One Girl In All the World (Volume 2) Page 3

  “But, Spike, she wouldn’t…I mean I don’t think she would—”

  “Don’t you lecture me on bleeding hearts.” He pointed his finger. “It’s been more than three months since Broody McUnderwearModel left town, and I don’t see you making googly eyes at any of these lads. Valentine’s is coming up, you know. Do you have one?”

  “A valentine?” Frankie scoffed. “Valentine’s Day is nothing more than a good excuse to stock up on discounted day-after boxes of chocolate.”

  “That’s true,” said Spike. “We should pick up some of those. But back to the point: I’m immortal. I can afford to be frozen awhile. You’re not, and you need to forget about Grimloch the Hunter of Hotpants and get out there and…cavort.”

  Frankie hopped down from the desk. “Easier said than done. What about Ms. Ames from the English department? You two would make a great couple.”

  “Look, that coffee thing is a poetry club if you must know,” Spike snapped. “We meet tonight, and it’s my turn to bring the cookies.” He sighed. “I’m sorry about what I said out there. About it not being necessary. It’s just all this waiting is not my style. I should be out there, looking for her. I should be doing…what that bleeding underwear model is doing.”

  “But we need you here,” Frankie said.

  “I know.” The vampire’s jaw tightened, his eyes drifting again. “And I do get the sense that something is coming.”

  “What’s coming?”

  “Nothing.” He snapped back to attention and waved her off, putting on his tweed jacket to go do librarian things. “You run along now, Mini Red.” She nodded and went. As she pushed through the doors, she heard him grumble, “Doc Holliday wasn’t even a vampire. The blood on his lips was from tuberculosis. Don’t they teach any worthwhile history these days?”

  All through her afternoon classes, Frankie fought daydreams. Most of them, she was embarrassed to admit, were about Grim. But now they were also about Spike. Not about Spike in that way, gross, but about ways to cheer him up. She imagined finding a spell to return the missing slayers. She imagined Buffy returning to all of them, and the look on Spike’s face. He would weep, probably, and then he would hug Buffy, and hug Frankie, and tell her that she’d done it, that he couldn’t believe it but she’d done it, she’d brought them back, and then he wouldn’t be sad, or restless in a Sunnydale that seemed determined to be safer and less demon-infested when it should have been the opposite. The slayers were gone, and they were all holding their breaths, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the next clue to start them on the path that led to the slayers’ eventual rescue. Vi Larsson, showing up during the battle with the Countess like a white knight, had seemed like that clue. But then she disappeared, and everywhere they chased her they met with a dead end.

  It had been months now. And Frankie had begun to fear that they were wrong. There was no great mission ahead with a reward of shiny slayers. The explosion had been it. Not the start of something but the end, and they were just pointlessly hoping, dragging their feet as New Sunnydale marched on around them.

  “Frankie. Frankie!”

  “Huh?” She looked up into her history teacher’s confused expression. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Matthews, I didn’t hear the question.”

  “The question was the bell,” Mrs. Matthews replied. She gestured to the rows of empty desks. “It rang. A while ago.”

  “Oh.” Frankie smiled and sheepishly gathered her pens and notebook. “I guess I missed it. I was thinking about tonight’s homework.”

  “There is no homework. And don’t turn in extra—I don’t have time to grade it.” She touched Frankie on the shoulder when she got up to leave. “Wait. As long as you’re lingering, linger a minute longer. What’s going on with you, Frankie? You used to be a very good student. An ace, really. And now you’re all over the place.”

  “My grades have only dropped half a letter,” Frankie said quickly.

  “Half a letter. And you’re willing to accept that?”

  “No! Well, yes, kind of. I knew something was going to give with all the late nights, and really it almost doesn’t matter anymore because chances are I’ll be pursuing a career in law enforcement or private security, I thought about UFC or that pro-wrestling stuff, but isn’t that cheating?” She stopped and blinked up at Mrs. Matthews perplexed face. “Sorry, what was the question?”

  “Frankie…are you okay?”

