Shadow Though it Be: An Excursus – Chapter 9
"Buffy," Giles said, trying for a note of unalloyed pleasure.
She clearly wasn't buying it. "What are you doing?" she said. "I've been looking for you all evening."
"Didn't Willow get a hold of you?" he said, holding on to his insouciance for dear life. "I told her to check in with you, as I was going to be out of pocket this evening."
Buffy repeated: "What have you been doing?"
"I—" He stopped, tried again. "That is, Elisabeth and I—" He gestured feebly behind him; Elisabeth let go of his wrist and moved out a little from behind him to face their inquisitor. "We were out," he said vaguely, "driving."
"A sort of experiment," Elisabeth elaborated.
"Testing dimensional walls," Giles added.
Elisabeth tried very hard to hold her lips in line; but she was too late to stop a small snort of laughter coming out her nose. Giles heard it and giggled; then cleared his throat gravely and wiped the smile from his mouth with one hand. "Excuse me," he said, an edge of laughter still in his voice.
Buffy thrust her face forward to scrutinize his. "Are you drunk?" she accused.
He stiffened. "No," he said, offended. "What—do I have to be drunk in order to be enjoying myself?" For reply, Buffy lowered her chin and regarded him levelly. He said hastily, "Don't answer that. Anyway," he added, slipping into mild hysteria again, "if anyone's drunk, it's her." He pointed behind him at Elisabeth and snickered.
Buffy's basilisk stare turned on her. Thanks a lot, Giles, Elisabeth thought. She pinched him good and proper on the back of his elbow, where Buffy couldn't see.
"I'm not drunk either," she said earnestly. Her own hysteria had cooled, and she could see clearly that this conversation needed mending, fast. "Giles took me out for dinner and drove me around town, by way of inquisitioning me about my life and morals."
"And we ended up having fun, if that is all right with you," Giles said. His hysteria, apparently, had cooled into outright irritation.
Buffy's glare returned to his face, and Elisabeth felt for the first time the palpable aura of Slayer pissitude. "I don't have time for this," she told him severely. "I'm swamped. I have studying to do, not to mention the research, I have patrolling with a side order of extra vampires, and I have my family to protect—"
—And I have my bride to murder on my wedding night, and a country to frame for it, Elisabeth thought giddily—
"—and I don't have time to chase after you, carousing with your—" She flapped a hand in Elisabeth's general direction.
"I don't think that's quite fair," Giles said, lifting his hands to plant on his hips.
Elisabeth really, really didn't need to be a part of this conversation anymore. She stepped up next to Giles and held out a hand in front of him. He didn't notice.
"I don't have time for this—" Buffy repeated. Sprouting eyes like a seraphim, Elisabeth thought. Definitely time for her to make an exit.
Elisabeth whapped Giles in the midriff twice with the back of her open hand.
"What?" Giles said to her.
"The key," she said.
Startled, both Buffy and Giles whipped to look at her. "What about it?" Buffy snapped. Elisabeth saw Giles shoot a worried glance at his protégée. She groaned inwardly. Open mouth, insert foot, she thought.
Elisabeth pointed at the door behind Buffy. "The house key?" she said. "Giles? Please."
"Oh!" In the shadows, a suggestion of hot color rushed into Giles's face. "Here." He dug his keys out of his pocket and dropped them into her outstretched hand.
"Excuse me, please," Elisabeth said tentatively to Buffy.
Very slowly, Buffy moved aside so that Elisabeth could get to the door. Elisabeth fumbled with the keys, wishing Buffy would take that furious gaze off her. She tried two wrong keys before getting the right one, and shakily stumbled her way into the apartment, pushing the door to behind her. It didn't quite close, but she didn't care—she'd passed the gauntlet, and all she wanted for the moment was a glass of water.
Her mind cleared as she gulped down her water in the kitchen, and she was able to hear again: Buffy and Giles's discussion had escalated into a full-blown argument.
From beyond the door, Giles's voice came clearly: "I have told her nothing."
"Then why did she sound like she knew something about the Key?"
"We can't assume she knows about the Key."
"Well, why can't you find out what she knows?"
"That," Giles enunciated, "is what I have been trying to do."
"And having fun," she shot back.
