Shadow Though it Be: An Excursus – Chapter 14
He woke with the plan forming in his head. Today he would give her rest and space, first of all; which meant showering and dressing very quietly and getting out the door without waking her up. At lunchtime he would leave Anya at the helm (he'd worry about the heart palpitations when they happened), and come back to check on her. When he got to the shop he would call Xander and Willow and Buffy and ask them to meet there that afternoon to pool their information. He was through messing around.
His plan succeeded very well at the start…until he bobbled the bottle of Tylenol and the pills rattled like beads all over the kitchen floor. "Shit," he mouthed, watching them roll away across the tiles. It was very difficult to crawl around on the floor gathering them without grunting. You're getting old, Ripper, he thought—pushed the thought away, and stood with the handful of caplets. He looked at the bottle, glanced back at the sleeping form of Elisabeth on the couch, decided to dump the pills into a sandwich bag. Less noise that way, and anyway the pills were a bit dusty now. I'm going to be finding Tylenol on the floor for weeks, he thought sourly.
He took the dose he'd laid out for himself before the bottle-spilling incident, and crept down the hall to the bathroom.
The shower water seemed incredibly noisy, especially when it spattered against the shower curtain. Giles could only be thankful that Elisabeth appeared to be a heavy sleeper: perhaps she would sleep through another person's noises in the bathroom, especially if she'd gotten more comfortable in his flat. Which she seemed to have done. Too, she seemed to have gotten more comfortable with him, though he had an idea she had not at all abandoned her idea of keeping vigilantly clear of involvement with their world.
He could respect that.
He could even wish—
Giles looked sternly at himself in the bathroom mirror and whipped the shaving soap into a lather in the cup, unmindful for the moment of the noise it made. He had made a choice: the same choice, more than once. Hadn't he recently been told twice in the same evening, by two different people, that he was not expendable?
Giles wished he did not understand quite so thoroughly Elisabeth's urge to cling to nonentity. Is there something wrong with wanting it to be easier? she had said. And, No, he had said. He began to daub the shaving soap briskly onto his face. He had a question for her…Is there something wrong with wanting to be significant? And: Do we answer those questions by the outcome—whether we get what we want?
"The proof of the pudding," he said dryly to his reflection as he began to apply the razor.
After the Tylenol-spilling incident, the Quiet Plan seemed to go more smoothly. Giles dressed, gathered things into his satchel, and slipped into his leather jacket, all without making undue noise. He was congratulating himself on his success as he picked up his satchel to shoulder it, when a sound from the couch made him freeze.
Elisabeth grunted, made a little groan, and finally sat up and looked over the back of the couch, blinking hard. "Rupert?" she said.
Damn. He stood straighter, accepting being caught.
She rubbed hard at one eye, then the other. "Are you going?"
"Yes," he said, still holding his satchel at an awkward angle. He finally lowered it to the floor. "I thought I'd give you some rest. I'll come back here at lunchtime."
"Oh," she said, with a little yawn. "Okay."
He hefted the satchel again, and made to go. "I'll see you," he said.
"Wait!"
He stopped and turned her way again. She struggled with the covers, and finally stumbled off the couch and around the table to come toward him.
"Yes?" He adjusted his glasses and peered at her in concern.
"Before you go," she said breathlessly, "I want to pronounce a blessing over you."
"A—a blessing?"
"Yes," she said seriously, "a blessing. You look like you could use one."
For response, he raised one eyebrow.
"Don't be so skeptical," she said, and cleared the morning gravel from her throat. She lifted one small hand, palm flat and sideways like a priest, sighting from her forehead up to his. She made the sign of the cross, soberly intoning: "Minutum cantorum, minutum balorum, minutum carborata descendum pantorum."
He blinked several times, and by the time she had finished the sentence and gesture, he was frowning oddly. She clasped her hands before her and watched him expectantly.
