Lisa sat behind her desk going through a couple of files that had been assigned to her by the head of her department, some Englishman whose name she had already forgotten again – names and numbers were not her forte. A widow wanted to contact her late husband in order to find out the secret combination to the vault in which he had hidden away his entire fortune, a dark soul needed to be vanquished from a hotel owned by one of Wolfram & Hart's clients, a spirit had to be conjured to give evidence of a recent murder. It was her second day at work, actually that was not entirely correct - she was always working the night shift, because this way she could also go to her classes - and she was already wading knee deep in cases. The young woman sighed and massaged her temples. Lisa needed a break. The letters were already starting to swim before her eyes. She walked over to the window and looked at the lights of the Los Angeles skyline.
Her mirror image reflected in the glass. She was wearing leather pants, boots with high heels and a black see-through shirt with black corset underneath. Her long hair was tied back to a sleek ponytail; her features were beautiful but somehow lifeless, like those of a marble statue. She was slim and tall with a porcelain white complexion. At school she had been always ridiculed by her classmates because of it. They had called her 'ghost girl'. If only they knew how close they had come to the truth. When she walked the city streets she always saw them - the spirits. She consciously chose to ignore them, trying to lead a normal life. Once you started helping you were bound to end up in a vicious circle. Soon enough the rumour would spread and you would be damned to sacrifice your own happiness for others – the dead. And let's face it they were neither rather thankful - speaking in terms of rewarding you with money – nor was their company a benefit to your mental health. So Lisa blocked her feelings out most of the time. She had often been called cold-hearted, but in reality that was not the point at all. She just wanted to protect herself. She had burned herself once too often. Keep it light, do not get too involved. From that point of view this law firm was the ideal place for her. It was a sanctuary where there were no ghosts lurking behind every corner, except, of course, for one – that pesky guy called William. She turned her back to the city lights and walked back to her writing table.
"Nice view." She stopped walking, frozen on tracks by the voice behind her. Male, low, seductive and distinctly British. Lisa wrinkled her nose and slowly turned around.
"What do you want?" she asked coldly, "I have work to do."
"Just dropped by for a little chat among friend", he sauntered up to her with a confident smirk on his face.
"We. are. not. friends", she punctuated every single word. "We just happened to run into each other in the elevator the other day." She grabbed her bag and coat, walking to the door.
"Funny, I've been told so before by someone else yet we ended up being friends in the end."
"Touching."
"Where are you going?"
" To my 9:30."
"And that would be?"
"Clean up job."
"Mind if I tag along?" he asked, already following her as she stormed through the office building towards the garage with huge energetic strides.
"Yes," she answered shortly, slowly loosing her patience with him.
"Perfect, don't have to do anything else anyways," he said, ignoring her answer completely.
A few minutes later they were sitting in her car headed towards the 'Tropical Island', a hotel at the outskirts of town. Her fingers were drumming on the steering wheel while Spike was filling up the time with talking incessantly. "...and so I took the bloody amulet, because the big poof was too much of a chicken to pull the whole thing of, anyways. Pranced away to L.A. to lean back in his comfy new arm chair and take his shiny new cars for a test drive. Whereas I get fried alive, like bloody chicken wings and what do I get as a reward? Nothing!"
"You poor thing, you," Lisa said with irony dripping from her voice. He gave her a brief sideways glance before he continued.
"You don't get it!" he gesticulated with his hands, "He maimed, tortured and killed. I bloody did the same. He gets a shiny little soul and so do I. He ends up at the top of the world and what about little ol' me? Well, I get to be a ghost who's slowly heading towards the place where all nasty nasties are bound to go sooner or later. Whereas the almighty Angel is embarked on this whole Shanshoo redemption trip where he gets to be a real boy in the end. What about me? Eternal torment! Nice, huh?"
"Well, life, or in your case un-life's a bitch and then you die. Pardon the pun," she shrugged her shoulders, apparently totally untouched by his tale.
She decided that she had had enough of his talk. Lisa reached for a CD and put it into the CD-player. Immediately the car was filled with brachial sound of an angry and extremely loud metal band. She turned up the volume so that it became practically impossible to lead a conversation without shouting. A self-satisfied smirk appeared on her face while the music merrily blasted away through the loud speakers. 'I kill till I die...nauseating screams...a vicious lust for blood,' the dark voice of the lead singer screamed, loudly reverberating inside of the small car. Lisa looked over at Spike hoping that by now his astral ears were bleeding. Instead he was contently humming along, his finger drumming in time with the beat. She rolled her eyes and focused on the street.
