Shadow Though it Be: An Excursus – Chapter 19
Elisabeth was wakened next morning from unpleasant, sluggish dreams involving growling vampires and items missing from her backpack tantalizingly dangled before her, by Giles's hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently. She groaned.
"Wake up," he said softly; then, as she tried to pull the covers over her head, "No, you don't. Come on now. I've got a cup of tea here for you."
He persisted in shaking her till she had opened her eyes and reluctantly struggled up onto one elbow. "There. Drink your tea now, we've got a lot to do."
She glared puffy-eyed at him as he retreated into the kitchen. Today he was wearing a midnight-blue oxford shirt, partnered with a grey tie with gold flecks in it. Sitting up and swinging her feet to the floor, she turned her attention away from his sartorial splendor to the cup of tea (properly milked, she noticed) sitting on the coffee table. But before she could reach for it her head gave a horrible throb, and the various aches and pains and pulled muscles in her body reasserted their bid for her attention.
Giles looked through the bar window and caught sight of her sitting lumpishly, with her head in her hands. "All right?" he asked.
"Headache," Elisabeth mumbled. "Actually, pretty much an all-overache." She lifted her head heavily and reached at last for the teacup and saucer. "Ahhh," she moaned as she took the first sip, "the healing balm."
Tea really was magical in that respect. Elisabeth could recall very few situations that had not looked better after a cup of tea. And Giles had milked and sugared it exactly right. Elisabeth held cup and saucer and sipped at the hot elixir, her eyes coming more open.
"I woke you up in time to have your bath," Giles said from the kitchen.
"Good boy," Elisabeth said. For answer she heard a single grunt of a laugh.
"But only if you do it with relative celerity," he added.
"I'll give you celerity," Elisabeth muttered into her tea.
"Hmm?"
"Nothin'." Elisabeth set down the cup. "Going to take my bath now."
She made a dismal discovery when she opened her pack: she had worn her last fresh clothes to go patrolling in, and they were all-too-obviously smudged with sweat and dirt. The rest of them she had stuffed into the pack, so even if there was anything wearable, it was badly wrinkled. Muttering imprecations against herself for putting off laundry this long, Elisabeth pulled out her creased all-purpose-but-mostly-for-interviews black skirt and her grey cardigan. She shook out her little white T-shirt, sniffed it, decided it smelled okay, and put all three articles into a pile with her bra and bath things.
In the kitchen, Giles was buttering himself a piece of toast and glancing over the paper, which was spread out awkwardly over the kitchen counter. "Can I use your clothes dryer?" Elisabeth asked him.
"Certainly," he said, taking a bite out of his toast at the same time. "You finished with your tea?"
"I abandoned it," Elisabeth said, "in the interests of celerity."
"Ah," he said. "By the way, thank you for having the presence of mind to purchase the tea." He lifted his own cup for a sip.
Elisabeth grunted.
"And I'm doing it again, aren't I? Talking to you in the morning."
She gave another grunt, but with humor this time. "'Lis'beth not happy without her bath. —Of course this naturally leads to the question why I choose a way of life that mostly involves nasty shower stalls."
"Yes," he said, burying his eyes in his teacup.
Elisabeth moved on down the hall to the bathroom. She set up her bath things and turned on the taps, then took up her clothing and went to find his dryer. She threw them inside unceremoniously and set the timer for thirty minutes. That ought to take care of the worst of the wrinkles, she thought; and went back to her bath.
She made the water extra hot, to soothe the aches in her calves and shoulders; and, celerity or no, she leaned back in the water as the tub filled and shut her eyes, letting the warmth wash over her, comforting and achingly needed, like the tea. It was only when she heard Giles's footsteps in the passage that she decided to sit up and actually wash.
She didn't much like putting her pajamas back on after getting out of the tub; they smelled sour and needed a wash as badly as anything in her pack, but it was either that or wear a towel into the passage to retrieve her clothing from the dryer, and Elisabeth knew without question which she preferred. She ventured cautiously into the passage and went to find her clothing, only to discover that Giles had taken it upon himself to iron it all and put it up on the wall rack on a pair of plastic hangers. She shook her head. "Rupert, someday your friends are going to perform an intervention on you for terminal punctiliousness," she murmured as she took down the skirt, cardigan, and T-shirt.
