Here Be Monsters, page 4
They didn’t want to wait. Didn’t see the need to wait. Well, Mama’d said it herself, hadn’t she?
Boys will be boys.
“Come on, Webster,” Percy whispered, as he stuck his leg out their bedroom window and prepared to climb down a convenient apple tree. “Let’s go see what’s come out to play.”
Behind him, Webster gave a high-pitched giggle.
“Besides us, of course.”
* * *
Buffy’d gotten Suz Tompkins a glass of water, then watched in amazement as the other girl took one long drink, fished a piece of Kleenex from her pocket, dunked it, and used the soggy tissue to wipe off her eyeliner. Without her make-up Suz looked a lot younger. And much more vulnerable.
“So, what do you think is happening?” Buffy asked. She pitched her voice low.
In the time it had taken Buffy to get Suz’s drink, a second band had taken over from the Dingoes. Of the striving-to-be-socially-relevant variety. On the Bronze’s stage, a bass player backed a lanky girl as she whispered into a hand-held microphone. Her face was completely obscured by a curtain of long, dark hair. Buffy had no idea what she looked like.
“I don’t know for sure,” Suz answered. Her naked eyelids looked red and puffy. “Nothing I can prove anyway. I just know that something’s wrong and I’ve got no one to talk to about it. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to find a lot of people lining up to be all worried. You’ve probably noticed I don’t exactly hang with the merit scholar crowd.”
“Me neither,” Buffy said.
“What about Rosenberg?” Suz countered. “I’ve heard she’s a walking four-oh.”
“Well, she is,” Buffy agreed. “And though my math skills may not be the best, even I can figure out that it takes more than one to make a crowd.”
Suz relaxed enough to give a snort of laughter and picked up the glass of water. It was halfway to her lips before she remembered the contents now probably qualified as hazardous waste. She set the glass down again, abruptly. Water sloshed over the rim and onto the table.
Buffy pushed the soda she’d been drinking across the table toward her. “Nothing contagious, I promise.”
Suz took a sip, set the glass down, then used the straw to jab at the ice cubes. Watching her, Buffy had a sudden out of body moment. She figured this must be exactly how her mother felt when trying to get important information out of her. Information she’d really rather keep to herself, even though she knew she shouldn’t.
“Come on, Suz,” Buffy said, trying to match the concerned yet no-nonsense tone her mother always adopted on such occasions. “You’re stalling and you know it.”
“It’s just I feel so stupid!” Suz burst out. “You’re going to think I’m nuts or something.”
“I won’t,” Buffy said. If there was one thing she’d learned since becoming the Slayer, it was that absolutely nothing was impossible. There were things that went bump in the night, and Buffy had gotten up close and personal with most of them. If a girl as tough as Suz Tompkins was scared, there was probably a very good reason for it.
“It happened the first time about a month ago,” Suz said haltingly. “Leila Johns just disappeared. Heidi—Heidi Lindstrom, my best friend—she and Leila and I were supposed to go to a movie or something. But Leila never showed, and then she didn’t show for school the next morning. She never really went to class much anyway, so I don’t think the teachers even noticed.”
Suz paused and took another sip of Buffy’s soda.
“Did you talk to anybody about it?” Buffy asked. “What about Leila’s family? Don’t they know where she’s gone?”
Suz shook her head. “I tried,” she answered. “But I’m not exactly on the best of speaking terms with Leila’s mom. She thinks I’m a bad influence or something.”
Or something. “How about the police?” Buffy persisted. “Did you file a missing persons report?”
On stage, the singer abruptly let out a burst of wild laughter. Suz Tompkins joined her.
“Get real,” she said shortly. “Look at me, Buffy. The cops have the same opinion of me as your friend Cordelia and Leila’s mom. They take one look and see a felony in progress. I tell the cops I’m worried ’cause one of my friends didn’t make a movie date, and I guarantee you they’ll laugh so hard they’ll ralph up their morning doughnuts.”
