Shadow Though it Be: An Excursus – Chapter 3

It was passing strange to ride in Giles's car through the streets of Sunnydale, the movements of the car responding to his hands on the wheel; it was stranger still to arrive at his home, to get out and heft one's backpack and follow him through the courtyard to a very familiar door; and strangest of all to walk in past his ushering hand, into a room she knew well—and somehow knew not at all.

She didn't know she had stopped until he nudged her awkwardly so that he could come in after her. "Familiar to you?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. She walked forward, looking slowly around. Yes, it was familiar: stained glass lamps, dark wood, bookshelves and all; and it was new: there was a faint scent of old cooking, mixed with that of incense, cleaning fluid—and the pervading influence of the books: like the white page, containing all the text. Books were a scent she knew well; Elisabeth followed her nose to a shelf by the window and ran a finger down the spine of a cracked leather binding from the seventeenth century. The book was well-cared-for, as she expected: her touch drew only a faint stain. She rubbed it off on her thumb and looked round at him. He had been watching her, and he took his gaze away to go into the kitchen. His voice came from out of her view. "You were an academic, you said?"

"Yes," Elisabeth said, finding a spot on the couch to curl up and watch him through the breakfast bar. "Anything to do with books, I've done a little of. Librarianship public and private; research; academia; bookstores...jack of all trades and master of none, as they say."

"Indeed," Giles said. His back was to her, and she couldn't tell from his tone what his state of mind was. "Would you care for some tea?"

Her stomach groaned audibly. "Tea. Yes. Please. And—Giles?"

He glanced over his shoulder. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry to be so blunt, but—I'm starving. Can there be something substantial to go with the tea?"

She wasn't sure, but she thought there was that humorous timbre to his reply: "I think that can be arranged."

"Thank you," she breathed.

True to his word, Giles supplied her with a tray all her own, complete with a pot of tea (and a mismatched, Oriental handleless mug), a pile of shortbread cookies, and a generous slice of cold quiche. Elisabeth demolished the quiche and half the cookies in short order, took the first cup of very hot tea too quickly, and finally sat back with the last bit of shortbread and her second cup, munching, sipping, and nursing her burnt palate.

She found him watching her again, seated in a chair across from her perch on the couch, nursing his own mug of tea. You could almost hear the precise workings of his brain: clickety-clickety, like an abacus, behind the glint of his glass-rims.

"So...may I ask where you were headed, if not to Sunnydale?" he said.

She shrugged. "Anywhere. I've been playing the itinerant while I still have some youth in me." She dared a glance at his eyes, was relieved to find no judgment there. "I pick someplace and stay there for a while, take a job of some sort, earn some money, keep my bills current...and move on when it looks like a good time to do so. I've been moving faster in the past six months or so; it's only taken a year for me to work my way down here from Seattle."

"So you're not from California originally."

"No."

He waited a beat, then asked: "Where are you from?"

"Oh, the Midwest. Land of Quiet Desperation. I lit out after staying far too long; decided I wanted to live the life of Thoreau."

"Or Siddhartha," Giles said.

It was a bit too close to the bone for Elisabeth: she cleared her throat and looked away at the bookshelves, sipping deeply at her tea.

The silence thinned to a fine torture while she studied the books on the shelves and he studied her face. When she could bear it no longer, she looked at him and said abruptly, "Thank you for the tea."

"You're quite welcome," he said, dropping his eyes to his cup. Then he drew a breath and said, "Well, since you're going to stay here till we figure out what to do, you should—perhaps—have a little tour? just so you know where things are? unless—"

"A tour would be fine." Elisabeth got up as quickly as he did, and to cover it, took up her tray from the coffee table. "I'll take this in."

"I should do that," he said.

"No, I'll—It'll give me an opportunity to see the kitchen."

"Right...right."

The kitchen was...Giles's kitchen. Elisabeth wanted to ask him if the ancient fridge worked by magic—she had always wondered that—but her tongue had somehow become a small warm stone in her mouth, and it refused to move. She straightened her glasses and listened to Giles's stammering docent act: "Right...the uh, the pantry through there...pots and pans in this cabinet, dishes and glasses in that one. Refrigerator. Sink....Do remember, you're welcome to help yourself to food if you're—ah—starving again."

Elisabeth nodded, and found herself blurting: "When I was in high school I had this babysitting gig once, and the girl's father and mother both told me repeatedly that I could eat anything in the kitchen that didn't bite back."

Giles blinked at her.

Elisabeth dug her nails hard into her other palm. "I found it unnerving, myself."

Giles blinked some more, and said: "Yes. I would think—I would think you would. Ah...the lavatory is this way." He gestured with his glasses, and she followed him to peep duly into the bathroom. Neither of them felt like lingering in that doorway, so they found themselves quickly back in the living area, where Giles stammered valiantly on: "The books. You're welcome to all the books you can read while you're here—" He broke off. "Elisabeth...."

