Gamefic: Making Arrangements, Part IV.
Title: Making Arrangements.
Rating: R.
Fandom: Covenant of the Slayer/Healy Compound.
Synopsis: Jerry and Sam try to connect over the phone, while things get a little unpredictable both at home and abroad. Originally written for ceolyn, for the first Valentine's Day round of Iron Author, but it fetched up a bit on the 'longer than intended' side of things. As so often happens. You can find part one here, part two here, and part three here.
***
Virgin Airlines, Transcontinental Flight #35.
*
Dating Jerry -- he could've said 'dating a Slayer', but Sam had met a lot of Slayers since deciding to follow the bevy of scantily-clad girls home from their rescue party, and he'd come to accept that some things were really just traits of being Geraldine Harrington, and had nothing at all to do with any wacky mystic Calling, however much she tried to pretend otherwise -- really did a number of a guy's idea of what constituted a 'romantic movie'. Not that he'd dated all that much before the whole monkey demon superhero thing decided to come along and complicate his social life, but still, he was pretty sure that most guys didn't get all maudlin when Slither came on the in-flight entertainment. That was life with Jerry: slime came before the smoochies.
On the screen, a blonde woman who bore a vague resemblance to Kim Healy was driving a fencepost into the throat of a slug-infested corpse. He regarded her with the sort of dull interest that was all his current lack of sleep and dip in adrenaline would allow, and finally concluded, aloud, "It's the hair." In his experience, only a Healy would take the time to curl her hair before going out to face down her mutant monster husband in a cornfield. Well, a Healy, or Jerry, who viewed a trip to the cornfield as somewhat better than a night out at the opera. Which was cool, since you didn't usually get deranged serial killers from beyond the grave at the opera. Not unless the lyrics were by Elton John, anyway, and if they were, he'd never get Jerry to attend in the first place.
Now the alien dead were taking over the town, getting gore and slime and alien cooties all over everything. The last time he'd seen this part, Jerry'd been in his lap, hogging the popcorn and making dismissive comments about the lack of really heavy weaponry at the police station.
Suddenly, Slither had become a depressing 'this is maybe the last movie I ever saw with my girlfriend before she left me to marry a guy without a chin' movie. That was new.
Sam reached for the remote.
One nice thing about the whole 'flying transcontinental' thing: the inflight entertainment was a heck of a lot better than anything he'd ever seen on Southwest, where you were lucky if you got, y'know, a movie, insted of the flight attendants doing an interpretive dance called We Are Flying Through High Turbulance and We're Out of Air-Sickness Bags. Here, you got ten different channels, all of them showing nothing but movies, which you could pause and fast-forward at will. He'd never been able to channel-surf on a plane before.
He was on his second pass through the available selections when a flight attendant stopped next to his seat, clearing her throat. Sam looked up, and slid off his headphones, letting them dangle around his neck. "Yes, ma'am?"
"We're about to start serving dinner, and I was just wondering whether you had any special...dietary restrictions?" She offered him a quick, conspiratorial smile.
Sam blinked at her. "Uh...is this a 'coffee, tea, or me' thing? Because I'm flattered, but I'm sort of on my way to London to stop my fiancee from marrying somebody else and I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't exactly help my case if we--"
"Not quite," she said, and grinned more broadly. Literally: her lips drew back well past the point that they would have stopped on a normal human, affording him a glimpse of her hinged-back fangs.
"Whoa." Sam stared. "Snake on a plane."
"Literally," she agreed, closing her mouth again. "And yes, I'm planning to go to opening night, and yes, Samuel L. Jackson is one bad-ass motherfucker. And if you tell anyone I said that, I'll deny it, because getting fired is only fun if it's over something interesting, like eating one of the baggage handlers."
"Uh, have you ever--"
"No."
"Oh, good." Sam relaxed. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I still have to fight the forces of darkness when they rear their heads at thirty thousand feet? But I'm also pretty sure that it would really, really suck."
"Probably true," agreed the stewardess. "Luckily for you, I'm not the forces of darkness. I'm just checking to make sure you don't have any special dietary requirements that the online reservation system wasn't set up to account for. We don't have any live food on this flight, but we do have a pasta option that includes crickets in the--"
Sam held up his hand. "Stop. Please. I beg. I mean, I've been living on a farm with people who think entrails are a food group and everything, but my stomach still has its limits, and the word 'crickets' is definitely one of them. No special dietary requirements. I don't like bananas, but that's just about it." He paused. "How did you..."
"Know?" Grinning again -- although this time without breaking any laws of standard human physiology -- the stewardess tapped the side of her nose. "The nose always knows. Not exactly what I'm dealing with, it's true, but beyond that? I've got a pretty high success rate when it comes to telling who's who. If there's anything I can do to make your trip more comfortable, and to keep you from eating the other passengers while we're in flight, I'm happy to help."
"I don't eat people," Sam said, shaking his head. "Jerry'd kill me. The normal meal is fine."
"All right! Dinner will be coming around in a few minutes; if there's anything else that you need, please, feel free to hit your call button and just ask for Mary. I'll be glad to take care of you until we touch down in England." She turned, starting back down the aisle.
"Actually..." Sam said, somewhat hesitantly.
"Yes?" She looked back, smiling again. He found himself wondering how she showed quite that many teeth without displaying her fangs by mistake. Maybe she and Kim had taken the same 'smiling like you mean it, even when you really, really don't' classes, and they'd been able to offer her some tips. "Can I help you with something, sir?"
Lowering his voice, Sam said, "I'm really, really not comfortable being all...human...for long periods of time, and if I fall asleep, there's a chance that I'll, y'know...stop. Can you make sure I get some really strong coffee? Like, nuclear-strong coffee?"
"How about I smuggle you into one of the employee sleeping cabins instead, and let you have a nice nap in whatever shape you're most comfortable in?" At his startled look, she grinned widely enough that he caught another glimpse of her fangs. "Keeping you from frightening the other passengers is a part of my job, too, sir. And won't your fiancee be happier to see you if you're not dealing with sleep deprivation and jetlag at the same time?"
It would definitely make it easier to hit any Watchers he happened to come across. And to be sure that he was actually hitting Watchers, not, say, random tourists. Or fenceposts. "That would be fantastic," he said. "You're sure that's okay?"
"Sir, on the last flight I was on, we had a gorgon with airsickness issues, an incubus with a severe fear of flying, and a harpy who decided that 'midway over the Atlantic Ocean' was the perfect time to lay her eggs," the stewardess replies. "One relatively polite passenger who just happens to sleep in a different shape than he started out in is absolutely nothing compared to some of what we've had to deal with. I'll come and show you where the cabin is after we clear the dinner dishes?"
"That'd be great," Sam replied.
"Enjoy your dinner," she said, and turned, walking off down the aisle.
Sam settled back in his seat, blinking at the movie screen set into the back of the seat in front of him. His channel-surfing had been interrupted while it was back on Slither. Things were blowing up, and the alien-infested dead were absolutely everywhere. The entire plane was starting to smell like food, and he had a nap to look forward to. Shrugging, Sam put his headphones back on.
He liked the ending, anyway.
Hurtling towards London at hundreds of miles per hour, Sam Taylor kept his eyes on the screen, and wondered what Jerry was doing.
*
Basingstoke, England.
*
Jerry stared at the unnamed Council Slayer, eyes gone wide. The Slayer glared defiantly back. Leaf looked from one to the other, too confused to speak.
Someone had to break the silence. In the end, it was Leaf, who said slowly, "I'm going to go get some plates before our dinner gets cold," and fled the room, choosing retreat as the better part of valour. Being inside the blast radius somehow struck her as being...not a bad idea, exactly, so much as an idea that only seemed like a good one until Jerry started to yell.
She had barely made it to the kitchen when Jerry's voice came scything through the walls, demanding indignantly, "I DID WHAT?!" Leaf winced.
