The ringing on the other end of the line finally halted with a click as somebody picked up. An irritable growl strangled the words "Rupert Giles" through the receiver.
Wesley, taken aback, withdrew the cellphone from his ear and frowned severely at it, wondering whether the infernal item was faulty. That hadn't sounded at all like...
The growl repeated itself, loud enough that he heard it clearly even with the cell two feet removed from his earlobe, and he hurriedly reunited them. "H-hello?" he ventured.
"Who the hell is this?"
With some effort, he scraped together his composure and took a steadying breath. "Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, Mr Giles. Good Lord, man, where have you been? I've been trying to contact you since yesterday afternoon!"
"Well, I'm very sorry I don't tailor my life around your - Wesley?" There was faint disbelief in Giles' tone, and then almost audibly he pulled himself together and reattached the veneer of snippy politeness Wesley had always associated with the man. "Wesley? What in God's name does the Council want from me now? I'll have you know Buffy has a lot to contend with already at the moment and I'm certainly not going to--"
His heart gave a little jump in his chest at the confirmation that Giles didn't know. He stammered, "It's not, in fact, strictly speaking, Council business. That is to say..."
"Do stop blathering and get on with it."
"If you wish," Wesley said. In truth, the familiarity of Giles', well, irritating familiarity was something of a comfort. "I have a rather knotty research problem on my, uh, hands, and I wondered if you might assist. There's a murderer on the loose in LA - of supernatural origins, needless to say - and I appear to be missing any access to the necessary informational resources."
"The Council has its own researchers." For a moment, it seemed he was going to slam the phone down, but when Wesley raised a quick and no doubt 'blathered' protest he sighed instead. "All right, Wesley. Explain to me why you're phoning me at... oh, dear God, is that the time? Never mind. What's this all about?"
"About? Aside from the fact still more innocents will die unless I stop this fiend?" He made efforts to calm himself and said, in more measured fashion, "You know the Council bureaucracy. By the time I pry the information I need out of their system, it could be too late. Far quicker to obtain it from an independent such as yourself..." He paused, unsure of whether that could be construed as rubbing it in, though he certainly hadn't intended it in any such way. His thoughts recoiled from the idea of setting Giles to rights on the matter and admitting his own humiliation. "And I thought that you and I... well, we'd established a certain rapport, I felt, by the summer... perhaps it would be preferable to come to you."
"A rapport." He could visualise Giles groaning and rubbing his head from the long-suffering tone in his voice, and winced because all evidence pointed towards Mr Giles' opinion of him being every bit as bad as he'd feared it might be. "Very well, Wesley. Make it quick."
"Certainly. And thank you. And - my sincere apologies for disturbing you so rudely. Terribly improper of me, I realise now." Giles had probably been asleep, resting after a night of battling the forces of evil in service of the Slayer who still wanted him around, and with that realisation Wesley felt appropriately guilty for all his cursing of the man over the last - good grief, almost twenty-four hours it had been since he first tried to call.
"Wesley," Giles said firmly.
"Sorry." His thoughts had always been apt to wander, but he was starting to suspect his prescribed painkillers weren't helping the issue. "It's a vampire named Penn. Of Angelus' particular infamous brood, or so I'm told; the Order of Aurelius. I'm working with the police here in LA, where this individual has embarked upon a killing spree of especially sadistic proportions."
"Aren't there research facilities available in LA?" With a distinct air of 'is that all?', the other Watcher abruptly became very snippy indeed. "I can give you the contact numbers and addresses of some private libraries and stores where I'm sure you could find what you're searching for."
Wesley hesitated. All things considered, he would prefer to undertake his own research, much as he respected Mr Giles' abilities in the field. Yet in his present state, as he'd demonstrated to himself yesterday, even travelling across town to reach them would prove such a draining task he'd be useless by the time he got there. And he certainly wasn't about to send Detective Costas to do the research for him, even if the man would agree to any such arrangement.
"I'm... afraid I'm somewhat incapacitated at present," he admitted meekly.
