Life had been slow to return to normal after the destruction of Sunnydale. Not that it had ever been normal to begin with. There were Slayers to train; many, many Slayers, to track down all over the world; and no longer any real Watchers' Council to provide support. Giles didn't miss the Watchers. They had always had their issues with him, finding fault with his methods and his character, but goodness knew their infamous resources would have been useful in the task of tracking the former Potentials, and setting them upon their new calling. Buffy had been wonderful, alternating her first real chance at exploring the world with finding Slayers and showing them all that they could do. Dawn was useful too, her new talents for study and research giving her the book learning that was always beneficial in training a new Slayer. She was no Watcher, certainly, but she was as good as they could get right now. Willow too, making a formidable team with her own Slayer partner, Kennedy, taking a different part of the world to carry on the search there. Giles had been kept busy beetling about between the two pairs, carrying on his own search the rest of the time, gathering Slayers and hunting out any Watchers who might have survived the catastrophic attack on the organisation. There were few enough of them, but from the furthest corners of the Earth they came in the end; the outcasts, the black sheep, the handful who had been fired. Old, young, and everything in between, they came together at his call. A potential new Council, but one that would have made the old one cringe and shiver. None of them had a past quite as questionable as his own, but they had all managed to bring the wrath of the old Council down upon them at some point. It had saved their lives, but whether or not that would turn out to be for the best in the fight against evil, only time would tell.
But for now, at least, Giles was on holiday. Or taking a short break at any rate. He had landed at Heathrow Airport in the early hours of the afternoon, found his way back to his London flat in a daze of jet lag and general sleepiness, and fallen onto the nearest couch as soon as he had staggered his way upstairs. His eccentric housekeeper had followed him all the way up to the top floor, offering one hundred and one ancient recipes supposedly guaranteed to pep him up and make him feel ready to face the world, but all he had wanted was sleep. He awoke in darkness, and the realisation that, for the first time in many weeks, he didn't have anything to do. He could just lie here for as long as it suited him.
Ten minutes later he was bored. Great. All this time he had been dying for a holiday. Now he had one and he didn't know what to do with it. Could it be that he was really so much a part of his calling that he had nothing to fill his time outside of Watcher/Slayer business? All his usual forms of recreation seemed involved with it somehow; reading, writing, research. He could play music of course; put some on the stereo, sit and strum his guitar, go out and find a club with a live act playing - but that didn't seem enough to fill the next seven days before he and the rest of the Scoobies had agreed to meet up again in Vienna, their respective vacations completed. He wished he could believe that they were all finding it as hard to occupy their time, but he didn't believe that for a moment. Maybe he should have taken up Willow and Kennedy's offer to accompany them surfing in Australia - if that wouldn't have just been weird. And probably intrusive. And... definitely weird.
So it was just him - him and a threat from Andrew to drop by on a visit some time. Andrew had latched on to him for some reason, and was filled with grand ideas about visiting Britain, and touring ancient monuments that he had read about in his erratic researches. Giles could only hope that he lost his passport, or got kidnapped by vampires, or fell down a hole or something. Anything would do, so long as it kept him from turning up in London looking to hang with his favourite Watcher. At least he didn't know about this flat. Very few people did. He would probably find his way to Bath in the end, and wander around there looking lost, wondering when the twenty-first century had arrived. He had a firm conviction that he would find England filled with horse-drawn carriages and dark, Jacobean mansions housing ill-tempered ghosts. One of these days, Giles was going to have to have a talk with him about the books he was using for his 'research'.