It was almost enough to make her feel sorry for the intruder.
Almost.
In the living room, the Council Slayer flinched but kept her eyes on Jerry, glowering with a level of focus that would have been commendable, if it hadn't been so patently, suicidally stupid. "I said," she said, words sharply clipped off by the tightness of her tone, "you stole my fiancee. You two-bit turn-coat whore."
"Pretty sure you left that last bit off before, and I did not steal anyone's bloody fiancee," Jerry snapped. "He was completely unattached when I found him!"
"You left! You don't get to hang onto him forever, not when you went off and left! Or are things like 'polite behaviour' too much to ask of Little Miss 'quitting the Council, moving to America'?"
Jerry paused as what the girl in front of her was actually saying filtered through her irritation. "Hang on," she said, carefully. "What?"
"I said, you left. Or did you have a better way of saying 'split the country, never coming back again, living like a savage out there with those bastard Healys'?"
"I...ah." Jerry reached back, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand. "My."
Looking triumphant, the girl demanded, "Not used to being called on what you've done, are you, you overbred bitch?"
She looked suitably bemused as Jerry started laughing.
It was slow at first -- just chuckling, which grew quickly into giggling, and finally into open, outright, arms wrapped around the middle, leaning back on the table laughter, the sort that most comedians can only dream about. The Council Slayer stared. "Are you completely fucking mental?!" she demanded. "Can't you even understand when you're being insulted?!"
Rather than answering, Jerry put her hands on her knees and howled.
The sound of laughter filtered through the kitchen walls, and Leaf stuck her head hesitantly back out into the living room, asking, "Is this the part where I start becoming concerned?"
"Leonard!" Jerry replied, and pointed to the Council Slayer, who was looking increasingly perplexed, as well as increasingly more incensed. Given another few minutes, and Leaf suspected she might actually burst into flame. "Sh-she thinks I stole L-Leonard!"
"Stole what from him?" asked Leaf, blankly. She paused, eyes widening. "Oooooh. You mean -- she thinks you -- does she really?"
"Really really!" confirmed Jerry, with a vigorous nod.
A moment later, there were two Slayers slumped against the table laughing themselves sick, with Jerry leaning on Leaf's arm in a vain search for support. Rocking her chair back onto two legs, the unnamed Slayer shouted, "WILL YOU TWO DAFT BITCHES CUT IT OUT?!"
Jerry and Leaf just laughed harder.
Apparently seeing this as some form of insane challenge, the Council Slayer started swearing louder, causing Leaf and Jerry to laugh harder still, until it became a sort of competition, with each side trying to wear the other down. Eventually, it was the lack of oxygen that did all three of them in, and Jerry straightened, wiping the tears from her eyes as she said, breathlessly, "Not quite what Great-Grandfather William had in mind when he had this place soundproofed, I'd wager, but it turns the trick. All finished now?"
"You're insane," said the Council Slayer.
"And you're the one tied to the chair, so maybe it's time to start being a little more willing to cooperate with the crazy girls, hmmm?" Jerry wiped her eyes. "Also, we're not the crazy ones here. I think you've just provided ample proof of that."
"You're the ones laughing like a pair of werehyenas in heat!" snapped the intruder.
"And you're the one thinking that I actually have the slightest fraction of an interest in marrying Lord Leonard Cunningham, so I'd say we're even," Jerry blandly replied.
"Also, you still haven't got a name," Leaf added. "That isn't crazy, but it's rather rude."
Eyes narrowed, the Council Slayer glanced from one to the other. "You're Geraldine Harrington," she said, finally, settling on Jerry. "You were engaged to Leonard Cunningham when you were both tots, as a part of the Watcher's breeding program. And then you died, which meant that the engagement was off, all right? But now you're here again, and just you have it from me, you're not getting him back. I'll fight you if I've got to."
"You already fought me," Jerry pointed out. "You lost. Spectacularly. That would be why one of us is now tied to a chair, and one of us is not."
"As a tip, you can usually tell who won by who isn't participating in the involuntary bondage," Leaf said. "I mean, unless it's that sort of a relationship."
"You can't keep me tied up here forever!"
"I dunno," Jerry said, with a shrug. "You do rather add to the decor."
"Stupid traitorous rich-bitch whore!"
"She has a bit of a one-track mind," commented Leaf.
"Welcome to what the Council can do to a girl," Jerry said, and folded her arms. "All right, time to play 'let's make a deal'. Your call. You can give us a name to call you by, or I can make a phone call and get a name to call you by."
"Call the Council if you want," said the intruder, defiantly. "There's nothing more that they can do to me."
"Over-dramatics -- just another part of what the Council can do to you, if you're not careful," Jerry asided to Leaf.
Leaf nodded, thoughtfully. "That explains Emilia. But what explains Buffy?"
"Lead-based paint," Jerry blandly replied. "I'm sorry; I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. You see, I'm not intending to call the Council at this point."
The Council Slayer narrowed her eyes still further. "So who are you going to call?" she asked suspiciously.
Jerry smiled. "Leonard."
The Council Slayer turned white and then red in a matter of seconds, as the blood first left her face, then came rushing back, with reinforcements. "You wouldn't."
"Jerry, that's mean," said Leaf, blinking.
"She kicked you in the stomach, Leaf."
"All right, true." Leaf looked towards the squirming Slayer. "Still, she's been with the Watcher's Council. Her aura is probably misaligned."
"I have no living clue what that means, but you're probably right," Jerry cheerfully replied. "Still. Tell us who you are, or we call Leonard and tell him that you attacked us. Bet he'd like to know about that."
The Council Slayer muttered something unintelligible.
Leaf frowned. "Did you strain your throat shouting 'whore' too much? Do I need to get you a cup of tea?"
The poisonous look the Council Slayer shot in her direction was enough to start Jerry snorting with laughter once again. Pulling herself up as straight as the ropes and her seated position would allow, the intruder gathered the tattered shreds of her dignity around herself, and said, "I'm Salila Patil. And I hate you both."
"Behold the famed English hospitality," Jerry said, with a sweep of her hand. "Next, she'll call me a whore. Just watch."
"I'd rather not, if you don't mind. Salila, I'm Leaf Chang. Can I get you anything? Tea?"
"You could untie me."
"Are you going to start hitting us again?" When Salila didn't answer, Leaf sighed. "You know, Geraldine, I always thought the stubbornness was just you and Evie."
"Did you? And what do you think now?"
"Now I think it's national. What are we going to do with her?"
"Oh, that's easy." Jerry smiled broadly. "I'm going to phone Leonard."
*
Virgin Airlines, Transcontinental Flight #43.
*
Smuggling the mice out of the Healy Compound hadn't actually been a problem. They didn't like her very much, largely on account of Elvin's tendency to want to dissect anything he hadn't encountered before -- and given the Healy passion for taxidermy, she really would've expected them to be a little more understanding towards people whose passion involved getting a look at the insides of things with interesting outsides, but whatever -- so she'd come prepared, hauling most of a wheel of cheddar out of the back of the minifridge, where she'd been banking it against just such an emergency. (Granted, she'd expected the emergency to have more to do with Elvin having dissected the high priest, and less to do with a sudden rescue mission to the United Kingdom, but she was trying not to look a gift opportunity to punch some Watchers in the mouth.) Once she'd forked over the cheese, and explained that as penance for her relationship with the False God of the Scalpel by making pilgrimage to the land where proper cheese had been invented, filling her satchel with eager rodent pilgrims had been no trouble at all.
Once they got to the airport, she'd needed to feed them most of a package of Junior Mints to keep them from expanding their pilgrimage to include playing with the automatic toilets, and then an entire box of Crackerjacks and a corn dog to convince them to hop out of her duffel bag, run around the X-ray machines without being seen or stopping to say hello to the Perky Priestess, and climb back into the duffel bag. It had been tedious and annoying, and had required a level of clandestine muttering that she really wasn't suited for, but in the end, she'd managed it, and expected things to go smoothly from there.