He heard a distinct snort. Of course, he could hardly blame Giles for his scepticism, recalling with painful acuity the fuss he'd been making the last time the man had seen him 'incapacitated'.
"As you say, Mr Giles." He very much did not want to go into the details of the situation with his fellow ex-Watcher. "But I should greatly appreciate your research assistance in this matter."
Giles' response was an unexpectedly long pause that was beginning to worry before he finally said, with great and very apparent reluctance, "This... sounds like you could use more help than just research. I know I said Buffy had a lot to handle at present, but if things are bad, she and I could be over there by the early evening--"
"No!" Wesley all but shouted, making himself jump. He tried to snatch a quick recovery. "I mean, really, it isn't at all necessary. As I said, I'm working with the police. The assistance I'm providing is more in terms of knowledge and contacts than anything else. They will, I'm sure, be able to deal with the subduing and termination of the vampire."
"There's no need to jump down my throat." Giles sounded more relieved than annoyed by the outburst, though. "If my direct help isn't required... very well, I shall undertake the research you need. Though I must say, isn't it rather unusual for the Council to overtly take a hand in helping the authorities?"
"It's more a few particular police contacts than the police per se," Wesley said evasively. "And, well, truth be told, it's more... a particular Watcher than the Watchers Council, per se, as well--"
He was interrupted by a bark of laughter. Utterly confused, he blinked at the cellphone. "I beg your pardon?"
"I always knew there was a human being in there somewhere," Giles said. Wesley could hear his smirk. "Just don't let on to the Council about your side projects. Remember what happens to those Watchers who let themselves become emotionally involved."
The trace of mocking irony in the remark wounded - probably completely unintentionally, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel its bite. Giles, of course, didn't realise just what had been the price of remaining behind against orders in Sunnydale to provide his near-useless contribution to the Graduation Day battle.
But, because there were other things he was guilty of, for which he fully deserved Giles' chastisement, he said, "It's... not easy, I realise that now. To... Watch, and not become involved. Emotionally. Physically. I said things to you, before, that I believe I find myself less than proud of now, and I must apologise for that."
Giles was quiet again a moment before he said, his voice softer and more sincere than it had been throughout the preceding conversation, "We were all taught to stand back and send others into the front lines. It isn't your fault that you ended up being what you were trained to be."
"Perhaps not." He could not help but reflect a little bitterly that it would have been nice if he'd been shown more of that willingness to understand at the time. If he'd found any kind of acceptance in Sunnydale - why, he might not even be here now like this.
Getting angry with Giles would not help his case.
"At any rate, I should thank you - profusely - for agreeing to this favour, given our past--"
"I thought we had a rapport?" Giles put in, fairly humourlessly.
"Ha ha," Wesley said, shifting in his chair with discomfort. "Well. You'll call me back, then, when you find something?" He read out the number of Costas' cellphone.
"I will indeed. Goodbye, Wesley." Giles spoke the last very firmly, and just before the phone clicked... was that a woman's drowsy voice that he could hear in the background?
Scandalised, Wesley switched off the cellphone and stared at it long and hard, trying to figure out the chances that, given the strength of his pain medication, he'd just hallucinated an entire conversation.
Really. So much then for taking time out from helping Buffy save the world and protect the innocent.
Wesley set the cellphone down on a rickety side table and leaned back into the armchair. The place where his arm had been did not ache notably less than it had the previous day, though he tried to insist to himself that it must be healing, improving. It would not tie him down for long. He would not be relying on Costas and mobile telephones and all this damnable sitting and waiting forever.
The last twenty-four hours had been occupied by the need to get in touch with Giles - ever since it had occurred to him that Costas' provision of the cellphone meant he could actually take action of his own, even bound to this room as he was by illness and injury.