"Oh, God forbid!" In the brief pause that followed, his voice gentled. "Buffy—"
Buffy was having none of it. "I'm telling you I can't spare any time for this. I have too much to do—"
"Which is why—"
"—and I can't afford to be worrying about you, too." For the first time a note of panic crept into her voice. Elisabeth could hardly miss it even through the door; and she was quite sure it was not lost on Giles. "You're the only other one who knows. You are not expendable—"
"Buffy—" His voice grew even more patient.
"I need you," she said.
"You have me."
No, it had not been lost on Giles.
"Do I?" she challenged him.
"Yes," he said. "You say you're spread too thin. No, listen to me. That is why you should let me worry about this problem. I'm more freehanded than you are, and what is more—all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding—I've got a clearer head at the moment."
Buffy spluttered, attempting to interrupt.
"In fact," Giles said over her inarticulate protests, "I think you would do well to chuck the extra patrol tonight and rest at home."
"I can't," Buffy said.
There was a small silence.
"You can only do one thing at a time, Buffy," he said gently. "This evening, let the wheel point to your family."
Elisabeth strained her ears, listening for the reply. She was beginning to think she had missed it, when Buffy said:
"And you're not going AWOL on me?"
"No," Giles said. "Cross my heart, King's X, and all that. Pax?"
"Pax." Some of the humor had returned to her voice.
"Go home," Giles said, "and take care of Joyce and Dawn."
"Aye-aye, Cap'n," Buffy said, but her attempt at jocularity was flat.
Elisabeth decided she'd heard enough. She put down the water glass and went down the hall into the bathroom. Shut the door behind her and leaned against it briefly before going to use the toilet.
The mirror again. Damn the mirror. Elisabeth took off her glasses and peered in close. She looked like—like a person who'd had two Grand Marniers and then had the fabric of her being stretched to tearing point. She sighed, turned on the taps, splashed her face. Dried it with the towel. Resumed her glasses and braved herself up to going out there again.
When she returned to the kitchen, she found Giles there, hitched up against the counter and downing a glass of water of his own. He saw her and lowered the glass. "Oh, hello," he said. "You all right?"
"Yes," Elisabeth said. "Is she all right?"
"Yes," he said. "I should have noticed sooner she was having a bad night of it." He made a wry grimace.
"Did you find out what happened—if anything?" Elisabeth refilled her water glass at the tap.
"No. I don't think anything did. I think she's just been out of the loop this evening and it made her nervous."
"Understandable," Elisabeth said. She took a long drink of the water, hiding behind the glass while she observed him. She was aware again of his height relative to hers, and she wondered for a moment if this was the sign of another anxiety attack. But no: her mind was relatively clear. Something else then; her memory played over a keyboard of images and ideas, striking odd notes—the illusion of grandeur associated with great size, the illusion of darling weakness associated with the miniature—the fairy great-grandmother at the beginning of Phantastes—the grief lines around Giles's mouth, back in the car on the highway—the graceful slope of his shoulder now, as he poured out the remainder of his water into the sink.
"Have you read any George Macdonald?" she asked him.
He looked up, his eyes unfocused and searching the middle distance. "Rings a bell...Victorian, wasn't he?"
"Yeah. Did my Master's thesis on him, and fairy painting, and William Blake."
"Ah," he said, brightening—she knew not whether from recognition of the name, or delight in a faërie-related discovery about her, or both. "Yes...," he said, taking off his glasses and chewing thoughtfully on the earpiece. "Didn't he do an address on the writing of fairy tales, or some such?"
"He did several," she said, "but his most famous is 'The Fantastic Imagination.'"
"Yes," he said. "I remember now. So what about it?"
"I've just been thinking about him, is all," she said. "The way he warps reality with a perfect image—he's so completely a man of his age, and yet there's no one like him. I've just been thinking about his fairy tale for grownups, Phantastes—have you read it?"
"No," he said, looking at her with interest, "I regret to say I have not."
"It's amazing," she said, "how he has this concentric worldview, and yet his picture of lived experience is entirely contiguous, both in and out of Faërie. I wonder what he'd have to say about my experiences....I should get a copy of that book and look it over again."
"Do," Giles said. "It couldn't hurt."
"Might help," she said. She put down her water and wandered out of the kitchen, toward the bookshelves by the ancient television. She was pretty sure Giles didn't have a copy of Phantastes, or any other Macdonald, but—something was niggling at her consciousness—not well-shaped enough to be a clue, yet not diffuse enough to pass unnoticed: like the writer's urge, resonating in the fiber of her brain and breath and muscle. Her eyes were fixed in their gaze on the shelves.