After what seemed to Lisa a sheer endless drive, the car came to a screeching standstill in front of the 'Tropical Island'. They entered the hotel lobby, a huge entrance hall that represented the biggest and most shameless display of bad taste Lisa had come across in her entire life. The neon green carpet combined with the hideous bamboo print wall-paper that was supposed to give you the illusion you just entered the hut of a Hawaiian village elder, inspired in her the almost overwhelming desire to claw out her own eyeballs with her fingernails. To complete this chaos of colours there also were some red armchairs and mahogany tables with some disgusting little wooden statues on it. Had she forgotten to mention there were fake flowers almost everywhere?
"Bugger," Spike muttered behind her and raised his eyebrows while he sceptically eyed the hotel interior. Lisa confidently strode up to the reception desk behind which a middle aged man dressed in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt was waiting for them.
"Welcome, to the 'Tropical Island', Miss. How may I help you? Room for two, I presume?" he asked with a petrified smile on his face.
"No," she answered abruptly. This place made her feel absolutely uncomfortable. "We are here for the clean up job," Lisa added in a lower voice.
"Miss Gray from Wolfram & Hart?"
"Yes, the very same."
"And who's your colleague?" Spike wasn't exactly her colleague, but what was she supposed to say? The annoying spook which haunts our office building and decided to tag along?
"Mr...uhmmmm...William..." she tried hard to think of a name.
"Green," Spike supplied finally able to rip his gaze away from the hypnotizingly ugly carpet. "Alright, please follow me."
They were let through the hotel bar and stepped through a curtain made out of brightly coloured plastic pearls behind which a door with the gold- framed tag 'staff only' was hidden. Fortunately the hotel employee didn't notice that the pearls slipped right through Spike's purely incorporeal form. After they had passed the kitchen, in which a fat sweating cook was busily slaving over a hot stove, the came to stop in front of a rusty iron door.
"My boss, Mr. Morgan, told me to lead you here. I don't know what this is all about, but honestly I really don't want to. Especially when it's got to something do with this place down there," the receptionist told them as he unlocked the door to the hotel cellar.
"Thank you. We will take care of the problem and please make sure nobody disturbs as." Lisa informed her vis-à-vis in a business like tone. The man nodded and left quickly. As a matter of fact he almost ran to get away as fast as possible.
"He seemed to be in an awful hurry," Spike pointed out, leaning laxly against the wall opposite of the cellar door. "Are we going down there now?"
"No, we have to prepare ourselves before we do. This way it would be down right suicidal." She reached into her pocket and produced a small bag. "Come closer," she waved at him with her hand.
Spike raised his eyebrows sceptically, but decided to refrain from protesting. He assumed she knew what she was doing. The young woman spilled the contents of the bag on the floor so that they formed a small circle around them.
"What's that?" he asked curiously, indicating the grainy transparent substance that she had strewn out.
"Salt. Now will shut your mouth, pleas?."
The young woman closed her eyes and opened her arms in a graceful gesture that radiated absolute confidence. Her face was a mask of silent concentration. When she spoke again her voice was different. Ageless, sexless, filled with tranquillity and wisdom.
"Osiris, thy humble servant calls upon thee for protection. Bless us and grant us thy guidance! May our wills be strong and our hands never falter as we restore the eternal balance," the air seemed heavy and voices whispered around them. It was almost as if someone was standing right next to them and they could feel his soft breath tickle their ear. Spike watched around nervously. The circle briefly flashed in a warm golden light. From its borders it slowly crept closer and closer towards Spike and Lisa, until it finally swept over them like a warm summer breeze. Then everything was over as quickly as it had started.
"Thank you, master," the young woman said in a low voice and stepped out of the circle. She seemed completely at ease with what had just happened, as if she had just done something absolutely normal like brushing her hair or turning the car keys in the ignition. Whereas Spike still stood there rooted to the spot. He had felt a very powerful presence. It had watched him like an insect under a magnifying glass. He had been scrutinized very closely and the decision was made that he deserved to continue his miserable existence just a little bit longer.
"Are you coming or are you're just going to stand there and stare?" she asked impatiently.
Lisa turned and stepped through the door which swung open with a loud creaking noise. A raft of cold air seemed to come up the stairs which led down to the cellar and swept over her, leaving Goosebumps on her skin. She reached for the light switch and pushed it down. An erratic bluish flicker which presumably came from some neon tubes could be seen at the bottom of the stairs.
"Inviting," came Spike's sarcastic comment from behind her.
"Still better then the lobby," her warm breath formed little smoke clouds in the cool air.
Lisa started climbing down the stairs. Her steps echoed loudly in the huge vault as it was the only sound besides the electronic humming of the light tubes. Dusty boxes, shelves, tattered decoration elements briefly flashed in the bluish white light and disappeared again.
"This could get messy," she muttered more to herself than Spike who had come to a halt next to her at the bottom of the stairs. The young woman straightened her clothes and took one deep and calming breath.