He'd had to ring Cordelia first, to try find out what Giles' number in fact was (irritated with himself that somehow, he'd managed to keep the girl's, despite that disastrous parting kiss, but had lost that of his fellow Watcher, which there was actually some practical function to retaining) only she had relocated herself. The woman who answered, who he assumed to be her mother, had sounded rather intoxicated, but had nonetheless dug out Rupert Giles' number at his request. He had been forced to put the phone down shortly after, as her initially subtle drunken innuendos became shockingly lewd.
Cordelia apparently was also in LA. She had an acting contract. She was going to be on television. Wesley, not so very naive as all that, vaguely wondered what she would be advertising. He might even buy it to reminisce, even if the bubble was now long burst. It had felt wonderful to be a hero in somebody's eyes, if only for a brief time.
The final completion of the telephone call left him aimless, robbed of its multiple diversionary values: fretting about Giles, about what he would say to the man, whether he would agree to help, the embarrassment if he knew about Wesley's own changed relationship with the Council... the mounting frustration as hours passed and still more hours passed while he kept trying to ring. In the end, all things considered, the call had gone well. Giles had been civil, if not enthused, to hear from him, and he hadn't asked about Council business or, God forbid, his father, and he hadn't had to explain his current pitiful state of affairs. For all of this, he could be grateful.
In a near-empty apartment, he was stranded again with the undisturbed contents of his thoughts. Yesterday's failures. His continuing frustration at his trapped status and his helplessness.
Trying to drive the ghosts from his mind with activity, he got up and proceeded to do what he could to tidy his living space until dizziness forced him back to the armchair. After another half hour of sitting, he repeated the process over again.
It was shortly after he'd sat down the second time that he heard the voices start up across the hall, raised once more in debate, and shortly after that when there sounded the sharp rap of knuckles against the door.
He'd barely turned the key in the lock and touched his fingers to the handle when Costas impatiently shoved it open and pushed his way through. Wesley almost closed the door on the woman trying to follow him inside, and he stammered a rattled apology as she entered rubbing her shoulder and grimacing. Her eyes narrowed on him, their gaze uncomfortably shrewd and judgemental, then she apparently dismissed him and moved on to survey the apartment, which fared little better in her esteem, before zeroing back in on Costas.
"All right," she said, in a smoky voice with a sarcastic catch to its drawl. "We're here. You said you'd talk, so talk. Now what the hell's going on?" Her eyes darted back to Wesley and away again. "And who is this man?"
He avoided the sporadic scrutiny by turning his back and taking his time to lock the door. Costas and the woman continued the sniping he suspected they had been carrying on for quite some time, and he realised then that it had not been his neighbours he had been listening to these past minutes.
"This is the guy with the answers," he heard Costas say.
"Answers about what? Vampires and demons? Ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night?"
"You're the one who's sitting on a murder case involving three victims drained of blood from bite-like neck wounds. You tell me."
Three, Wesley thought. Then, there had not been another murder that night, while he was forced to rest, useless. He wondered if that was Angel's doing. If Penn was already dust, or if Angel was.
"That's very funny, Jack. Is this a new game? Encourage all the cranks and send them over to Lockley?"
"There's nothing crank about this, Kate." Costas turned his attention to Wesley, wincing covertly in gruff apology. "Pr-- Wesley, Detective Lockley is the officer heading up the murder investigation. I think I might've mentioned her yesterday."
The look the woman targeted at his oblivious back made it clear she was well aware of the kind of terms under which she had indeed been mentioned. She flicked her blonde hair back from her face as she raised her head, squaring her chin and staring Wesley in the eyes. She took his proffered hand with a minor hesitation, shook it firmly, and nodded when he introduced himself, "Wesley Wyndham-Pryce."
"Detective Kate Lockley." She withdrew her hand and wiped it on her pants less than surreptitiously, and he cringed realising his palm was most likely unpleasantly clammy to the touch.
"Guy's just got out of the hospital," Costas offered up randomly, looking out of the window. His hands toyed with a box of cigarettes that Wesley sincerely hoped he wasn't intending to light up
"Gee, I couldn't tell. What does this have to do with my case?"