Then she noticed what it was she was looking at. "A chess set," she said, reaching for it.
"What?" Giles called from the kitchen.
"You have a chess set here," she said. "Do you play?"
"What...?" He came into the livingroom. "—Oh, yes, the chess set. Haven't played in a while. Not since Spike was here."
A smile toyed with her mouth. "You played chess with Spike?"
He lifted his eyes in a familiar longsuffering gesture. "Please don't mention it to the others."
"Your secret dies with me," she said, grinning. "Play me?"
His brows went up. "You play?"
"Well—I know how all the pieces move."
He dropped his shoulders and gave her his inimitable disparaging look. "You don't play, then," he said.
"I can learn," she said, giving him a winning smile.
He sighed at her, looking over his glass-rims. "Chess," he said, "is a complicated game. You can't possibly learn enough to play me a decent game in one evening."
"Aristotle says: 'We learn how to do things by doing the things we are learning to do.'"
"Bugger Aristotle," Giles said; but he took the proffered chess set and carried it to the table. "Set up the pieces—I trust you do know how to do that—and I'll make tea."
She clapped her hands lightly and skipped over to the table to do as he bid.
By the time he had brought the two steaming cups to the table, she was sitting waiting behind the ranked black row of chessmen. He sat down and turned the board around so that he was behind the black. "White goes first," he said, "and you need all the advantage you can get."
"Egotistical, much?" she said.
Giles chose not to answer that. "Wait a minute—these are the rooks, and these are the bishops." He switched their places on both sides, then sat back and eyed the pieces, perhaps to search for more mistakes in her placement. But as it happened, she hadn't made any more, so he relaxed, unbuttoned the cuffs of his red button-down shirt, rolled up the sleeves, and waited expectantly for her to make her first move.
She tried to think of a strategy, but nothing suggested itself to her, so she chose a pawn along the edge and advanced it. She half expected Giles to grunt or make a caustic comment, but instead he merely advanced one of his pawns in silence.
The next few minutes were silent, punctuated only by the sound of one or the other of them sipping noisily at the hot tea as they took turns moving. "Ah-ah, can't do that," Giles said once; she grunted and amended her move. "Better," he said, and lifted one of his knights. "Check," he said. She moved her queen in defense. He moved a rook: "Checkmate."
"Already?" she said, disappointed. "How?"
"You opened it up here, and here," he said, indicating the breaches in her defense with one long finger. "Set them up again."
She suppressed a sigh, and recast the pieces.
A few minutes later, she was mated again.
"Damn," she said.
"Set them up again," he said. She glanced at his face: his expression as he eyed the board was impassive, patient: the Sphinx-riddling gaze of the Watcher. The writer's-urge feeling rose in her again, whether inspired by the blank mystery of the board or Giles's face, she was not sure. She decided to ignore the feeling and let it come out into the open on its own. Meanwhile, she had a chess game to lose. Which she did, in short order.
"Blast," she said, and he looked up at her, the humor twitching in his mouth. "Giving up?" he asked.
"Not on your life," she said, and set up the pieces again.
"A word of advice," he said. "Pascal says: 'A man does not achieve moral superiority by reaching one extreme or the other, but by encompassing them both.'"
She looked up at him, pausing in reaching for a pawn, and broke into the first full smile he'd seen from her. "You insolent so-and-so," she said.
He grinned at her with his eyes, over the rims of his glasses. She pushed her own glasses up on her nose with one finger, and reached again for the pawn. "What you mean," she said, advancing it, "is that I should keep my goal in sight but watch my back."
Giles answered with his opening move. "Very good," he said.
"Also easier said than done," she said, moving another pawn to back up the first.
"Again, very good."
Amazingly, as play continued, Elisabeth managed to stay alive for another ten minutes. When Giles made the final move, his "Checkmate" stung a little less.
Elisabeth began to set up the pieces again.
"Where did you learn to play?" she said.
"At home, during my childhood," Giles answered, helping her to set up the board. "It was the family pastime, and my first training ground."
"You mean, as a Watcher?"
"Yes."
"I don't doubt it." She made her first move. He made his.