"You're welcome," Giles said, passing through the other end of the passage.
She snorted good-naturedly and returned to the bathroom to get dressed.
She had a brief bad moment when she looked in the mirror and recoiled at the sight of the dark bruise on her cheek. Some of the swelling had gone down, but she still looked like the proverbial prizefighter who'd forgotten to duck. She debated for a moment whether makeup wouldn't just make it worse; she decided that she'd use the pressed powder and if it looked hideous, she'd just wash it off. In the end, however, she merely looked like a decently-made-up person with a bad bruise on her cheek, and when she put her wet hair up the image was complete. She sighed deeply, put on her glasses, and gathered up her things to carry out into the livingroom.
Giles was packing his satchel with new books. "You look nice," he said as she sat down in the armchair with her socks and shoes.
She held up her hands, briefly modeling the cardigan and skirt. "Witness the bitter end of my clean laundry."
"Ah."
"So what are our plans today?" she asked as she tightened the laces on her shoe.
He lifted a hand and ticked items on his fingers. "Meet with Buffy, meet with Willow, plan the spell, plan the patrol, and do various other things like eat meals and earn a living."
"That does sound like a full day," Elisabeth said blandly. Giles grunted and returned to cleaning out his satchel and repacking it.
By the time they left, the sun was a little higher in the sky, and a feathering of cirrus clouds magnified the light outside. Elisabeth rather wished she hadn't lost her sunglasses a couple towns and a dimension ago. They didn't say much in the car, but then again, there was very little need for them to say anything. Giles's lips were tightly primmed, and he drove with both hands firmly on the wheel. Elisabeth decided not to ask him if this was because he was anticipating talking to Buffy, or because of something else; in any event, it mattered little.
And considering that Buffy hadn't quite pulled off the moral victory she'd planned, it was too much to hope that Elisabeth's own (unavoidable) next interview with her would be anything but painful. But maybe at least it would result in her not going on the patrol tonight. Elisabeth had seen quite enough of vampires, and last night, in between trying not to think about the exquisite subtlety of Giles's hands, she had been trying not to think of the silent scream of the demon as it cut through her vitals, dying; or of the other vampire's uncanny strength, lifting her off her feet. Between the two sources of unbearable tension, however, she seemed to have survived the night, weighted in the center, without any annoying psychological detritus.
Lost in thought, she came to herself to find her eyes on the aforesaid subtle hands, curved over the wheel in a strong grip. As she watched he dropped the right one to the automatic gearshift, light and restless….Elisabeth took her eyes deliberately away and looked out her window at the world falling away behind the car.
"We're nearly there," he murmured, unnecessarily.
*
No sooner had Elisabeth and Giles unlocked the shop and stepped in than Anya arrived with Xander in tow. "Hi," she said brightly to both of them.
Giles grunted.
Elisabeth gave them both a single noncommittal wave.
Anya's face fell, and she gave them both a sympathetic look which mystified Elisabeth for the moment; Anya brushed lightly past her to set up the counter for business.
Xander said: "Nice shiner. Where'd you get that?"
At first Elisabeth didn't know what he was talking about; she saw Giles's shoulders stiffen as he headed toward the back, and it gradually dawned on her. "Oh!" she said, then, laconically, "Patrol."
"Really? Buffy took you out last night? Color me impressed. You bag a vamp?"
"Nah. Vamp almost bagged me instead. It's rather depressing," Elisabeth told him more truthfully.
"Ah, don't worry. Everybody's an amateur at first. Except the Slayer, of course." He eyed Elisabeth shrewdly as she put up her fingers to trace the lump on her face. "Want some coffee? I'll make it."