Buffy wrinkled her nose in disgust. There are some things even a Slayer shouldn’t be forced to confront.
“Couldn’t Leila have just gone off somewhere and not told you guys about it?”
Before Buffy’d even finished her sentence, Suz Tompkins was shaking her head from side to side.
“She wouldn’t have done that,” she said, her tone rising.
“Why not?”
Suz’s face flushed an angry red. “Because she’s not like that!” she all but shouted.
“Will you be quiet?” a guy at the next table broke in. “I can’t hear the band.”
Suz turned toward him. Buffy thought the other girl actually bared her teeth. “Back off,” she said.
Without another word, the guy picked up his drink and chose another table. Suz turned back.
“Impressive,” Buffy commented.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” Suz accused. “You’re just like all the others. You only see what you want to see.”
“I only see what you let me see, Suz,” Buffy countered. “If you want me to see more, you’ll have to show me where to look.”
Way to go, pop psychology.
Suz Tompkins put her head down in her hands. Her shoulders slumped. All the fight seemed to go right out of her. Buffy was surprised to feel a funny lump form in the back of her throat. She knew what despair looked like when she saw it.
“I don’t know if you can understand this . . . but . . . my friends and I . . . we have have . . . rules,” Suz finally said softly.
“Nobody does anything major, anything that could impact the group, without letting everybody else know about it. It’s the way we protect ourselves, you know? Watch our own backs. Take care of one another. Leila would never take off without saying something. None of us would. Don’t ask me to explain how I know for sure, I just do. I know it, Buffy.”
“That’s why you think she’s dead. She didn’t say that she was going, and she hasn’t been in touch.”
Suz Tompkins nodded. She began to fiddle with the straw again, her body tense, as if expecting Buffy to make another denial at any moment. When Buffy didn’t offer one, Suz’s hands grew still. Buffy frowned in concentration, staring absently out across the crowded Bronze, her mind turning over the pieces of Suz’s puzzle.
While it was true that not every bad thing that happened in Sunnydale had a direct link to the Hellmouth, Buffy knew better than to start out by assuming that the Hellmouth wasn’t involved. On the other hand, it was possible, theoretically at any rate, that Leila Johns could have been done away with by perfectly normal, not very nice guys.
But what if she hadn’t been? What if Buffy’d been lulled into a false sense of security thinking how quiet things had been lately, when really they hadn’t been so quiet after all?
Some things that came out of the Hellmouth just wanted to wreak some havoc and then slink off again. Not everything wanted the Slayer to know it was in town.
She’d heard rumors of Leila’s disappearance, Buffy realized now. She just hadn’t paid all that much attention. Maybe Suz was right about her. Maybe she was just like everyone else. All those grown-ups who assumed that because a girl like Leila looked like trouble, when she met trouble she deserved what she got, had found what she was looking for.
Abruptly, Buffy’s eyes focused and she realized what she’d been staring at all this time. Intuitively, her gaze had gone straight to where Willow was helping Oz pack up the Dingoes’ sound equipment. Xander and Cordy stood nearby. Not that Cordelia was doing anything to help, of course.
Now that she was paying attention, Buffy could see that Willow kept glancing her way, trying to figure out what was going on.
Buffy knew what people thought when they saw her group together. They were the freaks and geeks. With the exception of Cordelia, the misfits of Sunnydale High.
Those are my friends, she thought. Her friends, who’d proved more times than she could count that they would do literally anything for her. We have rules, too, she realized.
And first on the list was that friends never broke their own rules, never broke the promises they’d made to one another. Friends kept their word. They stuck together no matter what . . . .
* * *
“I’m not going back over there,” Cordelia announced. “You can’t make me. So just forget about it.”
Oz snapped the lock on his guitar case closed. “Looks heavy,” he commented.
“Well, if you had a real band, you wouldn’t have to carry it yourself. You’d have, you know, groupies, or something.”