Wesley managed to drag together the threads of his late authority, pushing the increasingly familiar knot of humiliation roughly aside - he had neither time nor patience for it now. He turned on Costas and pitched his voice to override Detective Lockley's. "What in God's name is going on here? I thought we had an understanding--"
"Oh, we have an understanding, do we?" Lockley said.
"Ms Lockley, please--"
"That's Detective--"
"Wesley, Kate--"
"What connection does your one-armed English boyfriend have with my goddamned case?"
Polite formality shattered, everyone glared at each other. Wesley leaned heavily against the door at his back and shot an unnerved glance at Costas, who lit up a cigarette, the hiss of the lighter loud in the silence. Lockley bunched her hands into fists.
Much as he certainly did not want to introduce another outsider to a world where demons walked the Earth, it was very clear that the lady detective was not about to leave until she received her answers. It was also clear that Costas had already given away too much information for a lie to be a viable option.
Wesley exchanged a look with Costas and saw him nod very slightly, his mouth twisting in an unhappy curl.
"It has a great deal to do with your case, Detective. We happen to ourselves be attempting to track down the perpetrator of these terrible crimes - who is, by the way, not human, nor any kind of creature with which I imagine you are accustomed to dealing."
She stared blankly at him, glared at Costas, glared at him again, threw up her arms and demanded, "Do you people have a radar homed in on me? Do I have a subliminal sign over my head that reads 'Bring in the Kooks'? I am so tired of this bullshit--"
"It isn't b-- that is, I'm telling the truth. I can prove it - or I could, given a few hours to hunt around this city late night." And the energy and health to do so, he didn't add. "Vampires aren't only real, they're not precisely scarce either. Working for the police, you must have come across any number of corpses drained of blood."
Lockley wavered at that, giving an unsure glance around the room, not meeting his eyes for a full ten seconds. "I've seen bodies. Yes."
Costas was nodding. "It's real, Lockley. I mean, I'd been suspecting this freaky stuff was going off a while, but yesterday I met one - an actual vampire. Blood drinking and all."
"Really?"
"Sure. Hey, Wesley, maybe we could take her to meet him."
He winced. "I don't think that's a good idea. Angel isn't what you might call precisely a--"
"Angel?" Lockley said sharply. "Big guy, spiky dark hair, tendency to brood and speak in monosyllables?"
"Y-yes," Wesley said, astonished.
"How the hell did you know that?" Costas demanded.
"I know him. How the hell do you know him? And... what did you say he was?"
"Angel's a vampire." Wesley stopped. "Wait. You know Angel? And he didn't tell you what he was?"
"No." Her voice shook, a denial rather than an answer. "No. Damn it, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I don't know what to... this is all fairy tales and monster movies. I don't believe you."
She spun and practically ran to the door, jolted as she hit her shoulder on the jamb in her haste. She fumbled at the handle.
"Ms. Lockley, wait!"
"Kate! Damn it, what do you think you're--?"
"I'll get the answers from him, that son of a bitch."
"Kate!" Costas snapped.
The door slammed decisively behind her as she left them both gawping in her wake.
"Jesus Christ in a cartoon," Costas said. "That's all I fucking need."
"Really, detective, is that any way to speak about a lady?" Wesley asked weakly.
"It's not a lady. It's a force of freakin' nature. Like a cyclone. Earthquake. Forest fire..."
"Yes, yes, all right," he curtailed quickly. "But if I might ask, what on Earth possessed you to bring her here?"
"I didn't bring her here. Like the saying goes, the bitch just followed me home. I was trying to get in on the case, look up the files at the station - next thing I know I'm on my way up to your apartment and she jumps on me outside the door demanding answers."
"Oh. I see." Wesley sighed. He wandered over into the kitchen area and clumsily filled the electric kettle and set it to boil. Costas grunted acknowledgement when he offered tea; the policeman slumped in the spare armchair and watched him going about making it. Wesley felt as though he were under assessment and was relieved that none of his bouts of dizziness chose to emerge.
