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Rough Trade
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Part II
Spike had to drive, because (Cordelia grudgingly explained) Angel had taken the others in his own car for their current vitally important mission, so that she herself had ridden a city bus to the rendezvous at the diner. Spike waved it away and led her to where he had parked, lighting a cigarette on the way. When she saw the vehicle they were headed for, she stopped dead in the parking lot and blurted, “What the hell is that? I thought Giles was going to get you a rental!”
“He did,” Spike told her. “An’ I turned it back in ’n’ pocketed the deposit. ’Adn’t driven Baby here in months, but she was still tucked back in the warehouse when I needed her.”
‘Baby’ was a two-door 1960 DeSoto Adventurer hardtop, battered and dusty but still two solid tons of Detroit muscle car. Both windows were rolled down, and through the passenger’s side Cordelia could see by the parking lot lights that the interior was awash in litter. “My God,” she breathed, almost a moan. “And I thought Xander’s Gremlin was horrendous.”
Spike gave her a razor-honed sneer. “Gremlin? Figures. Pansy car for a pansy-boy.”
“Styleless-loser car for a styleless loser,” Cordelia corrected firmly. Then, with a small, unreadable smile, she added, “But not a pansy. No, sirree.”
With the door open, the litter could be at least partially identified: empty cigarette cartons, empty whiskey bottles, old newspapers (Weekly News of the Warped seemed to be a continuing favorite), even a few old pizza boxes smelling strongly of anchovy and jalapeņo. Cordelia set her mouth and swept the detritus into the floorboards, then seated herself with the same martyred air she displayed whenever she had to venture — yet again — into the sewers. She shook her head. “You’ve seriously been driving this scrap-heap since the Sixties?”
Spike had got in on his own side, and now he threw her an irritated glance. “Mm? No, picked it up just before I hit Sunnyhell the first time.”
“But … you call it Baby.”
The irritated look was stronger now. “It suits me, okay? Like the coat, the hair, the ring, the Zippo.” He reached out to caress the dashboard in front of him. “She’s a beat-up old bitch, but she’ll still power through anythin’. No matter how low I’ve been brought — which is pretty bloody low, let me tell you — sittin’ behind this wheel again makes me feel just a bit like the old Spike.”
He cranked up the engine (there, were, naturally, no seat belts) and started out of the parking lot. “Take a left,” Cordelia directed, “then cut under the freeway in six, seven blocks —”
“I know where to go,” he interrupted, steering one-handed. “Threw down with the Big Poof in the parking garage there, remember?”
“We’re in a different place now,” she told him. “The old one blew up.”
“Really?” He grinned hugely. “Sorry I missed that. Sorry it wasn’t me did it.”
Cordelia realized she was having trouble seeing out parts of the windshield, and peered closer. By the passing streetlights she could see that much of the glass was blacked over; she rubbed at it experimentally, and the blacking smudged and flaked off. Shoe polish, or something similar, to provide makeshift protection from the sun during the day, then wiped away for night driving …? She shook her head, contented herself with giving terse directions when necessary, and Spike followed them without comment, lost in some musings of his own.
When he pulled up in front of the Hyperion Hotel, however, he swiveled in his seat to ask, “Why didn’t you just have me meet you here? Glad I got the wings, mind, but I don’t see the point of fritterin’ time away if you’re fightin’ a deadline.”
“Some things …” Cordelia shook her head, almost angrily. “They just have to be a certain way, okay? Part of the whole vision thing.” She opened her door and stepped out, still talking. “They come in different types, but you get to know the feel of it after awhile, and this is one where you have to … to shape what you do so you can catch the right moment.”
“Yeh, fine, whatever.” Spike fell into step beside her. “Just lead the way to Peaches’ weapons cabinet, an’ —”
Cordelia stopped at the door, fixed him with a gimlet gaze. “Oh, you’re not coming inside.”
He laughed at that. “What, ’fraid I’ll nick the silverware? This’ll go faster if you don’t have to cart everythin’ about, plus I’d like to have a say in what tools I’m to go hackin’ with.”
She faced him squarely. “And what you’d like means exactly squat to me. No, you’re not rummaging around in Angel’s things, he’d smell that you’d been there and never stop carping over it. If we do this right, nobody will ever know.” She turned back to the door, muttering, “And then I can start forgetting about it.”
