Gamefic: Making Arrangements, Part VI.
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, part three here, part four here, and part five over here. I'd like to say that this is going to be less than ten parts long. I would be lying.
***
Basingstoke, England.
*
"Hello. You've reached the mobile phone of Leonard Cunningham, but as you may have guessed from this utterly charming pre-recorded message, I'm not presently available to take your call. It's nothing personal. It's just that I have an actual life, in which I actually do things, and talking to you isn't currently one of them. Leave a message, and I'll call you back, if I fancy the notion. I probably won't, though. Cheers!" The phone beeped merrily, signalling that it was now safe to begin recording a message.
Jerry forced herself to unclench her teeth, and drawled, "Hallo, Leo? It's Jerry. You remember me, don't you? Your Council-mandated fiancee?" On the other side of the room, Salila's spine snapped straight with such force that she actually managed to rock the chair on its legs. Jerry ignored her, continuing, "Only I think Leaf and I have rather found something that belongs to you. It's a bit tarty, really, and hasn't got any manners, but I rather thought you'd like it back, seeing as how it claims you're fond of it, for some inexplicable reason. I can't say it says much for your taste, but there you have it. Please be a dear, ring me back, and tell me where I can shove it, won't you?" She dropped the phone back into its cradle, and dusted her hands together. "There we are, then; that should get him moving."
"If I weren't tied to this chair, I'd--"
"I've got no real doubts that you would, dear, but the fact of things is, you are tied to that chair, whereas I'm rather not, and given that our acquaintance opened with a frontal assault, I dare say that I'm being nicer to you than you'd be to me, if the situation was reversed somehow."
"She's right," commented Leaf. "Jerry can be a little kharmically unbalanced sometimes, but she's never broken into anyone's home and attacked them for stealing her boyfriend." Ignoring Jerry's poisonous look, she added, "Although no one's ever shown signs of wanting her boyfriend. So it could just be a lack of opportunity, I suppose..."
"Leaf, would you like me to leave for the character assassination, or can you manage to keep it up while I'm still in the room?" Jerry crossed her arms across her chest. "Just wondering, you understand. Interests of science and all that."
"Oh, I'm fine," said Leaf blithely.
"Not what I asked," muttered Jerry. She turned towards Salila. "He's not picking up. Hopefully, he'll call back, and we can get this whole messy business concluded in some sort of reasonable time-frame."
"Why? Got more boyfriends to steal?" snapped Salila, glaring.
"She really doesn't move past that, does she?" Leaf shook her head. "Every time I think we've moved on towards a reasonable level of adult discourse, she just goes right back again."
"Like a Healy scenting gunpowder," Jerry said darkly. "No, I don't have more boyfriends to steal -- or any boyfriends to steal, for that matter. I need to go back to the Council and start trying to negotiate my way out of this idiotic sham of a marriage. Just because they want to spank me for daring to leave, that's no reason to go mucking up a whole raft of lives. Yours apparently included, and I am sorry about that, even if I'm currently fighting off the nigh-irresistable urge to break your nose."
"I can watch her, if you'd like to get going," Leaf said. Salila and Jerry both turned their heads to stare at her. Leaf shrugged. "I need to do my afternoon meditation, anyway, and I think I can manage one teenage girl. Especially when she's already been securely tied to a chair." And it would give her some time to clean up the bathroom, without having to deal with Jerry defensively claiming that the walls had been improved by the addition of a few holes. That was the best part of the plan.
Jerry was clearly tempted, but managed to restrain herself long enough to offer a weak, "Well, if you're certain that it wouldn't be too much of a bother..."
"Really, Jerry, we'll be fine. I'll make a pot of tea, and do my stretches, and then Salila and I can discuss anger management techniques until Leonard comes to pick her up." Leaf smiled earnestly. Adding exposure to the Council Slayers to her existing impressions of Jerry and the Mason girls had convinced her that her early diagnosis was correct: British Slayers had severe anger management issues, and would probably be much happier and more fulfilled as human beings if they could just learn to control their less social impulses. Her attempts to teach Jerry and Evie some simple anger management techniques had been failures, so far, but that was largely because her subjects tended to get up and walk away in the middle of the conversation. Salila was tied down.
She anticipated a breakthrough success.
"Here!" Salila snapped. "Torture is still illegal!"
That statement was enough to make Jerry stop wavering. Her smile abruptly returned, thinning out and refining until it looked more like a threat than any sort of expression of pleasure. "Yes, of course you can stay here and watch after Sal, Leaf," she said. "Thank you awfully. I'll get moving, then, and I'll ring you when I'm done talking to Mr. Davies. I'm sure he'll be willing to see reason." And if not, she added, silently, I'm sure I can take him in an unfair fight.
"Enjoy yourself, and try not to break anyone," said Leaf, relieved. Jerry was always calmer when she had a target for her rages, and while Salila had definitely committed a few social faux pas, with the whole 'breaking in and attacking them' thing, she probably didn't deserve to be the sole target of Jerry's unhappiness. "If you're out too late, and Leonard doesn't show up, I'll find something that we can both have for dinner."
"Anger management training and Leaf's cooking? You picked a fab day to break in on us." Jerry snagged her bag from the table by the front door, and waved. "You enjoy yourselves, then."
"Remember, being arrested is bad for your karma!"
"Come back, you cow, this isn't fair!"
Laughing now, Jerry closed the door behind her as she exited.
"Oh, good." Leaf turned a warm smile towards Salila. "She's a little bit tense right now. She's always too high-strung for her own good, but having the Council attempt to co-opt her free will and the choices of her heart made her...well...she killed the bathroom. It never did anything to hurt her, or anybody else, but she killed it, and now it's dead. Getting out of the apartment will be good for all three of us."
Salila glared at her. "You're mental, you are. Completely 'round the twist."
"Didn't anyone ever tell you that ceaseless insults are the sign of a mind crying out for intellectual stimulation?" Salila glared more. Leaf sighed. "No one ever told Anna that, either. The world is a very bleak and unenlightened place sometimes."
Salila continued to glare. If there'd been a competitive glaring team in the area -- or anywhere in the world, for that matter -- she could probably have taken top honours.
Leaf sighed. "I'm going to go make some tea." Turning, she moved towards the kitchen.
Behind her, in a surprisingly civil tone, Salila said, "I could fancy a cuppa, if you don't mind."
"Really?" Leaf looked back, and smiled. "All right. I'll be right back."
No one that had a proper appreciation of tea could be all bad; Leaf had learned that from her grandmother, and considered the fact that all the excessively tense British people she knew were coffee drinkers to simply support her hypothesis. And sure, Mr. Giles was a tea drinker, but he'd also been possessed for most of their interactions, so he didn't precisely count.
Stepping back into the kitchen, Leaf turned on the electric kettle with a flick of her thumb and began scanning the selection of teas that she had lined up on the counter like school children waiting for their bus. That was one thing England didn't lack for: a wide and worthwhile selection of teas. If it weren't for all the negative karma, the bad food, and the people bursting in to try beating her up at random, she could almost have learned to live there.
As she considered her brewing options, her eyes lit on a small black rectangle that was distinctly out of place amidst the clutter of the kitchen, and Leaf winced. "Jerry forgot her phone again. Oh, she's going to be cranky when she gets back." And without a functional bathroom, she couldn't even maneuver the taller Slayer into a calming, lavender-laced bubble bath. "Won't this be a fun evening?"
The cannisters of tea gave no reply, and with a sigh, Leaf set herself to brewing.
Salila was still tied securely to the chair when Leaf emerged from the kitchen several minutes later, carrying a tray with a small pot, two cups, the milk, and a small dish of sugar. "I wasn't sure how you liked your tea, so I thought I'd just let you tell me," she said, apologetically.
"Milk, two sugars," Salila replied. She still sounded sullen, but there was no active vitrol in her tone.
Leaf gave her a thoughtful look as she set the tray down and started to prepare the tea. "Have you finally stopped clinging to your anger?"