  “I’m great.” Frankie grabbed her things. “I am having trouble focusing and I’m going to work on that, and there’s not a lot of time at night to do homework and I have added what feels like about a million shall we say ‘extracurriculars’ to my schedule, but I’m still only willing to accept half a letter drop in my grades because I’ve worked hard at them my whole life and who needs sleep?” Her voice rose as she stalked away. The reminder about her flagging academics had done nothing to improve her already-troubled mood, but that wasn’t Mrs. Matthews’s fault, so she turned around and popped her head back into the classroom. “Mrs. Matthews?” she called. “Thanks for worrying.”

  In the halls, she plowed through students like the prow of a ship: head down, books hugged tightly to her chest, her red bun pointed slightly forward like a bull’s horns. New Sunnydale was too damned quiet. Where were the demons, coming to challenge her? Where were the Big Bads, looking to kill a slayer and make a name for themselves?

  “It’s like we don’t even have a hellmouth anymore,” she muttered as she burst through the doors and into the crisp sweater-weather sunshine. So nice and safe, a pretty day, perfect for traipsing through fields of daisies and singing. It was no wonder that Spike was feeling stagnant, and that Sigmund had the time to come up with a project like the demon census. They’d done so much training, so many patrols, and for what? “Where is the evil?” Frankie hissed, and stormed out past the sports field into the border of trees, where she could kick shrubs and rant in peace.

  Maybe the Hellmouth only conjures as much evil as the current slayer in residence can handle, she thought, and chuckled. Then she frowned. Only a real dope would heckle herself and laugh about it.

  She had walked another fifty yards, skirting the edge of school property, when she caught the hint of something foul on the air. And not foul evil, but truly foul. She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. It smelled like a very warm low-tide beach she’d visited once with her mom. They’d built sandcastles for about twenty minutes before they caught sight of a dead seal bobbing in the waves. She was about to turn around and head back when her slaydar emitted a very soft ping. So she followed the smell instead, walking faster and then running when she heard the cries, and the thrashing of leaves.

  “Hey! Is someone there?”

  “Help! Somebody help me!”

  Frankie leapt ahead, arms pumping, jumping over whole shrubs and swinging off low branches. “Hold on!” she shouted. But the only reply she received was an earsplitting scream. When she crashed onto the scene, she didn’t see anything right away—just a pool of rain runoff from the large metal culvert that drained into the woods. She still smelled the smell, stronger now and distinctly fishy. And then she turned and saw the boy.

  The boy was dead. There were deep, bloody gashes visible through tears in his hooded Razorbacks sweatshirt, and his neck was clearly broken.

  The demon, her slaydar beeped. Get the demon!

  Frankie ducked into the culvert, the demon’s most likely path of escape. Shadows closed over her head as she splashed through grimy water to her ankles. She thought she heard something for a moment—more splashing and some kind of hiss—but then there was nothing, and the fishy, salty smell faded in her nose. She stopped to listen, and lowered her arms from a fighting position.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Come back and attack me. I’m just a helpless, delicious, not-at-all-superpowered person.…” But the demon didn’t take the bait. It was scared. Or it was smart. Or it was gone already and had no idea she was standing there.

  Frankie turned and made he
r way out of the culvert. She looked down at the body of the boy. He was a senior, she thought. But she didn’t know his name.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “When I went looking for evil, this is not what I meant.”

  The Scoobies assembled in the library as soon as it cleared for the day, and Frankie recounted her tragic discovery along the edges of the school grounds.

  “You didn’t see what did it?” Hailey asked, leaning against a bookshelf, eyes downcast.

  Frankie shook her head. “There was a smell, though, like rotten fish? And a sound…like wheezing or hissing.”

  Sigmund nodded and started pulling books, leafing through them with fast fingers. He wouldn’t find it, not off that thin a description. But Frankie knew he just needed something to do.

  “Do you know who the boy was?” Hailey asked.

  “No. I think he was a senior.”

  “A senior,” said Jake. “Dang. He was this close. This close to making it out.”

  “Jake,” Hailey chided. “Don’t make jokes. He was a person.”

