1632 Revello Drive
Eight – Summer without a Summers
July 2, 1997 – Sunnydale, California
"Teach, duck!" Xander swung a baseball bat with everything he could muster, to his credit Cornelius did manage to duck before the swing met with his head, instead crashing into the vampire the three of them been fighting. The resounding crack was oddly enriching as the creature recoiled backwards onto Willow's waiting stake and dissolved in a cloud of bone dust without much fanfare. Giles had declined joining them most evenings beyond teaching the younger would-be monster hunters the bare basics of the craft that they hadn't already picked up on.
"Good job, Will." Xander managed one of his cocky smiles.
"We've gotten good at this. I shouldn't be proud of that." Willow managed a weaker smile, they'd known some of the vampires they'd slain, it was a bit... surreal.
"I'd say we were passable, though yes, we are getting better. Well done, Ms. Rosenberg." Cornelius looked at his watch, "I should get you two home before I provide Giles with a status report." Both teens looked at him and he shrugged.
"Someone has to do the paperwork." He offered. Both teens nodded with a mute understanding that was only familiar to the inner circles of the Sunnydale monster hunter's club, what, with their very exclusive membership and distressingly high mortality rate. Though they'd only lost one so far and for only a few minutes.
"Yeah, it helps you can afford the international rates." Xander cracked, destroying the mute tension that had built in the air. Cornelius chuckled as the trio walked, true, the wizard thought, he could afford Ma Bell's extortion.
It was half an hour later that he'd dialed the number Giles had given him while he was away over the summer, reporting things to his conspiratorial council and probably twisting himself into knots over Buffy going on holiday with her father. "Yes, two more this evening, Ms. Rosenberg and Mr. Harris are passably competent." Cornelius stirred an errant tea leaf that had escaped from the small metallic sphere it had been contained in, steam coiled upward from the porcelain cup in gentle waves that didn't break, they faded away instead. That was good fortune according to superstition.
"Yes, well, with all good luck we'll be back at fighting fit shape come autumn." Giles was twelve hours ahead, in the middle of the day and already sounded tired.
"I've attempted to get us some interim help but my colleague is understandably not able to hop across the continent at a moment's notice. Being a member of the working class has that affect, unfortunately."
"Why does it not trouble me more to know you have colleagues in our… area of work?"
"You can't expect that you're the only demon hunters in the world." The wizard lifted his tea cup and drank. His lack of respect for conspiratorialism evident in his blase method of saying what they really did for a living with laughable ease.
"No, I suspect not. Still, it is not a widely employed field."
"There's about… maybe a dozen of us give or take mortality rates?" The question was rhetorical, "Also, this call is expensive."
"Oh, yes, have a good evening, Mr. Andrews." Giles' sarcastic use of his other name made the wizard raise an unseen brow before he heard the click of the receiver followed swiftly by the beep of the dead line.
"Britons." He sighed as he set down his cup as a shiver went down his old spine. He shook in a way he hadn't in years, as was the case usually these days. Perhaps it was because he wasn't expecting the knock at his door, or how the wards flared out imperceptibly to anyone without the sight for magic.
Naturally, the first thing he did was check his watch. "Who calls at this hour?" Granted, it was only two, but still.
Cornelius crossed his home with a bit of trepidation. His curtains were open and the large bay windows had betrayed no one and nothing on approach which meant either invisibility or stealth he was just bad at seeing. It wouldn't surprise him, he was mighty and he was blind sometimes simultaneously. Everyone thought with power comes wisdom, no, with wisdom comes wisdom and occasionally he did not feel very wise.
The bolt rattled out of place by the wave of his hand, but the door did not open until he turned the knob 'naturally'.
"And you are?" He beheld a younger lady, a girl really, with dark hair and a gait that told him she was worldly. Probably a bit too worldly considering the self-assurance of her stance.
"Nomadic, mostly. Heard by way of the grapevine you're the guy to see for magic around these parts." She wore a coy smile that probably worked on most men, Cornelius gave her an unimpressed stare.
"I'm afraid you're mistaken, miss..?" The wizard's other hand was behind his door, threading power.
"Nancy." She offered her name freely, he suspected that wasn't her name, but the inflection of her speech was familiar to him.
A sort of half-Southern, half-Northern accent that bewildered him when he first arrived in the States back in the early 20th century for a time. Her vowels weren't as cockeyed as anyone from the proper 'south' as some called it, yet it also wasn't in the same way the more northerly ones used to be either.
"Like I said, I heard you're the guy to see for magic. Could definitely use a magician's help and we both know I'm not talking about that stage shit so if you'd be so kind as to invite me so that you don't violate the masquerade or whatever?"
"Nancy," the wizard repeated, committing her name to memory. "Very well," He stared at her a long, hard minute before he acquiesced to her request for entry, the magical barriers flickering as he guided her into the family room where he spent most of his waking time.
"Surprisingly normal digs, I thought you all lived in towers." Nancy pursued one of his bookshelves that sat against the far wall. Cornelius followed her movements, his gaze neutral.
"No, that went out of fashion some thousand years ago when the peasants figured it was a good way to kill us all by setting them on fire at the base." He could be very blunt when it came to engaging in stereotypes, while he certainly did look the part if he so chose, he'd never actually lived in a tower. "Tea?"
"Oh, yes, please." Nancy flashed a toothy smile and the wizard sighed internally, it was going to be a longer night than he expected…
July 4, 1997 – Sunnydale, California
Another firework exploded above the heads of the crowd and Cornelius tried not to cringe in tune with the crowd's awing at the display of light and sound. Sunnydale kept it simple, at least. No complex shapes, just a shower of fire and sparks that illuminated the night sky and scared away the demons and monsters. It made a sort of sense, the more people around the more likely the intended victims were to scream, and there were fewer shadows to hide in for the vampires.