Anna was starting to think that the Healy family mice had never actually encountered the word 'smoothly'.
First there was the attention span problem. They were just fine with anything religious -- according to Cousin Becky, who was basically the family demon-mouse-ologist, they could spend years training for the priesthood, and given their lifespans, that was sort of like a human being willing to spend decades as a grad student -- but secular things only kept their attention for a few minutes. And that was if they really, really liked the secular things.
And when they really, really liked the secular things, they wanted to canonize them.
It was, Anna had rapidly discovered, extremely difficult to conceal a colony of demon mice in the process of canonizing a corn dog. Especially given their tendency to hail things randomly when excited, thus setting off a chain reaction of small, fuzzy bodies excitedly shouting 'hail' as they worked their way up to demanding cheese and cake. Again. Since boarding the plane, the mice had hailed the safety announcements, the coming of the blanket, the coming of the dinner service, the inflight entertainment, and the mighty, mighty snores of the miniature Slayer. She was beginning to wonder if she could make it through the flight without losing them to some sort of mouse-y pilgrimage back to the luggage compartment.
Worse, she was starting to wonder if she would really mind that particular disappearance. The Healys had a lot of mice. They probably wouldn't miss a few...
A faint squeaking noise was emitting from her duffel bag. Anna sighed, turning towards it. The mice generally started out pretty quiet, but they didn't stay that way for long, and she really didn't need a religious revival breaking out at thirty thousand feet. Flipping the front flap of the bag open, she hissed, "What is it this time?"
"The most Holy of Questions has been put forth by a Novice amongst our Number," squeaked one of the mice, a tiny female whose sparrow-bone hat probably meant that she held some sort of special rank. Other than 'fashion challenged'.
Anna waited impatiently for the mouse to get on with it, finally demanding, "Well? What's the question?"
Clearing her throat, the mouse asked solemnly, "Are we there yet?"
"Are we..." Anna made a thin choking noise, putting her hand against her face to fight off her first urge, which was to smack the mouse briskly until it became a small, non-offensive, silent smear on the side of the duffel bag. Voice muffled by her palm, she said, "No, we are not there yet."
"Oh," said the mouse, sadly. Then she brightened, asking, "Are we there now?"
"Never having children ever," Anna muttered. With the mice to serve as a dark glimpse of the future, she was amazed that any of the Healy women bothered to breed at all. The line should really have died out the first time a well-meaning rodent blinked its tiny black eyes and asked 'why?'
The mouse turned to the others in the duffel, informing them, "There is to be no having of children upon the Sacred Plane." The mice nodded solemnly, muttering amongst themselves.
There would be no mousey Mile High Club. Anna bit back a hysterical giggle, and said, "Yeah. We don't do it on the plane. Look, can't you guys, like, sleep or something? Just until we get to England? I can't get any sleep if I have to keep an eye on you, and I really, really need to get some rest." If she didn't get any sleep, her reflexes would suffer, and a Slayer with bad reflexes didn't get to hit nearly as many Watchers as a Slayer at the top of her game. "Please?"
"But we have already had the Long Sleep, and the Short Sleep, and the Go To Sleep, Dammit, Before Someone Hears You," said the mouse plaintively. "We have run out of times for sleeping. Now is the time of Being Awake and Doing Things!"
"Who told you that?" asked Anna, hoping that the answer would be something along the lines of 'no one' or 'Mr. Rogers'. The mice took the teachings of the television somewhat less seriously than they took the things they'd learned from their various gods and priestesses, and could sometimes be talked out of them.
"The Noisy Priestess, during the Sacred Winter of I Am Not Too Goddamn Pregnant To Hunt A Swamp Hag, Now Give Me My Smoked Glasses and Tell Me Where You Put My Gun, Or I Swear To God, Thomas, I Will Be A Widow Before the Spring," recited the mouse dutifully. "Would the recitation of the catechism be pleasing to you?" The other mice perked up, anticipating a religious lesson.
"No!" Anna said hurriedly, before wincing and glancing guiltily around. Everyone else still seemed to be sleeping, in varying states of apparent comfort. Carmen was wrapped around Edward's arm like a boa constrictor trying to squeeze the life out of a goat, causing him to cant sideways at an alarming angle, while Evie was curled into a tight knot that barely filled the bed of her own seat. Kim was sleeping just as prettily as a Disney Princess in repose, and had somehow even managed to get her hair to fan out attractively on the headrest. It was sickening and unfair.
"There is to be no catechism?" asked the mouse, somehow contriving to look deeply saddened by the news. Even her tiny ears drooped. "No children, no catechism, and still we are Not Yet There...truly, this is the most difficult of journeys."
"It's a challenge for the ages," Anna wearily agreed. "Look...if I can find something that'll keep you entertained, will you promise to stay in my bag, and stay quiet? Just until the flight attendants come around with breakfast? I gotta get some rest, or I'm going to be totally useless when we land."
The mouse turned, conferring with her fellows in a series of animated gestures and squeaks. After several moments, they seemed to come to a decision, because she turned back towards Anna, and nodded solemnly, saying, "Indeed. If Entertainment can be brought forth, we will Pledge Silence and to Remain Within the Holy Bag."
"Great. Hang on a second." Anna straightened, looking frantically around. What could she find on a plane that would count as 'entertaining' to a bag full of intelligent, demented demon mice who worshipped violent blonde women and the men crazy enough to get involved with them? They'd just make nests out of the in-flight magazine, and somehow, she couldn't really picture them as the crossword type. For one thing, they were probably too small to use the pencil very well.
Her gaze landed on the headphones that went with the in-flight entertainment center. Virgin Atlantic was what Evie had enthusiastically called 'posh', and every seat had its very own screen, controlled by a personal remote. They wanted to keep the passengers sedated and happy for the duration of the flight.
Anna grabbed the remote in one hand and the headphones in the other, and shoved them both down into the bag. "Here!" she said. "I bring you the source of all entertainment: the headphones and the remote control."
"The Head's Phones and the Distant Control," murmured the mice, swarming over the equipment. One adventurous soul jumped on the 'power' button, and the screen flickered into life, drawing a uniform 'oooooooo' from the group. Turning to face Anna, the spokesmouse said, solemnly, "This will do."
"Thank God," muttered Anna, and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes. The mice had television. Maybe now she could finally get some rest. And tomorrow? Whack-a-Watcher.
Life wasn't great, but it definitely could have been worse.
*
International Arrivals Terminal, London, Heathrow.
*
Sam's sleep had been light, restless, and broken by disturbingly disjointed dreams about chasing Jerry through a vast labyrinth filled with bookshelves, high school classrooms, and angry librarians who shushed him and shouted things like 'No monkeys in the white hot room!' while they tried to smack him with spike-studded rulers. He'd been faster than they were, at least until the floors turned into acidic-smelling toffee, and he realized that he was running through a roach motel, and Jerry was up ahead with her arms around a guy who looked like a teenage Giles crossed with the guy who played the Chief of Police in Slither, laughing at him, and he suddenly realized that this was what she'd wanted all along, and he'd chased her into certain doom for nothing...
"Sir?" Someone was shaking him. "Sir, we're preparing for final descent. You slept through breakfast in the main cabin. If you could retract your tail and re-take your seat, you'll have time to eat something before we have to clean up the last of the dishes."
"Wuh?" Sam opened his eyes, and blinked up at the flight attendant from before. Here, out of sight of the rest of the passengers, she'd allowed her human face to slip; her eyes had turned a uniform yellow from corner to corner, and her previously curly hair was now rearing up in individual garter snakes, flicking forked tongues and hissing thoughtfully in his direction. "Uh..."