"Yes?"

She watched the words forming in his face while he held up his finger to gain time. "I...I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I've just realized...there are some books here that I cannot let you read."

It was her turn to blink. "Of course," she said after a beat.

"You understand?"

She nodded.

He drew a breath of relief. "Good. While I'm thinking of it, let me...gather a few...." He duckwalked about the room, picking up books and putting them back down; keeping a few; muttering to himself. When at last he had accumulated a sizable pile of mismatched volumes, he wrangled the books over to a shelf and used the flat of one hand to push aside a scattered collection of figurines, talismans, and a variegated orb. Elisabeth jumped to help him, lining up the figurines at the farthest edge to give his books the most possible room; but when she reached for the orb, he said, "Don't...touch that—" —and she backed off penitently and let him finish the job himself.

He stood back and looked at his handiwork, then turned to her. "There. I—well, to the best of my knowledge that's—all the books you shouldn't read. The other ones, of course, are open to hospitality." He smiled nervously.

She smiled back. "And the Lord God said to them, 'You may eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden, but of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for on that day you shall surely die.' I get it. I mustn't read from those books, or I'll die."

He said: "Well—you might not die from reading the books, but—I might be forced to kill you."

She started a quiet laugh.

"I wasn't, you know, strictly joking."

"I know," she said. "That's why I'm laughing."

"Well—then—this situation being irregular—as so many of them seem to be," he uttered in parenthesis, rolling his eyes— "—I ought to lay down a few ground rules for you, as you are new to Sunnydale—though I realize it seems strange to lay down rules for a guest—"

"Giles...what are the rules?"

"Right. Well...I must caution you not to invite anyone in unless I'm there and say it's okay."

She gave him a look. "Giles...are you familiar with the phrase, 'No shit, Sherlock'?" Giles opened his mouth, but she went on: "Well, I can't think why you wouldn't be, it's been in circulation since before the twentieth century—but anyway—don't worry about the door, Giles, I won't let anybody in, unless they offer me some candy."

He gave her a level stare. "Come on," she said, "that was funny." When he didn't respond, she gave up and said, "Are there any more rules?"

"Perhaps I should just let you figure out what they are." He gave her the ironic smile.

Elisabeth shrugged, returning the smile. "That's what I usually do."

*

A number of books later, Elisabeth took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. Her eyelids felt oily and hot to the touch, but she pretended not to see the significance of that—that and the nausea which was gathering in her throat: always a bad sign. It didn't have to escalate; it probably wouldn't.

Giles was cooking supper in the kitchen. At the moment, he had something sizzling furiously on the stove, and the steam was rising, changing the light in the kitchen. Elisabeth stopped looking that way; her vision was blurred enough. She put her glasses back on and tried to concentrate on the page, but gave up after a moment and went to put the book back in its place. Instead of reaching for another, she squatted down to look at his collection of LPs, flipping them one at a time like index cards on their shelf. She didn't expect to recognize most of them, and she didn't—she had been neither alive nor in Britain in the early seventies, and retro classic rock was not her poison. She did, however, find a clutch of Bachs, a Mozart Requiem, and, shoved at the back, an album of famous arias. Elisabeth was pretty sure that the LPs, like the orb, were things Giles wouldn't want her to touch, especially the ones that belonged to his groovy past. She laid the LPs back the way she had found them, stretched wearily to her feet, and went to find the bathroom.

In the bathroom, with the door closed, the sounds of Giles's labors in the kitchen were muted. Elisabeth finished, went to the tap, and washed her hands of book grime. Remembering that she had used those dirty hands to rub her eyes, she broke one of her rules and looked in the mirror: and sighed. Shaking her head, she took off her glasses, turned the tap full on, and scrubbed roughly at her face. Then took her hair down from its straggling ponytail and scraped it back into a semblance of order before putting it up again. She surveyed the result. Her face had that look, the one she didn't like to see: that look of almost-beautiful intensity, the buoyant moment before the rollercoaster plunges. Her pupils were too narrow, and the very hazel color of the irises seemed scattered.

"Shake it off, Elisabeth," she told her reflection, and reached for her glasses.

When she came into the kitchen, Giles was pushing vegetables around in a large sauté pan, the sleeves of his sweater pushed up and his glasses slipping down. He gave her a glance. "Hello."

"Hi." She wandered to the counter and stood watching him, arms crossed. "Is this the mooted stir fry?"

"Yes."

"Looks good."

"H'm."

She stood there and watched the vegetables turn over under his spatula. She pretended not to notice the small peeks he was taking at her face, until he said:

"You all right?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I'm fine."