Elisabeth really wanted more tea, but she nodded gratefully and let Xander go to the sideboard and begin futzing with the coffeemaker. She took her seat at the back table, hanging her jacket on the back of her chair, and watched the shop come awake. Giles returned from the back with a small pile of dusty books; she saw him turn a wide-eyed grimace to where Xander was coaxing the coffee machine to life, but he said nothing, and looked at Elisabeth not at all. Elisabeth decided she would put no construction whatsoever on that fact, and laced her hands firmly in front of her on the table.
Xander poured coffee for everyone and delivered it to them where they worked (or in Elisabeth's case, sat lumpishly), after inquiring after everyone's tastes in creamer and sugar. When he placed Elisabeth's coffee on the table in front of her, she gave him the smile she was beginning to think of as the Xander Smile: not broad, but simple and slightly less wry than the smile she found herself habitually giving Giles. Her eyes went over to where Giles was writing fussily in a notebook: punctilious, she had called him, but it didn't quite fit; if the glory of his being had a name, it would not be punctilious, with all its sanctimonious overtones of checked lists and compared marks.
She came to herself again to find Xander glancing surreptitiously between her and the Watcher, who was now scrubbing irritably with his eraser at a mark and brushing off the debris with his free right hand. She dropped her eyes as Xander's look came back to her.
Before he could say anything, however, Buffy walked in.
Like Giles, she was dressed resplendently, though in her own way: a flowing blue sundress topped by a white cardigan sweater so soft Elisabeth would have instinctively reached to touch it if she'd been near enough. Of course, there was that other instinct keeping Elisabeth from getting near enough; Buffy's chin was high and her walk a bit too regal to be convincing, which spelled alert, though exactly for what Elisabeth didn't know.
"Ah, Buffy," Giles said, closing his notebook without a second glance.
"I'll be in the training room whenever you're ready," she said to him. Without sparing a glance for the others, she swept past them all into the back and disappeared.
Elisabeth cast her eyes down into her coffee cup and lifted it for a sip, and as she did so she found that her remaining animus against Buffy had vanished entirely. She looked up to see that Xander's eyebrows had gone up, and even Anya was blinking thoughtfully in the wake of Buffy's disappearance.
Giles smoothed his tie with an absent preciseness and said, "I won't be too long. If you could hold the fort, Anya…." He wandered behind Anya and around the counter, drew a sudden long breath as of girding his loins, and strode toward the back. Distantly, the door of the training room shut with a soft click.
Xander's gaze, following Giles, had become thoughtful; and before Elisabeth could take refuge in another sip of coffee, he turned it upon her—and more specifically on the prominent bruise on her face. His mouth went grim.
"I'm thinking," he said to Elisabeth, "that we're going to have a talk."
*
When Giles entered the training room, he found Buffy at the far end of it, fingering the knife collection on the wall desultorily. At his entrance, she straightened a little, to resume her regal air; but the effort was only halfhearted, and by the time he shut the door, she had dropped her hand from the knives altogether.
They stood for a long moment, looking not-quite at each other.
At the very moment Giles drew breath to say something horribly inane about their plans for the day, Buffy blurted: "Are you still mad at me?"
He swallowed grimly and dropped his eyes. He hadn't brought his coffee cup, so he couldn't buy time with a sip of coffee; he reached for his glasses, but never even got them off his face before he gave up and dropped his hand as Buffy had done. "Yes," he said quietly.
She had surely been expecting it, but he saw the little flinch anyway, and he added, after a pause: "But it's negligible."
He saw her swallow and reply, in the ghost of her wise-cracking voice: "Does that mean you're gonna get over it?"
A flicker of a smile came into his mouth; he felt fairly certain that Buffy knew exactly what "negligible" meant.
"Yes," he said.
*
"Yes," Elisabeth said, in answer to Xander's unasked question.
Xander and Anya were seated, like two friendly inquisitioners, across the table from her, and under their scrutiny Elisabeth had forcibly taken her hand from the bruise on her cheek.
Xander's dark eyes were disquietingly stern. "You did listen to what I told you yesterday," he said, not making it a question.
"Yes," Elisabeth said again, looking him in the eye. "I did listen. But if you're saying I should have been able to stop that train, I just don't think so."
"Excuse me," Anya said, "but Xander, what are we talking about?"