"Lesser chimera, not gorgon," she said, patting her hissing hair. "I'm not Angelina Jolie; I don't turn men to stone with just a look. You ready to move?"
"Uh. Good to know? Give me a second. Just waking up."
"Well, take your time, but not too much of it -- I can't have you back here once we begin our descent." The stewardess moved towards a mirror mounted on the wall, tucking a few protesting locks of...snake...back behind her ear. They looped there, hissing. "Singari, right? That was a surprise. I haven't seen a Singari in ages. No offense, but you don't tend to live this long."
"Guess I'm just lucky," Sam mumbled, rubbing his face with the flat of his hand and trying to convince his tired, jet-lagged body that it wanted to pretend to be human. It wasn't listening. "What time is it?"
"About nine-thirty at night; it'll be ten by the time we land." The stewardess glanced over her shoulder. "So is this really about a girl? Or are you being chased by the demonic side of your family? I've never met a Singari who liked the idea of half-breeds."
"It's a girl." Sam stood, stretching, as he finally convinced his body to play nice and put the tail away. "We're supposed to get married, only the stupid Watcher's Council is trying to convince her that she's got other plans."
"You're marrying a Watcher?"
"Well. Sort of." Sam shrugged. "She's also sort of a Slayer. It's a long story. Mostly, I just assume that she's going to look things up after she kills them, and then talk about how we're violating supernatural EPA regulations by stopping endangered things from eating people."
The flight attendant nodded, slowly. "Well, I'll give you this much: you're definitely Singari."
Sam blinked at her. "How's that?"
Smiling slightly, she shook her head. "You're clearly insane."
The flight after that had been a blur. He remembered, vaguely, eating something pastry-like that claimed to be stuffed with ham and egg, but really tasted like a cross between cafeteria meatloaf and week-old McDonalds has browns. It was food, and it was there, so he'd eaten it, but beyond that, it really hadn't made much of an impact. The flight attendant had come around again a few minutes after he finished his food, coiling snakes tamed back into curling hair, and winked at him as she whisked his dishes away, but there hadn't been time to talk as the whole crew went into the business of landing the plane.
Before he'd understood that most of the incomprehensible things in the world could be blamed on magic, Sam had wondered why planes didn't just plummet out of the sky as they slowed down. Now he understood that it had less to do with physics and more to do with tame gremlins, and that knowledge made the process of landing considerably less distressing.
At least if the plane went down in a ball of flame, there would be something people could kill in his name. Other than gravity, which, he had been assured by several of the elder Healys, was easy to stalk, hard to kill, and damn near impossible to stuff or mount. He was reasonably sure it had been tried, at least once, which was only one of the many, many reasons he made it a policy never to think too hard about the things he heard from Kim's relatives. They almost always made sense, and that was the part that worried him.
When the plane touched down without anything catching fire or trying to kill him, he was almost disappointed.
The flight attendant smiled at him -- a strictly human smile, with no hint of the fangs behind it -- as he deplaned, saying, "Thank you for choosing Virgin Atlantic. Enjoy your stay in the United Kingdom, and we hope to see you again soon." Expression not slipping from its plastic 'I get paid to be nice to you' serenity, she offered him a small slip of paper.
He took it, eyebrows raised in question. "Uh...thanks?"
"Remember, if you have any problems on this trip, just give your travel agent a call," she said, nodding towards his hand and winking. Then her attention slid away from him, towards the next person waiting to head down the jetway and into the dubious purgatory of baggage claim and immigration.
Sam knew a dismissal when he saw one. Shoving the paper down into his pocket, he shouldered his backpack and started for the exit.
The first thing that really hit him about Heathrow Airport was the orderliness of it all. Minneapolis St. Paul had been a mess of pushing, shouting, cranky people who all seemed to be existing in a sort of weird existential game of 'Frogger' where the only goal was to get to their plane without actually getting run over by the automated luggage carts. Here, people were actually paying attention to what was going on around them. In the time it took to walk to the immigration gates, he saw several people stop to help others catch their bearings, one man volunteer to carry all of an elderly lady's bags, and absolutely no mid-walkway collisions.
"It really is a foreign country," he muttered, and stepped into the long line snaking its way from the immigration officers to freedom.
People were remarkably patient about waiting. Beyond some casual grumbling and comments on the local trains, Sam didn't hear any signs of an impending riot in the time it took to get from the back up the line up to the front, where a bored-looking man in a uniform took his passport out of his hand, barely glancing at the picture.
"Length of stay?"
"Uh..." How long did it take to prevent a wedding, punch a bunch of Watchers in the face, and whisk your fiancee back to the dubious safety of a militia complex filled with semi-crazed demon hunters? Finally, he ventured, "A week?"
"Reason for visit?"
"I'm meeting my fiancee," Sam said. He hesitated, then added, "She's a citizen. But she's moving to America. So I'm here to see where she grew up. Meet her family." And punch them, he added, silently. Somehow, he couldn't imagine that part going over terribly well with immigration.
"Right," said the man, with no real sign of interest. He stamped Sam's passport with a smeary circle that could have been permission to enter the country and could have been a parking validation, then passed it back across the booth. "Enjoy your stay. Next!"
"Thanks. Uh, where's the pay..." The next person in line was already hustling forward. Recognizing retreat as the better part of valour, at least where the government was concerned, Sam retreated through the departure gates, and out into Heathrow proper, or, as he thought at first, into the seventh circle of Hell.
If the arrivals and immigration area had been unnaturally quiet, the terminal made up for it with sheer volume and range of accents. Everywhere he looked, people were shouting at each other, mostly in a language that bore enough resemblance to the way Jerry sounded when she was really pissed off that he was willing to guess that it was probably English. The air smelled of dirt and sweat and smoke and, for some inexplicable reason, puffed pastry. Reeling back out of the way, Sam narrowly avoided getting trampled by a small swarm of elderly women chattering animatedly to one another in Greek, and found himself pressed up against a bank of payphones.
"Guess that's something," he said, and took down the receiver, digging in his pocket for change.
"That won't work," said a voice by his elbow.
"Huh?" Sam looked up.
The man standing off to his right smiled, amiably. "Those are quarters. They won't work. You need to get some real money, if you want to use the local phones." He dug a hand into his pocket, pulling out an assortment of oddly-shaped coins, and offered them to Sam. "See?"
"Oh, crap, local currency," said Sam, and put the receiver down, sighing. "I just wanted to tell my girlfriend that I was, y'know, local."
"Well, then, here." The man poured his handful of oddly-shaped change onto the payphone shelf. "Give her a call. You know how girls can be when they don't hear from you."
"Really? Thanks. Thanks a lot."
"It's no bother at all." The man shook his head. "Sal gets apoplectic if I don't call for an evening. I can't imagine what she'd do if I didn't call when I'd just flown in from the other side of an ocean. Good luck with your girl, and just return the favour next time you see someone needs a hand, all right?"
"Thanks again, Mister--?"
"Leo." The man grinned, lopsidedly. "Hate to gift and run, but the folks I'm supposed to meet are right over there." He pointed towards where a tall, inordinately thin blond man was shepherding three cranky teenage girls out of the arrivals gate. "Have a nice night!"
"You, too," Sam called, waving, before he turned to start pumping change into the phone. When it finally stopped buzzing and started giving him something that sounded vaguely like a dial tone, he pulled his address book out of his pocket, and punched in the number for the Harrington family flat in Basingstoke.
The phone rang six times before the answering machine picked up, and Jerry's voice intoned, with excessive, even snotty formality, "I'm sorry, but we are not presently available to take your call. Please leave a message, and someone will endeavour to get back to you as soon as is convenient." This proclaimation was followed by a loud beep.
Closing his eyes, Sam said, "Jerry, it's me. I'm in London, and I'm on my way. Don't marry anyone until I get there, okay? Please? I love you. I'll be right there."