Spike waited at the door, one eyebrow cocked and a tiny smile turning a corner of his mouth. Well, now. The Slayer talked the same, and Droopy Boy, too, and even Red would toss out a little jab now and then, but this was different. The prom princess here, she didn’t just talk the talk, she hated him.
God, he’d missed that.
Cordelia was back in a bit over five minutes, and held up a sword with a four-foot blade and a hilt long enough for a two-hand grip. “Here,” she said, passing it over to Spike. “I heard Wesley call this a bastard sword … which means, perfect for you.”
He took the weapon, hefted it, nodded approval. Then he looked to her, and his smile broadened. She had tied her hair back in a ponytail, upgraded her footwear to a pair of sturdy boots, and shed the light jacket; now she wore a sleeveless top over cargo pants, accessorized by a katana in a slung sheath and a wicked dagger on her belt. “Well, now,” he drawled. “Check out the bloody fashion maven.”
“Says the Billy Idol knock-off,” she retorted, lip curled.
“Wanker copied my look,” he shot back instantly. “An’ for once I’m not takin’ the piss with you, you’re decked out almost practical for a night’s work.” He grinned. “Real improvement. You’ve come a long way since —”
“Since I stuck a crossbow in your face?”
He cocked his head. “Huh. Forgot all about that, I had, which should tell you summat as to how impressed I wasn’t at the time. No, I meant since I had to watch you go stumblin’ through the Mexican backwoods in stiletto heels ’n’ a party dress. Thought I’d kill you out of sheer bleedin’ impatience.”
The flaring of her nostrils showed he had touched a sensitive spot. “You jerked me off the Playa Principal,” she pointed out flatly. “I was dressed for a summer resort because that’s where I was. Nobody told me I’d be going on monster safari. Have I ever thanked you for that? I mean really thanked you, the way you deserved?”
His eyebrows went up. “You’re actin’ like you’ve got a grudge? You bloody stabbed Dru in the heart!”
“And I’m so sorry,” she wailed in a burlesque of remorse, before her expression hardened again. “… that I used a knife instead of a stake. Look, pull up your big-boy pants, will you? You got your ho-bag girlfriend back from Slumber Putz, I got out of it with nothing worse than blistered feet and ruined shoes — thanks to you! — and now we’re here.” She stepped closer, almost nose-to-nose with him. “You can’t kill me now. And I probably won’t kill you. So can we just drop the drama and get on with the damn program already?”
He drew a breath, shrugged with elaborate not-caring. “Lead on, Lara Croft. And just for the record, even if I can’t kill you, I can bloody well splash you with whatever I’m rippin’ apart on your behalf.”
Cordelia’s laugh was sharp, scornful, and apparently sincere. “Get real: Angel does that. And I seriously doubt your puppy-tantrums could match the damage that big, soulful dork can do with all his earnestness.”
Again Spike drove, the blacked-out windows of the DeSoto rolled down for visibility since the sun wasn’t an issue. He could have tried to needle her further, but the truth was that this one gave every bit as good as she got, and he was still learning the right balances of verbal aggression when he couldn’t back it up with actual physical menace. Besides, the lull gave him time to think. She’d said she had to use the amulet tonight; did that mean before sunrise, or before midnight? Could make a difference … not that it mattered a toss to him personally, but it could help to know what kind of pace they had to follow. Finding the bauble and dangling it out of her reach till the deadline passed would be one thing (and rousing fun, to boot), but not getting to it in time might look like he had failed, and he still had some scrap of pride to try and preserve.
No, he’d probably play straight with her, just to set up further bargains with the white-hats. Depended on what she did with that mouth in the meantime, ’cause he did have limits …
“Look, there, parking space,” Cordelia announced, and Spike swung into the spot indicated and killed the engine. They were in one of the seedier areas, pawn shops and head shops and bail bondsmen and …
Spike’s head came up, and he drew a long breath, tasting the air, then looked to Cordelia. “A bar?” he asked. “A demon bar, that’s where your trinket’s hid? Really, hell-fiends today got no self-respect whatsoever. Whatever happened to desecrated churches, buried temples, even a decent underground lair?”
“The thing isn’t here.” Cordelia opened the car door and got out. “This is just the next step on finding out where it is, at least according to the whang-o-rama in my skull this morning.” She held up one hand as Spike reached into the back seat for his sword. “Leave that in the car, and —” She unslung the scabbarded katana. “— tuck that up under your coat, okay?”