He didn't feel light headed until he took Costas his cup of tea, returned for his own, and sat back down. He said, as distraction, "Lockley. She seems very... focused."
"Yeah. Well, she's from one of those families. Father a cop; his brothers, his father. Big tradition thing. Whole little police dynasty of their own. I don't think her old man ever forgave her for being a skirt, and don't we all get to feel it. She's been all out to drive over anything in her path to prove herself to him so long, I don't think she even consciously knows it."
Wesley felt the back of his throat tighten, and nodded understanding. "And you?"
"Me what?"
"Your family." Awkwardness crashed over him and he wished he hadn't asked.
A laugh. "I was the black sheep. My dad didn't speak to me for a week after I first joined up. Think he intended to keep at it for years, not that it lasted. After that, they just used to talk about it in whispers." He grinned crookedly, the expression oddly boyish in reminiscence.
Hesitantly, Wesley tried smile back, but wasn't yet quite up to it, too many things weighing the corners of his mouth down. "And she knows Angel."
"Uh-huh. Who'd have thought the ice bitch would be all friendly with your vamp guy." Costas stood and paced the length of the room, his forehead creased like he was racking his brains over something. "Now you come to mention it, I think I saw him with her once. Had it in the back of my mind the guy looked familiar - thought maybe he looked like someone on TV or something. But no, it was at her old man's retirement party. Someone spiked the punch, made it kind of an evening you don't forget in a hurry. Your guy, Angel, he was her date there. They were all over each other. But then, that could have been the spike. Most of the guys around the precinct always figured she swung the other way and only dragged a guy out every so often to pacify her dad."
"Oh dear."
"Really? I thought it was kinda--"
"That's not what I... never mind." Wesley blanched and waved the implied question off, not feeling especially like explaining the specifics of Angel's curse. He reassured himself his initial concerns were likely unfounded, since Angel knew quite well the dangers and if he'd shown enough responsibility to chain himself up the previous night, surely he would not risk letting another romance progress far enough to endanger his soul. "Did you manage to get any of the information about the case? I suppose if Detective Lockley was on your tail you won't have had chance."
"Wrong." Costas leaned forward in his chair to hand over a sheaf of papers. "Look over them now while I'm here and make notes, because I'm returning them straight after. Kate may not know I took these, but I wouldn't put it past her to report me even if she's convinced by your vampire friend."
"He's not my--" Wesley abandoned the protest as he flicked through the papers. "Hmm. Would you pass over the notebook and pen from the table, please?"
Costas did so. As he turned his concentration to the misappropriated files, Wesley was marginally aware of the man retreating over to the other side of the room, where he stood in front of the open window and chain-smoked. Then, when next he emerged from his cocoon of concentration, his tea was stone cold and Costas was sprawled across the bed - with his shoes still on, no less.
Wesley's mouth was dry, so he drained the cold tea anyway. He asked Costas the time and spluttered upon hearing the answer. He'd been buried in research more than two hours.
"I believe I've done as much work here as I can," he said. "You had better get these back to the police files. I shouldn't like you to get into any trouble over this." He balanced his notebook on the arm of the chair and awkwardly pulled the mass of loose paper together one-handed, returning everything to what he hoped was a semblance of its correct order. One really needed two hands to handle papers efficiently, he reflected, and that was going to be exceedingly bothersome in the future. He stood, cursed as the pen shifted and rolled off the arm of the chair onto the floor - but chose to ignore it for the present, crossing instead to where Costas sprawled. He held out the papers.
"Right." The detective swung off the bed, only grinning as he caught Wesley's disapproval. "Anyone ever tell you you're a real prissy leather-clad biker demon hunter?"
He felt his face redden, imagining the image would look even stranger on him now. "Until just about a year ago, I was principally a researcher and translator."
Costas blinked, taken aback by the frosty tone, and Wesley couldn't blame him. He was taken aback himself. "So. The files. That's your thing, then. So did you find anything?"
"I'll need time to look through the details to form any kind of hypothesis. So far, mostly all I've accomplished is a great deal of factual notation."
