How I Survived My Summer Vacation Page 12

  “We do,” Giles concurred.

  Angel turned, began to move away.

  “Thank you,” Giles said.

  Angel didn’t stop. Didn’t look back. But Giles heard his voice, floating back on the still night air.

  “Don’t mention it,” Angel said.

  I’m going to die. And there’s nothing I can do.

  Buffy Summers struggled, and felt the strong arms that held her clamp down, tighter. It’s hopeless, she thought. Her eyesight had begun to dim. She couldn’t feel her legs anymore.

  Blood, she thought. I’ve lost too much blood. I’ve —

  “What’s the matter, Slayer?” she heard the voice of the Master taunt in her ear. “Afraid to wake up dead?”

  No!

  Heart pounding, Buffy sat straight up in bed. Sunlight streamed through the window of the spare bedroom of her father’s L.A. apartment.

  It’s all right, she thought. It’s over. This is L. A., not Sunnydale. I’m here, with Dad.

  She was awake, and very definitely not dead.

  Buffy threw back the covers and eyed the digital clock on the nightstand. Ten A.M., the red numbers glowed.

  Great. Another morning of missing her father because she’d overslept. At the rate things were going, she’d spend the rest of the summer in L.A. and only see her dad on the drive back to Sunnydale.

  She thrust her feet into her favorite pair of bunny slippers and headed for the kitchen.

  And the drive here was certainly a big success, now wasn’t it?

  Hank Summers had tried to make conversation with his daughter all the way from Sunnydale. Tried to explain about the new woman in his life. And what did I do? Turn into Ms. Neanderthal. The best Buffy had been able to manage was a grunt now and then.

  Of course, the fact that she’d had a lump in her throat the size of Nebraska hadn’t exactly helped at the time.

  I didn’t want to touch him, Buffy thought. All she’d wanted to do was to feel safe. From those visions.

  She opened the fridge and sloshed orange juice into a glass. Since then, things had gotten better between them. Her father had asked an awful lot of questions since then. What on earth was she supposed to have said?

  “How was the end of your school year, honey?”

  “Just fine, Dad. Except for those couple of minutes in there where I died.”

  Oh, yeah.

  But now her father’s job was occupying him round the clock. And the girlfriend — after a few stilted dinners in character-less restaurants — had moved on. “We didn’t mesh,” Hank Summers had said. But Buffy suspected Wendy was in search of a man without a teenage daughter.

  Now Hank was virtually gone, too. And Buffy’s old friends were scarce.

  But memories were plentiful.

  I will not break down.

  It was the same vow Buffy had made every day since she’d opened her eyes to see Xander’s worried face hovering above her. The day she’d discovered that she wasn’t invincible.

  That prophecies could come true after all.

  The day her battle with the vampire so old and powerful he was known simply as the Master had left her facedown in a pool of water.

  The day she’d gotten dead.

  Buffy drank half the glass of orange juice in three huge gulps, wincing as the cold of the liquid penetrated her sinuses.

  Those things that dead girls didn’t have.

  That would be right before you got back up and kicked the Master’s ass, she told herself. She slammed the refrigerator door.

  She was alive. The Master was dust.

  He’d lost. She had won.

  That’s all that matters. All that counts.

  Buffy finished the glass of juice, set it in the sink, then turned back to the fridge. On the door of the freezer was a Cathy notepad, the top page covered with her father’s scrawl.

  The Slayer shuddered.

  Cathy. So not her favorite way to start the morning. But she was willing to bet her dad had put a lot of thought into the selection of that notepad.

  He probably thinks she’s a good role model, or something.

  Cathy might have more neuroses than even Freud could handle, but she’d never burned anything down. Or not to the best of Buffy’s knowledge.

  She tore the top page off, then scuffed her way into the living room.

  Let’s see what the absentee Dad-lord has to say this morning.

  Since the face-to-face approach plainly hadn’t worked, and since Hank’s work schedule was full, notes and voice mail had become Buffy’s primary means of communication with her father. Every single morning when she got up, it was to discover her dad had left her a note on the fridge.