"No good reason for it, is there?" Salila shrugged as much as the ropes allowed her to. "The stupid cow as wants to steal my Leo isn't here anyway, and I'm too tired to shout at a stranger until Leo shows up to cart me off. May as well be a little pleasant, it's not like it's your fault."
"Thank you," said Leaf, gratefully, and lifted Salila's cup to her lips, advising, "Blow first; it's hot."
Salila blew. "Thanks," she said, before sipping. "S'good. I appreciate you being so nice to me, after the hitting and all."
"It was all a misunderstanding. It could have happened to...well, not anyone, but given the right set of circumstances, I'm sure it could have happened to more than just you." Leaf put Salila's cup down, reaching for her own. "Salila -- that's a pretty name. What does it mean?" There was no reply. She looked up again, blinking. "Salila?"
The Indian Slayer was slumped forward within the limits of her bounds, eyes gone glassy, skin suddenly waxen. Leaf dropped her cup as she jumped to her feet, pressing her fingers against the side of Salila's neck to check her pulse. It was racing, running far too high for a girl her size.
"Oh, God, she's allergic," whispered Leaf, before saying, louder, "It's all right, Salila, I can take care of this!" She began wrenching the knots loose, freeing the smaller Slayer from her bonds as rapidly as she could. If Salila was going into shock, every second could count; hesitation could mean she stopped breathing entirely, and then...
Leaf was so preoccupied with getting Salila untied that she didn't notice when the other Slayer opened her eyes and began tracking her motions; didn't even notice that she was awake until Sal's fist impacted, expertly, with the back of her skull. Eyes smoothly closing, Leaf sagged forward into a heap on the floor.
"Stupid Americans," muttered Salila, shaking off the last of the rope as she stood. "Never did learn what a decoy looks like." She stalked for the door, pausing as she remembered Leaf's words from inside the kitchen, and detoured long enough to snatch Jerry's mobile phone from the counter.
The little bitch wanted a fight?
Oh, she was going to get one.
*
Harrington House, Crouch End, London.
*
Edward flipped through his keys one after the other, scowling as each new option proved to be other than precisely what he wanted. He'd been through a good dozen of the damned things already, and was starting to believe that he could, in fact, unlock every house in London except for the one that he technically owned. Was it still breaking and entering if you held the title on the property? And how much proof were the police likely to require, if it came to that?
"Eddiiiiie," whined Evie, in an octave that had clearly been selected solely for its potential to drive an already somewhat unstable man mad. "I have to go to the toiiiiiiilet."
"I've never heard 'toilet' pronounced with four syllables before," said Kim. "Better hurry." She was lounging against the front gate, looking just as violently perky and refreshed as she'd been when they got off the plane.
Was it possible for an entire family to sell their souls for good hair? And if it was, did he really want to know?
"This is really your house?" asked Carmen, eyeing the facade thoughtfully. "It's pretty. I didn't know you lived in London, Eddie."
"We don't. Or rather, didn't. This is just one of the satellite homes -- we maintain it because it's easier to own a house and pay a caretaker than it is to explain to a landlord why demons have just come rampaging through and destroyed your bathroom, front bedroom, and security deposit." Edward tried another key, swearing softly when it failed to work, and went back to flipping through the ring. "Jerry and I grew up in Bath. That's where the actual family home is."
"Oh," said Carmen, thoughtfully. Giving him a sidelong look, she asked, "Eddie? Just exactly how rich are you?"
"Rich enough," said Edward, sliding yet another key into the lock. This time, it turned, and the lock came open with a click that was sweeter than an entire choir of angels. "Oh, thank God. Evie, the toilet's up the stairs and on the left. Kimberley, the armory -- which I'm sure you'd find anyway, so I'm just hoping to spare damages to the furniture -- is down the hall to your right. Carmen, either wake Anna or carry her inside, I don't particularly care which." Flicking on the hallway light (God bless family solicitors who took 'continue to pay the electric and water bills on all properties' seriously), he started forwards, towards the kitchen.
Behind him, the Slayers scattered to their various duties. Evie went thundering up the stairs, looking for the promised loo, while Kim took off down the hall, lured by the promise of heavy weaponry as only a Healy could truly be. Carmen remained outside, looking at Anna's prone form with a faintly perplexed expression on her face. The larger Slayer had stayed awake through getting out of the airport and onto the Underground, but as soon as they reached the house and stopped walking, she'd passed out where she stood. Carmen knew she could lift her; she just wasn't quite sure that trying wouldn't get her seriously hurt.
Finally, gingerly, she leaned over and nudged Anna in the side with her foot. "Anna," she said. "Anna, we're here."
Anna made a vague grumbling noise, and was otherwise still.
"Aaaaaaan-na, we're at Eddie's house -- did you know he owns a house? In London? Evie's eyes got all bulgy when he said that, so I'm guessing that owning a house in London means you've got a lot of money, and she'll probably buy another eight pairs of shoes to prove that he isn't better than her -- and he said something about a car, and Kim's getting first pick on all the good weapons," Carmen said, and nudged her in the side again. "Wake up."
This time, Anna's vague grumbling noise was accompanied by her hand rising up like a snake about to strike, and slapping the air where Carmen had been standing only a few seconds before. The Canadian Slayer huffed a sigh, planting her hands firmly on her hips and scowling at her slumbering counterpart. "Golly, Anna, I don't know why you're so tired," she said. "Why didn't you sleep on the plane like the rest of us?"
"Give the poor girl a break," said Kim, coming up behind her. She was toting what looked like a cross between an Alice-in-Wonderland blunderbluss and a morningstar, with a beautific expression on her face that clearly stated that as far as she was concerned, she'd just received her birthday present from the Harringtons. Carmen really hoped it wasn't a family heirloom or something, as she somehow couldn't see Kim willingly handing it back. "She had extenuating circumstances."
"Extenuating circumstances? Like what?"
Kim shrugged, replying guilelessly, "Her duffel bag's full of mice."
"Oh. Of course. Yeah, I guess that would d...what?" Carmen blinked at her. "Mice? Mice-mice? Like the little talking mice that live up in your attic and keep asking me why no one can ever actually tell them how to get to Sesame Street so that they can bring back Elmo's head as an offering to your mom?"
"Yup. Mice." Kim leaned forward, addressing Anna's bag as she said, "Isn't that right, fellas?"
"HAIL PRIESTESS!" replied Anna's bag, in shrill, delighted tones. Scrunching up her face, Anna groaned.
Carmen's eyes went wide. "She brought the mice," she squeaked. "Can she do that? Is that legal? Don't mice carry plague? Did we just bring the plague back to England? Are we going to be beheaded?"
"I don't think smuggling demon mice is ever strictly legal, but it's rats and ternich demons that carry the Black Plague, so we're probably okay on that front," said Kim, sounding faintly amused. "If the mice had plague, don't you think we'd all be dead by now?"
"I just figured you had antibodies."
"Antibodies," Kim repeated. Then she shrugged, amiably, and bent to grab hold of Anna's left arm. "Help me with her. We need to get her on inside, so that Mister 'I am the Watcher, I know what's best, no, Evie, don't eat another Aero Bar, you've already had enough to kill a normal man' can tell us what he thinks we should be doing next."
"You don't have to be mean," chided Carmen, as she grabbed Anna's opposite arm and hoisted. "He's got more experience with the Council than any of the rest of us. Even more than Jerry. He's doing the right thing."
"Who was being -- upsy-daisy, Anna, that's a good girl, don't fall on me and squash me like a bug, now -- mean, Carmen? I figure he'll be right about what we should be doing next. I just don't figure it's the best idea to go telling a Watcher that. They're too trained to tell Slayers what to do, and that's a road we don't exactly want to start walking down." Half-carrying, half-dragging Anna, Kim started for the doorway. "He's better'n most, I'll give him that."
"Kim?" Carmen asked, somewhat warily. "Are you going to shoot all the Watchers that aren't Eddie or Jerry? Because I think that might make them sad."
