"No," said Joe.
Click.
"No," said Mac.
"No, hang on... um, no."
Click.
"What about this one?"
"No," replied Joe. "There's something altogether too coherent about the look in this one's eyes."
"Joe, think about what you just said."
"Right," Joe frowned. "Take this face, add enough alcohol to intoxicate a pink elephant... But still not quite. Not enough bulbousness about the nose."
Click.
"The end."
"Wow. Did we really just go through the entire database?"
"Sadly, yes," said Mac. "This was a day well spent."
"Me, I'm just grateful that plastic surgery is not an option for immortals. Ooh, just think." He shuddered.
"And that leaves us exactly where we started. Nowhere," said Mac, heaving himself stiffly out of his chair and beginning to pace up and down Joe's office. The chair appeared to groan in relief.
"Which is just as well, perhaps."
"How so?"
"I dread to imagine the trouble I could have got into had you gone after her."
"Oh, and you feel better at the thought of an unidentified immortal in Seacouver, who apparently knows about Watchers, and seemed none too pleased about having run into one."
"Point taken, but yes, actually. Unidentified means untraceable. What ever happens, headquarters won't be pinning it on me."
MacLeod snorted. "I couldn't think of very many things easier traceable than this woman's sense of colour coordination. Eye-watering, to say the least."
They both nodded with pained expressions.
"Well, in any case," said Joe. "Adam was sure he didn't recognize her, was he?"
"That's saying a lot. I mean, you try getting a good look at someone's face when you have motor oil in your eyes and a cigarette butt up your nose."
Fascinating as their trip through Immortal Showcase had been, they really could have saved themselves the trouble, as around opening time that night, the elusive Faye showed up entirely of her own accord. Joe behind the bar, Methos – who had been banging on the door to be let in half an hour before opening time – and Duncan seated at it, all dropped their jaws by at least three inches when something slick, yellow and buzzing sidled up to them.
"Good, um" – she glanced at the clock above Joe's head – "evening."
"Yes, ah, yes," said Joe.
A thick, loaded silence ensued, caused by four people each waiting very hard for someone else to say something.
Faye and the door exchanged glances. "Well," she said finally, rather more chirpy than the occasion seemed to warrant. "Here I am, then."
"Right," said Joe. "Here you are."
"We don't mean to sound rude. Or anything," said MacLeod, before more silence had a chance to settle. "But we are a bit... surprised, I believe is the word I'm looking for, to see you."
"You said you wanted to talk."
"And you said you were leaving. Which you did."
Faye sighed. "If this is the rate at which we'll be cutting to the chase, you may want to buy me a beer first."
"Duvel?" ventured Joe hopefully.
"Heavens, no. That's a one-night-a-week sort of drink. Better yet, one-night-a-month, for the wiser among us. But if you should happen to have any Hoegaarden, I'd be much obliged."
Methos, who had been brooding like an old gorilla on a diet, perked up a bit. "Hoegaarden, eh? I'll have one of those too. And if you buy it" – he turned to Faye – "I may just consider forgiving you for dumping me on my ass."
"Oh," she said. "That was you." It was an observation. Not, by any stretch, was it an apology.
Methos didn't seem to mind. He took a long gulp of the pale sour-smelling stuff while the others shuffled some money about, as it seemed a bit unclear who should be paying for what.
"Drinks are on me," said Joe in the end. Little did he know the trend these four syllables would wind up setting. "Okay," he said then. "Maybe you wouldn't mind finally telling us who you are."
"Finally?" said Faye, with a knowing grin. "You spent all day looking through your dratted database, didn't you? Counting your blessings for being a member of the 20th century, in the days following the invention of such things as filing and online picture databases and spelling, I'll bet."
Joe shuffled his knees uneasily. The feet followed. They had little choice. "How, um, did you know that?"
"Never mind that. The crux of the matter lies in what you don't know, and will not know."
"Which is?"
"My existence. Savvy?" She waggled her eyebrows meaningfully, as if saying that contradiction might lead her to be rather creative in the finding of bits that could be cut off. Joe swallowed. Something about the look in her eyes suggested that she could be very creative indeed. The eyebrows, on second thought, had very little to do with the overall effect, looking, as they did, rather like a pair of caterpillars doing a happy-dance.
MacLeod cut in. "I don't believe I like your looking at my friend in that tone of voice. You had better not be threatening anyone."
"Nor had you," she replied flatly. "Look, it's really not that complicated. As long as I don't start seeing pictures of my mug online or catching idiots with cameras and notepads following me around, I expect we'll all get along just fine."
"All this rather begs the question," Methos piped up, "if you aim to stay out of the way of the Watchers, why did you come back here? Simply moving on would have been the clever thing to do, wouldn't it. They had nothing on you, no name, no picture, no whereabouts. Nothing, except that you wear the ugliest excuse for a coat I've ever seen and that you showed up at Joe's one day."
Faye looked as if her feelings were hurt, although it was unclear whether this was due to Methos' purport, or the reference to her coat. The way her fingers absently stroked the material of a sleeve, as if soothing it, might have been a little hint, though.
"Do you have any idea," she said, "how bloody difficult it is to find a place that serves some decent beer around these parts?"
Methos considered this, and conceded. "Does that mean, then, that you'll be around for drinks?"
"Possibly, possibly," she said to her glass of Hoegie.
"In that case, introductions are in order," said Methos, and extended his hand. "My name is Adam. Nice to make your acquaintance."
She looked at the hand, at the glass, back at the hand, and finally at Joe. "Do we have an understanding?"
"Of course," said Joe, as if throwing his wallet at a mugger before he had a chance to pull a gun. "Definitely," he added wretchedly.
"Faye," said Faye, shaking the hand.
"Nice and, um, short," said Joe, while they too shook hands.
"Yes, well, where I come from, people tended to find names of more than one syllable too tricky to pronounce," she replied enigmatically.
"Which is where?" Joe couldn't help but try. Curiosity did, after all, kill the Watcher.
"Don't push your luck, Rumplestiltpin. If you really want to know, you'll have to buy me a hell of a lot more beer," Faye said cockily, with the implication that no amount of beer would be quite enough to get her to blab.
Five hours later.
"Mammoths," slurred Faye. Her head hit the bar with the faint click of wooden bead on polished oak. She raised it again. "With tuk... tuk... big teeth."
"Phwoaarp," trumpeted Methos, possibly attempting to imitate the noise of a charging bull, though probably not even he knew for sure.
"I don't remember the names of my family," added Faye. "I don't remember if I had any family." She thumped her head into the bar again with rather unnecessary force. "Drat the mists of time. Drat the passing of the ages. Drat it all."
"Drat it all," agreed Methos.
Faye reached unsteadily for her glass, moaned when she found it empty. "Ug," she said. "Or possibly Zog. I really can't remember."
MacLeod and Joe exchanged mystified glances. So did others of the few still remaining customers. But no one paid any serious attention. When taking into consideration the haphazard collection of empty glasses in front of her – for some reason, Faye had objected to any of them being taken away – she was really behaving rather normally. In fact, most of them seemed to find her amusing.
Joe silently resented the amount of last-minute washing-up he was being saddled with, but found some sweet vindication in the thought of the state her head would hopefully be in come morning.