"Stopped playing it for a while when I was trying to forget my calling." The fingers of one of his hands absently stroked the rim of his teacup; his eyes drank in the situation of the new game on the board. "When I came back to my training, I came back to chess as well."
Which explained a lot; like the half-reckless, half-inexorable brilliance of his style. Elisabeth knew next to nothing about chess: but she was beginning to know Giles, and she could recognize easily that his playing style, like his handwriting and his mobile face, carried the same curious amalgam of passion, unconventionality, and delicate-reined control. With this in mind, she slowed down her moves, trying to drink in the board as she saw him doing. "I am beginning to feel you out," she murmured, moving a knight.
"I can see that," he murmured back.
She studied the board carefully, then moved another pawn. "Is it a sort of predestination, becoming a Watcher?"
"You have to ask?" he said, taking her pawn with his bishop.
"I don't know much about the process. I do know a little something about religious conversion, however, and I wondered if the experiences were comparable."
"I've never thought of my heritage in religious terms," he said. She listened carefully for any warnings in his tone, but found that his inflection was merely equable. He was watching the board.
"Surely you are not missing my point," she said.
"Please elucidate."
She bent a little, to sight along her bishop to one of his pawns, debating whether to threaten it or bide her time. "You argue it all down to silence," she said, "and then it ceases to be a question of what you want, or what you think, but what you will do; and it takes less than a moment—and it's finished."
He was silent a moment, then said: "Yes." He changed the position of his rook, in a seemingly meaningless move, but Elisabeth was beginning to know better. "You're a Calvinist, then?" he inquired.
"Not in the least," she said. "In fact, I don't hold much with the idea of Destiny-with-a-capital-D."
"No?" he said. "Check."
"I knew that rook meant something," she muttered. "No. You do, I suppose."
"I try not to think about it too much."
"Like Charles Lamb. 'Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.'"
"I am hardly untroubled by it," Giles said dryly. "Check."
Elisabeth removed herself from check and congratulated herself that her move did not immediately land her in checkmate. Now if only there were a move that was both defensive and offensive at once....
"Now, destiny with a little 'd' I believe in," she said. "Like the white page of a book: nothing's to be read that isn't on the page; and yet it's the words, not the page, that we read. Stop ignoring the white page, you start losing concentration on the words; and then you lose your hold on the meaning."
He smiled, but did not raise his eyes from the board. "You made that up just now, didn't you?"
"Yes. Check," she said, triumphantly.
"Checkmate."
"Argh!" She buried her hands in her hair.
Giles offered her a little smile.
"Can I take that move back?"
The look he gave her was answer enough. She made a wide-eyed grimace and began to set up the pieces again.
The next game, she grew impatient and sent pawn after pawn into the fray without planning ahead. She could almost hear Giles gritting his teeth: maybe this would force a wrong move out of him. "So, you don't believe in Destiny with a capital D," Giles said, refusing to be budged from his game. She cursed to herself.
"No," she said. "I prefer my philosophy to have some elbow room." She reached for her queen and lifted her for a long move.
"Don't you make that move," he said sharply. She looked up in surprise; he was glaring at her. "Not if you want to throw the entire game away."
Still holding the queen, she looked down at the board. "I don't see it."
"You're not concentrating."
"I am, though," she said.
He let out a compressed sigh. "Look at the whole board."
"I don't see it," she said again, irritably. "And I am concentrating."
"No," he said, "you're not."
She grew caustic. "I'm doing my best. Maybe having half my consciousness in another dimension has something to do with it."
"Oh, just bloody stretch," he growled.
She glared at him for a long moment. He glared back. Finally, she drew a long breath and set the queen back in its original place, then settled back to study the board, letting her eyes go unfocused. When she refocused them, she saw immediately the weakness he had seen before her. She grunted, and moved a knight to cover it.
"Much better," he said.
"Thank you," she said primly.
Play continued in silence. And lasted in silence. In fact, Elisabeth kept the game alive for another half an hour before his pincers closed on first her queen and then her king. She yawned and pushed her fingers up under her glasses, rubbing at her eyes. "I think I'm all in."
"You're improving," he said. "You may actually make a chess player some day."
She let her glasses fall back into place and gave him a smirk for answer.
"Help me clear up?" he said.
"Certainly."
She carried the tea cups into the kitchen while he replaced the pieces in the case and put it away on the shelf. When he came into the kitchen she was washing the few dishes that remained in the sink. He took them from her one by one and dried them. Then together they put them away.