He climbed out of the DeSoto, walked around it to accept the weapon from her. “So, we’re not supposed to be armed in this joint?”
“Not really a rock-solid policy,” she answered. “More a matter of they don’t like vampires or humans very much. So you don’t want to come across as hunting a fight … and, as for me, I don’t want any of the regulars to see me and think ‘Slayer’. Or, worse, ‘dumb bimbo who thinks she’s a Slayer’.”
Spike made a Chh! sound. “ ’Cause take it from me, the original article is bad enough.”
The interior of the bar was slightly larger than what Spike remembered of Willy’s (though the ferret-faced barman seemed to have fled Sunnydale recently), only more dingy and more smoky and more redolent of many competing odors. In other words, typical demon watering-hole. He stepped past a Hakklusch that was resting its root suckers in what looked like a Bloody Mary (’cept the liquid was probably dissolved nitrate fertilizer, Hakks were dotty for the stuff), and turned in a semicircle to survey the other patrons. “So what’re we watchin’ for?” he asked Cordelia. “Map, clue, inscription, guide, what?”
“There’s a little demon guy who should be here tonight,” she told him, low-voiced. “Mottled skin, face like a horned toad’s, kind of sunken eyes. According to my vision, he’ll be able to tell us about either Juwara or the talisman. I’ve still got a little cash for bribery, but that’ll work better with you here to threaten him.”
Threatening sounded good — violence sounded good — but being in a bar turned Spike’s mind naturally to thoughts of liquor. He was still carrying Tweedy’s deposit from the rental car, he could afford a few good belts, but he had to at least try to get the cheerleader to cover his drinks, if only for annoyance’s sake. “Look, long as we’re here,” he began …
Then he broke off, eyes narrowing, and four long strides took him to the end of the bar where an indistinct figure slumped atop one of the high stools. Spike’s hand closed on a narrow shoulder with bone-bruising force, and “Moori-a’ueil!” he cried cheerfully. “Fancy runnin’ across you here! An’ how’s my favorite gutter-sucking lump o’ garbage been doin, now?”
The slightly-built demon at the bar tensed under his grip, then slumped further with a breathy, plaintive, “Oh, man …” Then he turned on the barstool — Spike allowed it — and peered up at the vampire holding him. “Goin’ by Merl now,” he mumbled.
“An’ speakin’ English, too? Will wonders never cease.” Spike added another few p.s.i. of pressure, felt a glow of satisfaction at the resulting wince. “You can go by soddin’ Terry Gilliam, for all I care. You owe me fifty quid, you little tosser. Swore you’d have it for me by the end of the week, and that was four years ago.”
“You left the country, man,” Merl whined, blinking with huge-pupiled eyes. “And burned down the bar where I was supposed to meet you!”
Spike frowned. “Oh, right, the Delzpiyrian business. Tried to tell those bloody priests that a vampire psychic would do sod-all for their poncy prophecy, but there’s no reasonin’ with fanatics. Followed us clear to Prague, they did …” He shook his head. “Well, since you didn’t dodge me deliberate, I won’t start by tearin’ your arms off. Still, four years overdue, it’ll be seventy-five now, mate.”
“I don’t have —” Merl began, and at the same moment Cordelia stepped up beside them, saying, “Oh, good, you found him.”
“What?” Spike said.
“What?” Merl said.
“Hey, fella,” Cordelia went on eagerly, “we’re looking for a demon and an amulet, and I have it on really good authority that you can tell us something about that, and we can even offer you a little honorarium if it turns out to be good —” She became aware that they were both staring at her, and stopped to add her own, “What?”
Spike was the first to recover. “Turns out I have an unsettled debt with Squidgy here, so if you’re payin’ anybody it’ll be me, seein’ as I’ve got a prior claim.”
“But I don’t have —” Merl began again.
“No, she does,” Spike interrupted. “We’ll call it a down payment. So, Altcchon callin’ ’imself Juwara, amulet, other little grey bastards hangin’ about, any o’ that sound familiar?” He leaned toward the lizardish demon. “And ‘no’ is not a correct answer.”
“What, I’m supposed to pay you?” Cordelia crossed her arms. “Not on your unlife, he could tell us anything just to get rid of you.”
“Merl here knows better’n that,” Spike returned genially. “He’ll give us the straight gen or they’ll be pickin’ bits of him out of the palm trees oceanside.”