"Heck, no," said Kim, and smiled Pageant Girl Smile #7: You Don't Know What I Put In Your Tap Shoes. "I'm just going to hit them all a little bit."
Relieved, Carmen smiled back. "Oh. Okay."
Inside, Evie was peering at the photographs arranged along the mantle of the living room fireplace. There were nineteen of them in all, each one in a simple wooden frame, each one showing a teenage girl looking solemnly, even anxiously out at the camera. The oldest looked as if it had been taken sometime in the eighteen hundreds, while the most recent showed a girl whose teased-out, pink-streaked hair marked her a child of the eighties just as clearly as her over-sized shoulderpads.
She heard footsteps behind her, and turned to face Edward as he stepped back into the room, wiping grease from his hands. Pointing to the photographs, she asked, "Who are they?"
"Katherine Bell, Margaret O'Meara, Erika Droge, Anita Galais, Victoria Sutter, Mary Sutter -- they were sisters, just a year apart -- Suzanne Post-Healy, Djeneba Mukambe, Lily Carter, Anne Dwyffd, Milla Markovich, Louise Tenby, Ling Wa, Katarina Lencov, Stephanie Bourne, Tequoia Miller, Sienna Dehause, Mary Gersh, and Jessica Brown." The names were recited as if by rote, calm and matter-of-fact, all the way to the last one. As he named Jessica Brown, Edward paused, then added, "I met her. Twice. She was assigned to one of father's cousins. She was very well-trained. He used to call her 'gratifyingly obedient'. I remember looking at her and thinking she'd be pretty, if..."
"She had better hair?" ventured Evie.
Edward smiled, sadly. "If she didn't look like every bit of her that mattered was already dead and buried. Those are the family Slayers, Evie. Two hundred years of sacrificial lambs. There are painted portraits upstairs, if you're ever morbidly curious about how long we've been doing this. I recommend against it. If you'd like to tour a graveyard, the one in Highgate is much more attractive."
"Oh." Evie turned, frowning at the photographs. "You mean your family Watched them all?"
"Yes, and they all died, and the Council rewarded us for dilligent service by giving us lots of gold stars on our permanent record, and more Maids in Waiting to take charge of," said Edward, rubbing his face with his hand. "It was a long time ago. We're doing things a bit differently now."
"Which is good; Jerry'd kill me if I had to shoot her brother," Kim contributed cheerfully, as she and Carmen hauled Anna into the room. "What's the plan of attack, oh mighty, if temporary, leader?"
"I see you found the armory," said Edward dryly, with a nod to Kim's blunderbuss. Evie made a huffing sound, and he looked towards her, shaking his head. "I'll take you and Carmen both down to raid the place before we go. You'll all be calmer if you're armed, and I need you to stay calm for as long as possible, since we're definitely going to be out-numbered, given the number of Slayers the Council had working for them when I quit; they've just found more since then, I'm sure."
"Does that mean no hitting?" asked Kim, sounding woefully disappointed.
Edward shook his head. "Not at all. It just means we need to wait for them to hit first. The car's ready to go -- I'll need to pull off for petrol, but that's quickly enough done -- and it's a reasonably straight shot from here down the M3 to Basingstoke. We should be there in reasonably good time."
Carmen frowned. "What are we going to do when we get there?"
"Ah," said Edward, "the fun part. Someone pour some cold water on Anna, or something? She needs to be awake for this next bit, or she's not going to have any idea what's going on."
"I'll get it," said Carmen. She and Kim lowered Anna into a chair, and Carmen kissed the larger Slayer's forehead before scampering off towards the kitchen.
"Exposition time, Eddie?" asked Kim.
"Oh, yes," he said, and smiled.
*
British Railways, Express Train to Basingstoke.
*
Sam was getting hungry.
It was probably a good sign that he'd calmed down enough to realize that he hadn't really eaten anything besides airline food -- which he was pretty sure didn't actually count -- in some indeterminate number of hours; the switch from one continent to another had left his time sense standing in a corner gibbering to itself, but until he got onto the train, he'd been too high-strung to really stop and think about food. It was sort of difficult to remember to eat when there was the possibility that his fiancee was even now being crammed into a wedding dress and being forced to marry some random dude for the good of the Watcher's Council. Only now that he was on the way to Basingstoke, and actually stood a reasonable chance of crashing the wedding, 'Graduate'-style, he was starting to realize just how long it had actually been. What was it that Jerry said, when she was starving after patrol? 'I could murder a curry'? Leave out the homicide, and the curry, and he was there.
Looking around the train, Sam considered the other passengers. The commuters looked like they wouldn't take kindly to random questions from a random American, and while the three year old might have some cookies or something that he was willing to share, most parents took a pretty hard line on 'strangers talking to my kid'. He really didn't want to be thrown off the train, given how much trouble he'd gone through to get on it in the first place. That left the bevvy of text-messaging teenage girls. They didn't seem that different from their American counterparts: they were wearing brightly-coloured clothing that didn't exactly match, makeup that looked like it had been designed by a sadist with a watercolour kit, too much hairspray, and really ugly jewelry. If it hadn't been for their accents, they could probably have fit right in at any mall in America.
While getting engaged had taught him that using the 'I'm a cute football player, help me without question' card was a good way to get himself hit, that particular prohibition came with a reasonable number of loopholes, and if it was okay for Jerry to flash bouncers in order to get into punk clubs, he was reasonably sure that it was okay for him to look appealing at random teenagers in order to find out where he could get something to eat. He needed to keep his strength up, if only to make it easier to hit the Watchers. When he found them.
Rising from his seat, Sam made his way down the length of the train to the giggling cluster. Two of them looked up at his approach, then glanced down again, their fingers flashing as they sent out text messages to the rest of the group, which promptly burst into even louder, nearly-synchronized giggles. Sam grimaced. Dealing with large enough clusters of teenage girls was sort of like dealing with slightly deranged Johrlac demons, except without the telekinesis, and quite arguably even less sane. Johrlac really were one person with multiple bodies, rather than just trying to act that way.
"Um," said Sam. "Hi." As expected, this triggered another cascade of giggles. Manfully fighting the urge to wince, he continued, "I hope I'm not interrupting you..."
"You're American, aren't you?" asked one of the girls, wide-eyed. Hearing Jerry's accent attached to the sort of tone he usually associated with phrases like 'math is hard' and 'let's all have strawberry ice cream' was almost as jarring as the giggles had been.
Slowly, Sam nodded. "Um. Yeah, I am. Look, I was just wondering--"
"Do you realize you're on the train to Basingstoke?" asked one of the other girls, while her companions continued giggling to beat the band. "Not all that interesting, Basingstoke."
"You can join us, if you want," added another. "That's what you were going to ask, isn't it? Whether you could join us? You can."
"Um," said Sam. "Actually, yes, I know this train is going to Basingstoke, because Basingstoke is where I want to go, because," he continued hastily, cutting off the 'but why?' that he could practically see forming in three different faces, "my girlfriend is meeting me there, and she gets sort of cranky when I don't show up where I told her I was going to be. Only I forgot to grab dinner before getting on the train, so I was hoping you could tell me where I could find something to eat around here?"
At the word 'girlfriend', all the girls visibly abandoned their seedling attempts at preening and pouted instead, several of them slumping sulkily down in their seats. He had initiated the dance of boy-and-girls, their postures said; the least he could have done was play along with it. Sam remained perfectly, hopefully still, waiting to see whether being from a different country would buy him some sort of get out of jail free card. Failing that, he just hoped that teenage girls, like most predatory creatures, reacted to movement, and would forget that he was there if he held still long enough.
With a sigh that even Evie would have been impressed by, their titular leader hooked her thumb towards the end of the car, expression suddenly radiating boredom. "The dining car's down that way," she said, in a tone that couldn't have broadcast 'I don't have time for this' more clearly if it had come complete with a relay tower and a signal booster. "There's probably still something you can eat, if you don't mind swill."