He cocked his head, still blinking hard. Then his mouth twitched. Then he sputtered and began to laugh, still disbelieving. Finally he dropped the strap of his satchel and grabbed his knees, his shoulders shaking.
When he recovered enough to stand—still giggling helplessly—it was to see her surveying him with satisfaction. "I thought you could use an appropriate blessing," she said, one corner of her mouth finally betraying the joke.
"Where on earth did you pick that up?" he said, taking off his glasses to wipe at his eyes with his handkerchief.
"Internet's good for something," she told him.
He snorted. But he was still smiling as he refolded his handkerchief and tucked it away in his inner pocket. "Thank you," he said, smiling down at her.
"You're welcome," she said. "So: lunchtime?"
"Yes," he said. "Noonish. I'll pick you up and bring you back with me."
"I'll be ready. Should I eat beforehand?"
"Don't know what you'd have," he said. "I'll pick up something. There's going to be a meeting at the shop this afternoon."
"Okay."
He saw her swallow hard, and reached out to grasp her shoulder briefly. "Get some rest," he said. "I'll see you in a few hours."
She nodded. He shouldered his satchel and reached for his keys and the doorknob.
Before pulling the door to, he leaned his head back inside to look back at her. She was still standing there, in her ratty T-shirt and pajama pants, with her hair badly awry, watching him leave with a wry and faintly stoic smile on her lips.
"Rest," he told her, giving her a smile to match. "Dream sweet dreams. Dream of vaudeville."
She made a gesture, as of working a seltzer bottle, and smiled a little wider.
He gave a silent giggle in return; and shut the door behind him.
*
Elisabeth did not dream of vaudeville, though she did go back to her nest and doze for a little while. An hour or so later found her lying broad awake on Giles's couch, staring up at the ceiling. For a wonder, her mind was blessedly clear, and her thoughts, though tending toward the somber, did not hurt her.
It was time to think of the possibilities. Whatever spell the gang found, there seemed only a few outcomes once they had taken action. She could be integrated fully in Sunnydale—and that either because the spell pulled her through whole, or because in her own dimension—the thought came quietly—she was dead. She could be reintegrated into her own dimension—either alive or dead. In either case her life could quite nearly be over.
She didn't have enough mental wherewithal to prepare for all four outcomes. But one thing she knew: there wasn't much room for fear. In fact, it appeared to be the time for stepping out into apparent thin air, and not just in terms of physical safety.
Another phrase of George Macdonald's came to the front of her mind: We must do the thing we know in order to learn the thing we do not know. She had always kept it in her mind next to the one of Aristotle's about learning to do things by doing the things we are learning to do; and invariably when she thought the one, the other was not far away.
Elisabeth studied the ceiling, hands crossed over her belly.
So what was she learning to do?
Not to be a shadow.
And what did she know?
Pain. Honesty. Fairness.
The now-familiar creases of grief around Rupert Giles's mouth.
The way the pieces moved on a chessboard.
Five-candle spells, a rogue Latin phrase, and a partridge in a pear tree.
She smiled.
It was time to get up.
*
Phase two of Giles's plan was going well, even if the heart palpitations had indeed made their appearance. He set the parking brake on his car, thinking of the bottle of scotch he'd stashed under the counter at the magic shop and wishing briefly that he'd taken a snifter of it. Well, too late now. Anya had managed the shop alone for such brief periods before, and the others should be arriving soon, so—he told himself—there was really nothing to get one's knickers in a twist about. He'd already dashed in and out of the store; all that was left was to pick up Elisabeth, and if she was ready as she had said she'd be, that shouldn't take long either.
He hurried up the walk and through the court; he paused on his own doormat to pick out the proper key; and froze.
On the other side of the door he could hear music.
He listened acutely, but he couldn't tell what the piece was, only that it was classical, and being played very loud. The last time he had walked into his own flat to music he hadn't put on himself—
With a trembling hand Giles reached out for the doorknob and pushed the door quietly open. He put his head in, eyes wide, expecting to see disaster.