Dropping the receiver back into the cradle, he turned and ran for the exit.
Rating: R.
Fandom: Covenant of the Slayer/Healy Compound.
Synopsis: Jerry and Sam try to connect over the phone, while things get a little unpredictable both at home and abroad. Originally written for ceolyn, for the first Valentine's Day round of Iron Author, but it fetched up a bit on the 'longer than intended' side of things. As so often happens. You can find part one here, part two here, and part three here.
***
Virgin Airlines, Transcontinental Flight #35.
*
Dating Jerry -- he could've said 'dating a Slayer', but Sam had met a lot of Slayers since deciding to follow the bevy of scantily-clad girls home from their rescue party, and he'd come to accept that some things were really just traits of being Geraldine Harrington, and had nothing at all to do with any wacky mystic Calling, however much she tried to pretend otherwise -- really did a number of a guy's idea of what constituted a 'romantic movie'. Not that he'd dated all that much before the whole monkey demon superhero thing decided to come along and complicate his social life, but still, he was pretty sure that most guys didn't get all maudlin when Slither came on the in-flight entertainment. That was life with Jerry: slime came before the smoochies.
On the screen, a blonde woman who bore a vague resemblance to Kim Healy was driving a fencepost into the throat of a slug-infested corpse. He regarded her with the sort of dull interest that was all his current lack of sleep and dip in adrenaline would allow, and finally concluded, aloud, "It's the hair." In his experience, only a Healy would take the time to curl her hair before going out to face down her mutant monster husband in a cornfield. Well, a Healy, or Jerry, who viewed a trip to the cornfield as somewhat better than a night out at the opera. Which was cool, since you didn't usually get deranged serial killers from beyond the grave at the opera. Not unless the lyrics were by Elton John, anyway, and if they were, he'd never get Jerry to attend in the first place.
Now the alien dead were taking over the town, getting gore and slime and alien cooties all over everything. The last time he'd seen this part, Jerry'd been in his lap, hogging the popcorn and making dismissive comments about the lack of really heavy weaponry at the police station.
Suddenly, Slither had become a depressing 'this is maybe the last movie I ever saw with my girlfriend before she left me to marry a guy without a chin' movie. That was new.
Sam reached for the remote.
One nice thing about the whole 'flying transcontinental' thing: the inflight entertainment was a heck of a lot better than anything he'd ever seen on Southwest, where you were lucky if you got, y'know, a movie, insted of the flight attendants doing an interpretive dance called We Are Flying Through High Turbulance and We're Out of Air-Sickness Bags. Here, you got ten different channels, all of them showing nothing but movies, which you could pause and fast-forward at will. He'd never been able to channel-surf on a plane before.
He was on his second pass through the available selections when a flight attendant stopped next to his seat, clearing her throat. Sam looked up, and slid off his headphones, letting them dangle around his neck. "Yes, ma'am?"
"We're about to start serving dinner, and I was just wondering whether you had any special...dietary restrictions?" She offered him a quick, conspiratorial smile.
Sam blinked at her. "Uh...is this a 'coffee, tea, or me' thing? Because I'm flattered, but I'm sort of on my way to London to stop my fiancee from marrying somebody else and I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't exactly help my case if we--"
"Not quite," she said, and grinned more broadly. Literally: her lips drew back well past the point that they would have stopped on a normal human, affording him a glimpse of her hinged-back fangs.
"Whoa." Sam stared. "Snake on a plane."
"Literally," she agreed, closing her mouth again. "And yes, I'm planning to go to opening night, and yes, Samuel L. Jackson is one bad-ass motherfucker. And if you tell anyone I said that, I'll deny it, because getting fired is only fun if it's over something interesting, like eating one of the baggage handlers."
"Uh, have you ever--"
"No."
"Oh, good." Sam relaxed. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I still have to fight the forces of darkness when they rear their heads at thirty thousand feet? But I'm also pretty sure that it would really, really suck."
"Probably true," agreed the stewardess. "Luckily for you, I'm not the forces of darkness. I'm just checking to make sure you don't have any special dietary requirements that the online reservation system wasn't set up to account for. We don't have any live food on this flight, but we do have a pasta option that includes crickets in the--"
Sam held up his hand. "Stop. Please. I beg. I mean, I've been living on a farm with people who think entrails are a food group and everything, but my stomach still has its limits, and the word 'crickets' is definitely one of them. No special dietary requirements. I don't like bananas, but that's just about it." He paused. "How did you..."
"Know?" Grinning again -- although this time without breaking any laws of standard human physiology -- the stewardess tapped the side of her nose. "The nose always knows. Not exactly what I'm dealing with, it's true, but beyond that? I've got a pretty high success rate when it comes to telling who's who. If there's anything I can do to make your trip more comfortable, and to keep you from eating the other passengers while we're in flight, I'm happy to help."
"I don't eat people," Sam said, shaking his head. "Jerry'd kill me. The normal meal is fine."
"All right! Dinner will be coming around in a few minutes; if there's anything else that you need, please, feel free to hit your call button and just ask for Mary. I'll be glad to take care of you until we touch down in England." She turned, starting back down the aisle.
"Actually..." Sam said, somewhat hesitantly.
"Yes?" She looked back, smiling again. He found himself wondering how she showed quite that many teeth without displaying her fangs by mistake. Maybe she and Kim had taken the same 'smiling like you mean it, even when you really, really don't' classes, and they'd been able to offer her some tips. "Can I help you with something, sir?"
Lowering his voice, Sam said, "I'm really, really not comfortable being all...human...for long periods of time, and if I fall asleep, there's a chance that I'll, y'know...stop. Can you make sure I get some really strong coffee? Like, nuclear-strong coffee?"
"How about I smuggle you into one of the employee sleeping cabins instead, and let you have a nice nap in whatever shape you're most comfortable in?" At his startled look, she grinned widely enough that he caught another glimpse of her fangs. "Keeping you from frightening the other passengers is a part of my job, too, sir. And won't your fiancee be happier to see you if you're not dealing with sleep deprivation and jetlag at the same time?"
It would definitely make it easier to hit any Watchers he happened to come across. And to be sure that he was actually hitting Watchers, not, say, random tourists. Or fenceposts. "That would be fantastic," he said. "You're sure that's okay?"
"Sir, on the last flight I was on, we had a gorgon with airsickness issues, an incubus with a severe fear of flying, and a harpy who decided that 'midway over the Atlantic Ocean' was the perfect time to lay her eggs," the stewardess replies. "One relatively polite passenger who just happens to sleep in a different shape than he started out in is absolutely nothing compared to some of what we've had to deal with. I'll come and show you where the cabin is after we clear the dinner dishes?"
"That'd be great," Sam replied.
"Enjoy your dinner," she said, and turned, walking off down the aisle.
Sam settled back in his seat, blinking at the movie screen set into the back of the seat in front of him. His channel-surfing had been interrupted while it was back on Slither. Things were blowing up, and the alien-infested dead were absolutely everywhere. The entire plane was starting to smell like food, and he had a nap to look forward to. Shrugging, Sam put his headphones back on.
He liked the ending, anyway.
Hurtling towards London at hundreds of miles per hour, Sam Taylor kept his eyes on the screen, and wondered what Jerry was doing.
*
Basingstoke, England.
*
Jerry stared at the unnamed Council Slayer, eyes gone wide. The Slayer glared defiantly back. Leaf looked from one to the other, too confused to speak.
Someone had to break the silence. In the end, it was Leaf, who said slowly, "I'm going to go get some plates before our dinner gets cold," and fled the room, choosing retreat as the better part of valour. Being inside the blast radius somehow struck her as being...not a bad idea, exactly, so much as an idea that only seemed like a good one until Jerry started to yell.
She had barely made it to the kitchen when Jerry's voice came scything through the walls, demanding indignantly, "I DID WHAT?!" Leaf winced.