Rising to his feet, stretching limbs cramped from their awkward sleeping place, he checked the small tower of mail waiting on the desk. Postcards from Ethan, sent from a dozen locations world-wide; a letter from Olivia; several invitations to the sort of parties he himself had used to throw back in the seventies - and which the police would probably love to be tipped off about; and the first consignment of books he had ordered to replace the library lost when Sunnydale had disappeared into the earth. He put Olivia's letter off to one side, promising himself that he would sit down to read it later and give it the concentration it no doubt deserved, when he had a nice glass of fine brandy to keep it company. Ethan's postcards didn't take long to read; most of them were only a couple of sentences long. Egypt great, read one. Buggered up a spell and got hexed, but everything worn off okay. Some things never changed. The books he unwrapped carefully, giving them the courtesy they seemed to demand. Most were several hundred years old. He pitied the postman. Rosie, the generally odd housekeeper, would have made him carry all this stuff upstairs rather than doing it herself, and the books must have weighed a ton. They were all the thick, leather-bound type, with a thousand or so pages, and with bands of metal to close them against prying eyes. Not the sort of thing you could order from anything like a conventional source. Compulsive reading though, with their grim tales, blood-soaked histories, grotesque true-life characters, and spells of mass destruction. The sorts of books written by people who didn't live long after completing the task; or who were already dead when they began it. He locked them into a huge oaken chest off to one side of the room, burying them beneath a rug hand-woven in India five hundred years before, and which allegedly possessed the power to fly. Not exactly an impenetrable vault, but secure enough. It was unlikely that any thief would make it past the spells that guarded the outer walls, anyway.
He picked up Olivia's letter then, pouring out a glass of his best brandy, and settling himself down in a favourite chair. Her handwriting on the envelope was perfect; beautifully shaped and formed, and she had drawn a little monster on the back, where the flap was sealed closed. Olivia might never fully accept what he did, or why he had to do it, but she was growing more at ease with it now. If ease could ever really be the right word. He smiled at her greeting at the top of the page, and at the sound of her voice that her written words produced in his head. She was in America on business, needless to say, so there was little chance of their getting together during his break. They always seemed to be too busy to get together these days, save for the odd beautiful coincidence. South Italy three months ago... Now that had created a few happy memories. Rather a lot of happy memories come to that. His mind drifted back to thoughts of rough new wine from lofty vineyards, and quiet strolls in the lukewarm dusk. The pair of them, giggling like schoolchildren as they hid from Buffy and Dawn in the villa they had rented together. It had been a wonderful handful of days.
"Olivia." He spoke her name with great satisfaction, a probably stupid smile plastered across his face; and from behind him, interrupting his dreamy thoughts, came a quiet, discreet cough. He sighed. Rosie again, no doubt, bringing some half remembered message left by one of his dodgy old acquaintances. Except that Rosie never coughed discreetly, and couldn't possibly have been behind him. Nobody could, unless they had been here, hiding, since before he had woken up. Rising very slowly to his feet, hand sliding quietly towards the letter opener resting nearby, he turned around. The rest of the room was dark; a place of shadows thrown by multitudes of bookcases. It was hard to distinguish one object from another; to see one thing in the midst of the murk and the gloom; but a human shape was there - or seemed to be. A tall human shape, bathed in dark colours beyond those of the shadows and the clouded moon. Realising that it had been seen, the figure moved forward, and Giles held the letter opener up in warning. Not that it had much of a blade on it, but it would stab, if it had to; and if he put enough force behind the blow. He stilled his hand though, when he recognised his visitor; and instead of attacking, he found himself beginning to smile.
"Bloody hell!" It was a man in his thirties; tall, and slight of build, with mussed up hair and several days worth of stubble. He was dressed in black jeans and a leather jacket, and the purple shirt that completed the ensemble was so far from Giles's mental image of the man that his smile soon became a laugh. "Sorry. I just, er... Never mind." He frowned. "How did you get in here?"
"I walked through the wall." The man, who in what seemed another lifetime had been Giles's colleague in the now destroyed Watcher organisation, came a little closer. Giles could see the changes in his face then; the changes that went deeper than stubble, less than perfect hair, and an absence of glasses. There was maturity, darkness and the echo of traumas old and new. The smile was new as well. Giles's previous experience of the smiles of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was of something that inspired the wish for violence; smug, self-satisfied smiles, smacking of the Watcher Council's special brand of arrogance. This was something different though. This was warm and almost friendly.
"Through the wall?" He was surprised, then impressed, then worried, in pretty much that order. "I'd heard that you were building up your magical powers. Quentin Travers expressed some concern about it the last time we met. But are you really up to transcendentals now?"