Instead, he saw Elisabeth sitting on the dining table, fully dressed, though barefoot, with her legs crossed under her tailor-fashion and her eyes closed. On the turntable was Bach: the Orchestral Suite No. 3. As he watched, she lifted her arms, eyes still closed, and began to move them to the ebb and flow of the music, half-conducting, half-dancing it; stirring it in the air with her fingertips, bringing the curve of her spine into it. Conjuring the healing that lay dormant in the plaintive strings.
He came in silently, not even breathing, and stood watching, living through the movement to its finish along with her. It seemed to last for a quiet eternity. His eyes were on the unselfconscious grace of her arms and the lift of her chin and the line of her throat against the light from the window. How long had it been since he himself had done something so simple and sensual, for spiritual reasons? When she drew a long visible breath, he found himself drawing it with her.
The burden of the music moved to its close; Elisabeth ended her dance with her hands before her face, and as the last tone died away, she lifted her head again and let her hands down to her lap, eyes still fervently closed.
Giles came to himself. This was not fair, watching her like this. He needed some way of letting her know he was there without startling her unduly. Quietly he reached behind him and pushed the door shut. In the same moment she opened her eyes and glanced toward the turntable as it began the next movement. At the sound of the door closing she turned her head, saw him, and let out a small cry.
He put out a hand. "I'm sorry—I didn't mean to—"
"You're early," she said, still catching her breath. "How long have you been standing there?"
"For most of the last movement. I'm sorry," he said again. "I didn't want to stop you."
Her cheeks were pink as she clambered off the table, the unselfconscious grace of her movements once again camouflaged, and went over to the turntable. "I hope you don't mind my using your hi-fi set," she said, lifting the lid and turning down the volume on the Bach.
"Of course I don't," he said. "Why—?"
She was pulling out the cover to the Bach LP. "Well," she said awkwardly, "it's clear your albums are well-loved. I mean, if it were me I wouldn't want just anyone messing around with my music."
He approached her slowly as she pressed the button to lift the needle from the record, and watched her stop the turntable gently and lift off the disc, handling it gingerly by the center label and the outer edge. It was possible that she wouldn't have been so careful with it had he not been there, but as he observed the way she slid the record back into its cover and the inner paper, he decided that it was merely the way she always treated music equipment, and his presence was only adding a sense of nervousness.
"It's fine," he said.
She darted a sideways glance at him, still blushing. "Okay."
"You like Bach, then."
"Yes. That piece in particular."
"It's lovely," he said quietly.
"Isn't it?" She was kneeling to replace the Bach on the LP shelf and tidying the edges of the records, a bit unnecessarily. "I've always thought it unfortunate that it should be called 'Air for the G String'—I've known too many high school boys to be able to let that title sit comfortably in my head." She stood up, dusting off her hands, and finally turned to look at him full-face. "I see you bear no food in hand. Have the plans changed?"
It was his turn to feel uncomfortable. "Well, yes, in a way. I ordered pizza at the magic shop. It should be arriving—" he turned his watch around on his wrist— "about now, and so should the others. I just came to get you."
"Oh! Well, then I better get myself together." She hurried to the other side of the couch and pulled out her shoes and socks. "Shoes—wait—I need to put my hair up—where's my ponytail holder? Oh, it must be in the bathroom...." She stood up, patting her head distractedly. He cocked his head, watching her: her hands were actually shaking, a far cry from the Bach-induced serenity of a scant minute before.
"Are you all right?"
"What?" She looked up.
"I said are you all right," he repeated. "You seem unduly flustered."
"I'm fine," she said, pushing past him toward the bathroom.
He gestured after her. "You've only put on one sock."
She stopped, let her shoulders fall, and turned back to give him a sigh and a look. "Oh, very well, I confess…I'm just a little bit nervous about meeting everyone again."
Giles blinked. "But why? I thought you'd gotten somewhat more comfortable here."