Cordelia became the focus of three pairs of eyes. “What?” She sat up a little straighter, alarm plain in her face. “I don’t have something in my teeth, do I?”
“I think he was talking about Buffy and Suz,” Willow finally said quietly. During Oz’s take-down, she’d continued to watch Buffy’s table from across the room, her expression both worried and thoughtful.
“How come we never learn anything useful in school?” she complained. “Like lip reading or something?”
“If Buffy’s going to get involved with somebody like Suz Tompkins, she can count me out,” Cordelia went on. “I absolutely draw the line.”
“And a straight and narrow one it is, too,” Xander spoke up.
Cordelia glared. “Could you be more annoying?”
Xander smiled. “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he said.
“Don’t bother,” Cordelia snapped back. “I already know.”
* * *
Buffy pulled her attention away from her friends. She had a job to do, and she couldn’t accomplish it by going all greeting-card sappy.
“Who else is missing?” she asked Suz Tompkins.
Suz stared at her across the table. Slowly, Buffy watched the realization dawn in the other girl’s eyes.
“You believe me, don’t you?” Suz asked.
“I believe you,” Buffy answered softly. “But you said ‘friends,’ Suz. Plural, as in more than one. That must mean somebody else is missing, too. Who is it?”
Suz’s eyes filled with tears once more. Buffy felt her stomach twist. She forced herself not to look back over toward Willow. Because she knew what Suz was going to say, this time.
“Last week—” Suz said. Her voice came out rough and ragged. She cleared her throat, tried again. “Last week, it was my best friend, Heidi Lindstrom.”
* * *
Webster and Percy were experiencing something of a letdown.
They’d been roaming the streets for over an hour now, and they still hadn’t found the girl they’d chosen. Webster was all for calling it quits and heading for home. Mama had probably realized that they were gone by now.
And the truth was that there were occasions when Mama had embarrassed her darling boys. She’d been known to come looking for them when they went hunting without asking her permission first. When they struck out on their own and conveniently forgot that the rules she made were for their own good.
Life was really so much easier when Mama was happy, Webster reminded Percy. But Percy wasn’t ready to call it a night. Not quite yet. Uh uh.
There was someplace Percy wanted to go first. The place he was almost certain the girl would go. The same place they’d found the last one. Only this time, Percy wanted more. He didn’t want to wait in the back alley to see what came out. This time, Percy wanted to go inside, where the prey, where the action was.
It would mean they’d have to wear their human faces, which was a bore. But even Percy knew better than to go into a crowded place in full vamp mode. If Mama ever found out they’d done that, she’d have an absolute conniption for sure. Definitely something Percy wanted to avoid.
“It has a funny name,” he said to Webster, as he took him by the arm to hurry him along. Sometimes, Webster was so slow it annoyed and embarrassed Percy. It reflected poorly on him. They were twins, after all. “A metal name.”
“Gold,” Webster suggested.
“That’s not it,” Percy said, steering his brother around a corner and up a darkened street.
“Silver.”
“That’s not it, either.”
“Copper.”
“No,” Percy said impatiently, bringing Webster to an abrupt halt with a jerk on his arm.
“Percy,” Webster whined. “You’re being a bully, and you’re being rude. If you don’t start being nicer to me right this minute, I’m telling Mama when we get home.”
“We’re here, Webster,” Percy said. He released his brother’s arm and pointed.
“I was going to guess that next,” Webster said.
The sign above the front door said, BRONZE.
* * *
It had taken some fast talking and another soda, but Buffy had finally convinced Suz to let the others rejoin them. Appealing to Suz’s sense of friendship had finally tipped the scales. That and the fact that Cordelia had bailed. If Suz trusted Buffy, she was going to have to trust Buffy’s friends, too. Those were her rules.
Once they were all reassembled, Buffy’d filled her friends in, quickly. When she was finished, Suz had signaled her acceptance of the fact that the others were now involved by adding one final piece of information.