"No. Not exactly." Wesley was still smiling faintly, a teasing glint in his eyes. Teasing? Wesley? Giles shook his head, trying to make the oddities translate into sense. What the hell was the man doing here, in England, claiming to have walked through his wall? And why was he dressed in the sort of clothes he would never have dreamed of wearing, back in their days together in Sunnydale? He had been a man of suits and ties then; every stitch placed exactly, and every millimetre of cloth pressed to perfection. Shined shoes, gleaming glasses; the antithesis of all he now seemed to be. "Giles, I--"
"You're undercover." It made sense, in a peculiar way. He was pretending to be somebody else. "Some case for Wolfram & Hart, which I really don't want to know about. I think I've made my feelings quite clear on that score. If you're going to involve yourself with an organisation like that, you can handle the problems it causes without coming to me for assistance."
"Undercover?" Wesley sounded frustrated. "I'm not undercover. And I'm not here for Wolfram & Hart. We're finished with them now, or at least I think we are. It's complicated, and quite frankly--" He broke off. "What makes you think I'm undercover?"
"The, er..." Giles's eyes travelled up and down, once again taking in the clothing and the stubble. "It's a new look for you. That's all. With the, er..." He gestured with the hand that didn't have the letter opener in it, then shrugged and shook his head. "Never mind. I-- No, never mind. So you're in to transcendental projection now? I'm impressed. Is your body back in Los Angeles?"
"Probably." Wesley's smile suggested a joke that Giles didn't share. "I'm not projecting myself, Giles. This isn't magic. Or... not the kind you mean. And why is it never easy to explain anything to you? I'm dead. Stone cold. Long gone. Passed over. Or... some of the way. That's how I managed to walk through your wall. And I came here for a reason, so--"
"You're dead?" It wasn't exactly a common conversation to have with somebody, even in Giles's line of work, which might explain some of the confusion. "I... I had heard rumours, to be honest. I was beginning to suspect... But no one seemed to have seen your body. Nobody seems to know where it is."
"Yes, I know. I'm a little concerned about that myself." Wesley shrugged, very faintly. "But it's difficult to do anything about such things when you're dead." He stopped, a gentler look coming into his eyes. "You know that Angel is dead too? I know you were friends, of a sort, anyway. And I know that you didn't agree with his recent career choices, but... I thought you'd like to know."
"Yes." Giles looked away, unbidden memories of wishing for Angel's death floating into his mind, along with images of Jenny Calendar, and far too many hours tied to a chair in a little dark room. So many kinds of pain. But there were other memories, which would always come to make the worst ones easier to bear. "Again, I'd heard rumours. Nothing confirmed. Is he, er..." He looked around, half expecting the big, perpetually brooding vampire to appear through one of the walls. Wesley shook his head.
"He's watching over Buffy. It's strange, but with all we've been through, all we've done, I've never seen him so happy as he is now. Really happy, with no fear of unleashing Angelus. Perhaps it's redemption, of a sorts."
"All of which is at least as weird you being here. I... So you're a ghost? A wandering spirit?"
"I know what a ghost is, Giles. Watcher, remember? Or ex-Watcher, anyway."
"You're certainly an ex-Watcher now." Giles forced the grin from his face. "Sorry. So it really is true that your whole team went down? I've been picking up bits of a story here and there, but it's not the first time, so I rather ignored it. There was a rumour once before that Angel and Cordelia were both dead. And then that they'd come back. And then that Cordelia was gone again. Los Angeles is a complicated place, when it comes to rumour."
"Things happen there. Lots of things. This time the rumours are true." The slight shoulders shrugged. "Or they appear to be. We died. Or I'm rather assuming that we did. It... wasn't what I'd expected, frankly. I'm not sure what I was expecting... but it's fair to say it wasn't Cordelia, talking about higher planes. I think she's an angel now, which... is an odd choice."
"Nothing warm, white and floaty?" That was more or less as Buffy had described the place she had found herself in when she had died. A place of peace and contentment. Wesley smiled.
"Not really, no. Actually I wound up in the lobby of the Hyperion hotel, where we used to have our offices. Cordelia was the closest I got to Saint Peter, which... isn't very close at all, when you think about it. One minute it's 'You're dead, how very careless,' and the next it's 'There's still plenty you can be doing.' It's... strange. Very strange. But I will say one thing for it. It's a whole lot easier to stake vampires when you're dead. They have much less chance of killing you."