"I think I'll manage," he said, politely, over the giggles of her clique. The businessmen were starting to look around, annoyed by all the ruckus. "Thank you. Have a nice night." Not waiting to see whether they had a response to that, he turned and headed off in the direction she'd indicated. All he needed was a sandwich, or some cookies, or something to keep from digesting himself. Then he'd go back to his seat.
How much trouble could he get into on a train, anyway?
*
British Railways, Express Train to Basingstoke, Dining Car.
*
"Linda, I promise, we're not all barbarians here in the United Kingdom, we do wash our cups between uses, even the railway system believes in the cleansing power of soap and hot water, now could you please just pick a mug and let the nice lady pour you out a cuppa? Please?" Silently, Leonard added, Before I go insane.
Getting Anne and Sophie settled had been gratifyingly easy. Anne turned out to be easily pacified by chocolates and cheap bottled beer, and while Sophie felt the need to essay lengthy complaints about the quality of the local breweries before she'd settle down with a bottle of the single most expensive offering on the menu, at least she had settled down. They were sharing a table now, watching with evident amusement as he tried to get Linda to set her sea of neurosis aside just long enough to nurse a cup of tea and let him try to drown his headache in beer.
There was to be no beer for Linda, unfortunately, nor cider, either; it seemed that both drinks had the potential to contain live yeast cultures, and were thus unhygenic death-traps waiting to poison the unwary individual. He wasn't even remotely sure how this could be the case, given that Manchester United continued to have living fans, but she seemed to be very, very firm on the idea, to the point that she'd begun to hyperventilate when he asked her what that said about sourdough bread. He might still have been able to coax her into a sedated, reassuring state of drunkenness, but the dining car didn't offer any actual hard liquors. Even she had to admit that scotch was probably sterile.
At least he hoped she had to admit it, because if she didn't, he wasn't entirely sure he'd survive the rest of the trip back to Basingstoke.
"There are paper cups," said the woman behind the serving counter, who had been watching his growing frustration, and Linda's calm rejection of every cup the train had to offer, with something that began as irritation, then transitioned quickly into pity as she realized, bless her, that Leonard was clearly in the company of a madwoman. "Would you like me to get one for you?"
"I will remember you in my prayers forever, if you do," said Leonard, quite seriously. The idea of adding the Sainted Serving Lady With the Paper Cup to his personal pantheon didn't trouble him in the least. Not if it meant he could get Linda her tea before the heat-death of the universe. Glancing to the overly-squeamish Slayer, he added, before she could think of it herself, "And might we get a plastic spoon to go with it?"
"Can't be too carefuly," said Linda, in a faintly detached tone that made her sound as if she'd decided that living inside her own skin was unhygenic, and was in the process of moving out.
Leonard and the serving lady both stared at her for a moment, while Anne and Sophie did their best to smother their giggles. Finally, the serving lady said, "I'll just get that for you, dear. Did you want a cider, sir?"
"I'm already remembering you in my prayers; I'll have to settle for 'God, yes'," said Leonard. "Linda, it sounds like we're getting things sorted out. How do you take your tea? I'll bring it over to you."
"Plain," Linda replied, solemnly. "Cream is unhygenic."
"Of course it is," said Leonard, and waved towards the table, fully aware of the sympathetic look the serving lady was directing towards him. "I'll be right there."
Nodding seriously, as if instructions to go, sit, and wait for tea were the most important words ever to leave anyone's lips, Linda turned and walked over to the table, where she began gingerly wiping the seat next to Anne down with a handkerchief she produced from her own pocket. Leonard smothered a groan.
"The bloody napkins aren't clean enough, now?" he muttered.
"She's a special one, isn't she?" asked the serving lady.
Leonard sighed. "You honestly have no idea."
He'd been envious of Eddie -- Edward, right, he'd quit the Council, so no more friendly nicknames for him, even if they had been at school together -- when he went off to Cleveland to take custody of the Slayers there, including the baby sister that everyone, Leo included, had long since written off as dead. Things had been a little cocked up for their generation, what with the sudden glut of Slayers and dearth of Watchers; most Watchers would never have their 'own' Slayers, girls to train, protect, and mold. No, they had to be content teaching classes, like common professors, knowing that someone else could make the mistakes that got the girls they were supposed to take care of killed. He'd always hoped that one day, maybe, he could do something to make them realize that he deserved a Slayer of his very own.
Now, looking at the options currently at hand, he could only hope that he would never, ever do anything that might make the Council decide he needed a Slayer of his very own.
Death truly might be the kinder option.
"I'll just get your drinks," said the serving lady, and turned to do just that, leaving him to lean against the counter, glorying in his few moments of freedom from the insanity, and wait.
The door at the end of the dining car slid open, and a reasonably tall, dark-haired gentleman of what looked to be mixed Asian and Caucasian descent stepped inside, peering around with the unashamed curiousity of a stranger in a strange land. The giggling stopped as Sophie caught sight of him and straightened, expression sliding into the semi-predatory 'oooo, he's cute' that anyone who worked around overly-hormonal teenage girls with superpowers rapidly learned to recognize as a sign of impending danger. Leonard frowned. Unusually enough for a random stranger on a train, the fellow looked somewhat, well, familiar.
"Is this where the food is?" the stranger asked, as he approached. He sounded tired, somewhat harried, and -- most notably of all -- American.
Leonard blinked. "You're the fellow from the airport. I didn't think I'd be seeing you again -- and especially not Basingstoke-bound. What's got you all the way out here?"
"Huh?" The stranger blinked back, and then grinned, saying, "I guess England really is a small country. Leo, right? I'm here because I'm hungry. My seat's back that way." He waved a hand, vaguely indicating the direction that he'd come from. "Do they have sandwiches? Or apples? Anything."
"There's a bowl of bananas over there."
"Anything but that," the stranger amended. Offering his hand, he said, "Sam Taylor. Nice to meet you. Will they feed me?"
"As soon as the server gets back -- she's fetching a paper cup for Linda over there." Leonard indicated her, mouthing the words 'don't ask' exaggeratedly towards Sam.
"Oh," said Sam, sounding only faintly bemused. "Well, I can wait. How long before we get to Basingstoke, do you think?"
"About an hour, maybe a trifle less," Leonard said. "Here, you didn't say why you were heading out there. It's not a huge tourist attraction, especially not in the middle of the night. We won't be getting in until around midnight."
"My girlfriend's there, and I sort of really need to see her right now, to make sure that she's okay," Sam replied. He glanced away as he said it, and Leonard frowned. Given the non-offensiveness of the answer, he wouldn't have expected evasion.
"She know you're coming, mate?" he ventured. It was a stab in the dark, but given the time of year, well, he'd seen more than a few 'vacation romances' turn south, as some tourist falls hard, goes home, and then expects that it can all start back up again, if they can just get back into the same geographic location.
"Not exactly," Sam admitted.
Ah-ha, Leonard thought. "She going to be happy to see you, or are you hauling all the way out here just to hop onto the next train home? Girls can be a little funny that way."
"Well, we're supposed to be getting married, so I don't think she's going to kick me out of the country," Sam said. "It's more a matter of she came to England to take care of some stuff with the old family business, and then the stuff got to be more than she could handle, and now she's sort of stuck, so I'm coming to help out."
Leonard nodded. "Sounds like you're a pretty good boyfriend, coming from America without her knowing you're on the way, just to help out. And you're engaged? Cheers to that."
"Thanks," said Sam, with a brief smile. "I'm happy about it."
"So did you meet at school, or...oh, dear Christ, here comes Linda." Leonard put a hand over his face. "Try to avoid eye contact. Maybe she'll go again."
"Sophie and Anne want to know who your friend is, and so they've sent me to pretend I'm anxious for my tea," reported Linda, as she walked over to them. Looking towards Sam, she frowned, squinting, and then turned to Leonard, demanding, "Why are you standing here talking to the demon?"
"What?" said Leonard, dropping his hand.
"What?" said Sam, looking stunned.
"Some sort of monkey demon," Linda said. "He smells of bananas and stupidity."
"Singari?" squeaked Leonard.