“No, no, no.” She shook her head. “I know you’re all kill-and-slaughter-and-then-kill-some-more, but that is not the way we’re doing this.”
Merl had been looking from one of them to the other, one scaly hand gripping an opened can of Dr Pepper. “So is this good cop/
bad cop?” he asked at last. Cordelia’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, was one of us supposed to be good? Guess I missed the memo.” She put her elbow on the bar next to Merl. “I was ready to do some friendly negotiation, but Captain Peroxide here seems to have blown that for us, so here’s how it is. First, I’m not paying him anything.” She cut her eyes toward Spike. “Matter of principle. Second, you I’ll pay, as long as you deliver the goods, and if you want to pass the money over to him, hey, that’s your biz. Only, I won’t open my wallet on faith, we’ll confirm before you get anything —”
“Nah, this character’ll scarper the moment we turn our backs,” Spike objected. “Know his habits, I do, I’m not lettin’ him out of sight till I have my dosh —”
“Third,” Cordelia interrupted, raising her voice, “just to be sure of quality control, you’ll be coming with us, Merl. How does that sound?”
Again the little demon’s eyes were darting back and forth between the two of them. “Me come?” he squeaked. “No, no, that doesn’t work for me. It’s a bad scene you’re headed for, and I’m no fighter, I’d just slow you down —”
“Not askin’ you to fight, Squidgy.” Spike gave him a gentle shake, just for punctuation. “But you are comin’.”
Merl looked around as if hoping for help from some other quarter, but the rest of the bar’s patrons seemed somehow oblivious to his plight. “But … what if I don’t know anything about this, who’d you say, Juwara?”
“Oh, that would be really bad, Merl.” Cordelia leaned toward him. “Because I know you do, so if you said that, well, I’m pretty sure Spike would just start in on his tear-open-and-dismember routine.”
Merl looked at Spike, who showed teeth in a happy snarl, and then back at Cordelia. “You’d … you’d let him do that?” he quavered.
“Well, I’m not supposed to,” she admitted. “But he’s so much faster and stronger and meaner than me, how could I stop him?” She shook her head. “Besides, no way am I getting these clothes splattered with demon intestines, so I’d just have to go somewhere else and get a drink to calm my nerves.”
“There we are, then,” Spike said as Merl seemed to wilt. “So how’s about a location, mate? And any other helpful little details you might have to hand?”
Back in the DeSoto, Merl had to take the back seat, which was cumbersome with a two-door, and uncomfortable due to the trash heaped back there. “Naw, it really is a theater,” he was insisting as Spike cut across the city. “Lots of empty properties in L.A., but they never stay empty, you know? Any time some bunch gets settled in and ready to set a routine, here come developers and demolition teams and plans for a new cluster of condos, it just never ends. So, these Kung’r got themselves a sub-lease at a community theater: stay outta the way when there’s rehearsals, and do their rituals and stuff the rest of the time.”
“Kung’r are low-level twits,” Spike said, one-handing the steering wheel while he lit a new cigarette. “Like Lubbers or Lei-achs, can’t stand up with the big boys. What would Juwara have to do with that lot of sad-sacks?”
“I really don’t know about no Juwara,” Merl said again, hanging onto the seat as Spike fishtailed around a corner to beat the red light. “But the Kung’r — the grey guys you described — they do have some kind of amulet they’re all proud of, sort of a status thing that they’re the ones keeping it safe. And I heard somebody say something to somebody else about a big blue guy, so maybe they hired him for extra security.”
“An’ what’s the amulet s’posed to do?” Spike asked when Cordelia didn’t.
“Beats me.” Merl seemed to grow more mournful as they got closer to their destination. “Except you couldn’t use it for anything.”
“No? Why not?”
“ ’Cause the only thing I ever heard about it — one of their chants, they really should go light on the erbit lungs in public if they can’t stay sober — was about ‘focus the soul-force’. Which does you no good if you don’t have one.”
“Huh,” Spike said. “Demons, guardin’ somethin’ only them with souls can use? That’s a stumper.”
Merl gave a what can I say? shrug. “Human or not, everybody’s weird when it comes to religion.”