She was pretty sure her number was up next. Because she was absolutely sure that she was being followed. The stalking had started right after Heidi had disappeared.
Oz was the first to speak up. “Did you see who it was?” he asked quietly. Not that he ever asked any other kind of way.
“Not really,” answered Suz Tompkins. “You know, not enough so that I could identify them in a police line-up. Just enough to give me the creeps.”
Her forehead wrinkled, as if she was trying to remember details. “I think they dressed kind of funny.”
Willow choked on a mouthful of soda. Suz turned toward her.
“All the time?” Willow hurried into speech.
“How should I know?” Suz asked. “I don’t help them get dressed in the morning.”
“No, I mean, do you feel like you’re being followed all the time,” Willow clarified. “Or is it, you know, only certain times. Like, say, for instance, after dark.”
Suz considered, her face thoughtful. If she noticed the way the tension at the table had just ratcheted up a notch, she didn’t show it.
“Only after dark,” she confirmed after a moment.
Well, Buffy thought. That definitely narrows down the list of suspects. There were lots of things that didn’t like to get a tan, but only a few for whom those UV rays would prove instantly fatal from a case of spontaneous combustion.
And topping the list . . .
“Hey,” a new voice said.
“Oh. Wow. Look. It’s Angel,” Willow squeaked. “I mean, you know, what good—”
“Timing,” Xander finished for her.
Angel looked from one to the other, his eyes narrowing slightly.
He’d long since become accustomed to the fact that the reception he received from Buffy’s nearest and dearest could, and often did, vary nightly. Not that he cared about it for himself. Not much. But Angel didn’t like being a source of conflict between Buffy and her friends. He figured just being the Slayer was hard enough on her. Particularly since it included the whole evil-Angel-tried-to-kill-her-and-everyone-she-loved thing.
Actually, so far, all things considered, tonight’s response was pretty positive.
“You guys have been practicing again, right?” he asked.
As usual, it was Willow who responded. Xander only dealt with Angel directly when he didn’t like his other options. Say, for instance, in cases when his imminent demise seemed highly likely.
Willow nodded. “Night and day. And day and night.”
“That should cover it,” Angel said dryly.
How does he do it? Buffy wondered. His presence always jolted her. And, no matter how hard she tried to be prepared, the moment she least expected him was bound to be the one when he showed up.
But then, the truth was, she’d never really been prepared for Angel. How did a girl get ready to deal with the fact that her soulmate was a vampire over 200 years old?
He moved to stand beside her, though he didn’t touch her. He rarely did, in front of others.
“Angel, this is Suz. Suz, Angel,” Buffy performed the necessary introductions.
“Hey,” Angel said.
“Hey,” Suz answered.
“Well,” Xander said, as if unable to resist the chance to needle. “I can certainly feel my heartstrings being plucked by that touching little moment.”
Angel ignored him. “Buffy,” he said, his gaze prowling the Bronze restlessly. “We need to talk. I—”
“Oh, my God. I think that’s them,” said Suz Tompkins.
Every head at the table swiveled in the direction Suz was pointing. After a moment, Buffy could see two guys making their way through the Bronze.
They were dressed exactly alike in khaki pants and white button-down oxford cloth shirts. The only thing that marked one from the other were their ties. One navy blue. One maroon. Buffy couldn’t see their feet, but she was willing to bet her virtually nonexistent college fund on penny loafers. With the pennies actually in them.
The guys were rubbernecking, seemingly oblivious to the stares and snickers going on around them, craning their necks as if to take in every single detail of the Bronze. They looked exactly like five-year-olds who’d just been turned loose in a candy store. Without adult supervision.
When they spotted Suz, the two guys began to whisper together. The one in the navy blue tie actually waved. Maroon-tie slaped his arm down.
“That’s them?” Xander asked, his tone incredulous. He turned to look at Suz Tompkins. “You’re afraid of the Pillsbury Doughboys? Why didn’t you just poke them in their little tummies or something?”