"You... I don't... But never mind." Giles shook his head once more, still trying to make everything work itself out inside his brain. It didn't look like it was going to be doing so any time soon. "You can still stake vampires?"
"Well, no. I can move ornaments about with a bit of concentration. But maybe one day." Wesley raised his eyebrows. "You know, nice though it is to have this opportunity to catch up, Giles, I really did come here for a reason. It's not like I've been assigned to you full time. I have a mission. You have a mission."
"If you tell me you're my spirit guide, I'll start an exorcism right away." Giles threw down the letter opener that he suddenly found he was still holding. "Listen, Wesley... I'm sorry. I should have said that straight away. I... confess that I wanted to kill you myself the last time we met... but I would never really have wished you dead. You're a young man still."
"Was a young man. Sort of. I didn't feel like one anymore, to be honest. Life is complicated, Giles. For me, perhaps more so than most. I could explain some things, but quite honestly I don't want to. Suffice to say, death has given me something of a new perspective, so forget the sympathy card, and let me tell you why I'm here. It's important, or so I'm told. Very important. Presumably these things usually are."
"Presumably. It's not often a ghost turns up on my doorstep claiming to be bringing me important news, so I'd imagine that it's a rarity at least." He sat down on the arm of his chair, and gestured to the younger man. "Go ahead. You said something about a mission. Is this something I want to hear, or something I want to get as far away from as I possibly can?"
"That would probably depend on your outlook." Wesley came closer, sitting down on the edge of the desk beside Giles's chair. He seemed able to sit well, as though some part of his consciousness that was used to solidity enabled him to perform such tasks well enough, whatever his current non-corporeal status. "Given that it was Cordelia who sent me, I suppose you should be wondering if you've ever done anything she might be wanting revenge for."
"Ouch." That was a tough one. There had been all manner of subtle insults in the old days, when Cordelia had been an obnoxious teenaged girl, and one more of the many problems against which Giles had had to struggle every day of his Sunnydale life. And now she was some kind of angel, apparently, sending dead men on voyages to the land of the living. There was a lesson there, in always being nice to everybody, because of never knowing how they might one day be placed; but the writers of such morals were never the ones who had actually had to put up with Cordelia during her high school beauty queen phase, so what did they know? He shook his head. "I'm sorry. It's just that, you, Cordelia - it all seems just a little too much to believe. The last time I saw you, you were a bumbling idiot. And I'm not going to apologise for that. Buffy and Willow both said that you'd been through a few changes, but I still don't really see you as the sort of person that some higher power is going to see fit to pull back to this plane of existence for whatever reason. Let alone the sort of person who would be sent to me, in whatever form, to pass on a... a 'mission', from - from who exactly? From Cordelia? Because that's looking rather hard to believe as well from where I'm standing. Cordelia, an angel? She might have turned out to have a good heart beneath the... faintly nauseous exterior... But an angel?"
"You want some kind of proof? I could move ornaments about with my mind before I died, Giles. It's elementary sorcery. I could manipulate the lights and make things glow too. If I walk through a wall you'll just go back to this 'transcendental projection' nonsense - which, for your information, I cracked a long time ago. I just never really found any point to it. It happens to be ever so slightly annoying being non-corporeal. Spike got the hang of it, and I fully intend to do so myself, but for the time being at least, it's a pain in the backside. I wouldn't take it on by choice!" He drew in a deep breath, which had to have been a purely instinctive motion, and then fixed Giles with an intensity in his gaze that was truly off putting. Either death had brought the man new self-confidence, or he truly had been through some gargantuan changes before he had died. Such intensity did not belong to the Wesley Wyndam-Pryce of memory.
"And Cordelia?" Giles asked, feeling a little subdued. Wesley smiled fondly.
"You wouldn't believe the things she's done. The way she changed. When she died... it felt like the end of everything. But the way she died. Everything it meant. If she truly is an angel now, Giles, then she deserves it. Every sparkle and shine on the wings she might one day wear." He frowned. "Do angels actually have wings, or is trying to win them merely metaphorical? The books were always a little unclear on the subject."