  Their tone was deliberately upbeat, as if Hank Summers had taken a course entitled, “How to Communicate with your Troubled Teenage Daughter.”

  It had been a correspondence course. Obviously.

  Good morning, lazybones, this morning’s note said.

  Buffy made a face. Just what she needed. A reference to bones.

  “Big meeting this afternoon, but I should be home in plenty of time to take my favorite daughter out to dinner. Put your party clothes on. I’ll call from the cell when I leave the office. If you go out to the pool, don’t forget to put on lots of sunblock.”

  For the first time that morning, Buffy felt her lips quirk up in a smile. That remark ranked fairly high on the cuteometer, she thought. At least her father was worried about something that might happen to her during the daytime.

  “Have a good day, honey. See you tonight.”

  Buffy felt her spirits begin to lift. Things are definitely looking up, she decided. Not only was her dad doing his best to give her another shot at quality togetherness time, he hadn’t drawn a smiley face on the bottom of this note like he had on the last one.

  She set the note beside her on the couch and propped her feet up on the coffee table, angling her toes together so that the bunnies looked like they were talking to one another.

  Tonight’s dinner with her father could be a second chance. I’ve got to get it right, this time, she decided. She could tell him what she’d been doing in Sunnydale.

  Selectively, of course.

  Buffy tapped the bunny heads together, deep in thought. There was all the time she spent in the library, for instance. That ought to perk her father up.

  As long as she left out the part about the way the library sat right on top of a Hellmouth.

  Well, then, there was Willow, her new best friend. Buffy’s dad had always wanted her to be a better student. Maybe she could get some mileage out of talking up the way Willow carried a 4.0.

  As long as she didn’t mention the way Will’s brainy loneliness had made her an easy target for Moloch, the demon masquerading as a sensitive chatroom guy.

  Oh, I give up.

  She could tell her father exactly the same thing she told her mother. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

  The dinner tonight was going to be just like the drive. A disaster from start to finish.

  I’ve got to get out of here, the Slayer thought.

  She’d come to L.A. to heal, to forget.

  And you’re just doing a dandy job so far.

  That’s enough! she told herself. If there was one thing she hated, it was a whiner.

  So what if she was having a little trouble settling in? If the real reason she slept so late was because she hardly slept at all. If she still felt edgy and off-balance.

  She’d died. She was entitled.

  It was just taking her a little longer than she’d thought to catch her breath, that’s all.

  Catch my breath. Ha ha. Very funny.

  Buffy pushed herself up from the couch. Thinking was plainly getting her nowhere in a hurry. So stop thinking, she told herself. Frontal-lobe activity was Willow’s department, after all. Buffy was more of the action-figure type.

  She strode purposefully toward the bathroom, heading for the shower. It was time to stop sitting around. Time to be m
oving. Be bold.

  Get over yourself.

  There was one thing guaranteed to do that more effectively than any other.

  It was time to shop.

  “Will you buy some cactus candy, senorita?”

  Buffy looked down. In front of her stood a young boy carrying a tray full of small white bags filled with translucent slices of candy.

  Sure, she thought. Why not?

  She’d come here to do something different, hadn’t she? Eating candy made from a plant that could double as a lethal weapon seemed like a pretty good place to start.

  Buffy’s quest for shopping had ended in Olvera Street, the oldest street in L.A. The last place she’d intended to go when she’d set out. But every time she pictured herself going to the Beverly Center, Buffy’d suddenly felt like she was right back in her dad’s apartment.

  Same old. Same old.

  There were no surprises at the mall. No life.

  And Buffy was beginning to discover that what she wanted was to feel like what she was.

  Alive.

  And what better way to prove it than by making myself sick? she thought. She bought a bag of cactus candy and began to eat it as she strolled along.

  It was hot on Olvera Street, something else that made it different from the mall. Buffy knew the street catered primarily to tourists, but it still felt more real than the mall, somehow.