"...crap," said Sam.
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, part three here, part four here, and part five over here. I'd like to say that this is going to be less than ten parts long. I would be lying.
***
Basingstoke, England.
*
"Hello. You've reached the mobile phone of Leonard Cunningham, but as you may have guessed from this utterly charming pre-recorded message, I'm not presently available to take your call. It's nothing personal. It's just that I have an actual life, in which I actually do things, and talking to you isn't currently one of them. Leave a message, and I'll call you back, if I fancy the notion. I probably won't, though. Cheers!" The phone beeped merrily, signalling that it was now safe to begin recording a message.
Jerry forced herself to unclench her teeth, and drawled, "Hallo, Leo? It's Jerry. You remember me, don't you? Your Council-mandated fiancee?" On the other side of the room, Salila's spine snapped straight with such force that she actually managed to rock the chair on its legs. Jerry ignored her, continuing, "Only I think Leaf and I have rather found something that belongs to you. It's a bit tarty, really, and hasn't got any manners, but I rather thought you'd like it back, seeing as how it claims you're fond of it, for some inexplicable reason. I can't say it says much for your taste, but there you have it. Please be a dear, ring me back, and tell me where I can shove it, won't you?" She dropped the phone back into its cradle, and dusted her hands together. "There we are, then; that should get him moving."
"If I weren't tied to this chair, I'd--"
"I've got no real doubts that you would, dear, but the fact of things is, you are tied to that chair, whereas I'm rather not, and given that our acquaintance opened with a frontal assault, I dare say that I'm being nicer to you than you'd be to me, if the situation was reversed somehow."
"She's right," commented Leaf. "Jerry can be a little kharmically unbalanced sometimes, but she's never broken into anyone's home and attacked them for stealing her boyfriend." Ignoring Jerry's poisonous look, she added, "Although no one's ever shown signs of wanting her boyfriend. So it could just be a lack of opportunity, I suppose..."
"Leaf, would you like me to leave for the character assassination, or can you manage to keep it up while I'm still in the room?" Jerry crossed her arms across her chest. "Just wondering, you understand. Interests of science and all that."
"Oh, I'm fine," said Leaf blithely.
"Not what I asked," muttered Jerry. She turned towards Salila. "He's not picking up. Hopefully, he'll call back, and we can get this whole messy business concluded in some sort of reasonable time-frame."
"Why? Got more boyfriends to steal?" snapped Salila, glaring.
"She really doesn't move past that, does she?" Leaf shook her head. "Every time I think we've moved on towards a reasonable level of adult discourse, she just goes right back again."
"Like a Healy scenting gunpowder," Jerry said darkly. "No, I don't have more boyfriends to steal -- or any boyfriends to steal, for that matter. I need to go back to the Council and start trying to negotiate my way out of this idiotic sham of a marriage. Just because they want to spank me for daring to leave, that's no reason to go mucking up a whole raft of lives. Yours apparently included, and I am sorry about that, even if I'm currently fighting off the nigh-irresistable urge to break your nose."
"I can watch her, if you'd like to get going," Leaf said. Salila and Jerry both turned their heads to stare at her. Leaf shrugged. "I need to do my afternoon meditation, anyway, and I think I can manage one teenage girl. Especially when she's already been securely tied to a chair." And it would give her some time to clean up the bathroom, without having to deal with Jerry defensively claiming that the walls had been improved by the addition of a few holes. That was the best part of the plan.
Jerry was clearly tempted, but managed to restrain herself long enough to offer a weak, "Well, if you're certain that it wouldn't be too much of a bother..."
"Really, Jerry, we'll be fine. I'll make a pot of tea, and do my stretches, and then Salila and I can discuss anger management techniques until Leonard comes to pick her up." Leaf smiled earnestly. Adding exposure to the Council Slayers to her existing impressions of Jerry and the Mason girls had convinced her that her early diagnosis was correct: British Slayers had severe anger management issues, and would probably be much happier and more fulfilled as human beings if they could just learn to control their less social impulses. Her attempts to teach Jerry and Evie some simple anger management techniques had been failures, so far, but that was largely because her subjects tended to get up and walk away in the middle of the conversation. Salila was tied down.
She anticipated a breakthrough success.
"Here!" Salila snapped. "Torture is still illegal!"
That statement was enough to make Jerry stop wavering. Her smile abruptly returned, thinning out and refining until it looked more like a threat than any sort of expression of pleasure. "Yes, of course you can stay here and watch after Sal, Leaf," she said. "Thank you awfully. I'll get moving, then, and I'll ring you when I'm done talking to Mr. Davies. I'm sure he'll be willing to see reason." And if not, she added, silently, I'm sure I can take him in an unfair fight.
"Enjoy yourself, and try not to break anyone," said Leaf, relieved. Jerry was always calmer when she had a target for her rages, and while Salila had definitely committed a few social faux pas, with the whole 'breaking in and attacking them' thing, she probably didn't deserve to be the sole target of Jerry's unhappiness. "If you're out too late, and Leonard doesn't show up, I'll find something that we can both have for dinner."
"Anger management training and Leaf's cooking? You picked a fab day to break in on us." Jerry snagged her bag from the table by the front door, and waved. "You enjoy yourselves, then."
"Remember, being arrested is bad for your karma!"
"Come back, you cow, this isn't fair!"
Laughing now, Jerry closed the door behind her as she exited.
"Oh, good." Leaf turned a warm smile towards Salila. "She's a little bit tense right now. She's always too high-strung for her own good, but having the Council attempt to co-opt her free will and the choices of her heart made her...well...she killed the bathroom. It never did anything to hurt her, or anybody else, but she killed it, and now it's dead. Getting out of the apartment will be good for all three of us."
Salila glared at her. "You're mental, you are. Completely 'round the twist."
"Didn't anyone ever tell you that ceaseless insults are the sign of a mind crying out for intellectual stimulation?" Salila glared more. Leaf sighed. "No one ever told Anna that, either. The world is a very bleak and unenlightened place sometimes."
Salila continued to glare. If there'd been a competitive glaring team in the area -- or anywhere in the world, for that matter -- she could probably have taken top honours.
Leaf sighed. "I'm going to go make some tea." Turning, she moved towards the kitchen.
Behind her, in a surprisingly civil tone, Salila said, "I could fancy a cuppa, if you don't mind."
"Really?" Leaf looked back, and smiled. "All right. I'll be right back."
No one that had a proper appreciation of tea could be all bad; Leaf had learned that from her grandmother, and considered the fact that all the excessively tense British people she knew were coffee drinkers to simply support her hypothesis. And sure, Mr. Giles was a tea drinker, but he'd also been possessed for most of their interactions, so he didn't precisely count.
Stepping back into the kitchen, Leaf turned on the electric kettle with a flick of her thumb and began scanning the selection of teas that she had lined up on the counter like school children waiting for their bus. That was one thing England didn't lack for: a wide and worthwhile selection of teas. If it weren't for all the negative karma, the bad food, and the people bursting in to try beating her up at random, she could almost have learned to live there.
As she considered her brewing options, her eyes lit on a small black rectangle that was distinctly out of place amidst the clutter of the kitchen, and Leaf winced. "Jerry forgot her phone again. Oh, she's going to be cranky when she gets back." And without a functional bathroom, she couldn't even maneuver the taller Slayer into a calming, lavender-laced bubble bath. "Won't this be a fun evening?"
The cannisters of tea gave no reply, and with a sigh, Leaf set herself to brewing.
Salila was still tied securely to the chair when Leaf emerged from the kitchen several minutes later, carrying a tray with a small pot, two cups, the milk, and a small dish of sugar. "I wasn't sure how you liked your tea, so I thought I'd just let you tell me," she said, apologetically.
"Milk, two sugars," Salila replied. She still sounded sullen, but there was no active vitrol in her tone.
Leaf gave her a thoughtful look as she set the tray down and started to prepare the tea. "Have you finally stopped clinging to your anger?"