"Buffy was the one who hit Elisabeth," Xander said quietly.
Anya looked, startled, at Elisabeth's bruise. Elisabeth resisted the impulse to cover it with her hand.
Xander, meanwhile, was already conceding Elisabeth's point. "I'm not saying you should have been able to stop it," he said. "I'm just saying…."
"Count the cost," Elisabeth said. "Well, I did. With middling success. The patrol part was pretty much an unqualified disaster."
"I thought we were going to talk about Elisabeth and Giles having sex," Anya said, putting out her lower lip.
A strangled squeak came out of Elisabeth's throat, and her face went bright hot. "Jeez, Anya," Xander said, blushing himself, "could you be a little less subtle, I don't think we all got your meaning."
Anya folded her arms. "Well, I thought it was time we cut through all this riddling crap of yours, Xander. Why did Buffy hit Elisabeth?"
"Because—" Xander looked at Elisabeth for help.
Elisabeth said, "Because she wants to protect Giles from me."
"Why?" Anya said. "Are you evil?"
Elisabeth had to smile a little at that. "No. I'm human, and agendaless."
"So what's the problem?"
"It's complicated," Xander said.
"I don't see how. I mean, all Buffy has to do is find out if Elisabeth is lying about not being evil, and that's pretty easy to do. I mean, we could even get Spike to hit her like he did Tara, if she needs proof." Anya looked from one to the other. "You want me to get Spike?"
"I think I want to have a hit-free day today," Elisabeth said feebly.
"Well," Anya said, shrugging, "then Buffy's just going to have to learn to believe you."
Xander and Elisabeth exchanged looks.
"Well, then, let's get to the main topic on the agenda: sex." Anya laced her fingers and sat up straight in her chair. "Specifically, referring to you and Giles. Because, I mean, we could talk about me and Xander and even Buffy and Riley, but that pretty much happens all the time and for the purposes of this discussion, it would be boring. Though not," she hastened to assure Xander, "boring in the act."
"Thank you," Xander said, in a strangled voice.
"Anyway," Anya said, including Elisabeth again, "it shouldn't be that hard. He already likes you, so all we have to do is—"
"Oh, I don't think—" Elisabeth squirmed in her chair.
"Of course, he didn't say much to you this morning, did he? I bet that's just nerves, especially with Buffy being all—" Anya wiggled her hands in the air.
"'And is not general incivility the very essence of love?'" Elisabeth quoted softly, so that she fell behind listening to Anya's next sentence.
"—so all we have to do is just plant a few subtle hints here and there and we'll make him into a Casanova in no time—"
Elisabeth caught up abruptly with Anya's meaning, and held up her hands in panic. "No—no—waitjustaminute—I am not on board with this—"
"Oh come on," Anya said pleadingly. "Everyone else is getting orgasms, it's just not fair for Giles, and he hasn't had any in months." (Elisabeth felt sure her face was turning purple; she wished she had enough breath to retort something that was copacetic with right-thinking feminist sensibilities.) "And you like him, don't you? I'm sure you do."
"I—don't—"
"Anya," Xander said, but she paid him no heed.
"So you don't want him at all, do you?" she said, in tones of deepest skepticism.
"No," Elisabeth said, in a very small, indignant voice.
Which plainly convinced Anya of the opposite, for she broke into a beatific smile. Xander's look, meanwhile, said plainly, You gotta do better than that. "Well, it's settled then," Anya said.
"No, it isn't!"
Elisabeth gripped the edge of the table hard, her pulse pounding in her temples. She spoke in a clenched hiss. "I've got more important things to worry about than ministering to Rupert Giles's libido. I might be dead in forty-eight hours. I'm trying to avoid getting killed by the Slayer on one hand and on vampires on the other, and research ridiculous-sounding spells, and not rip apart the fabric of the universes by merely being here, and here you are playing a sex game with my possibly-quite-short life, for f—" She stopped abruptly, yanked off her glasses, and pressed the bridge of her nose hard with both sets of fingers, trying to breathe deeply.