They found the theater, and Spike parked in front of a fire hydrant. “See, guys?” Merl implored as he levered himself out of the back seat. “Just like I said, I know better than to try anything. I’ll just wait out here, you’ll see in a couple minutes I was telling the truth —”
“Not happening.” Cordelia motioned him ahead. “We go in, we do our deal, you get your money. That’s how it works.”
The building was unlit: no rehearsal or performance tonight, which meant no humans to worry about. Spike tried the door, found it locked, gave a hard yank that snapped the internal mechanism and tore out part of the door frame. He stood there for a moment, making no immediate move to enter, and Cordelia asked, “So what are we waiting for?”
He had let his true face come out, and he grinned at her now through jagged teeth. “Well, this is usually where I’m ravin’ to get inside ’n’ kill everything, and somebody tells me no, we need a plan.”
“Yeah?” She unsheathed the katana. “Here’s the plan: go inside and kill everything.”
They entered, moving softly, not trying for complete silence but avoiding unnecessary noise; their feet on the carpet inside made less sound than the faint whimpers from Merl. Spike held the sword in one hand and a hardwood stake in the other; he preferred bladed weapons against demons, but with other vampires he didn’t have the fine motor control for deft, certain decapitation, and fast kills were what you needed when you were facing numbers. He heard a choking sound behind him, and whirled to tell Merl to sack up and shut it … but it was Cordelia, stumbling blindly and raising her free hand to her head, and he dropped his weapons to catch her as she pitched toward the carpet.
He laid her out with rough care, she was jerking and making little animal sounds in the back of her throat. Merl backed away, gulping, and Spike hissed, “Try to run and I’ll gut you!” The little demon froze, throat-sac palpitating in his terror, and Spike dismissed him from consideration and turned his concentration to the woman before him.
One of her visions, had to be. Drusilla’s visions had never caused this kind of physical pain, but sometimes the things she saw distressed her greatly, and the similarity was unwelcome. Spike felt no affection for this acid-tongued cow — no regard for her at all, apart from a small, vague hint of admiration for her grit — but to see her like this, writhing and blinded … well, he didn’t like it. And liked even less being unable to do anything except wait for it to pass.
Oh, and she’d been right: she did drool a bit.
He could tell when she came out of it; she began making the sounds of someone trying to hide pain, and her hands reached out to steady herself. He helped her upright, demanding, “So what was it? What was so urgent you had to get a warnin’ just as we’re about to wade into a tussle?”
“I … it …” Cordelia drew a shaky breath, her face still tight and drawn, eyes only just beginning to focus. “Just wait,” she said. “Just wait.”
Spike waited, seething with impatience and resentment. Where was the fun in seeing someone in pain and not being able to enjoy it? Within a few seconds Cordelia had regained control, and bent to pick up her fallen sword. “We have to give Merl some kind of weapon,” she announced. “As in, now.”
“What? No!” Merl was jittering in his agitation. “I told you, I’m no fighter!”
Cordelia’s mouth set. “And when the horde comes to kill us, you just let them know that, okay? I’m sure they’ll understand.” She was looking around quickly, no panic but plenty of urgency, and her eyes fixed on a long-handled push-broom propped up in a corner of the wide lobby. “There, that thing, fast.”
It was the work of a moment for Spike to snatch up the broom, strike off the brush attachment with the sword, leaving a sheared point, and toss the makeshift spear to Merl. “Poke that at anybody comes your way,” he ordered the wispy demon. “Slow ’em down for a second or so, at least. An’ stick close to us, ’cause —” He looked to Cordelia. “Horde comin, you said?”
She took a double-hand grip on the hilt of the katana, settled into a ready stance. “Oh, yeah,” she assured him. And, almost as if responding to a cue, the horde arrived, bursting through the double doors of the theater auditorium and tumbling down the side-stairs to the upper balconies.
In the first moments there seemed to be scores of them, hundreds — far more than Cordelia had told from her vision — but Spike was instantly in motion, leaping and striking about, and a century of vicious experience sorted it out for him in immediate cool clarity: bit more than a dozen of the Kung’r, five vampires, and Ju-Wanker himself, seven feet of corded blue muscle wielding a fire axe as if it were a camp hatchet. Steep, glorious odds, the only downside being the necessity of keeping Cordelia alive (the bloody Scoobies would be full chaffed if she carked it, and Peaches, too, and that was a set of headaches he didn’t need), but that only added to the challenge. His nocturnal vision easily coped with the darkness of the theater lobby; the chit and Merl kept to a central patch dimly lit by streetlight illumination leaking through the upper windows, she’d chivvied the little demon into a back-to-back formation where they awaited attack while Spike ramped about on his own. Juwara drove straight for him, roaring, and he’d have been happy to meet the great Smurf head-on but there were the other vampires to contend with, so it was strike and dodge away and cut at someone else, roll and leap and dart back in for another swing, it was sword and stake and boots and elbows and blood and crunch and screams and dust, and Spike howled his glee and challenge as he gave himself over to the heady joy of slaughter.