"With you," she said. "I've been with you practically 24/7 since I got here. And we've talked a lot. Nobody else knows what you know about me, except for what you've told them. It's bound to be awkward."
He took her point. "Well, it's certainly true that they don't know you as well as I do; I haven't told them much."
"Why not?"
He met her probing look. "Elisabeth: I do keep confidences."
"You mistake me," she said. "I'm not worried about that. I'm more worried that you might think you're under some charge not to share vital information with them. I mean, if they're going to be helping, they ought to know everything you know, shouldn't they? Or whatever you see as important to the search." With a little shrug she continued into the bathroom and came out again a moment later, with her hands up binding her hair.
Giles leaned against the hall doorway, watching her as she went into the kitchen to glance over the counters. "You trust me quite a lot, don't you?" he said.
"Yes," Elisabeth said absently, taking down her ponytail to start over again. Then she heard the words for the first time and turned to look at him as she re-bound her hair. "Yes," she repeated.
"When people do that—" he said, and started over. "I've let a number of people down," he said. "Badly."
Elisabeth's mouth quirked. "So have I. Drink five Bloody Marys and you won't remember."
He squinted at her. "What?"
"Sorry," she said, threading her hand through the ponytail holder. "British comedian. Told a joke about an Anglican vicar taking confession."
"Oh," he said, deciding that the little comprehension he'd gleaned was enough.
She smoothed her hair against her head and felt the ponytail to make sure it was even. "Yes," she said, "I trust you. So what? I see no reason not to—unless, you know, you were a serial killer in your dark past."
He snorted. "No," he said, putting his back against the kitchen doorway, hands in pockets. "Just a foolish and occasionally dangerous young man."
"And now you're a foolish and occasionally dangerous middle-aged man." She grinned at him.
He pulled off his glasses and glared at her. "Yes, thank you." He drew the other hand from his pocket and the ubiquitous handkerchief with it.
"With," she went on, "the grace of self-knowledge. Which counts for a lot in my book." She was standing before him now, her eyes steady and humorous on his. Then she put her hands on her hips and glanced around him. "Now where the hell are my glasses?"
Giles paused in cleaning his to gesture at the bar window. "Over there, where you left them last night."
"Oh!" She ducked around him to go and retrieve them.
He put his glasses back on and folded away his handkerchief; came back into the livingroom to watch her lacing her shoe, her foot braced on the edge of the coffee table.
"Five Bloody Marys, eh?" he said.
She wrinkled her nose at him. "If you like vodka. Myself, I think it makes things taste like medicine."
He smiled, and she offered him a little grin in return before bending to put on her other shoe.
*
In the car, he asked her:
"So you think I should tell them, then?"
She looked over at him. "Tell them what?"
"That—that you know what's to come."
She pursed her lips. "Mmm. Your call; but I kinda think not. I mean, some of them will figure it out on their own; but some of the more preoccupied ones might freak if it was suddenly revealed to them."
"You needn't be so circumlocutory. I know you're talking about Buffy."
She answered him only with a look.
"—And I agree with you. But, did I hear you say that some of the others might know?"
"Well, I think Tara has it figured out."
He glanced at her. "What makes you think so?"
"Well, she's a smart cookie, Rupert. And she—she can read me. She can't really help it. I've found myself disclosing things to her without saying a word—" Elisabeth sighed heavily.
"Well," he said, to comfort himself as much as her, "she's a steady sort of person; and I'm sure she'll be circumspect...you don't think she'll tell Willow, do you?"
"I don't know," Elisabeth confessed. "She may just keep it to herself to think over. But really, Rupert, it's just a matter of time before they all figure it out. And I want to—I need to be gone from here before that happens."
"Which," he said, "is why we're having this meeting. I thought if we all pooled our information, we'd come to the solution faster. It's coming together; we just need the form of the spell and the knowledge of when to do it...."