  “Well, yeah. But he was a Sunnydale person. When we meet our demise, it is not exactly what you would call ‘unexpected.’ We know the score.” He looked down. “Somehow we all know the score.”

  “We should figure out a way to get someone out there to discover him,” Frankie said. “Though I don’t enjoy the thought of someone else having to see what I saw.…”

  “Wait, you just left him out there?” Jake asked. “You didn’t tell anybody?”

  Frankie shrugged helplessly.

  “Frankie’s right,” said Spike. “Just because she’s the one always finding the corpses doesn’t mean she can always be the one finding the corpses. Even with the elevated Sunnydale body count, it would start to look suspicious.”

  “And not to be insensitive,” Sigmund added, “but at least now we can go have a look at the victim. Search it for clues. I mean him. Search him for clues.” He looked at Hailey. “Sorry.”

  They trudged out to the sports field, and Frankie led the way back to the culvert. Spike had to stop at the edge of the trees—“Any farther and I’ll combust”—so they went on alone. The sun had started to dip lower and there was no breeze, but even so, Frankie’s nose caught the scent of the demon right away. Somehow it was even stronger than when she’d left.

  “Ugh.” Hailey waved a hand in front of her face. “If dicing up the Countess hadn’t already put me off poke, then the smell of this sure would have.”

  “It is quite pungent,” Sigmund agreed.

  “Any pungent demons springing to mind?” Jake asked. His sensitive werewolf nose was working, but unlike the others, he didn’t seem to mind the reek. Sigmund shook his head and plugged his nose between his index finger and thumb.

  “There he is,” Frankie said, and pointed.

  They fanned out around the body, grimacing at the deep red cuts in his chest and the knob of vertebrae that shouldn’t have been visible in his neck from that angle. He lay on his back, his arms fallen peacefully to his sides. One knee was bent, and his eyes were fixed and open.

  “I do know him,” said Jake, kneeling. “It’s Gustavo Fuentes. He was on the swim team. He was a good guy.” He reached out and closed Gustavo’s eyes. “Smart. I heard he’d gotten into some school in Maryland.” Frankie’s jaw clenched. Jake might’ve been being insensitive earlier, but he’d been right: Gustavo had been so close. So close to getting out of Sunnydale alive.

  “All right.” Sigmund steeled himself and knelt beside Jake. “Let’s have a look.” He lifted the tears in the boy’s T-shirt to peer underneath. “Four slashes, like from a hand of claws. Deep, too. Perhaps…a half an inch at the widest point.”

  “And it’s obviously strong,” Hailey noted. “Gustavo wasn’t a small guy, and fit from swimming. Not to mention how hard it must’ve been to twist his neck around so far.” She winced and swallowed, waving away more of the smell that was thankfully fading.

  “Wait.” Frankie looked around. “He’s just wearing a T-shirt. When I left him, he had a sweatshirt on, too. A hoodie. One of the school ones.”

  “Why would a demon come back and take a sweatshirt but leave the body?” Hailey asked. “Especially when, judging by those claw marks, it was totally ruined.”

  “Perhaps it was after something in the pocket,” Sigmund suggested. “Something he was carrying?”

  “Time to question Gustavo’s friends,” Jake said, and sighed. “I guess I can do that tomorrow after practice. Some of the guys on the lacrosse team knew him.”

  “And I’ll continue to search for possible culprits,” said Sigmund, dabbing at a bead of sweat on his forehead.

  “First we’d better get him found,” said Hailey. “And get him out of here.”

  Frankie stared down at Gustavo grimly. “Just another beautiful day in Sunnydale,” she murmured.

  The slayer tugged her hood up and set her pack down by the side of the highway, not far from the old WELCOME TO SUNNYDALE sign (that someone had spray-painted WELCOME TO SUNNYHOLE). From her bag she removed several dull white stones the size of her fist and arranged them in a circle in the dirt. Then she took up a tightly wrapped bundle of herbs soaked in cow’s blood, and a flint. Not a lighter—an actual, honest-to-frontier-times flint.