"I don't know." For the first time since Wesley had appeared, Giles found himself softening a little. "I can't say that I've ever met one. Apparently I don't move in the right circles."
"If rumours about your past are true, Giles, you and the right circles couldn't be further apart. But then I'd have said the same thing myself, once upon a time. I expected to find myself on the fastest escalator down into hell, as soon as my heart stopped beating. But then I'd more or less forgotten that I had a heart, so perhaps I wasn't the best judge. All the same, I was quite convinced that there was some innermost level of hell, set aside just for me."
"I think we all believe that. It's something to do with being a Watcher. Never being the hero, only the one who does the things that the hero shouldn't have to do." Giles found that he was smiling, and no longer with amusement at the expense of his guest. "Alright. Go ahead. What is it that you came here to tell me?"
"Twelve centuries ago, a sorcerer named Philarbus was studying his art in Italy. It was the Dark Ages in much of the world, and there was little worthy of celebration going on in the lands around him. Eventually the people became afraid of him, and he was burned at the stake. Much of his property was burned too. His former neighbours built a gigantic bonfire out of his possessions, and his house was knocked into rubble before being burnt as well."
"Yes, the story does ring a bell. After the fire went out, a secret room was found beneath the ruins of the house, containing all manner of magical artefacts. Books, dried ingredients, parchments dating back nobody knew how long. Wonderful things, or would have been if they had survived. The people who found it all set fire to the room immediately. It spread so fast, and the heat was so intense, that only one of the arsonists escaped."
"True." Wesley nodded slowly. "But what most accounts don't say, is that there was something else, besides the firestarter, which survived. A box. It was found in the middle of the secret room, three days later, when the fire had finally cooled enough to allow people to enter. One box, untouched by the flames, as cold as if it had never been near a fire in all its days. They tried to open it, but they couldn't. In the end, afraid by what it might be, they sent it to the Vatican, for study or destruction. It never arrived. Rumours persisted about it for years. It had been stolen, it had been destroyed. Demons had arisen from hell to steal it away from the messengers carrying it. Any number of tales, each more extravagant than the last. Then, earlier this year, it finally turned up."
"A box belonging to Philarbus?" Giles whistled. "Now that would be something to study. Is there any indication of what's inside it? Has anybody examined it? Have you seen it?"
"No. Nobody has, not really. Including Wolfram & Hart, who are very anxious to find out what's in it. So far they haven't been able to get anybody inside the vault where it's hidden."
"Which is where I come in."
"Which is where both of us come in. The box was stolen, when it was on its way to the Vatican, by one of Philarbus' greatest rivals, a former scientist and philosopher who had turned to magic after conventional studies had failed him. He believed that the box contained the ultimate secrets of magic, and perhaps even the secret of eternal youth." He shrugged. "Yes, well. What good story of magic doesn't involve that particular rumour? But this man - Corbio - was certain that the box contained something that would make him rich and powerful, and all the other things that people crave in such stories. But he never managed to open it. He became obsessed with it; more and more consumed with the idea that it contained great secrets and treasures, and that others would one day try to take them from him. He had it locked into a great vault, which he used all his knowledge to build - and the knowledge of certain demons with which he had supposedly made deals. And there it remained."
"Until some crusading archaeologist uncovered it?" Like most scholars, Giles was fond of archaeology - but there were times when he wished that people would be a little more circumspect about what they dug up. It seemed that ancient demons, old magicks, and any number of vengeful spirits had been re-released upon the world by historians who had dug somewhere that they shouldn't. Wesley shook his head.
"I doubt any ordinary archaeologist could reach the vault. That's where we come in, remember? No, in this case it was some pieces of parchment that were dug up. A series of writings by Corbio, which confirmed that it was him who took the box, and hid it. Wolfram & Hart went on the alert instantly, and began attempts to recover the box. It's only a matter of time, with their resources, before they get to it. Somebody else has to get to it first. Whatever is in that box, whether it's something good, something terrible, or even nothing at all, Wolfram & Hart consider it worth their attention; and that means that they have to be prevented from claiming it. The Senior Partners... well let's just say that recently I've had even more cause than before to see what they're like. What sort of things they do, and why. It's important that somebody else gets to that box before they do."