It was almost enough to make her feel sorry for the intruder.
Almost.
In the living room, the Council Slayer flinched but kept her eyes on Jerry, glowering with a level of focus that would have been commendable, if it hadn't been so patently, suicidally stupid. "I said," she said, words sharply clipped off by the tightness of her tone, "you stole my fiancee. You two-bit turn-coat whore."
"Pretty sure you left that last bit off before, and I did not steal anyone's bloody fiancee," Jerry snapped. "He was completely unattached when I found him!"
"You left! You don't get to hang onto him forever, not when you went off and left! Or are things like 'polite behaviour' too much to ask of Little Miss 'quitting the Council, moving to America'?"
Jerry paused as what the girl in front of her was actually saying filtered through her irritation. "Hang on," she said, carefully. "What?"
"I said, you left. Or did you have a better way of saying 'split the country, never coming back again, living like a savage out there with those bastard Healys'?"
"I...ah." Jerry reached back, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand. "My."
Looking triumphant, the girl demanded, "Not used to being called on what you've done, are you, you overbred bitch?"
She looked suitably bemused as Jerry started laughing.
It was slow at first -- just chuckling, which grew quickly into giggling, and finally into open, outright, arms wrapped around the middle, leaning back on the table laughter, the sort that most comedians can only dream about. The Council Slayer stared. "Are you completely fucking mental?!" she demanded. "Can't you even understand when you're being insulted?!"
Rather than answering, Jerry put her hands on her knees and howled.
The sound of laughter filtered through the kitchen walls, and Leaf stuck her head hesitantly back out into the living room, asking, "Is this the part where I start becoming concerned?"
"Leonard!" Jerry replied, and pointed to the Council Slayer, who was looking increasingly perplexed, as well as increasingly more incensed. Given another few minutes, and Leaf suspected she might actually burst into flame. "Sh-she thinks I stole L-Leonard!"
"Stole what from him?" asked Leaf, blankly. She paused, eyes widening. "Oooooh. You mean -- she thinks you -- does she really?"
"Really really!" confirmed Jerry, with a vigorous nod.
A moment later, there were two Slayers slumped against the table laughing themselves sick, with Jerry leaning on Leaf's arm in a vain search for support. Rocking her chair back onto two legs, the unnamed Slayer shouted, "WILL YOU TWO DAFT BITCHES CUT IT OUT?!"
Jerry and Leaf just laughed harder.
Apparently seeing this as some form of insane challenge, the Council Slayer started swearing louder, causing Leaf and Jerry to laugh harder still, until it became a sort of competition, with each side trying to wear the other down. Eventually, it was the lack of oxygen that did all three of them in, and Jerry straightened, wiping the tears from her eyes as she said, breathlessly, "Not quite what Great-Grandfather William had in mind when he had this place soundproofed, I'd wager, but it turns the trick. All finished now?"
"You're insane," said the Council Slayer.
"And you're the one tied to the chair, so maybe it's time to start being a little more willing to cooperate with the crazy girls, hmmm?" Jerry wiped her eyes. "Also, we're not the crazy ones here. I think you've just provided ample proof of that."
"You're the ones laughing like a pair of werehyenas in heat!" snapped the intruder.
"And you're the one thinking that I actually have the slightest fraction of an interest in marrying Lord Leonard Cunningham, so I'd say we're even," Jerry blandly replied.
"Also, you still haven't got a name," Leaf added. "That isn't crazy, but it's rather rude."
Eyes narrowed, the Council Slayer glanced from one to the other. "You're Geraldine Harrington," she said, finally, settling on Jerry. "You were engaged to Leonard Cunningham when you were both tots, as a part of the Watcher's breeding program. And then you died, which meant that the engagement was off, all right? But now you're here again, and just you have it from me, you're not getting him back. I'll fight you if I've got to."
"You already fought me," Jerry pointed out. "You lost. Spectacularly. That would be why one of us is now tied to a chair, and one of us is not."
"As a tip, you can usually tell who won by who isn't participating in the involuntary bondage," Leaf said. "I mean, unless it's that sort of a relationship."
"You can't keep me tied up here forever!"
"I dunno," Jerry said, with a shrug. "You do rather add to the decor."
"Stupid traitorous rich-bitch whore!"
"She has a bit of a one-track mind," commented Leaf.
"Welcome to what the Council can do to a girl," Jerry said, and folded her arms. "All right, time to play 'let's make a deal'. Your call. You can give us a name to call you by, or I can make a phone call and get a name to call you by."
"Call the Council if you want," said the intruder, defiantly. "There's nothing more that they can do to me."
"Over-dramatics -- just another part of what the Council can do to you, if you're not careful," Jerry asided to Leaf.
Leaf nodded, thoughtfully. "That explains Emilia. But what explains Buffy?"
"Lead-based paint," Jerry blandly replied. "I'm sorry; I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. You see, I'm not intending to call the Council at this point."
The Council Slayer narrowed her eyes still further. "So who are you going to call?" she asked suspiciously.
Jerry smiled. "Leonard."
The Council Slayer turned white and then red in a matter of seconds, as the blood first left her face, then came rushing back, with reinforcements. "You wouldn't."
"Jerry, that's mean," said Leaf, blinking.
"She kicked you in the stomach, Leaf."
"All right, true." Leaf looked towards the squirming Slayer. "Still, she's been with the Watcher's Council. Her aura is probably misaligned."
"I have no living clue what that means, but you're probably right," Jerry cheerfully replied. "Still. Tell us who you are, or we call Leonard and tell him that you attacked us. Bet he'd like to know about that."
The Council Slayer muttered something unintelligible.
Leaf frowned. "Did you strain your throat shouting 'whore' too much? Do I need to get you a cup of tea?"
The poisonous look the Council Slayer shot in her direction was enough to start Jerry snorting with laughter once again. Pulling herself up as straight as the ropes and her seated position would allow, the intruder gathered the tattered shreds of her dignity around herself, and said, "I'm Salila Patil. And I hate you both."
"Behold the famed English hospitality," Jerry said, with a sweep of her hand. "Next, she'll call me a whore. Just watch."
"I'd rather not, if you don't mind. Salila, I'm Leaf Chang. Can I get you anything? Tea?"
"You could untie me."
"Are you going to start hitting us again?" When Salila didn't answer, Leaf sighed. "You know, Geraldine, I always thought the stubbornness was just you and Evie."
"Did you? And what do you think now?"
"Now I think it's national. What are we going to do with her?"
"Oh, that's easy." Jerry smiled broadly. "I'm going to phone Leonard."
*
Virgin Airlines, Transcontinental Flight #43.
*
Smuggling the mice out of the Healy Compound hadn't actually been a problem. They didn't like her very much, largely on account of Elvin's tendency to want to dissect anything he hadn't encountered before -- and given the Healy passion for taxidermy, she really would've expected them to be a little more understanding towards people whose passion involved getting a look at the insides of things with interesting outsides, but whatever -- so she'd come prepared, hauling most of a wheel of cheddar out of the back of the minifridge, where she'd been banking it against just such an emergency. (Granted, she'd expected the emergency to have more to do with Elvin having dissected the high priest, and less to do with a sudden rescue mission to the United Kingdom, but she was trying not to look a gift opportunity to punch some Watchers in the mouth.) Once she'd forked over the cheese, and explained that as penance for her relationship with the False God of the Scalpel by making pilgrimage to the land where proper cheese had been invented, filling her satchel with eager rodent pilgrims had been no trouble at all.
Once they got to the airport, she'd needed to feed them most of a package of Junior Mints to keep them from expanding their pilgrimage to include playing with the automatic toilets, and then an entire box of Crackerjacks and a corn dog to convince them to hop out of her duffel bag, run around the X-ray machines without being seen or stopping to say hello to the Perky Priestess, and climb back into the duffel bag. It had been tedious and annoying, and had required a level of clandestine muttering that she really wasn't suited for, but in the end, she'd managed it, and expected things to go smoothly from there.