"Are you sure? Because you've got a funny look in your eyes; and I don't know you, but—"

"But it doesn't look good for the Mudville nine, does it?" Elisabeth sighed, resigned.

"No."

"I've been better," she admitted. "I've also been much worse."

"What's the Mudville nine?" Giles asked. She looked up with her mouth open, scandalized—and saw that he was giving her a little sideways grin. She shook her head, smiling. "You really feed off the cultural difference jokes, don't you?" she said.

"A man has to survive somehow," he said, turning the pan.

"A time-honored philosophy," she said, "one that also happens to be my own."

"Good," Giles said abstractedly. He looked pointedly up at a cabinet. "Grab me a platter, would you?"

She opened the cabinet he indicated. "Like this one?"

"Yeah."

*

Neither of them was very talkative at the dinner table. Nor was Elisabeth hungry any more; she pushed her stir-fry vegetables around, making a halfhearted attempt to eat them. She caught Giles looking at her plate and said:

"It's not the stir-fry. It's my appetite. It's troughed again."

"Well, you seem to be making a valiant effort." But he wasn't really looking at her. Instead, he appeared to be staring off at a point somewhere beyond her elbow.

"Shall I get you your pipe and shag tobacco, Holmes?" Elisabeth said.

He smiled, but his eyes still didn't quite focus. "Thank you, I haven't enough clues yet."

"Tell me about it." Elisabeth rolled her eyes.

It was then that his gaze focused and moved to her eyes, and it occurred to her all at once that besides being herself, Elisabeth was also—was perhaps foremost a conundrum, a "case", a possible source of difficulty and even evil to him. He was trying to be kind about it, but nevertheless he was on the alert. And ready to go on the offensive. Giles was nobody's fool. It was something she'd always liked about his character; but then, she'd never expected to get those probing eyes turned on her.

She broke their eye contact and looked down at her plate. "I'm sorry," she said after a beat, "I'm just not hungry." She got up and took her plate into the kitchen, scraped it over the trash, rinsed it in the sink. Came back to the table and sat down to sip at her water glass. Giles had meanwhile returned to eating, and for some time she sat and watched him finish his plate. She couldn't quite determine whether their silence was awkward…no, it was awkward, but perhaps it wasn't quite unbearable.

Giles took his plate into the kitchen and began to wash up. She debated going in to help, but in the end she remained where she was, wearily staring across the table at Giles's now-empty chair. When she heard him turn off the sink taps, she finally got up and went into the kitchen. He was drying the dishes and stacking them neatly, one by one, in their cabinet. He glanced over at where she stood in the entryway, arms crossed again.

"Elisabeth," he said, "I'm going to have to do some research tonight. I'm afraid I won't be much of a host this evening—"

"Oh, don't worry about that, I usually prefer to entertain myself anyway—"

"I trust there will be books enough to keep you busy."

"Oh yes."

"Good." He smiled at her again, but once more she was visited with the notion that he was looking through her rather than at her.

"D'you need any help?" she asked him, glancing at the pans in the sink.

"No—no, I'm about through here."

"Okay." Elisabeth retreated to the main room, to resume her examination of his bookshelves.

*

As it turned out, watching Giles research was nearly as interesting as dipping into his books. She had kept quiet so as to make him forget she was there; and her efforts seemed to have met with success, for he was muttering unself-consciously as he flipped pages and made notes. He stuck a pencil behind his ear, then forgot it was there and dug through his desk for another; he took off his glasses and chewed ruminatively on the earpiece; then, glasses dangling from his teeth, lunged over and reached to take another book from his pile. She watched surreptitiously as he intently compared the two texts. "Ah ha!" he said, then, "oops!" as his glasses fell from his lips to clatter on the desk. He threaded his glasses on, knocking the pencil from behind his ear and startling him. Elisabeth returned her eyes to her book just in time, as he looked up at her from his bobbling efforts to catch the pencil on its way down to the floor.

"You may laugh," he said.

She gave him a sidelong look, then allowed herself a smile. "You've been having an interesting few minutes."

"Well, at least I am serving a dual purpose here."

"Oh?"

"Providing you with entertainment while getting my work done."

She smiled again, and returned her attention to her book. Giles returned to his research.

It was quiet for a while. Elisabeth finished browsing that book and went to find another. She was very pleased; not half an hour ago she had found a cache of actual literature. Demonologies were all very interesting, but literature was her métier, and a good story would beat a glossary of uglies any day.

She picked up a battered old hardback reprint of Jane Eyre and flipped through the pages. Loneliness—Rochester—creepy Thornfield Hall—creepier St. John Rivers….Elisabeth shut the book and put it back.

She was stretching as she browsed, when Giles said: "Elisabeth?"

She turned. "Yes?"
He straightened his glasses to look at her. "I'm going to be up for a while—quite possibly all night." He paused.