He put his backside to the counter and wiped his hands idly with the dishcloth, staring again into the middle distance. She came to a rest next to him, her gaze going idle, like his.
"On the other hand," she said after a silence, "perhaps I am destined to be a poor chess player." She had meant it for a jest, but the sad note crept out despite her efforts.
His mouth moved wryly. "You have the mind for it," he said. "It's just that you're used to using words instead of pawns. And you're not used to a limited board."
She smiled over and up at him. "Thank you, kind sir."
"It's not kindness," he said simply.
There was another silence, then he added, "And I should be thanking you."
"Oh?" She looked up at him again, and again there was that gathering of an urge in her consciousness; she remembered suddenly her abandoned sonnet-in-progress begun on the bus, and wondered what it had to do with him.
Giles pulled off his glasses and wiped delicately at the corners of his eyes with his thumb. "Yes," he said. "Having fun is usually not on my agenda."
"I know," she said. "I'm glad you did."
"Though your British accents are deplorable." He glanced sidelong down at her.
"Really?" she said. "I always thought they were rather good."
"Oh, it's not your intonation that's the problem," he said; "it's the fact that you can't seem to decide what part of the bloody country you're from."
She laughed, and shrugged. "Well, I can't seem to decide what part of the bloody country I'm from at home, either. So I don't think that's going to get fixed any time soon. Ah well. I can live with it."
Giles settled his glasses back on his nose and shot a supercilious glance out into the hall. "Excellence in all things," he said.
For the second time that evening she gave him a little playful shove. "I have had about enough of that from you tonight."
He laughed.
It occurred to her suddenly what one of the elements niggling at her consciousness was. She tipped her head and took in the sight of him: tall, inimitably poised on the divide between Air and Earth—a man of horizons, both comfortable and unpredictable at once. His collar was awry, and she reached up and straightened it. He looked down at her curiously.
Impulsively she decided to risk it all by mentioning it. Not what Giles himself would do; but then, she wasn't Giles.
"You know," she said, tipping her head further, "it's been a long time since I made any friends. It's nice."
His eyebrow quirked only a little. "So it takes a lot, then?" he said.
She waved a hand. "Oh, you know, just the usual things. Crossing dimensions—almost getting killed—having a panic attack—pretty easy, really."
He smiled.
"And playing chess," she added.
"In more ways than one," he said.
The giddy feeling rose and fell within her again. "Yes," she said with a small unbidden smile.
His gaze was not the inquisitor's gaze of earlier in the evening, but still he was searching her face, curiously, patiently. At the very same moment that she decided to welcome it, she headed him off by blurting:
"Did you know that in my dimension you're a sex symbol among female librarians?"
His reaction was immediate: he doubled over, snorting into astonished laughter. Nor did he recover quickly. He took his glasses off and wiped tears from his reddened face, still giggling helplessly. "You're having me on," he managed to say as he pulled out his handkerchief.
"No, I'm really not," she said. She didn't, however, mention that the phenomenon extended beyond the ranks of female librarians.
He shook his head, still laughing. "You come from a very queer dimension, Elisabeth," he said, wiping his face with the handkerchief. "Though I admit, that does feel nice to my ego."
"You must promise never to use this power for evil," she said gravely.
He started to giggle again. "Very well, I promise. In fact, I shall forget it directly."
She bent her head, flushing as she realized what an embarrassing position she'd just maneuvered herself into.
He then proceeded to make it worse. "And why do you tell me this?"
She didn't quite meet his eye. "I don't know," she said. "I suppose I just had an urge to throw the game away."
"Stop doing that," was all he said.
"And," she added, "I like watching you laugh."
"It doesn't unnerve you?" She caught a wistful note in his voice.
"No," she said, looking up at him again. "I'm unnerved by much more inexplicable things; like being inquisitioned."
He smiled. "Don't you consider that part of the game?"
"Now who's distending metaphors?" she said.
"Just shows what sort of nasty habits one can pick up."
She grinned. "I'd say that that was all part of my evil plan, but in this dimension, that actually means something."