"I can imagine." Giles nodded slowly. "So what sort of a task is it likely to be? And more to the point, why come to me about it? I might keep myself in good shape, especially with all the work that I've had to do lately - but something like this is a task for a Slayer, surely? You're not telling me this is going to be an easy ride?"
"A Slayer?" Wesley smiled fondly. "I'd trust my Slayer - or yours - to fight her way into any vault and come through it unscathed; if that was all that was called for. But neither Faith nor Buffy, nor any of your new army could do what's required to break into this vault. We can't take your whole gang, Giles. The fewer people the better."
"So what is required? Brains rather than brawn?"
"In a sense. Corbio was a Watcher. To open the vault requires Watcher blood, so neither Faith nor Buffy would be any use there. The way to the vault is marked out in a fashion that Corbio believed would guard it from all save himself. A labyrinth of some kind, with obscure languages to guide you through the passages, and doors guarded by magicks that only a sorcerer could break. If I was still alive I'd do this myself, but as it is there's too much I probably wouldn't be able to do. It very likely requires a living, breathing man - a living, breathing Watcher - to go in and do what needs to be done. I can translate the languages you don't understand, and if any of the magic is beyond the sorts of thing you do nowadays, I can help out there too. But it needs somebody who's still got some substance to finish the job. I certainly can't use my blood to open the vault."
"You can still perform magic? Because I have to say, I'm more than a little rusty. These last few years I've tended to let Willow do the lion's share of that kind of thing. She's the one with the real power."
"Yes, I know." For a second the intensity in Wesley's eyes warmed into something fond, then snapped back into full hardness again in an instant. "I can do magic. Admittedly mixing ingredients is a little hit and miss just at the moment, but I can still do magic." He scowled. "It's frustrating. Spike can move things with remarkable precision just by using his... ghostly powers, if you want to call them that. But then he does have previous experience of course. Me? I can use magic to make things float, and that's about all. Cordelia says it might be some kind of cosmic punishment for always having worked alone, since I obviously need to work with somebody else just at the moment, but I prefer to think that it's because I haven't got used to all of this yet. Gunn's just as useless. He's taken to popping up in front of vampires and surprising them so much that somebody else can take the opportunity to stake them, but I can't see him being content with that for long." He frowned. "Sorry, you never met Gunn. Suffice to say that he's another friend who managed to get himself killed. I'd think we'd been bloody stupid if it hadn't been so satisfying, even for just an instant."
"You make quite the case for dying in battle, you know. Fight, die, and carry on the fight regardless."
"Maybe." Wesley's eyes faded in their focus for a second, and Giles could see that death was perhaps not so great a career move. "It's not all good. Perhaps not even half good. I still have my friends about me, but the one I cared for most is gone forever, and now I could have an eternity to mourn that fact, instead of the fifty odd years I might have had otherwise. I can't feel the night breeze on my face anymore, or taste anything, smell anything, touch anything. That last might change with time, as I've seen it do for Spike, but it'll never be the same. I can only touch other dead people. There's a... a certain lack of satisfaction in that." He smiled faintly. "But I suppose it's better than oblivion. It's certainly better than hell. And, in a way, it's better than my life was towards the end. I'd still prefer to be alive, but now that I'm dead all my mistakes and sorrows no longer haunt me so." He shrugged. "But this is the kind of thing we might swap stories about later, when the box is recovered. We should get moving."
"Time is of the essence, I suppose." Giles sighed. "Isn't it always? But I haven't said that I'll go with you yet, Wesley. For all I know you could be lying. You could be here working for Wolfram & Hart, not against them. You might not even be Wesley."
"I'm not a cyborg disguised by clever spellcasting." Wesley sighed. "So what is it that you want? I could suggest that you ask me a question only Wesley would know the answer to, but we never knew each other well enough for that. I'd ask somebody else to vouch for me, but pretty much everybody I ever knew is dead, and I doubt that the survivors would be much help. Besides, they're all too far away. By the time you could get any of them here, we'd have lost valuable time. The only one close enough to reach in the next few hours is my father, and to be perfectly honest I have no desire to speak with him."