"No good reason for it, is there?" Salila shrugged as much as the ropes allowed her to. "The stupid cow as wants to steal my Leo isn't here anyway, and I'm too tired to shout at a stranger until Leo shows up to cart me off. May as well be a little pleasant, it's not like it's your fault."
"Thank you," said Leaf, gratefully, and lifted Salila's cup to her lips, advising, "Blow first; it's hot."
Salila blew. "Thanks," she said, before sipping. "S'good. I appreciate you being so nice to me, after the hitting and all."
"It was all a misunderstanding. It could have happened to...well, not anyone, but given the right set of circumstances, I'm sure it could have happened to more than just you." Leaf put Salila's cup down, reaching for her own. "Salila -- that's a pretty name. What does it mean?" There was no reply. She looked up again, blinking. "Salila?"
The Indian Slayer was slumped forward within the limits of her bounds, eyes gone glassy, skin suddenly waxen. Leaf dropped her cup as she jumped to her feet, pressing her fingers against the side of Salila's neck to check her pulse. It was racing, running far too high for a girl her size.
"Oh, God, she's allergic," whispered Leaf, before saying, louder, "It's all right, Salila, I can take care of this!" She began wrenching the knots loose, freeing the smaller Slayer from her bonds as rapidly as she could. If Salila was going into shock, every second could count; hesitation could mean she stopped breathing entirely, and then...
Leaf was so preoccupied with getting Salila untied that she didn't notice when the other Slayer opened her eyes and began tracking her motions; didn't even notice that she was awake until Sal's fist impacted, expertly, with the back of her skull. Eyes smoothly closing, Leaf sagged forward into a heap on the floor.
"Stupid Americans," muttered Salila, shaking off the last of the rope as she stood. "Never did learn what a decoy looks like." She stalked for the door, pausing as she remembered Leaf's words from inside the kitchen, and detoured long enough to snatch Jerry's mobile phone from the counter.
The little bitch wanted a fight?
Oh, she was going to get one.
*
Harrington House, Crouch End, London.
*
Edward flipped through his keys one after the other, scowling as each new option proved to be other than precisely what he wanted. He'd been through a good dozen of the damned things already, and was starting to believe that he could, in fact, unlock every house in London except for the one that he technically owned. Was it still breaking and entering if you held the title on the property? And how much proof were the police likely to require, if it came to that?
"Eddiiiiie," whined Evie, in an octave that had clearly been selected solely for its potential to drive an already somewhat unstable man mad. "I have to go to the toiiiiiiilet."
"I've never heard 'toilet' pronounced with four syllables before," said Kim. "Better hurry." She was lounging against the front gate, looking just as violently perky and refreshed as she'd been when they got off the plane.
Was it possible for an entire family to sell their souls for good hair? And if it was, did he really want to know?
"This is really your house?" asked Carmen, eyeing the facade thoughtfully. "It's pretty. I didn't know you lived in London, Eddie."
"We don't. Or rather, didn't. This is just one of the satellite homes -- we maintain it because it's easier to own a house and pay a caretaker than it is to explain to a landlord why demons have just come rampaging through and destroyed your bathroom, front bedroom, and security deposit." Edward tried another key, swearing softly when it failed to work, and went back to flipping through the ring. "Jerry and I grew up in Bath. That's where the actual family home is."
"Oh," said Carmen, thoughtfully. Giving him a sidelong look, she asked, "Eddie? Just exactly how rich are you?"
"Rich enough," said Edward, sliding yet another key into the lock. This time, it turned, and the lock came open with a click that was sweeter than an entire choir of angels. "Oh, thank God. Evie, the toilet's up the stairs and on the left. Kimberley, the armory -- which I'm sure you'd find anyway, so I'm just hoping to spare damages to the furniture -- is down the hall to your right. Carmen, either wake Anna or carry her inside, I don't particularly care which." Flicking on the hallway light (God bless family solicitors who took 'continue to pay the electric and water bills on all properties' seriously), he started forwards, towards the kitchen.
Behind him, the Slayers scattered to their various duties. Evie went thundering up the stairs, looking for the promised loo, while Kim took off down the hall, lured by the promise of heavy weaponry as only a Healy could truly be. Carmen remained outside, looking at Anna's prone form with a faintly perplexed expression on her face. The larger Slayer had stayed awake through getting out of the airport and onto the Underground, but as soon as they reached the house and stopped walking, she'd passed out where she stood. Carmen knew she could lift her; she just wasn't quite sure that trying wouldn't get her seriously hurt.
Finally, gingerly, she leaned over and nudged Anna in the side with her foot. "Anna," she said. "Anna, we're here."
Anna made a vague grumbling noise, and was otherwise still.
"Aaaaaaan-na, we're at Eddie's house -- did you know he owns a house? In London? Evie's eyes got all bulgy when he said that, so I'm guessing that owning a house in London means you've got a lot of money, and she'll probably buy another eight pairs of shoes to prove that he isn't better than her -- and he said something about a car, and Kim's getting first pick on all the good weapons," Carmen said, and nudged her in the side again. "Wake up."
This time, Anna's vague grumbling noise was accompanied by her hand rising up like a snake about to strike, and slapping the air where Carmen had been standing only a few seconds before. The Canadian Slayer huffed a sigh, planting her hands firmly on her hips and scowling at her slumbering counterpart. "Golly, Anna, I don't know why you're so tired," she said. "Why didn't you sleep on the plane like the rest of us?"
"Give the poor girl a break," said Kim, coming up behind her. She was toting what looked like a cross between an Alice-in-Wonderland blunderbluss and a morningstar, with a beautific expression on her face that clearly stated that as far as she was concerned, she'd just received her birthday present from the Harringtons. Carmen really hoped it wasn't a family heirloom or something, as she somehow couldn't see Kim willingly handing it back. "She had extenuating circumstances."
"Extenuating circumstances? Like what?"
Kim shrugged, replying guilelessly, "Her duffel bag's full of mice."
"Oh. Of course. Yeah, I guess that would d...what?" Carmen blinked at her. "Mice? Mice-mice? Like the little talking mice that live up in your attic and keep asking me why no one can ever actually tell them how to get to Sesame Street so that they can bring back Elmo's head as an offering to your mom?"
"Yup. Mice." Kim leaned forward, addressing Anna's bag as she said, "Isn't that right, fellas?"
"HAIL PRIESTESS!" replied Anna's bag, in shrill, delighted tones. Scrunching up her face, Anna groaned.
Carmen's eyes went wide. "She brought the mice," she squeaked. "Can she do that? Is that legal? Don't mice carry plague? Did we just bring the plague back to England? Are we going to be beheaded?"
"I don't think smuggling demon mice is ever strictly legal, but it's rats and ternich demons that carry the Black Plague, so we're probably okay on that front," said Kim, sounding faintly amused. "If the mice had plague, don't you think we'd all be dead by now?"
"I just figured you had antibodies."
"Antibodies," Kim repeated. Then she shrugged, amiably, and bent to grab hold of Anna's left arm. "Help me with her. We need to get her on inside, so that Mister 'I am the Watcher, I know what's best, no, Evie, don't eat another Aero Bar, you've already had enough to kill a normal man' can tell us what he thinks we should be doing next."
"You don't have to be mean," chided Carmen, as she grabbed Anna's opposite arm and hoisted. "He's got more experience with the Council than any of the rest of us. Even more than Jerry. He's doing the right thing."
"Who was being -- upsy-daisy, Anna, that's a good girl, don't fall on me and squash me like a bug, now -- mean, Carmen? I figure he'll be right about what we should be doing next. I just don't figure it's the best idea to go telling a Watcher that. They're too trained to tell Slayers what to do, and that's a road we don't exactly want to start walking down." Half-carrying, half-dragging Anna, Kim started for the doorway. "He's better'n most, I'll give him that."
"Kim?" Carmen asked, somewhat warily. "Are you going to shoot all the Watchers that aren't Eddie or Jerry? Because I think that might make them sad."