Giles made a left turn, musing to himself, and it was a few blocks before he noticed that Elisabeth had gone quiet again. He shot a few glances at her morose profile, casting about in his mind for something to distract her. "I want you to do something," he said abruptly.
She looked at him, startled, but clearly ready to cooperate. "What?"
"Sing for me."
"What?"
"Sing for me," he repeated.
"You mean, a song? With my voice?"
"Well, yes." His eyes and voice were mischief embodied.
"Now?"
"Yes, now. A song. With your voice. In the car, on the way. Of your choice," he added, forestalling her next question.
"Oh, for—You really are an ornery so-and-so." She glared at him, but the shape of her mouth was not at all convincing as a threat.
"I'm waiting," he said, resting a casual wrist on the top of the steering wheel.
"Bugger," she said, throwing herself back in the seat to think. She paused once, tapping her fingers on the door where her arm rested, to glare at him again. Without taking his eyes from the road, he smirked. She snorted and looked away again, thinking.
Finally she sat up and drew breath. She's going to be timid about it, he thought. Well, if I know the song I'll help her out.
She wasn't timid. She opened her mouth and belted, daring him to dislike it:
"She came in through the bathroom window
Protected by a silver spoon
But now she sucks her thumb and wanders
By the banks of her own lagoon...."
He was startled enough to put both hands back on the steering wheel; but managed to recover enough to come in with the harmony on the chorus, with Elisabeth beating rhythm on the dashboard:
"Didn't anybody tell her
Didn't anybody see?
Sunday's on the phone to Monday,
Tuesday's on the phone to me...."
"Now you sing the second verse," she said.
"Okay, um—oh, damn, what is the second verse? Oh—right—got it—
She said she'd always been a dancer
She worked at 15 clubs a day
And though she thought I knew the answer
Well I knew what I could not say...."
And they finished off the song together, trading off on the harmonies and hitting the occasional sour note. By the time they came to the end they were both breathless with laughter.
"Didn't expect you to know any Lennon and McCartney," Giles said when they had recovered somewhat.
"Oh, give me some credit," she said.
"At the least I'd've thought you'd think that song was written by whoever made a cover of it last."
"Are you kidding? This is my early childhood we're talking about here. I know from Lennon and McCartney. Your problem is, you've been used to talking to young people who were born under the Reagan administration."
"And when were you born, the Carter administration?" he sniffed.
"No," she said, with dignity. "Gerald Ford."
He tried to hold it in, but lasted only a second before he was laughing again. She held out a few seconds longer before sputtering out into laughter herself.
They were both still laughing hysterically by the time he pulled up in front of the magic shop. And coming toward them along the sidewalk were Tara, Willow, and Buffy.
"Well, well, well," Buffy drawled, "if it isn't Heckle and Jeckle."
That sobered them up a bit—but only a bit. Giles set the parking brake, clearing his throat; Elisabeth ducked her head and put a quelling fist to her mouth.
Before either of them could attempt to explain the joke, Xander poked his head out the front door. "C'mon, the pizza's getting cold!"
"I'm sure it is," Giles said, recovering his self-possession as he got out of the car. "Elisabeth, grab that grocery bag from the back seat, would you?"
*
"You see, I was honorable this time," Xander was saying as Giles lifted the lid of one of the pizza boxes and inspected its contents. "I waited till you all got here to eat."
"Yes, Brutus," Elisabeth said absently, hefting a two-liter soda bottle from the grocery sack, followed by— "Grapes, Rupert?"
"They were on sale," Giles said, not quite looking at her.
Elisabeth shrugged and placed the bundle of grapes next to the pizza boxes, snapping one off the stem to pop into her mouth as she did so. Then she grabbed the soda bottle. "Do you have enough glasses for all of us?"
"Um, I think so." Giles was thumbing quickly through a notebook at the counter.
"I know where the paper plates are," Willow said, moving to get them.
"Funny, Xander," Buffy said with a smile, "you had all this time—why didn't you set the table?"