  She dropped to a crouch and scowled as she struck it. Not that it was harder to use the flint than to flick a Zippo; with her slayer strength, she got a shower of sparks on the first try. It was just the principle of the thing. An actual flint. Move into this century, demons. Live in the now.

  A second shower of sparks fell across the bundle of blood-marinated herbs and caught. Not enough to start a fire. Just enough to generate smoke. Very bad, decayed-blood-smelling smoke that made her recoil. She hated demon magic. But it was all they had. Slayers were not witches, at least not until recently. And demon magic tended to work for even the least talented practitioners. Case in point: Andrew.

  She stood and let the smoke thicken. As she spoke the incantation in a demon language she could never nail the accent for, the smoke rose into the air and slowed. It ceased to behave like normal smoke and instead swirled together to create a wall. And then the wall split to form a window, in which the face of another slayer appeared, cast in shadow.

  “Why do we have to do it this way?” The hooded woman gestured to the still-smelly smoke. “We do have phones, you know.”

  “Phones that anyone can look through. And that the red witch can hack. She won’t notice these little blips of portals opening, and if she does, she won’t be able to trace them. Besides, ditching burner phones is a hassle.”

  “Okay.” The first slayer adjusted her hood. “But why do you have to be all whispery and shrouded? I feel like I’m talking to Dr. Claw.”

  “The longer you bust my chops the longer you have to breathe in smoke,” the other slayer said. “Are you in contact with the daughter of the red witch?”

  “Frankie. Her name is Frankie, apparently.” Frankie Rosenberg. Born of the same magic that had been forced upon them. They didn’t know precisely how. Maybe the red witch had sensed the explosion at the slayer meeting and used the Scythe to create one more last-ditch savior. Most of them thought that’s what happened. The red witch, once again wielding power that was never hers to wield, and wielding it for her own benefit.

  “Not yet,” the hooded slayer said.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  “I thought we needed time to find the amulet?”

  “The amulet is almost found. At this very moment, she’s gone to retrieve it. So you’d better get a move on.”

  “And what am I supposed to do, then? Make slayer small talk? Hey, I like your knife. Nice job on the decapitation.”

  “The beacon you planted on the Hellmouth will help you. Once it lures the demons, she’ll be more than ready to accept an extra pair of slaying hands. And it’s better anyway if she’s kept busy.”

  The slayer pushed her hood back. She kicked pebbles acr
oss the hard, dry dirt. “I hate this place. You know, we could probably just ask the new slayer to help us. She’s just a kid. And she seems sweet.”

  “We can’t trust anyone but each other. So do as you’re told. The red witch must know the location of the Scythe. We will find the amulet, but to find the Scythe, we need her. And when we have them both, it’ll be over.” The other slayer smiled, and her voice filled with hope. “We’ll be free.”

  Spike walked through the streets of New Sunnydale, carrying a box of cinnamon shortbread. Thursday night. Poetry club meeting. His turn to bring the cookies. He didn’t exactly feel much like discussing “L’Albatros,” not after that poor lad had just been sliced up on school grounds, and also because he hated that bloody depressing poem, but the ladies had voted for French and he didn’t want to be a poor sport about it. Not to mention that since the boy had been killed, and his body had not yet been found, alibis for school librarians with black fingernails and unorthodox manners were a good idea.

  He paused at a crosswalk and sniffed the air, scenting for innocent blood before remembering that he had a soul and he didn’t do that anymore. Demons. Demons and vampires and mischief afoot—that was what he was looking for these days. Not as much fun, whispered the demon that still resided inside him. And much more dangerous. Demons had teeth and claws and, on occasion, acidic spit. He’d never had half so much trouble chasing down a pretty girl.

  But that wasn’t who he was anymore.

  “And I don’t miss it,” he said to the stars, and rather unconvincingly. After all, he was still the Big Bad, still able to beat down the worst of whatever the Hellmouth threw at him. And to prove it, that night he’d traded the tweed for a pair of jeans and a black sweater. Let these poetry ladies get a taste of who they were really dealing with. Someone dangerous. Someone damaged. Someone who had killed, and would kill still more, and would never get the blood off his hands.