"Heck, no," said Kim, and smiled Pageant Girl Smile #7: You Don't Know What I Put In Your Tap Shoes. "I'm just going to hit them all a little bit."
Relieved, Carmen smiled back. "Oh. Okay."
Inside, Evie was peering at the photographs arranged along the mantle of the living room fireplace. There were nineteen of them in all, each one in a simple wooden frame, each one showing a teenage girl looking solemnly, even anxiously out at the camera. The oldest looked as if it had been taken sometime in the eighteen hundreds, while the most recent showed a girl whose teased-out, pink-streaked hair marked her a child of the eighties just as clearly as her over-sized shoulderpads.
She heard footsteps behind her, and turned to face Edward as he stepped back into the room, wiping grease from his hands. Pointing to the photographs, she asked, "Who are they?"
"Katherine Bell, Margaret O'Meara, Erika Droge, Anita Galais, Victoria Sutter, Mary Sutter -- they were sisters, just a year apart -- Suzanne Post-Healy, Djeneba Mukambe, Lily Carter, Anne Dwyffd, Milla Markovich, Louise Tenby, Ling Wa, Katarina Lencov, Stephanie Bourne, Tequoia Miller, Sienna Dehause, Mary Gersh, and Jessica Brown." The names were recited as if by rote, calm and matter-of-fact, all the way to the last one. As he named Jessica Brown, Edward paused, then added, "I met her. Twice. She was assigned to one of father's cousins. She was very well-trained. He used to call her 'gratifyingly obedient'. I remember looking at her and thinking she'd be pretty, if..."
"She had better hair?" ventured Evie.
Edward smiled, sadly. "If she didn't look like every bit of her that mattered was already dead and buried. Those are the family Slayers, Evie. Two hundred years of sacrificial lambs. There are painted portraits upstairs, if you're ever morbidly curious about how long we've been doing this. I recommend against it. If you'd like to tour a graveyard, the one in Highgate is much more attractive."
"Oh." Evie turned, frowning at the photographs. "You mean your family Watched them all?"
"Yes, and they all died, and the Council rewarded us for dilligent service by giving us lots of gold stars on our permanent record, and more Maids in Waiting to take charge of," said Edward, rubbing his face with his hand. "It was a long time ago. We're doing things a bit differently now."
"Which is good; Jerry'd kill me if I had to shoot her brother," Kim contributed cheerfully, as she and Carmen hauled Anna into the room. "What's the plan of attack, oh mighty, if temporary, leader?"
"I see you found the armory," said Edward dryly, with a nod to Kim's blunderbuss. Evie made a huffing sound, and he looked towards her, shaking his head. "I'll take you and Carmen both down to raid the place before we go. You'll all be calmer if you're armed, and I need you to stay calm for as long as possible, since we're definitely going to be out-numbered, given the number of Slayers the Council had working for them when I quit; they've just found more since then, I'm sure."
"Does that mean no hitting?" asked Kim, sounding woefully disappointed.
Edward shook his head. "Not at all. It just means we need to wait for them to hit first. The car's ready to go -- I'll need to pull off for petrol, but that's quickly enough done -- and it's a reasonably straight shot from here down the M3 to Basingstoke. We should be there in reasonably good time."
Carmen frowned. "What are we going to do when we get there?"
"Ah," said Edward, "the fun part. Someone pour some cold water on Anna, or something? She needs to be awake for this next bit, or she's not going to have any idea what's going on."
"I'll get it," said Carmen. She and Kim lowered Anna into a chair, and Carmen kissed the larger Slayer's forehead before scampering off towards the kitchen.
"Exposition time, Eddie?" asked Kim.
"Oh, yes," he said, and smiled.
*
British Railways, Express Train to Basingstoke.
*
Sam was getting hungry.
It was probably a good sign that he'd calmed down enough to realize that he hadn't really eaten anything besides airline food -- which he was pretty sure didn't actually count -- in some indeterminate number of hours; the switch from one continent to another had left his time sense standing in a corner gibbering to itself, but until he got onto the train, he'd been too high-strung to really stop and think about food. It was sort of difficult to remember to eat when there was the possibility that his fiancee was even now being crammed into a wedding dress and being forced to marry some random dude for the good of the Watcher's Council. Only now that he was on the way to Basingstoke, and actually stood a reasonable chance of crashing the wedding, 'Graduate'-style, he was starting to realize just how long it had actually been. What was it that Jerry said, when she was starving after patrol? 'I could murder a curry'? Leave out the homicide, and the curry, and he was there.
Looking around the train, Sam considered the other passengers. The commuters looked like they wouldn't take kindly to random questions from a random American, and while the three year old might have some cookies or something that he was willing to share, most parents took a pretty hard line on 'strangers talking to my kid'. He really didn't want to be thrown off the train, given how much trouble he'd gone through to get on it in the first place. That left the bevvy of text-messaging teenage girls. They didn't seem that different from their American counterparts: they were wearing brightly-coloured clothing that didn't exactly match, makeup that looked like it had been designed by a sadist with a watercolour kit, too much hairspray, and really ugly jewelry. If it hadn't been for their accents, they could probably have fit right in at any mall in America.
While getting engaged had taught him that using the 'I'm a cute football player, help me without question' card was a good way to get himself hit, that particular prohibition came with a reasonable number of loopholes, and if it was okay for Jerry to flash bouncers in order to get into punk clubs, he was reasonably sure that it was okay for him to look appealing at random teenagers in order to find out where he could get something to eat. He needed to keep his strength up, if only to make it easier to hit the Watchers. When he found them.
Rising from his seat, Sam made his way down the length of the train to the giggling cluster. Two of them looked up at his approach, then glanced down again, their fingers flashing as they sent out text messages to the rest of the group, which promptly burst into even louder, nearly-synchronized giggles. Sam grimaced. Dealing with large enough clusters of teenage girls was sort of like dealing with slightly deranged Johrlac demons, except without the telekinesis, and quite arguably even less sane. Johrlac really were one person with multiple bodies, rather than just trying to act that way.
"Um," said Sam. "Hi." As expected, this triggered another cascade of giggles. Manfully fighting the urge to wince, he continued, "I hope I'm not interrupting you..."
"You're American, aren't you?" asked one of the girls, wide-eyed. Hearing Jerry's accent attached to the sort of tone he usually associated with phrases like 'math is hard' and 'let's all have strawberry ice cream' was almost as jarring as the giggles had been.
Slowly, Sam nodded. "Um. Yeah, I am. Look, I was just wondering--"
"Do you realize you're on the train to Basingstoke?" asked one of the other girls, while her companions continued giggling to beat the band. "Not all that interesting, Basingstoke."
"You can join us, if you want," added another. "That's what you were going to ask, isn't it? Whether you could join us? You can."
"Um," said Sam. "Actually, yes, I know this train is going to Basingstoke, because Basingstoke is where I want to go, because," he continued hastily, cutting off the 'but why?' that he could practically see forming in three different faces, "my girlfriend is meeting me there, and she gets sort of cranky when I don't show up where I told her I was going to be. Only I forgot to grab dinner before getting on the train, so I was hoping you could tell me where I could find something to eat around here?"
At the word 'girlfriend', all the girls visibly abandoned their seedling attempts at preening and pouted instead, several of them slumping sulkily down in their seats. He had initiated the dance of boy-and-girls, their postures said; the least he could have done was play along with it. Sam remained perfectly, hopefully still, waiting to see whether being from a different country would buy him some sort of get out of jail free card. Failing that, he just hoped that teenage girls, like most predatory creatures, reacted to movement, and would forget that he was there if he held still long enough.
With a sigh that even Evie would have been impressed by, their titular leader hooked her thumb towards the end of the car, expression suddenly radiating boredom. "The dining car's down that way," she said, in a tone that couldn't have broadcast 'I don't have time for this' more clearly if it had come complete with a relay tower and a signal booster. "There's probably still something you can eat, if you don't mind swill."