  She could smell the scent of food wafting out the door of a nearby restaurant to mingle with the dusty smell of hot asphalt. She could feel the heat of the day radiating up through the thin soles of her sandals. Feel it beat down on top of her unprotected head.

  Guess Dad was right about that sunblock.

  But the best thing was the sense of anonymity Buffy felt. Nobody here knew she was the Slayer. Nobody cared that she was the Chosen One. Nobody here needed rescuing, or, if they did, it wasn’t the sort only she could provide.

  Slowly, amazed to find herself relaxing for the first time in weeks, Buffy worked her way down one side of the street, and started up the other, not even minding the endless jostling of the crowd.

  She inspected terra-cotta pots and silver jewelry. Admired braids of bright peppers. Red. Orange. Green. Yellow. She looked at baskets. Embroidered dresses and tablecloths. Resisted a wild impulse to buy Giles a fringed sombrero. A Watcher in fringe. Now there was a scary thought.

  The only shop she avoided was the one with the fortuneteller sitting out in front.

  The fortuneteller was an old woman sitting behind a folding card table, a big umbrella shielding her from the sun. Her eyes were dark and bright in a face as wrinkled as an apple doll’s.

  “Tell your fortune, senorita?” she asked.

  Not likely, Buffy thought. I’ve had enough of prophecies, thank you very much.

  Besides, she didn’t want to be responsible for this woman’s demise. Buffy had to figure anything the fortuneteller might see in her future would scare the old woman half to death. And it still wouldn’t tell the Slayer anything she didn’t already know.

  She shook her head, sidling silently by the table, trying to ignore the feel of the old woman’s eyes. The way they followed her, focused as a laser, hard and black as shiny jet buttons.

  Stop looking at me, Buffy thought. I’m nothing special. I’m just a tourist like everybody else.

  Yeah. Right.

  “Dennis Michael Jones, you come back here this instant!” Buffy heard a voice cry out. A moment later, something small, sticky, and hot careened into the back of her legs, moving full force, knocking the Slayer to one side. She reached to brace herself, caught the edge of the card table, and felt something close around her wrist, tight as a vise.

  Fingers.

  Buffy jerked back, but the fingers held on. She turned, instinctively raising her other hand to strike out, and found herself looking down into the fortuneteller’s eyes.

  She could see herself reflected in them. Her blond hair disheveled, her own eyes startled, wide.

  Is that what I really look like? she thought.

  “So you have come,” the fortuneteller said, her voice like the whisper of thin paper in one of Giles’s oldest reference books. The sound of it raised goose-bumps on the Slayer’s skin, even with the sun beating down. “She’s been waiting for you. It’s about time.”

  Who’s been waiting for me?

  Scratch that. I don’t want to know.

  The last time somebody’d waited for her, she’d ended up making a quick trip to the afterlife.

  “I’m waiting for you,” the Master had said as he’d taunted her, playing hide and seek. “I want this moment to last.”

  “I don’t,” the Slayer had answered. Right before his strong arms had closed around her, disarming and imprisoning her.

  “I understand.”

  No! Buffy thought. I’m not going back there!

  Her stomach lurched, like she’d taken a fist straight to the solar plexus. The cactus candy roiled, then threatened a sudden return to the light of day. Buffy jerked her hand back, out of the fortuneteller’s grasp.

  She heard a grunt of breath as the fortuneteller fell forward against the table. Doubled over, hands folded across her stomach, Buffy lurched through the doorway of the nearest shop.

  It was hot, close, dark. Away.

  “What is the matter, senorita?” she heard a woman’s voice exclaim. “Are you ill? I have a chair in the back. Please, you must come and sit down.”

  Buffy felt a second set of fingers close around her elbow. Soft. Gentle. Persuading. Still fighting nausea, she let herself be led forward into the shop. After the bright, hot light of the street, the shop seemed pitch dark, save for a strange glow at the back.