The silence came at her from the other side of the table, like a breeze rolling off a cool river. "Sorry," she croaked, without taking away her hands. "I'm sorry. I just—" She stopped, and didn't attempt any more.
"You know," Anya said in a very small voice, "you'll probably make it through fine. These things happen, people cross dimensions all the time, and it usually works out. And we've done this sort of thing before, so…."
"Yeah," Xander added, equally softly, "we do this dimension stuff all the time."
"Oh, I trust you," Elisabeth said, her throat aching suddenly. "I'm just—a bit—stressed out."
"You know what's good for that?" Anya said tentatively.
"Anya," Xander reproved in a murmur.
"Well, it is," she said.
Elisabeth started laughing quietly behind her hands. She braced her elbows on the desk, leaned her head into her hands and chuckled, wearily, for a long time. When she lifted her head she saw that both of them were regarding her with concern. "I'm all right," she said in an attempt to reassure them. She put her glasses back on and looked levelly at Anya, and the humor was back in her voice when she said, "No, I'm not on board with the Casanova Plan." She folded her arms.
"Okay." Anya's voice was meek enough, but Elisabeth figured she hadn't heard the end of it yet. She reached for her now-cold cup of coffee and sipped at it.
"I'll tell him," Anya said triumphantly, "that you had nothing to do with it."
*
"So that's what it was then," Buffy said.
"Yes."
"Giles…why didn't you tell me it was that she knew about Dawn? I mean, instead of letting me think…."
"Well, I see now that that was a mistake," Giles said, earning a dropped-chin look from his Slayer. "But as I recall, I did tell you that I was finding out what I could and that you should trust me in the meantime."
"And I was going to, but then Willow told me about that thing that happened with the meditation, and the crystals, and how you reacted…it just sounded really freaky to me."
Giles drew a taut breath. "I wouldn't argue too hard against that description."
"She said it was like—" Buffy paused before going on. "Like you went away with her, to this really horrible place—she said it was like being erased—" She stopped at the look on Giles's face.
Giles spoke after a moment, his voice guarded. "And what sort of conclusion did Willow draw from that?"
Buffy said reluctantly, "Well, she didn't decide Elisabeth was evil. She just said she was spooked."
Giles sighed heavily.
"And then the next thing I know, you've got that lovesick-sheep look of yours, looking at her—"
"I do not have a lovesick-sheep look," Giles said indignantly.
"Yeah, okay," Buffy said, "but it just seemed kinda…."
"Dodgy?"
"Suspicious."
"I see."
She folded her arms and gave him a mirthless smile. "What?"
He raised an eyebrow. "I was going to say, if that's the case then why do I get the feeling that it isn't the whole story?"
She heaved a sigh and looked away. "Giles,—it's complicated, okay?"
"I grant you that," he said dryly. "In fact, that was the objection Elisabeth herself raised last night."
"Objection…to what?"
A faint flush crept into Giles's cheeks, but he spoke with equanimity. "To taking any sort of involvement with our lives while she's here."
"With you, you mean."
"Oh very well, with me." He fixed her with an exacting eye. "But also with everyone else."
Buffy looked at him, at first steadily, but then drew a breath and dropped her eyes. "So then what about this patrol," she said flatly to the table between them. "Are we going to take her?"
Giles knew dimly within himself that he ought to press her for an answer to his question, but, as so often he felt too tired in spirit to do anything but let Buffy change the subject. "I've been thinking about it," he said, taking off his glasses and swiping gently at the dust on the lenses with his handkerchief. "And I think we may have no choice but to take her. That is, if we want to get a sense of where the focus is. I'll know more after I meet with Willow, when she gets here. What's your opinion?"
"Well," Buffy said, "she knows what to do in a fight—keep her head down and get armed—but I don't know if she's consistent. If you train her a little, I think I can take her. If she can still trust me," she added, a little bitterness creeping into her voice.
"Well," Giles said evenly, "as to that, you'll have to ask her."
*
While Anya served a customer at the register, Xander went to dig under the sideboard. When he returned to where Elisabeth sat, he brought with him a small box that turned out to be—
"Animal crackers?" Elisabeth said, with a little smile.