"Hypothesis, eh?" Costas pulled on his jacket and stuffed the papers inside it.
"Indeed." He unlocked the door for the detective. "My contact should be ringing back sometime this evening."
"I'll call back later, then. For now, better return these and work some cases that're actually assigned to me." For an instant, Costas looked distinctly hassled, and Wesley remembered with clarity first meeting the man in the hospital. If he'd been tired and overworked then, how much more so now that he'd added extracurricular demon hunting and playing babysitter for a maimed ex-Watcher to his daily itinerary? Wesley determined he must pull himself together, and quickly, and give the man space to breathe. As soon as his arm completely healed and he could go back to working by himself--
"Good luck," he said, trying to smile encouragingly.
But the glance Costas returned him as he backed out into the hallway was only distrustful.
His notes stretched across the surface of the bed in front of him - a sprawl of facts, spidery diagrams and brainstorm charts. Method, location, remembered historical parallels. His memory was good, but not eidetic, and he battered at its limits for information that wouldn't come when recalled. Even so, the memory of the photographs of the victims, scared dead eyes and fear-twisted bodies, stared back at him from between the uneven lines of his own handwriting, and he had no trouble visualising those.
Buffy craned over his shoulder, chirpily pointing out his mistakes; expanding upon them until he thought he'd go mad from the sound of her voice. When he turned around to demand she be quiet, it was his father standing there with a raised fist he used to provide punctuation as he repeated Buffy's diatribe in angry shouts, and Mr Giles lectured in the background, his voice a sensible drone.
The sound of the blows falling became louder and louder, and he woke with a choked cry to find himself sprawled across his bed, face pressed into the hard spine of the notebook, pages of his notes littered all around him. His head ached dully. In the background, the knocking sound started up again, louder than before.
He lurched up from the bed and lost his balance out of the lingering asinine expectation that he had two arms to support him. His glasses flew off as he landed face-first in grubby sheets... cut-off-shoulder-first against the edge of the mattress. The pain dwarfed that of his bruised knees and only the smothering bedclothes pressed into his nose and mouth swallowed his scream.
The knocking continued.
He made it more slowly to his feet, breathing regular breaths. Movement peppered his vision with sparks. He almost passed out fumbling around on the floor for his glasses. Slipping them on at least brought the room back into focus, and he registered the sky outside the window darkening with the first touches of evening. He cursed himself for falling asleep and hoped he hadn't slept through the cellphone ringing with Giles' return call.
Whoever it was outside bashed on the door again. Wesley finally reached it and engaged in the familiar battle with the lock. He found Kate Lockley standing outside, her obvious trepidation in stark contrast to the brusque manner with which she had earlier pushed her way in.
"Detective." Even when he stepped back in his surprise, she lingered doubtfully beyond the threshold, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
"I want to talk," she said.
"Detective Costas isn't here anymore. He went to--"
"I don't want to talk to Jack. I want to talk to you. You're the guy with the answers, he said. Said you told him about all this stuff. Said you know about these creatures... that you hunt them."
"Ms. Lockley, I frankly don't understand why you'd come here to me. We don't know each other. We met for about fifteen minutes, most of which you spent shouting I might add. You could easily talk to Detective Costas, with whom you're obviously better acquainted. As a fellow officer, surely it would be more practical for you to approach him."
She visibly sucked in a breath, paused with her mouth half-open to let it go. Continued in more measured tones, "I don't want second-hand information. And I don't want to just solve a case. I need to know about this. Angel's shutting me out. Don't you join him."
"Angel probably doesn't want you hurt." His chest tightened painfully as he registered his own words, and he pulled the door wide with a sigh. "Please."
When she stepped inside, he awkwardly touched her arm, but she shook off the gesture of comfort, he thought more from the habit of keeping her distance than any specific disdain for himself. "Would you like a drink? Tea? Coffee?" he asked, from his own habit of courtesy.