"Look, we can do this the hard or the easy way. I've already seen everything: bleeding walls, exploding mirror glass, disturbing visions...so you needn't bother to try and scare us. It won't work. Just come out. We won't harm you, I promise," she said in a loud voice.
Nothing, but the dead silence of the basement.
"This will be your only chance," Lisa added after a while.
As an answer the flickering of the light became more unpredictable.
Spike nosily cleared his throat beside her, "...I think can see dead people," he pointed with his finger at a point ten feet away from then.
A brief flash of light revealed a man starring at them with open hostility. Several shot wounds had torn his chest to pieces; his face was pale and disfigured by a mask of suffering and anger.
"Go away," he said. Is voice was like the wind that howled in the dark woods in a stormy autumn night.
"No," Lisa said calmly.
"Go away!" the ghost thundered. He commandingly waved his arm and suddenly a couple of cans hissed through the air and hit the stone wall just a few inches from them, leaving deep notches on the stony surface. Spike shrugged his shoulders dismissively, while Lisa didn't even flinch. The ghost screamed angrily and his form exploded into a swarm of dark particles that spread in the entire room like angry bees.
"Who do you think you are, little girl? So young! So stupid! You think you can threaten me? I will teach you not to mess with things you don't have the slightest idea about!" The stone walls around them seemed to tremble. The neon tube flickered fearfully and with each light flash the ghost materialized somewhere else, coming closer and closer.
"Now would be a good time to do something," Spike suggested.
"Oh, you think so?" Lisa said, while she coolly looked ahead. The ghost stormed at them with a terrifying scream and came to an abrupt halt as he collided with an invisible barrier.
"What have you done, witch?" the man hissed at her.
"Well, firstly I'm not a witch and secondly let's just say that I don't have a very strong death wish."
"Why are you here?" the ghost asked circling them, obviously trying to find a hole in the protective shield that surrounded them.
"Work reasons. Have you ever asked yourself the same question?" The ghost stopped walking.
"No," his face was an expression of utter surprise. How come he had never asked himself that question? Years had passed and everything had faded but the feeling of anger. It had grown and made him strong. Anger was the only thing that was of any importance, nothing else. But there was something inside of him – a trace of the person he once used to be that still longed for something. The only tragedy was he had forgotten what it was.
"You want to be somewhere else. You have taken a short glimpse of that place, but now it is gone and you don't know how to get there anymore. I will lead you there...,"the young woman said.
"But he shot me."
"Does it matter anymore?"
"I want my revenge," the ghost screamed in a sudden outburst. One of the light tubes exploded in a rain of gleaming sparks.
"I can't promise you revenge, but what about justice?"
The man frowned and seemed to contemplate carefully what she just said. "I guess I could settle for justice," he said after a while.
"Then give me the name."
Some minutes later they were sitting in the car driving back to the headquarters of Wolfram & Hart. Spike had been unusually quiet since they had left the hotel, not that Lisa was complaining about it. She had done her job. The ghost had been vanquished, just as requested. It had been completely unspectacular – at least to her. After he had given her the name of his murderer he had simply disintegrated and the last they had seen of him was a content smile slowly spreading over his face. The long silence began to annoy her, but somehow she didn't feel like switching on the radio.
"So..." she let the single word hang loosely in the air.
He briefly looked at her and then stared out of the window again as he had done for the last couple of minutes. A long pause followed.
"What?" Spike finally asked, more to fill the embarrassing gap between her attempts at a conversation than anything else.
"Why are you so quiet?"
"I've been thinking."
"Oh, so you there is actually some brain wave activity. I'm impressed," she said with an expression of mock surprise on her face. He gave her a well-merited sideways glance.
"What about?" the young woman asked curiously, unimpressed by his foul mood.
"The last couple of hours, if you have to know." Another pause followed.
"Why?"
"Goddamn it! Woman, can't you just leave me in peace!"
"No."
He massaged his temples tiredly. Lisa doubted that ghosts could get a headache.
"For starters I just saw a ghost who got a bloody first class ticket the great beyond. Gets to sit on a blasted cloud and happily flap his little feathery wings. And not to forget your little protection spell."
"What about it?"
No response.
"You felt his presence, didn't you? Osiris was watching you," Lisa guessed, giving him an intense stare.
"Yes, whatever it was could have bloody squished me like a bug."
"But he didn't," she answered, stopping in front of a red traffic light.
"But why? I'm dead. I don't belong in this world anymore."
"Maybe, your time to go hasn't come yet," Lisa shrugged her shoulders and stepped on the accelerator as the light switched to green.
"You really think so?" Spike asked interestedly.
"Yes," she nodded simply.
"You cast a protection spell on me...," he grinned as if he was just realizing something.
"Yeah, so what? Go ahead and sue me!" she nervously brushed a strain of hair out of her face.
"So you do actually care a little bit about me."
Lisa broke out in loud laughter, but somehow it didn't sound that convincing.