Anna was starting to think that the Healy family mice had never actually encountered the word 'smoothly'.
First there was the attention span problem. They were just fine with anything religious -- according to Cousin Becky, who was basically the family demon-mouse-ologist, they could spend years training for the priesthood, and given their lifespans, that was sort of like a human being willing to spend decades as a grad student -- but secular things only kept their attention for a few minutes. And that was if they really, really liked the secular things.
And when they really, really liked the secular things, they wanted to canonize them.
It was, Anna had rapidly discovered, extremely difficult to conceal a colony of demon mice in the process of canonizing a corn dog. Especially given their tendency to hail things randomly when excited, thus setting off a chain reaction of small, fuzzy bodies excitedly shouting 'hail' as they worked their way up to demanding cheese and cake. Again. Since boarding the plane, the mice had hailed the safety announcements, the coming of the blanket, the coming of the dinner service, the inflight entertainment, and the mighty, mighty snores of the miniature Slayer. She was beginning to wonder if she could make it through the flight without losing them to some sort of mouse-y pilgrimage back to the luggage compartment.
Worse, she was starting to wonder if she would really mind that particular disappearance. The Healys had a lot of mice. They probably wouldn't miss a few...
A faint squeaking noise was emitting from her duffel bag. Anna sighed, turning towards it. The mice generally started out pretty quiet, but they didn't stay that way for long, and she really didn't need a religious revival breaking out at thirty thousand feet. Flipping the front flap of the bag open, she hissed, "What is it this time?"
"The most Holy of Questions has been put forth by a Novice amongst our Number," squeaked one of the mice, a tiny female whose sparrow-bone hat probably meant that she held some sort of special rank. Other than 'fashion challenged'.
Anna waited impatiently for the mouse to get on with it, finally demanding, "Well? What's the question?"
Clearing her throat, the mouse asked solemnly, "Are we there yet?"
"Are we..." Anna made a thin choking noise, putting her hand against her face to fight off her first urge, which was to smack the mouse briskly until it became a small, non-offensive, silent smear on the side of the duffel bag. Voice muffled by her palm, she said, "No, we are not there yet."
"Oh," said the mouse, sadly. Then she brightened, asking, "Are we there now?"
"Never having children ever," Anna muttered. With the mice to serve as a dark glimpse of the future, she was amazed that any of the Healy women bothered to breed at all. The line should really have died out the first time a well-meaning rodent blinked its tiny black eyes and asked 'why?'
The mouse turned to the others in the duffel, informing them, "There is to be no having of children upon the Sacred Plane." The mice nodded solemnly, muttering amongst themselves.
There would be no mousey Mile High Club. Anna bit back a hysterical giggle, and said, "Yeah. We don't do it on the plane. Look, can't you guys, like, sleep or something? Just until we get to England? I can't get any sleep if I have to keep an eye on you, and I really, really need to get some rest." If she didn't get any sleep, her reflexes would suffer, and a Slayer with bad reflexes didn't get to hit nearly as many Watchers as a Slayer at the top of her game. "Please?"
"But we have already had the Long Sleep, and the Short Sleep, and the Go To Sleep, Dammit, Before Someone Hears You," said the mouse plaintively. "We have run out of times for sleeping. Now is the time of Being Awake and Doing Things!"
"Who told you that?" asked Anna, hoping that the answer would be something along the lines of 'no one' or 'Mr. Rogers'. The mice took the teachings of the television somewhat less seriously than they took the things they'd learned from their various gods and priestesses, and could sometimes be talked out of them.
"The Noisy Priestess, during the Sacred Winter of I Am Not Too Goddamn Pregnant To Hunt A Swamp Hag, Now Give Me My Smoked Glasses and Tell Me Where You Put My Gun, Or I Swear To God, Thomas, I Will Be A Widow Before the Spring," recited the mouse dutifully. "Would the recitation of the catechism be pleasing to you?" The other mice perked up, anticipating a religious lesson.
"No!" Anna said hurriedly, before wincing and glancing guiltily around. Everyone else still seemed to be sleeping, in varying states of apparent comfort. Carmen was wrapped around Edward's arm like a boa constrictor trying to squeeze the life out of a goat, causing him to cant sideways at an alarming angle, while Evie was curled into a tight knot that barely filled the bed of her own seat. Kim was sleeping just as prettily as a Disney Princess in repose, and had somehow even managed to get her hair to fan out attractively on the headrest. It was sickening and unfair.
"There is to be no catechism?" asked the mouse, somehow contriving to look deeply saddened by the news. Even her tiny ears drooped. "No children, no catechism, and still we are Not Yet There...truly, this is the most difficult of journeys."
"It's a challenge for the ages," Anna wearily agreed. "Look...if I can find something that'll keep you entertained, will you promise to stay in my bag, and stay quiet? Just until the flight attendants come around with breakfast? I gotta get some rest, or I'm going to be totally useless when we land."
The mouse turned, conferring with her fellows in a series of animated gestures and squeaks. After several moments, they seemed to come to a decision, because she turned back towards Anna, and nodded solemnly, saying, "Indeed. If Entertainment can be brought forth, we will Pledge Silence and to Remain Within the Holy Bag."
"Great. Hang on a second." Anna straightened, looking frantically around. What could she find on a plane that would count as 'entertaining' to a bag full of intelligent, demented demon mice who worshipped violent blonde women and the men crazy enough to get involved with them? They'd just make nests out of the in-flight magazine, and somehow, she couldn't really picture them as the crossword type. For one thing, they were probably too small to use the pencil very well.
Her gaze landed on the headphones that went with the in-flight entertainment center. Virgin Atlantic was what Evie had enthusiastically called 'posh', and every seat had its very own screen, controlled by a personal remote. They wanted to keep the passengers sedated and happy for the duration of the flight.
Anna grabbed the remote in one hand and the headphones in the other, and shoved them both down into the bag. "Here!" she said. "I bring you the source of all entertainment: the headphones and the remote control."
"The Head's Phones and the Distant Control," murmured the mice, swarming over the equipment. One adventurous soul jumped on the 'power' button, and the screen flickered into life, drawing a uniform 'oooooooo' from the group. Turning to face Anna, the spokesmouse said, solemnly, "This will do."
"Thank God," muttered Anna, and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes. The mice had television. Maybe now she could finally get some rest. And tomorrow? Whack-a-Watcher.
Life wasn't great, but it definitely could have been worse.
*
International Arrivals Terminal, London, Heathrow.
*
Sam's sleep had been light, restless, and broken by disturbingly disjointed dreams about chasing Jerry through a vast labyrinth filled with bookshelves, high school classrooms, and angry librarians who shushed him and shouted things like 'No monkeys in the white hot room!' while they tried to smack him with spike-studded rulers. He'd been faster than they were, at least until the floors turned into acidic-smelling toffee, and he realized that he was running through a roach motel, and Jerry was up ahead with her arms around a guy who looked like a teenage Giles crossed with the guy who played the Chief of Police in Slither, laughing at him, and he suddenly realized that this was what she'd wanted all along, and he'd chased her into certain doom for nothing...
"Sir?" Someone was shaking him. "Sir, we're preparing for final descent. You slept through breakfast in the main cabin. If you could retract your tail and re-take your seat, you'll have time to eat something before we have to clean up the last of the dishes."
"Wuh?" Sam opened his eyes, and blinked up at the flight attendant from before. Here, out of sight of the rest of the passengers, she'd allowed her human face to slip; her eyes had turned a uniform yellow from corner to corner, and her previously curly hair was now rearing up in individual garter snakes, flicking forked tongues and hissing thoughtfully in his direction. "Uh..."
"Lesser chimera, not gorgon," she said, patting her hissing hair. "I'm not Angelina Jolie; I don't turn men to stone with just a look. You ready to move?"