"I think I'll manage," he said, politely, over the giggles of her clique. The businessmen were starting to look around, annoyed by all the ruckus. "Thank you. Have a nice night." Not waiting to see whether they had a response to that, he turned and headed off in the direction she'd indicated. All he needed was a sandwich, or some cookies, or something to keep from digesting himself. Then he'd go back to his seat.
How much trouble could he get into on a train, anyway?
*
British Railways, Express Train to Basingstoke, Dining Car.
*
"Linda, I promise, we're not all barbarians here in the United Kingdom, we do wash our cups between uses, even the railway system believes in the cleansing power of soap and hot water, now could you please just pick a mug and let the nice lady pour you out a cuppa? Please?" Silently, Leonard added, Before I go insane.
Getting Anne and Sophie settled had been gratifyingly easy. Anne turned out to be easily pacified by chocolates and cheap bottled beer, and while Sophie felt the need to essay lengthy complaints about the quality of the local breweries before she'd settle down with a bottle of the single most expensive offering on the menu, at least she had settled down. They were sharing a table now, watching with evident amusement as he tried to get Linda to set her sea of neurosis aside just long enough to nurse a cup of tea and let him try to drown his headache in beer.
There was to be no beer for Linda, unfortunately, nor cider, either; it seemed that both drinks had the potential to contain live yeast cultures, and were thus unhygenic death-traps waiting to poison the unwary individual. He wasn't even remotely sure how this could be the case, given that Manchester United continued to have living fans, but she seemed to be very, very firm on the idea, to the point that she'd begun to hyperventilate when he asked her what that said about sourdough bread. He might still have been able to coax her into a sedated, reassuring state of drunkenness, but the dining car didn't offer any actual hard liquors. Even she had to admit that scotch was probably sterile.
At least he hoped she had to admit it, because if she didn't, he wasn't entirely sure he'd survive the rest of the trip back to Basingstoke.
"There are paper cups," said the woman behind the serving counter, who had been watching his growing frustration, and Linda's calm rejection of every cup the train had to offer, with something that began as irritation, then transitioned quickly into pity as she realized, bless her, that Leonard was clearly in the company of a madwoman. "Would you like me to get one for you?"
"I will remember you in my prayers forever, if you do," said Leonard, quite seriously. The idea of adding the Sainted Serving Lady With the Paper Cup to his personal pantheon didn't trouble him in the least. Not if it meant he could get Linda her tea before the heat-death of the universe. Glancing to the overly-squeamish Slayer, he added, before she could think of it herself, "And might we get a plastic spoon to go with it?"
"Can't be too carefuly," said Linda, in a faintly detached tone that made her sound as if she'd decided that living inside her own skin was unhygenic, and was in the process of moving out.
Leonard and the serving lady both stared at her for a moment, while Anne and Sophie did their best to smother their giggles. Finally, the serving lady said, "I'll just get that for you, dear. Did you want a cider, sir?"
"I'm already remembering you in my prayers; I'll have to settle for 'God, yes'," said Leonard. "Linda, it sounds like we're getting things sorted out. How do you take your tea? I'll bring it over to you."
"Plain," Linda replied, solemnly. "Cream is unhygenic."
"Of course it is," said Leonard, and waved towards the table, fully aware of the sympathetic look the serving lady was directing towards him. "I'll be right there."
Nodding seriously, as if instructions to go, sit, and wait for tea were the most important words ever to leave anyone's lips, Linda turned and walked over to the table, where she began gingerly wiping the seat next to Anne down with a handkerchief she produced from her own pocket. Leonard smothered a groan.
"The bloody napkins aren't clean enough, now?" he muttered.
"She's a special one, isn't she?" asked the serving lady.
Leonard sighed. "You honestly have no idea."
He'd been envious of Eddie -- Edward, right, he'd quit the Council, so no more friendly nicknames for him, even if they had been at school together -- when he went off to Cleveland to take custody of the Slayers there, including the baby sister that everyone, Leo included, had long since written off as dead. Things had been a little cocked up for their generation, what with the sudden glut of Slayers and dearth of Watchers; most Watchers would never have their 'own' Slayers, girls to train, protect, and mold. No, they had to be content teaching classes, like common professors, knowing that someone else could make the mistakes that got the girls they were supposed to take care of killed. He'd always hoped that one day, maybe, he could do something to make them realize that he deserved a Slayer of his very own.
Now, looking at the options currently at hand, he could only hope that he would never, ever do anything that might make the Council decide he needed a Slayer of his very own.
Death truly might be the kinder option.
"I'll just get your drinks," said the serving lady, and turned to do just that, leaving him to lean against the counter, glorying in his few moments of freedom from the insanity, and wait.
The door at the end of the dining car slid open, and a reasonably tall, dark-haired gentleman of what looked to be mixed Asian and Caucasian descent stepped inside, peering around with the unashamed curiousity of a stranger in a strange land. The giggling stopped as Sophie caught sight of him and straightened, expression sliding into the semi-predatory 'oooo, he's cute' that anyone who worked around overly-hormonal teenage girls with superpowers rapidly learned to recognize as a sign of impending danger. Leonard frowned. Unusually enough for a random stranger on a train, the fellow looked somewhat, well, familiar.
"Is this where the food is?" the stranger asked, as he approached. He sounded tired, somewhat harried, and -- most notably of all -- American.
Leonard blinked. "You're the fellow from the airport. I didn't think I'd be seeing you again -- and especially not Basingstoke-bound. What's got you all the way out here?"
"Huh?" The stranger blinked back, and then grinned, saying, "I guess England really is a small country. Leo, right? I'm here because I'm hungry. My seat's back that way." He waved a hand, vaguely indicating the direction that he'd come from. "Do they have sandwiches? Or apples? Anything."
"There's a bowl of bananas over there."
"Anything but that," the stranger amended. Offering his hand, he said, "Sam Taylor. Nice to meet you. Will they feed me?"
"As soon as the server gets back -- she's fetching a paper cup for Linda over there." Leonard indicated her, mouthing the words 'don't ask' exaggeratedly towards Sam.
"Oh," said Sam, sounding only faintly bemused. "Well, I can wait. How long before we get to Basingstoke, do you think?"
"About an hour, maybe a trifle less," Leonard said. "Here, you didn't say why you were heading out there. It's not a huge tourist attraction, especially not in the middle of the night. We won't be getting in until around midnight."
"My girlfriend's there, and I sort of really need to see her right now, to make sure that she's okay," Sam replied. He glanced away as he said it, and Leonard frowned. Given the non-offensiveness of the answer, he wouldn't have expected evasion.
"She know you're coming, mate?" he ventured. It was a stab in the dark, but given the time of year, well, he'd seen more than a few 'vacation romances' turn south, as some tourist falls hard, goes home, and then expects that it can all start back up again, if they can just get back into the same geographic location.
"Not exactly," Sam admitted.
Ah-ha, Leonard thought. "She going to be happy to see you, or are you hauling all the way out here just to hop onto the next train home? Girls can be a little funny that way."
"Well, we're supposed to be getting married, so I don't think she's going to kick me out of the country," Sam said. "It's more a matter of she came to England to take care of some stuff with the old family business, and then the stuff got to be more than she could handle, and now she's sort of stuck, so I'm coming to help out."
Leonard nodded. "Sounds like you're a pretty good boyfriend, coming from America without her knowing you're on the way, just to help out. And you're engaged? Cheers to that."
"Thanks," said Sam, with a brief smile. "I'm happy about it."
"So did you meet at school, or...oh, dear Christ, here comes Linda." Leonard put a hand over his face. "Try to avoid eye contact. Maybe she'll go again."
"Sophie and Anne want to know who your friend is, and so they've sent me to pretend I'm anxious for my tea," reported Linda, as she walked over to them. Looking towards Sam, she frowned, squinting, and then turned to Leonard, demanding, "Why are you standing here talking to the demon?"
"What?" said Leonard, dropping his hand.
"What?" said Sam, looking stunned.
"Some sort of monkey demon," Linda said. "He smells of bananas and stupidity."
"Singari?" squeaked Leonard.
"...crap," said Sam.