased by the sea; Doyle's lottery numbers had been washed away. The drawing would have been yesterday, I remembered, and I wondered for a second if he'd won anything, and if, by a capricious turn of fate, I was holding a dead man's winning ticket.
But coincidences do happen; fate does intervene. Coincidence had killed Jameela, and fate had brought Cordelia into my life.
Suddenly I remembered something Cordelia had said about Doyle when she found the ticket. She'd said he never stopped believing he'd get lucky, if he just waited long enough.
That sounded like a pretty good philosophy to me.
The sun was about to come up. I went into the beach hut, closed the door, and settled in to wait for Cordelia.
END