He grinned back. Elisabeth felt distinctly odd. But not unpleasant. In fact—
Giles was suddenly stammering. "D'you think—would it—would it queer the pitch if—if I—"
"No," she said—he blinked, surprised, but she went on— "no, you're not allowed to change metaphors at this stage. We were doing games, you can't just suddenly switch to music like that—"
She hadn't fully realized up to now that he had turned to face her. He fumbled with the dishcloth; she took it out of his hands and laid it on the counter next to them. He was laughing on a shallow breath. "Not many people—" he said, "know that's a music metaphor—" She laid a hand in the crook of his arm— "But from you I expect no less…." She lifted her head expectantly, gauging it by the nearness of his voice; but unfortunately he had moved quicker. Their faces bumped, their glasses tangled, and as she pulled back they scraped across her cheek. "Ouch!"
They were laughing, both of them, as they disentangled themselves. "Typical," Giles said. She got her glasses off, laid them on the dishcloth, then reached up and took his as he handed them to her. "Now try it," she said.
But as he moved in close, she drew in a sharp shivery breath.
He cocked his head backward. "Something wrong?"
She gave her head many small shakes. "It's just—anticipation makes me nervous…." Her voice petered out before she could finish the last word.
"I know the feeling," he said; and something in both his voice and his proximity eased her breathing, so that by the time he laid his cheek against hers she was relaxed, and her eyes were closed. When he moved gently to kiss her, she kissed him back, without hurry.
This was, Elisabeth thought dimly, another new thing to learn. There were a number of things she hadn't anticipated, but which pleased her very much: the way in which his shoulders framed themselves close to her, almost perfectly placed for her hands to rest on; the scent of his skin up close; the unexpected blend of gift and demand in the touch of his mouth and hands. So many borrowed words in English, she thought—one for every purpose, the Anglo-Saxon, the Norman, and the Latin—ask, demand, interrogate— After this, all words fled from Elisabeth's head like birds startled from a bush. That, too, was a new thing.
See, I am doing a new thing….
Their kiss progressed naturally, and ended naturally; she drew breath, swallowed dryly, and bent her head forward to rest her mouth and nose against his shirt. His arms went fully round her, tentatively at first, then more comfortably.
"You seem to do all right in the moment," he said quietly.
She couldn't remember what this was in reference to. She breathed softly in his arms, searching her mind unhurriedly until she found it. "That's usually how it is," she answered at last, her voice muffled in his shirt. "I'm the kind who gets all freaky until it comes to the point."
"Better that than the other," he said.
"Yes."
"Remind me again why you're running away?"
She smiled. "Nice try, Rupert," she said.
His shoulders moved a little as he laughed.
His red shirt smelled like sage smoke, and clean linen, and cool leather.
For not being part of the story, it was very nice.
The story. Her eyes came open, and the spell broke, silently. She pulled back and away.
"We can't do this—"
"We shouldn't do this," he said at the same moment.
She drew in a sudden relieved breath. "I'm—I'm so glad we're on the same page."
"Yes," he agreed, stammering again and looking at his feet, "it's much more difficult when there's no agreement on—such a point—"
"Right," she said. She reached over and resumed her glasses. Except that when she put them on, they felt odd, and her vision clouded painfully. She took them off again and looked at them, then at him: he was just giving up the attempt to fit her small glasses onto his face. They started laughing again. "Here," she said, and they traded. "Better?" she said.
"Much better," he said.
"I'm all in," she said, for the second time that evening. "I'm going to get ready for bed."
"Yes—a very—" he yawned— "a very good idea."
She moved around him, delicately, and went out to find her pack by the couch.
He followed her, idly, and stood watching her from the doorway as she crouched at her pack and dug through it. "It was a nice kiss, though," she said without looking up. "Thank you."
"It was," he said. "You taste of Grand Marnier."
She bent lower, so that he could not see the hot flush that was flooding her face. When she had recovered a little, she pulled out her toothbrush and held it up for him to see. "Not for long," she said.
He gave her a little wry smile. "Goodnight," he said, and as she stood with her pile of pajamas and toiletries, he moved out of the doorway and made his way—wearily, she noticed—across the room and up the stairs.
"Goodnight," she said belatedly, and scuttled down the hall to the bathroom.
A short time later she made herself comfortable in her nest on the couch, all the lights out except for one Tiffany lamp behind her head. The house was quiet. What a day, she thought, her head buzzing. I'm never going to be able to sleep now.
And fell promptly and profoundly unconscious.
*
Chapter 10