"He had his hands full being honorable," Willow said loudly from the back.
"Hey," Xander said.
"I'll help you with the soda," Tara said to Elisabeth; she nodded, and they went to the sideboard to count out tea mugs and glasses for everyone. "How are you doing?" Tara said casually, glancing into her face for a moment.
Elisabeth met her eye much more steadily than she had done a few days before. "It was kinda touch and go for a while last night, but we came out of it okay," she told Tara quietly. "We ended up falling asleep on the couch watching TV. It's much better today. For me, I mean. You'd have to ask Giles how he is."
"Good," Tara said, her voice soft and fervent. "And he looks better too."
"I'm glad." Elisabeth glanced briefly over at Giles, who was alternately lining up a pile of books on a chair and helping Willow deal out paper plates. "It's not like he needs any extra grief." She fitted her hands through two tea mugs of soda each, to carry them to the table.
Scooby meetings, as Elisabeth had suspected, were never precisely called to order, especially if there was food. In fact, for the first ten minutes the only one who didn't devote her whole attention to the meal was Anya, who kept making as if to dart toward the counter at the slightest indication that a customer might be about to make a purchase. There were more jokes about Xander's honorable forbearance, in light of numerous previous occasions in which most of the food had mysteriously disappeared before the others could arrive. "I'm a growing boy," Xander protested. "I think that plea becomes null by the time you reach twenty," Giles said, biting into his third slice. Which prompted Xander to observe that he, Giles, seemed to have no trouble consuming a large share of the food at any given time.
Elisabeth kept her head down for the most part, passing the bottle of soda when asked, and replenishing her little pile of grapes on her paper plate. She ate two slices of pizza and listened to the easy banter; and by the time she was down to eating the occasional grape and taking the occasional sip of her soda, the meeting was ready to begin in earnest.
Willow pulled her notebook out of nowhere and slapped it down on the table. "Okay, I have three lists," she said. "A list of possible spells, a list of possible dimensional contact points, and a list of factors."
"What's the list of factors?" Buffy asked, wiping her hands with her napkin.
"Umm...vampires. That's all I've got on it. Oh, and the Sunnydale city limits, but that mostly goes under dimensional contact points."
"Well, the list of factors seems to be my list," Buffy said. "I'll take care of the vamps while you take care of the mojo."
"I don't—think it's that simple," Willow said uncomfortably, looking over at Giles.
"Yes, unfortunately," he said, wiping his mouth, "they're a bit more intimately related to the situation than we thought. I received intelligence last night that the vampires are particularly attracted to the energy generated by the contact points. I also discovered that the current contact being made should reach its peak in the next few days or so."
"Or so?" Willow said, raising an eyebrow.
Giles rolled his eyes. "My source was not very specific. About anything, really."
"Was your source Spike, by any chance?" Buffy said shrewdly. Giles studiously ignored her. Elisabeth kept her eyes down.
"Well—" Willow pouched out her lips— "the new moon is in two days. That should give us a good index point if we don't find out anything more, um, specific."
"Otherwise," Xander said, "we'd have to follow a bunch of vamps around to find out where the focus is."
There was a small silence. "We may have to do that anyway," Giles said.
Buffy heaved a sigh and raised her eyes. "Do we have to talk to them? I don't have the patience right now to deal with smart-aleck vamps."
"Yes, dealing with the smart-aleck can be a sore trial," Giles said, lifting his mug of soda for a sip. Buffy gave him a look. Then transferred the look to Elisabeth, who swallowed her smile post-haste.
"Does that mean we're all going out on patrol?" Anya asked Buffy.
Buffy blinked. "No. No, I don't want to have to take everyone out just yet. I'm handling the vamps okay...unless you think the focus is going to happen tonight?" She looked to Willow.
"No, I don't think so," Willow said. "I'm planning to do a spell tonight to try and assess the energies in town, just to make sure. I'm still putting my money on the new moon, though."