  “Sit here,” the woman’s voice said. Buffy let herself be eased down. She felt the backs of her legs connect with the cool metal of a folding chair. “Close your eyes,” the woman said. “Put your head down. I will get you a drink of water.”

  Buffy complied with the woman’s instructions, heard the soft rustle of her garments as she moved away. Head down, eyes closed, Buffy pulled in one deep breath, then another. Slowly, she felt the candy stop its spinning as her pulse rate returned to normal.

  Way to go, ace. Could she have possibly been more stupid? She’d let that fortuneteller spook her like she was some kid at a Halloween carnival. “She’s been waiting for you.”

  Give me a break.

  That had to be about the oldest line in the book. Right after, I see a tall, dark, handsome man in your future.

  Does he occasionally have yellow eyes and really bad dental work?

  Buffy sat up, scrubbing her hands across her face. She opened her eyes. And found herself staring at the flickering light of dozens and dozens of votive candles.

  What on earth?

  At the back of the shop was another card table, this one spread with a brightly colored embroidered tablecloth. A photograph of a young girl in a silver frame stood in the very center, surrounded by the candles.

  Intrigued in spite of herself, Buffy stood up and moved closer.

  A child’s rag doll leaned against one side of the frame. On the other side, someone had draped a length of skipping rope. Jars filled with bright orange marigolds lined the back of the table. Petals were scattered across the surface of the tablecloth. Buffy could smell the peppery scent of the flowers in the still, hot air.

  It’s a shrine, she thought.

  In front of the picture sat a bag of cactus candy. There were tiny square cakes in paper holders, each cake decorated with pale pink frosting.

  Directly above the center of the table hung another image of the young girl, this one cut from delicate tissue paper. She was sitting in a swing, legs extended into the air, head thrown back, braids streaming out behind her. A figure Buffy assumed was her mother stood behind her, pushing the swing.

  The images reminded Buffy of the cutout paper snowflakes she and her cousin Celia had made as girls and taped to the front windows of the Summers’ house at Christma
stime. After Celia had died, Buffy had never made one again.

  Celia, she thought. The girl in the papercut even looked a little bit like her. In the heavy air at the back of the shop, the image cut from the thin tissue was absolutely motionless.

  “Ah, you are feeling better?” a voice behind her asked. Buffy jumped. She’d been so engrossed in looking at the shrine, she hadn’t heard the shopkeeper’s return.

  “Yes, I am,” she acknowledged. Talk about embarrassed. Buffy felt like she’d been caught eavesdropping. “Thank you for letting me sit down.”

  The woman shook her head, as if dismissing her own kindness. She held a glass out toward Buffy.

  “Here is your water.”

  “Thanks,” Buffy said, feeling a little awkward. She took the glass, took a sip of water, holding the cool liquid in her mouth for a moment or two before she swallowed.

  How old is this woman? she wondered. Her skin was mostly smooth, but her hair was bone-white. Not as old as the fortuneteller outside, but older than Giles or her mother, Buffy decided. The shopkeeper’s eyes were old and dark and sad.

  “You have been looking at the papercut?” she asked.

  Buffy caught a strange thread of eagerness running through the other woman’s voice. She nodded.

  “You know about Los Dias de Muertos, the Days of the Dead?”

  Once more, Buffy nodded. Giles had given her the basic info during one of their early “Things Every Slayer Should Know” sessions. Because the lecture had coincided with a display of papercuts Joyce was doing in the gallery at the time, Buffy had actually retained some of it.

  Los Dias de Muertos was the festival celebrating the return of the dead. But didn’t it happen in October? At pretty much the same time as Halloween, in fact, if Buffy was remembering Giles’s lecture rightly. The night the spirits of dead children were supposed to return was October 31, All Hallow’s Eve.

  What’s all this still doing up in July? Buffy wondered.

  “I made it myself,” the shopkeeper explained. “For my daughter.”

  The papercuts were a part of the festival decorations, but they also served another function. When the cutouts moved, it was considered a sign that the spirits were present.