"Yeah," Xander said. "I bought them for a snack a couple meetings ago, and then forgot about them. I think I've eaten all the monkeys."
Elisabeth opened the box, the little smile growing in her face. "All the monkeys?"
"Yeah," he said sheepishly, "I eat all the monkeys first. They used to scare me when I was a kid."
Elisabeth made a facial shrug. "Makes sense to me." She dug out a seal and popped it into her mouth. "I'm surprised Rupert hasn't polished off the rest," she said, chewing.
"He must not have known they were there," Xander grinned.
Elisabeth pulled out another animal cracker—this time, a tiger—and experimentally dipped it into her cold coffee.
"Is that good?"
She looked up into Xander's face, chewing thoughtfully, swallowed, and shrugged. The next cracker she decided not to use for biscotti.
"Listen," Xander said quietly, "don't worry about Anya's talk. She has a thing. You—you just do what you want."
Elisabeth nodded, blushing.
"And," he added, taking her shoulder briefly, "don't worry about the spell. You're in good hands."
"I know," she said softly, without lifting her head.
She saw Xander jerk his head up just as she heard it too: the door to the training room clicking open. She caught a brief glimpse of his dark intent eyes before looking over her shoulder herself; it was Giles who emerged from the back and, moreover, looked and headed directly for her.
It wasn't immediately apparent from the stern calm of his expression, but Elisabeth somehow knew to breathe easier when she saw him. So it wasn't disaster.
By the time Giles reached her, Xander had retreated to the counter to chat with Anya. Discretion is the better part of valor, Elisabeth thought with amusement, and raised her head to await whatever Giles was about to say.
He opened his mouth, but blinked when he saw the box she held. "Animal crackers? Where'd you get those?"
She grinned at him. "Xander found them for me under the sideboard. Want one?"
He took hold of the proffered box and dug out a handful of the little cookies. "Buffy'd like a word," he mumbled through the first animal cracker. "If you want to talk to her."
"Oh," Elisabeth said. "Okay."
She surrendered the box to Giles entirely and got up from her chair, waves of cold affect rippling over her limbs. Drawing a long strengthening breath much as Giles had done, she turned toward the back and headed for the training-room door.
*
She hadn't been inside the training room since the meditation disaster; so it was with a trepidation almost wholly unrelated to Buffy's presence that she entered the room and blinked at the calm slant of light. Unaccustomed clouds were gathering outside, rendering the light of the room dimmer and softer than she had seen it before, light scarcely strong enough to pick up the heart of an aquamarine. Elisabeth smoothed down one sleeve of her grey cardigan, as if to chafe warmth into her arm with one stroke, and turned her eyes from the windows to find the Slayer.
Buffy was sitting at the table with her feet on the seat of the chair and her backside on the back, elbows on knees; she looked as if she'd been there a while, and Elisabeth reflected that it must have irritated Giles to talk to Buffy sitting that way. Which would be the primary reason for doing it. Elisabeth smiled to herself.
Buffy was looking up at her guardedly, her mouth small and grim. Elisabeth said quietly: "Giles said you wanted a word."
"Yeah," Buffy said, in the same tone.
Elisabeth pushed the door gently shut behind her and came to sit in the chair that Giles had vacated. She laced her fingers tightly together in her lap, and pressed her lips together, eyes downcast. A long, impossible silence sat on their shoulders and devoured the room. Buffy broke it, uncharacteristically, by clearing her throat.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
Elisabeth looked up at her, surprised at the opening, and saw that Buffy's face was taut with—not quite concern, but with the gnawing misery of a general after a losing battle. She nodded, and forced her voice to work. "Yes. I'm all right."
"Good," Buffy said, and alighted from the chair to pace the floor of the training room. She turned after a full circuit to look hard at Elisabeth again. "Do you think you're up to going on patrol tonight?"
Elisabeth dropped her eyes again. "It's still being considered that I should go?"
"Yes…."
"I mean," Elisabeth said, in answer to Buffy's unspoken question, "since I made such a fiasco of the first one."
"You had help," Buffy said dryly.