"What do we do in the meantime?" Xander asked.
"I'll patrol tonight," Buffy said. "Xander, you and Anya keep reading." They nodded. "Willow and Tara will do the assessment spell. Giles, do you think your 'source' can be pumped for any more information?"
Giles shook his head.
Buffy shrugged. "I guess otherwise we'll just be marking time until we get a break."
"In the meantime," Willow said, "I want to take care of some of the things on my other lists. Which means I need to ask you a couple of questions." She turned to Elisabeth.
Elisabeth suddenly found the eyes of all the gang on her, and the heat rose in her face. "Of course," she said.
Anya got up. "I'll take everybody's plates," she said. "This part is going to be boring."
Willow glared at her. Anya ignored it, and Elisabeth felt quietly grateful to her for her forthright, and distracting, manner. Anya collected all the paper plates and used napkins and carried them toward the back, her shoes clacking.
"Can you tell me a little bit about your dimension?" Willow said. "I mean, I know it's where you lived, and that's kinda hard to describe, but maybe if I got a little clue about how our dimensions fit together, maybe I can figure out what spell we need to do to get you back there."
"Well...." Elisabeth paused, choosing her thoughts carefully. She had to tread lightly to avoid betraying her knowledge. Under the surface of her mind she cursed Giles briefly for getting her into this.
As if sensing her thoughts, Giles got up and went to the counter, leaving Xander, Buffy, Tara, and Willow to wait for her to speak.
"I mean—" Elisabeth began awkwardly— "our dimensions are so much alike otherwise, it looks like. I haven't discovered any fundamental differences in things like American history. All that seems different is that the population of individuals is—well, there are some people here that aren't there, and some there that aren't here. On the other hand, there's more war in my dimension than here. Most of the wars here appear to be supernatural. In my dimension, there's just a bunch of human wankers messing things up."
Giles coughed into his handkerchief as he turned over a leaf in his inventory book.
"We have no lack of human wankers here," Willow said with a smile.
"I didn't think so," Elisabeth replied, returning the smile.
"What's a wanker?" Xander said.
"It's another one of those British insults," Willow said.
"She's been hanging out with Giles all week," Buffy said. "What else do you expect?"
"Yes, but what is it?"
Everyone in the room gave Xander a look.
"A jerkwad," Elisabeth said shortly. "Or in that neighborhood." She waved a hand temporizingly.
"Ah," Xander said. "I'll have to remember that one."
"Hmm." Willow was thinking, with the end of her highlighter pressed into her upper lip. "It'd be interesting if your dimension were a sort of mirror-back to ours, with more of the Hellmouthy spiritual stuff on our side and more of the human strife on yours. And if it's really close to us, it'd explain why we have no record of it."
"We can't see the things that are closest to us," Elisabeth agreed.
"Of course, we don't know that for sure," Willow said, "but it's worth looking into. I think I know what book I want to try next. Cool, thanks."
At this point Anya click-clacked back into the front room. "Is the boring part over yet?"
Elisabeth smiled at her. "Yeah, I think so. Unless there're any more questions for me, I think we're all just fixing to hit the books."
"'Fixing to'?" Xander said quizzically. "Where are you from, the South?"
Elisabeth heard Giles give one of his longsuffering sighs, behind her at the counter. "Xander, you really need to work on your accents and dialects. Elisabeth is not from the South. She's from the Midwest." He paused to give a little sniff. "To be precise."
At this, Elisabeth lifted her head and sat calmly straight for a moment. Then, moving deliberately, she reached for one of the large grapes left on the paper plate, twisted around in her chair, and flung it at him, hard. He had his back to her, comparing two vials of herbs in spirits; her missile went wide to his left as he dodged right without missing a beat. The grape made a hollow squished thump as it hit the crystal-cabinet door, and fell to the floor, rocking gently.