"No, neither do I." Giles had never had much time for Roger Wyndam-Pryce, one of the few Watchers to have survived the recent cull. He had, of course, been called to help with the new organisation, but with a tiny handful of other old guard, had preferred to strike out on his own. Nobody knew what they were up to, those four or five old, reactionary types, who so hated the band of exiles and rebels trying to continue the Council's work. Giles didn't want to know what they were up to. They were from the Quentin Travers school of Watchers, and that meant that they had little in common with him. He didn't trust them. Not a single one of them. He picked up the letter opener, still lying nearby where he had left it, and tossed it casually through his guest. It passed through as though the younger man had not been there, though that in itself was not really the proof he had wanted. He still had his suspicions about a man who had gone to work at a law firm owned by the enemy. In all honesty, though, there was little that would prove Wesley's credentials, save his actions when it came to the crunch; and the only way that could happen was if they went together on this little mission. All of which seemed a particularly reckless way in which to prove something. He sighed.
"I'm supposed to be on holiday," he grumbled, without much true irritation. After all, The Powers That Be, or heaven, or whatever, didn't send dead colleagues to him every day, bearing alleged missions from the angels. Or an angel. Or Cordelia, anyway. Wesley smiled.
"You're bored already. Admit it. My last day on earth I was supposed to be out having fun, and I couldn't think of anything to do. We're cut from the same stuff, you and me. You may have your guitar and your rock music - Spike told me - but you still live for your work. It's in your blood, and in your case that's been true for generations. There were probably members of your family in the Watchers back in the days of Corbio and Philarbus, and they didn't know how to take a holiday either."
"True enough." It hurt, on one level, to be accused of being so limited in his interests, but only because it was something Giles had, a few moments before, been considering himself. He nodded.
"Alright Wesley. I'll go with you. But if you turn out to be evil, or if this turns out to be some kind of a set up, I'll have your soul right down in the hell you always expected it to end up in. And faster than you can say 'poetic justice'. Are we understanding each other?"
"Yes." Wesley's eyes showed gentle acceptance. "I think we understand each other perfectly."
"Good. Then perhaps we'd better be off." Casting a longing glance at the letter from Olivia that he had not yet finished reading, Giles drank down the last of his glass of brandy, and rose to his feet. "Where are we going? Italy?"
"Spain. By the fastest possible route."
"Fine." Giles picked up the telephone, and began to dial. "Then I'll book a seat on the next plane out. Um... do I have to reserve a seat for you too?"
"Very funny." Wesley also stood up, misjudging the movement slightly, so that he wound up standing half in the chair. It was a little off putting. "I'll see you in Madrid. You'll have to rent a car there. Don't hang about Giles; and be on the alert. It's always possible that somebody will be sent to stop you. I don't know how much Wolfram & Hart know."
"That's reassuring." Giles nodded. "I'll be careful."
"Good. Then I'll see you in Madrid." Wesley nodded a brisk farewell and disappeared. Giles stared after him. Something about this was very strange... but then wasn't it always? His life had ceased to be normal on his tenth birthday, when the suspicions about his father's peculiar career had been confirmed. There seemed little sense in looking for normality now. At the other end of the telephone line somebody answered, and he set about booking a ticket to Madrid. Whatever the weirdness, he had to go. This was something he had to investigate for himself.
"You really think that he has a chance?" Her voice was as warm as ever; throaty, musical, filled with flirtation and humour. Wesley sighed. Pleased though he would always be to hear that voice, there were times when it could be a downright annoyance. He turned away from the railing, from which he had been watching the sights of Madrid far below, and fixed his visitor with a frustrated eye.
"You. I should have guessed. Then I was right, and Wolfram & Hart are trying to get the box."
"Of course they are. All those secrets? They're really quite determined." She moved closer to him, and trailed a teasing finger up his arm. "And you've sent Rupert Giles to see if he can beat them - beat me - to the draw. I'd have gone for somebody younger, myself. I'd have sent you."
"If I weren't dead."
"Well, granted that is an obstacle." She laughed lightly. "For you. Personally I don't find it has many drawbacks."