"That doesn't bother me," she reassured him. "I'll probably be up a long time, too."

He shook his head. "No, I've been thinking about it; and I think you had better take my room while you are here."

"Oh—" Elisabeth dug her nails into her other palm and tried to draw a calm breath. "That's really not necessary. I have my own blanket and a small pillow, and I can sleep in just about any small space there is. And I have the books. I can read all night, and I sleep with the light on anyway. The couch will be luxury for me—"

"It's not," he interrupted her gently, "strictly a matter of courtesy." He waited, eyes on her face, for her to catch his drift.

She frowned, thinking about it. There was the obvious, of course, but with Giles it wouldn't be the obvious. There was his studious presence downstairs; but if he didn't want to be interrupted, or spied on, why wouldn't he have taken her to stay with one of the Scoobies? —Spied on….Elisabeth stared at him in disbelief.

"You're afraid I'll escape?" she said. "Where would I go?"

He didn't answer, just waited for her to think out the rest of it.

"Escape," she thought aloud, "or let in an evil while you're asleep. Maybe I'm a spy for some creepy Big Bad like the Mayor. That's it, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid so," he said.

She pursed her lips and frowned back at him. "Well, I have nothing to prove myself to you with. But weren't you the one who said to consider my presence here, and my story, as a logical possibility?"

"Yes," he said, "but there is more than one logical possibility."

"True," she said, pursing her lips harder. "But I don't want to sleep upstairs. I don't want to create any more displacement than I have to. I'm not just a guest, you're right—and by that token—I—" She stopped.

He stood up, and she recognized his worried thinking-face as he moved round the desk. When he looked at her she realized that to hope she would not cause him difficulty was to hope the impossible. She stood still and watched him drift, thinking, about the room. Finally he stopped, hands in pockets, fixed his gaze on the floor before him, and spoke:

"I said that we would not mistreat you. On the other hand, circumstances are—I can't treat you as a free agent. Not till I know more. And, forgive me, but you haven't exactly been forthcoming about your past and your purposes."

She blinked, wide-eyed. "But I did—I mean, I have. I told you what I've been doing and where I came from—"

"Yes, the Midwest."

"Yes." Her spine stiffened.

"The Midwest, as I recall, is a fairly large region."

Her cheeks went hot. "I've just met you. You'll excuse me if I don't trot out my whole biography for your dossier."

She didn't immediately know what made him jerk still, and she was too angry to care. He moved ahead of her to the window and stood looking out. She could see him working to breathe calmly.

She waited, but he didn't move. Abruptly she went over to him, hand out to grasp his shoulder—but just as her hand reached him, he whirled and grasped her hard, and the next thing she knew she was pinned tight against the wall and his taut face was glaring close into hers. A hot electric flash went through her fingertips. "Down boy," she breathed.

If she hadn't liked Giles's probing gaze at the dinner table, it was nothing to how she felt about this. And judging from the intensity of his glare, he wasn't about to let her go easily. She sighed, partly in an attempt to relax.

"Blunder number one," she said on a breath, "blindsiding an ex-Watcher. All right, I—"

He pinned her tighter, so that now it hurt.

Elisabeth was getting mad again.

"All right, you don't have to go all Ripper on my ass—let go—"

This was the wrong thing to say. She grunted in pain and opened her mouth to protest again, but he cut her off:

"If you are who you say you are," he said, his voice quiet and rough, "consider this: how unfair it is for you to flaunt your advantage in this fashion."

My advantage? Elisabeth's lips formed the words; but she got no further than that. As she met his eye, it was gradually becoming clear to her what he meant.

"Oh," she whispered finally.

As quickly as he'd grasped her, he let go of her; in the sudden warp of her gravity, she almost wished he'd take hold of her again. He turned away from her, stalked over to the table, pushed aside the centerpiece. He went over to a cabinet; when he turned back to face her, she saw that he was holding a bottle of whiskey. Her shoulders went down, and she hung her head.

"Forgive me," she said.

He gave her a pointed look, but made no reply. Instead, he set up the table with the whiskey and—she noticed now—two glass tumblers. He looked over at her again. "Let us make a trade, shall we, for my forgiveness. Sit."

"You mean," Elisabeth said shakily, "you'll forgive me if I let you drink me under the table? Giles—you should pick something that's harder to do."

This earned a little smile from him, but she could tell she wasn't off the hook yet.

"Sit," Giles said again.

Still shaking, Elisabeth crossed the room slowly and took her seat across the table from him. He poured himself a generous measure of whiskey, and (she didn't know whether to be flattered, encouraged, or unnerved by this) poured her measure as equal as he could make it. He set the bottle aside, lifted her glass by the rim and set it in front of her. Took a sip of his own.

"Now," he said. "Talk."

*

Chapter 4