He didn't often partake in the festivities but one of the other neighbors, Susan, he thought her name was, out of 1628, invited him to the collective spectacle and not wishing to be seen as even more of a recluse than usual, he agreed.
Another bloom of light illuminated the sky. It was pretty, he mostly appreciated them for inspiring wonder. The same way he'd appreciated the space race, for a single beautiful moment, people once again believed in the impossible and it was easier to practice the high arts once more. Then that moment past, and it was harder again.
A few more minutes past before the last firework faded from the sky and the wizard's smile faded with it. He checked his watch as his neighbors filtered back into their homes, he waved a good night to maybe-Susan and headed back to his own abode. It was only ten o'clock and that was time enough for a walk. So naturally he waited ten minutes before he started.
The walk itself was quiet. Most of them had been for the last several weeks. The wizard figured it was taking the forces of evil time to regroup after the death of their local bigwig. Sure, there was the erstwhile vampire, but generally they were a lot less mobile for whatever reason. Peaceful but odd was a good way to think about it he found.
August 9, 1997 – Sunnydale, California
"We should talk." Angel's words brought Cornelius out of his latest meandering. The wizard had almost walked passed the vampire, a disturbing thought in itself. Angel was leaned against a street lamp on the border of one of the many cemeteries in the town. The wizard hadn't even realized where he was, there were too many in Sunnydale.
"What would we have to talk about, young man?" The wizard stopped his walk and his hands drifted to his pockets. "The one thing we have in common, we have very, very different approaches to."
"We have two things in common. I've seen you before, a long time ago. Didn't think you'd still be alive, you were old then too."
"Good to know I've been stalked." Cornelius had met many a vampire over the years, he liked to think he'd remember a softhearted sadist but then he remembered that he'd met dozens of those, too.
"It was in passing, don't flatter yourself."
"Fair enough, old world, I assume? England or?"
"Milan."
"It's been a while, then." Cornelius checked his watch, looked to Angel and then back to the crystal inlaid face of the contraption. "I haven't returned to Mediolanum in… two centuries."
"Yeah."
The conversation lulled a bit as the two walked on, it was weird even for Sunnydale to stand around at one in the morning in the town's closest equivalent to the middle of nowhere talking. It picked up again almost easily as the two immortals bandied words, thoughts, a little poetry, that made the wizard preemptively uncomfortable, he never was much of a poet.
A few minutes of mostly amicable silence past before the wizard spoke again. "So, seeing as how you're a haemovore, how do you eat?"
"Sparingly, but to answer your question I don't raid blood banks or eat orphans. There's a butcher downtown I buy it from these days."
"I assume they don't know?"
"Oh, they know. It's why I get a discount." Angel smirked ever so slightly.
"How kind of you." The wizard chuckled.
"Seemed harmless enough, Sunnydale doesn't really play by the same rules as everywhere else."
"True, it certainly seems to be its own little black hole of evil. You're not doing the mind-control thing, I take it?"
"That implies I'm capable of mind-control. I'm merely seductive."
"Merely? How terrifying in its own, special way."
"Don't worry, you're not my type."
The wizard knew that much, he didn't find it particularly palatable to romance teenagers, but from the way that Angel carried himself, Cornelius doubted he ever really got to grow up when he wasn't consumed by guilt. Oh well, the ever-living did what they could to continue living, even when it was miserable.
August 25, 1997 – Sunnydale, California
A knock at the door in the dead of night. Again. Cornelius groaned as he ambled down the stairs, for once he'd actually been asleep. The bolt racked back in his way, the wizard turned the knob and once again, there stood Nancy. He blinked.
"Nancy." The grogginess fled his person as his suspicion rose ever so slightly. He rarely had repeat customers, he rarely had customers to begin with.
"Wiz." The young lady saluted sloppily, he didn't really care, that wasn't how he garnered respect.
"How was Paris?" He waved her into the house and moved through to the kitchen as the house's wards flared back into place. The lights of the room came on with the flip of a switch, the second time it'd ever been used by hand.
"Oh, it was alright. Texas sucks in general, though." Nancy sat in one of the chairs at his table as Cornelius pulled cups from his cabinets, with the wave of a hand the kettle both filled itself and flew to the stove. Vulgarity indeed.
"What brings you back to California?" The unspoken part of the question being Sunnydale, as opposed to Los Angeles, or San Francisco, or anywhere that wasn't this hellscape.
"Business, I'm sorry to say." Nancy accepted the offered cup with a gentleness and drank deeply from the hot liquid.
"Oh? What is it you do, you weren't much for speaking outside of need the last time you were here." Cornelius sipped his own tea gently, he tended to savor the experience like that.
"Well you see, Wiz. I kill people." Nancy gave him the flashiest smile imaginable. He shrugged.
"Yes, I suppose that I ought to have suspected as much. Which is why there's mandrake in your tea. No one kills me that easily, Nancy. I hope you enjoy your next trip." Cornelius wore a knowing smile, he'd been at the game a very long time indeed.
"Fuck." Nancy managed to blink once before her vision started to blur as the halogens kicked in.
"Indeed. Don't worry, Nancy. I'm not in the business of killing people any more. I'm going to let you sleep it off, then you're going to go far, far away. Where I can't find you. Understood?"
She managed to nod to the pink elephant that had replaced him in her eyesight before he waved his hand and she fainted, sleep as magically induced as the rapidity of the mandrake…
Summer was boring, and occasionally it wasn't. Maybe he'd go on vacation next year.