"Our circumstances are slightly different. But I'd rather experience a few corporeality problems than have Wolfram & Hart own my soul."
"Maybe." Her gentle fingers reached his face, and softly stroked his cheek. "But then I'm not you. I don't have a good guy complex. Or any of those pesky morals that seem to make your life so difficult." She ruffled his hair. "Or your death. Whichever."
"Lilah..."
"You could always help me. Let Giles flounder on his own. Wolfram & Hart would be very pleased. They might even give you your body back."
"Then they do have it!" He had been trying to get that piece of information out of her for months. Or weeks. He had rather lost track of whichever it had been; death did strange things to his sense of time. Lilah just grinned at him.
"Not telling. But not because I don't want to, Wes. You have to understand that Wolfram & Hart have their rules, and that some of them even I have to obey."
"I know."
"If you were to help me though, it would be a mark in your favour. Whatever it is they have planned - if they really do have your body - there's a fair chance they'd stop it. You know they resurrected Darla once. They could do the same thing easily enough to Angel and Spike if they wanted to. You and Gunn would be even easier, since you're not just dust. Wes... whatever you might think of me, there are many, many things that I want to spare you from. I'm evil, admittedly... but I'm the evil you can trust."
"Hmm. There's an oxymoron in there somewhere." He took her hand, and finally moved it away from its gentle stroking of his face. "But gosh, I just can't see where. Lilah, go back to your employers, and tell them that it's not going to work. I'm here for a reason, and I'm going to go ahead with it. I'm going to help Giles get into that vault, and we're going to get to that box before you do. There's nothing you can do to stop me."
"I know." He was still holding her hand, and she lifted them both so that she could place a quick kiss on his wrist. "If there was, it wouldn't be nearly so much fun. You wouldn't be nearly so much fun - and you've always been that."
"If you know that you can't stop me, why do you keep trying?" He pulled his hand away from hers, managing the difficult task of looking cross with her whilst still keeping an inexplicable smile in his eyes. She really did do strange things to him. She always had.
"Because I'm evil, Wesley." She batted her eyelashes. "You can never remember that, can you. I'm the black knight, you're the... murky grey one. I would suggest that that makes Giles the white knight, but from what I've heard he's even more of a murky grey than you are." Her smile brightened. "This could be fun."
"Lilah..."
"See you around, Wes." She blew a kiss at him, then turned around, took a step, and vanished. He stared after her, infuriated to an incendiary level. She was evil, he reminded himself. She did the things that she did because she was evil. He had to fight her for that reason; or fight the things that sent her, at any rate. That was why he was here, in Madrid, waiting for Giles's aeroplane to arrive. To help Giles recover an artefact that must under no circumstances fall into enemy hands. Into Lilah's hands. The hands of the woman he... don't say it Wesley... loved. Maybe loved. Sometimes loved. Liked a lot. Tolerated. He sighed. Why was death never simple? The roar of an aircraft's engines distracted his thoughts for a moment, and he looked up as it began its approach to descend. It was bringing Giles, to start the search for the box. To begin the latest game with Lilah Morgan. He didn't want to think about how he was going to explain Lilah away to Rupert Giles. Maybe he would get lucky, and he wouldn't have to. Believe that, Wes, and you'll believe anything. He sighed. Somebody somewhere probably found all this hilarious; of that at least he was certain. If there was one thing he had learnt from his experiences both living and dead, it was that the universe had a definite sense of humour. It was the only one who found its jokes funny, but the humour was still there nonetheless. The team at Angel Investigations had come to understand that well enough. But he had things beyond jokes to turn his mind to now. A vault, a box, and a Watcher who wasn't even sure that he trusted him. Cordelia, he thought irritably, one of these days I'm going to get you for this. A thousand miles away, or a thousand millimetres away, wherever the higher plane or the world of angels was, Cordelia laughed fondly, and sent a gentle kiss his way. And he smiled. The universe could have its jokes, and The Powers That Be could have their machinations. The players in their games could still move independently. And Rupert Giles would reach that box first. Wesley smiled tightly, and with a flicker of spectral light, disappeared.
Game on.