"Uh. Good to know? Give me a second. Just waking up."
"Well, take your time, but not too much of it -- I can't have you back here once we begin our descent." The stewardess moved towards a mirror mounted on the wall, tucking a few protesting locks of...snake...back behind her ear. They looped there, hissing. "Singari, right? That was a surprise. I haven't seen a Singari in ages. No offense, but you don't tend to live this long."
"Guess I'm just lucky," Sam mumbled, rubbing his face with the flat of his hand and trying to convince his tired, jet-lagged body that it wanted to pretend to be human. It wasn't listening. "What time is it?"
"About nine-thirty at night; it'll be ten by the time we land." The stewardess glanced over her shoulder. "So is this really about a girl? Or are you being chased by the demonic side of your family? I've never met a Singari who liked the idea of half-breeds."
"It's a girl." Sam stood, stretching, as he finally convinced his body to play nice and put the tail away. "We're supposed to get married, only the stupid Watcher's Council is trying to convince her that she's got other plans."
"You're marrying a Watcher?"
"Well. Sort of." Sam shrugged. "She's also sort of a Slayer. It's a long story. Mostly, I just assume that she's going to look things up after she kills them, and then talk about how we're violating supernatural EPA regulations by stopping endangered things from eating people."
The flight attendant nodded, slowly. "Well, I'll give you this much: you're definitely Singari."
Sam blinked at her. "How's that?"
Smiling slightly, she shook her head. "You're clearly insane."
The flight after that had been a blur. He remembered, vaguely, eating something pastry-like that claimed to be stuffed with ham and egg, but really tasted like a cross between cafeteria meatloaf and week-old McDonalds has browns. It was food, and it was there, so he'd eaten it, but beyond that, it really hadn't made much of an impact. The flight attendant had come around again a few minutes after he finished his food, coiling snakes tamed back into curling hair, and winked at him as she whisked his dishes away, but there hadn't been time to talk as the whole crew went into the business of landing the plane.
Before he'd understood that most of the incomprehensible things in the world could be blamed on magic, Sam had wondered why planes didn't just plummet out of the sky as they slowed down. Now he understood that it had less to do with physics and more to do with tame gremlins, and that knowledge made the process of landing considerably less distressing.
At least if the plane went down in a ball of flame, there would be something people could kill in his name. Other than gravity, which, he had been assured by several of the elder Healys, was easy to stalk, hard to kill, and damn near impossible to stuff or mount. He was reasonably sure it had been tried, at least once, which was only one of the many, many reasons he made it a policy never to think too hard about the things he heard from Kim's relatives. They almost always made sense, and that was the part that worried him.
When the plane touched down without anything catching fire or trying to kill him, he was almost disappointed.
The flight attendant smiled at him -- a strictly human smile, with no hint of the fangs behind it -- as he deplaned, saying, "Thank you for choosing Virgin Atlantic. Enjoy your stay in the United Kingdom, and we hope to see you again soon." Expression not slipping from its plastic 'I get paid to be nice to you' serenity, she offered him a small slip of paper.
He took it, eyebrows raised in question. "Uh...thanks?"
"Remember, if you have any problems on this trip, just give your travel agent a call," she said, nodding towards his hand and winking. Then her attention slid away from him, towards the next person waiting to head down the jetway and into the dubious purgatory of baggage claim and immigration.
Sam knew a dismissal when he saw one. Shoving the paper down into his pocket, he shouldered his backpack and started for the exit.
The first thing that really hit him about Heathrow Airport was the orderliness of it all. Minneapolis St. Paul had been a mess of pushing, shouting, cranky people who all seemed to be existing in a sort of weird existential game of 'Frogger' where the only goal was to get to their plane without actually getting run over by the automated luggage carts. Here, people were actually paying attention to what was going on around them. In the time it took to walk to the immigration gates, he saw several people stop to help others catch their bearings, one man volunteer to carry all of an elderly lady's bags, and absolutely no mid-walkway collisions.
"It really is a foreign country," he muttered, and stepped into the long line snaking its way from the immigration officers to freedom.
People were remarkably patient about waiting. Beyond some casual grumbling and comments on the local trains, Sam didn't hear any signs of an impending riot in the time it took to get from the back up the line up to the front, where a bored-looking man in a uniform took his passport out of his hand, barely glancing at the picture.
"Length of stay?"
"Uh..." How long did it take to prevent a wedding, punch a bunch of Watchers in the face, and whisk your fiancee back to the dubious safety of a militia complex filled with semi-crazed demon hunters? Finally, he ventured, "A week?"
"Reason for visit?"
"I'm meeting my fiancee," Sam said. He hesitated, then added, "She's a citizen. But she's moving to America. So I'm here to see where she grew up. Meet her family." And punch them, he added, silently. Somehow, he couldn't imagine that part going over terribly well with immigration.
"Right," said the man, with no real sign of interest. He stamped Sam's passport with a smeary circle that could have been permission to enter the country and could have been a parking validation, then passed it back across the booth. "Enjoy your stay. Next!"
"Thanks. Uh, where's the pay..." The next person in line was already hustling forward. Recognizing retreat as the better part of valour, at least where the government was concerned, Sam retreated through the departure gates, and out into Heathrow proper, or, as he thought at first, into the seventh circle of Hell.
If the arrivals and immigration area had been unnaturally quiet, the terminal made up for it with sheer volume and range of accents. Everywhere he looked, people were shouting at each other, mostly in a language that bore enough resemblance to the way Jerry sounded when she was really pissed off that he was willing to guess that it was probably English. The air smelled of dirt and sweat and smoke and, for some inexplicable reason, puffed pastry. Reeling back out of the way, Sam narrowly avoided getting trampled by a small swarm of elderly women chattering animatedly to one another in Greek, and found himself pressed up against a bank of payphones.
"Guess that's something," he said, and took down the receiver, digging in his pocket for change.
"That won't work," said a voice by his elbow.
"Huh?" Sam looked up.
The man standing off to his right smiled, amiably. "Those are quarters. They won't work. You need to get some real money, if you want to use the local phones." He dug a hand into his pocket, pulling out an assortment of oddly-shaped coins, and offered them to Sam. "See?"
"Oh, crap, local currency," said Sam, and put the receiver down, sighing. "I just wanted to tell my girlfriend that I was, y'know, local."
"Well, then, here." The man poured his handful of oddly-shaped change onto the payphone shelf. "Give her a call. You know how girls can be when they don't hear from you."
"Really? Thanks. Thanks a lot."
"It's no bother at all." The man shook his head. "Sal gets apoplectic if I don't call for an evening. I can't imagine what she'd do if I didn't call when I'd just flown in from the other side of an ocean. Good luck with your girl, and just return the favour next time you see someone needs a hand, all right?"
"Thanks again, Mister--?"
"Leo." The man grinned, lopsidedly. "Hate to gift and run, but the folks I'm supposed to meet are right over there." He pointed towards where a tall, inordinately thin blond man was shepherding three cranky teenage girls out of the arrivals gate. "Have a nice night!"
"You, too," Sam called, waving, before he turned to start pumping change into the phone. When it finally stopped buzzing and started giving him something that sounded vaguely like a dial tone, he pulled his address book out of his pocket, and punched in the number for the Harrington family flat in Basingstoke.
The phone rang six times before the answering machine picked up, and Jerry's voice intoned, with excessive, even snotty formality, "I'm sorry, but we are not presently available to take your call. Please leave a message, and someone will endeavour to get back to you as soon as is convenient." This proclaimation was followed by a loud beep.
Closing his eyes, Sam said, "Jerry, it's me. I'm in London, and I'm on my way. Don't marry anyone until I get there, okay? Please? I love you. I'll be right there."
Dropping the receiver back into the cradle, he turned and ran for the exit.