Elisabeth was chagrined to find that tears were trembling in her eyes. She lowered her gaze, to hide them from the Slayer. Of all the times to start crying, she chided herself. Pull yourself together, Elisabeth. She sat and relaced her fingers in her lap, swallowing.
When she felt strong enough to look up, she saw that Buffy's eyes were very wide in her face. Their gazes touched briefly, and the Slayer turned her head a little, to look at the wall. "Giles says you know something about—about Dawn," she said quietly.
Elisabeth blinked. "He said that?"
Buffy turned to look at her full-face once more.
"What do you know?" she said.
Elisabeth's heart constricted; she said nothing, and Buffy repeated her appeal more urgently. "I need to know."
With difficulty, Elisabeth got down a swallow. "I know what you know," she said softly.
Buffy had actually gone pale and quiet. "You haven't told anyone else?"
"No—of course not. But—" Elisabeth wrung her hands apart and smoothed her skirt over her knees. "—but it's hard to walk like I don't know anything. You understand why I have to get out of here, as soon as I can."
Buffy turned away again. "It makes sense," she said quietly.
"What makes sense?"
"Why you'd confide in Giles."
"Oh," Elisabeth said. "Yes, I suppose so. But in actuality, he had to pin me to a wall first."
Buffy turned back to her, eyebrows raised.
"I'm not exactly an unsuspicious article," she said. "I'm not really sure how I got him to trust me. I'm not even sure how he got me to trust him."
Buffy gave a snort of mordant humor. "You must think we're all crazy."
Some of the humor came back into Elisabeth's mouth too. "Like I told Rupert, I figured that's life on the Hellmouth."
The two women looked at one another, the elder one sitting with eyes upraised, the younger one on her feet, holding herself lightly. It was another moment before Elisabeth spoke.
"Even in my own dimension, you know, this isn't the sort of entanglement I relish."
Buffy's mouth moved wryly, acknowledging the point.
"This is the kind of problem I usually solve with a bus ticket," Elisabeth said, for good measure.
Buffy turned her gaze aside then, to stare into the middle distance. "I used to think I had that luxury," she said softly.
Elisabeth's voice, answering, was both strong comfort and apology. "I know."
*
"It looks like it's going to rain," Xander said, peering out the front window into the street and tilting his head to get a good glimpse of the greying sky. "Hope Will doesn't get soaked on her way here."
"Well," Anya said, slapping the register drawer back into place with a slightly vindictive flourish, "she's a witch. It's not hard to do something about that."
Giles was studiously ignoring them both, writing in his ledger again and pausing only to wish a proprietor's goodbye to the customer who'd just purchased ten ounces of his best sage blend. He continued to ignore Anya as she wriggled past behind him to replace the canister with its fellows, but when he raised his head to reach for his gum-eraser, he was confronted with Anya at his elbow, with an earnest look on her face that boded nothing good.
"Yes?" he said, warily.
"An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away," Anya informed him. And having delivered herself of this aphorism, she swept behind him, around the counter, and into the back room with her inventory clipboard.
Giles shut his eyes in a wince, shook his head, and returned to his work in the ledger.
Buffy and Elisabeth sure were taking a long time in there. Giles kept his head down, working, but he couldn't stop the suspense from plucking at his nerve-ends. He had told himself he wouldn't go into the training room even if he heard shouting, but his resolve was ebbing fast, and he was beginning to formulate excuses for intruding on their conversation that would not make him a complete ass. Instead of coming up with a good excuse, however, he merely managed to ruin his task with the ledger; after his third long session with the gum-eraser, he gave it up and shut the book.
The shelves needed dusting. Giles got out his featherduster and began to swipe delicately between and under the merchandise, working his way slowly around the room. When he came to the shelf on which stood the two fertility idols, tall and squat, he smiled to himself, remembering the ache in his gut from laughing so hard, remembering the mixture of stealthy triumph, hilarity, and wonder in Elisabeth's face. He took down the stone female idol and swiped it lovingly with the duster.
"Also," Anya said, "studies show that plenty of sex helps a person maintain good sleep levels."