He could see Cordelia only in fraction-of-a-second glimpses as he fought his own fight, but those were enough to paint a picture for him. She was only human, and her sword technique was bare-bones basic — maybe even self-taught — but she was quick and coordinated and clearly knew how to channel fear into focus. As the pitched battle passed the thirty-second mark, Spike realized with a spurt of amusement that she was fighting like a cheerleader, shifting as if choreographed from one stance or stroke to the next, and planning every move even if the planning came only an instant before the strike. (Suicide, for any normal fighter, but somehow she seemed to make it work.) The Kung’r were concentrating on her and Merl, he himself had managed to keep the vampires occupied and get in the occasional slash at Juwara, the whole business was balanced on a knife-edge … but now the last of his distractions dissolved into graveyard dust, and finally he could devote undivided attention to the strongest enemy.
“So, coward!” the massive demon boomed as Spike turned to him. “Are you prepared to face me at last in true combat?”
“Coward, is it?” Spike slashed, whirled, slashed again, ducked, thrust, drew back to reset himself. “Brave words, from somebody whose wrinkled blue arse was the last thing I saw scamperin’ over the horizon!”
“Lies!” Juwara bellowed from a tusked mouth, and bore down on Spike, swinging the fire axe in great cleaving sweeps. “It was you who fled, fearing to stand and fight as the sun rose!” Spike was forced to give ground: he had the greater speed, Juwara had the greater reach, for the moment it was even. For the moment.
“Izzat how you remember it?” Spike timed it right, caught the handle of the axe against the edge of his blade, and the axe-head spun away as the wood of the handle split from the impact. “Well, you’ve got your story, an’ I’ve got mine —” His next stroke opened up Juwara’s throat, the one after that finished severing the demon’s head, and he watched with satisfaction as the twitching corpse flopped to the carpet. “— and now there’s only mine.”
When he looked to Cordelia, only four of the small grey Kung’r were still alive, circling her with long daggers and probing without evident hope for an opening. Even Merl’s frantic lunges with the impromptu spear were enough to keep them back, and as Spike stalked toward them they fell away with mournful moans, fleeing through the door he’d broken to effect entry and vanishing out into the night street. “Well, now,” Spike drawled. “Somethin’ about an amulet, wasn’t there? And just where might that be?”
Cordelia was breathing hard, and perspiration beaded her face, but she spoke without gasping. “What I saw, kind of looked like underground. Don’t theaters have storage space under the stage? Let’s go, I think maybe I can feel my way to it —”
There was a screech from Merl, and Spike spun toward the sound: a female vampire, erupting out of the fallen Kung’r bodies, one-armed (right, Spike remembered cutting off the other) but her remaining hand drove at Spike with the stake he’d discarded when he’d thought it was just him and Juwara. Fast, the bitch was, Spike might not have got the sword up in time, but she jinked to the side to avoid Merl’s feeble jab with the wooden spear, and Spike flashed in an upward cut that transected his attacker from hip to neck … which apparently counted as decapitation, since the vampiress promptly shivered into settling ash.
He turned back at what sounded horribly like a sigh of relief from Cordelia, and she returned his stare, eyebrows up, visibly daring him to comment. “Was that it, then?” he demanded at last. “The vision: that tell you to arm Merl so he’d be just enough to keep me from poppin’ my clogs?”
That brought a derisive laugh in reply. “Please,” Cordelia said. “If the Powers That Be ever sent me a vision about you, do you seriously think it would be to save you?”
Point, that. He shrugged it away. “Right, then. So: amulet.”
She produced a small flashlight from a cargo pocket, and after ten minutes’ search she found the amulet, in the below-stage area as she had guessed. “Well, that’s done,” Spike announced. “What next?”
“There is no next,” she answered. “Not one that involves you, anyhow. Let’s go.”
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