Giles replaced one of the vials in its stand and turned slowly round to look at her, adjusting his glasses on his nose. Elisabeth hung her arm over the back of her chair and met his look levelly. "So," she said, "how did you know to dodge right?"
"Well," he said, his tone equally serious, "you're right-handed; if you were going to throw something at me you'd probably have to twist to give your right arm enough freedom, and you'd be throwing across your body, so the missile would likely go wide left. Which, as you see, it did. Q.E.D."
"Here endeth the lesson," Elisabeth said gravely, and turned around in her seat again, eyebrows high over her glasses. As she did so she saw that all the Scoobies around the table were staring at her. Willow's eyes in particular were quite wide. Elisabeth winked at her, and she flushed.
Buffy flushed too. She picked up a spork from the motley pile of plastic silverware on the table and began to score her napkin with it. "If we're all done with this exhibition, maybe we can make some plans." She paused in her maceration of the napkin to glare up at Giles. "Are we going to follow vamps tomorrow night?"
"If we don't make a breakthrough sooner than that," Giles said, keeping his equanimity, "I expect we will."
"And are we bringing her?" Buffy pointed at Elisabeth with the spork.
Giles blinked. "I'm not sure. She hasn't had any training."
"Unless you can kill vampires with an etched microspatula," Elisabeth said.
Giles snorted into a giggle.
"And sacrificed paste," Anya added brightly, carrying over a pile of books to be reshelved.
"Yes," Elisabeth said giddily, "we could paste his lips shut so he couldn't bite anyone, then stab him with the bone folder—oh, wait, that's not made of wood."
"A bone folder?" Xander said faintly. "That sounds pretty darn painful. Kill him; don't make him suffer."
"I wish I'd known about bone folders when I was a vengeance demon," Anya said.
"Don't think Giles'd take kindly to that kind of use of his preservation tools," Willow said with a little smirk. Tara dropped her eyes and covered her mouth.
Buffy's napkin was in shreds. "Nobody has answered my question yet," she said, with asperity.
"I wouldn't worry about it, Buffy," Giles said. "I can give Elisabeth a little training tomorrow, and if I think she sets up well, we can take her along."
"Great," Buffy said, scoring her shredded napkin harder.
"And no," Giles said, his eyes half-veiled, "you can't use my bone folder to fight evil."
"Darn it all," Elisabeth said, grinning at him. "And here I was looking forward to the training and everything."
The head of the spork snapped under the pressure and flew into a shelf full of jingling trinkets. Buffy dropped the handle, glaring at them with her mouth a small hard line.
"Buffy," Xander said, "you just killed an innocent spork."
Buffy ignored him. Willow glanced worriedly at Tara, who made a facial shrug.
Giles cleared his throat. "Well, I think that takes care of most of the meeting. Elisabeth—"
"I'd like to speak with you," Buffy said quietly to him. "Alone."
"Yes, of course." Giles wasn't looking directly at her. "Elisabeth, there's nothing in the kitchen for us to eat tonight. I wonder if you'd be willing to shop for our supper."
"Of course," Elisabeth said with alacrity. The waves of danger coming at her from Buffy's direction were not getting any fainter.
Giles pulled out his wallet and thumbed through the bills. "I think this should do it," he said, handing her a fifty. "Get whatever you'd like. Xander, you drove here, didn't you?"
"Yeah," Xander said, still looking at the decapitated spork and the ravaged napkin. "I'll take her."
"Excellent. Here," he said, working his housekey off the ring, "Elisabeth, here's the house key. I'll meet you back home when I've closed up here later this afternoon."
"Okay." Elisabeth pocketed the key and the fifty, then looked at Xander. "I'm ready if you are," she said.
"Yeah," Xander said, with a final glance at Buffy, who had folded her arms and was sitting looking stonily at them. "Let's go."
Pulling on his jacket, Xander ushered Elisabeth out the door before him; and shut it behind them on the sound of the tinkling bell.
*
Chapter 15