For the second time that week, the idol was nearly dropped to destruction. Giles whirled to see that his shop assistant had appeared at his elbow again, as if she had teleported there.
"Anya, for God's sake," he said—but she was already clacking away into the other room.
He was debating whether to go and find her and put a stop to this drive-by sex talk, or (alternatively) to go and barge into the training room, excuses be damned, when the phone rang.
He went to pick up before Anya could return from the back. "Thank you for calling the Magic Box," he said, tucking the featherduster under his arm. "How can I help—"
"Giles, it's me," Willow said breathlessly.
"Oh. Willow. Is everything all right?"
"Yes, it's all right, I just wanted to call and tell you—Tara and I did the spell last night, and it's definitely tomorrow night, and we almost found the focus, but the energies got too chaotic. I'm online right now trying to find a spell that will calibrate the target dimensions exactly enough so that we know where we're sending Elisabeth. So I don't think I'm going to come to the shop after all," she finished, taking a breath. "Okay?"
"Oh—oh yes—by all means—keep searching—" Giles said.
"How are things there?"
"Erm—I think they're all right," Giles said. "I'll be able to tell you more later. You're coming on the patrol tonight, of course?"
"Yeah, I'll be there."
"Good. Good, then—I'll see you tonight, and perhaps you can come over to my flat tomorrow—I'm thinking of closing the shop tomorrow for a holiday, to plan things."
"Okay, I'll be there tomorrow then. Bye, Giles."
"Good-bye," Giles said, and put down the phone.
Those books on the upper shelf needed dusting and straightening. Giles climbed the ladder to the book loft, anchoring the handle of his featherduster in his teeth. The task seemed to take no time at all, and as he descended the ladder again Giles reflected on watched pots and high-school clocks. Buffy and Elisabeth showed no signs whatsoever of emerging.
Anya was waiting for him at the bottom of the ladder. "And here's some good advice that I learned the hard way," she said. "You should check your supply of condoms to make sure they're fresh, because they do expire after a while, you know."
Giles brandished the featherduster dangerously. "Anya—what the hell are you on about? Not that I look forward to knowing—"
"You. You and Elisabeth, you silly, obtuse man," Anya said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Clearly, neither of you is happy enough today for you to have done it last night, so I'm just—subtly encouraging you to get a move on while she's still around." She rocked back and forth on her heels, smiling.
Giles dropped the hand holding the featherduster and raised his eyes in appeal to the painted tin ceiling. "And why," he moaned, "are you making this your business?"
"Because," Anya said, beaming, "a sexually satisfied boss is a happy boss. A boss who might give me a raise."
Giles reddened, and lowered his chin to look piercingly into her face. "Anya," he said softly, "I will never, never give you a raise, if you say one word more to me on this subject."
"That's the frustration talking," Anya said sagely.
Giles raised the featherduster again, but he—and Anya—were saved by the sound of the training-room door opening. Elisabeth came forth, followed by Buffy: Giles was faint with relief to see that neither of them was bleeding or crying, and in fact, Buffy was even smiling slightly.
"So," she said, "is Will here yet?"
"Er," Giles said, recovering, "she's not coming. She called to say she's deep in online research and will see us at the patrol."
"Oh, okay," Buffy said. "I'll drop by her place then, later. Right now I gotta go." She strode quickly toward the door, much more comfortable in her walk than she had been earlier that morning. "See you all tonight," she said, and swept out.
"Later, Buffy," Xander said, as the door fell shut behind her.
"Well," Anya said, looking pleased, "there's one problem solved. Now you can—"
"Rupert," Elisabeth interrupted, "why are you holding that featherduster like a weapon? Are there some rabid dustbunnies in the shop?"
Anya shrieked.
"It's just an expression," Xander said soothingly, coming up and gently maneuvering Anya away from them and back to the counter.
Giles looked at his watch. Thirty minutes until the shop closed; never had he been more grateful for the shorter Sunday hours. "Good one," he murmured to Elisabeth. "You saved us."
"Not for long," she murmured musically back, just as with a peal of thunder the rain began to spatter against the window.
*
Chapter 20