She shook her head and the first rays of the sunset seeping in through the window bounced fiery red off her hair. She sat down on the arm of one of the chairs, her legs straddling it in a way that was masculine rather than sexual, but nonetheless reminded him a little of Faith. Wesley moved papers out of the way and sank down opposite her on the edge of the bed. It was after he'd already sat that he realised how dark the apartment was - he could barely see the details of Lockley's face - but he didn't feel like getting back up just to switch on the lights.
"What did Angel tell you?" he asked.
"He showed me his face. The other one." She glanced down, and her hair fell forward, obscuring what little he could discern of her expression. When she threw it back again her mouth was stretched into a grimace with pretensions towards being a grin. "I guess I'm not having any trouble believing in this stuff anymore."
"I'm sorry."
She frowned at him. "How is it this is all so easy for you to accept? Monsters and vampires and whatever the hell else?"
"I was raised to it."
There was a pause while she waited for further explanation he wasn't willing to give. He did not know her. She had forced her way in here, been atrociously rude to his one ally, and now acted as though an explanation was her due. Finally, she said, "Then what about Jack? He didn't look to be exactly falling to pieces to me."
Wesley laughed a little. "No. But I think he suspected rather more before than you did yourself. He came to me first, in the hospital, and I contacted him later. And I don't think he's having as easy a time of it as perhaps it seems." He frowned, and asked with concern, "Do you consider yourself to be falling to pieces?"
Her own laugh was raw. "I don't know. I don't have time. I have a murderer to catch, and he's not even human." She hesitated, then said slowly, "Angel told me he fought the guy - Penn - last night. Stopped him from taking another victim, got himself skewered like a colander, which he seemed to take great satisfaction in showing me when I told him he was full of shit, but Penn got away. He'll be hunting again tonight. The state Angel's in, vampire or not, I don't know that he's in any condition to stop the guy, even if I was prepared to walk away and leave this all to him."
"I see." Wesley's throat was dry and his voice rasped.
"I need to know how to fight these things. I mean, I've seen the movies, and I figure if Angel can survive the kinds of injuries he showed me then bullets aren't going to kill them either. So are we talking like garlic, sunlight, stake through the heart?" She mimed what he presumed to be a cartoonish Dracula flinching from the sun.
"Garlic won't stop them. A Christian cross can repel them but it isn't infallible. You can kill them by--" He ran through the things that he had told Costas the previous day, barely noticing he'd slipped into the rote of lecture he'd never had chance to deliver to a Slayer, since both of his own had been hand-me-downs with more experience than he.
"You remind me of a Math tutor I had in school," she said dryly when he'd finished, her voice very quiet. The comment irked him until he reminded himself that he'd probably told her just enough to go out and get herself killed, and that Ms Lockley had just received a shock to her worldview of epic proportions and was most likely falling back on frivolous sarcasm as a defence mechanism.
Or perhaps he was simply far too accustomed by now to excusing other people's mocking, having grown so adept at it in Sunnydale.
With impeccable timing, the cellphone rang even as he formed the thought.
The shrill noise surprised him and he almost fell off the bed again. Kate Lockley visibly tried not to look amused as he hunted around, unable to remember where he'd left the device this time and clumsily swiping papers aside in his haste. She awkwardly sprang up to help when full realisation of his plight tugged at whatever heartstrings the woman possessed, and it was she who finally dug the cellphone out from the depths underneath the bed where he must have knocked it earlier, tossing and turning while he slept.
"Wesley Wyndham-Pryce." His voice came out sounding quite as flustered as he felt. Lockley perched on the bed beside him, close enough to touch, and he was perfectly aware that she did so as an excuse to listen in.
"Wesley." Giles' impatience was almost tangible. "I have the information on your vampire. Do you have a pen and paper handy?"
"Just a second." The cellphone held to his ear, he looked around for the notebook, spied it just beyond Detective Lockley's denim-clad knees, made to reach for it. And stopped. "Bugger."
The sounds of Giles choking greeted the curse. "Wesley?"
"I... ah, oh I do apologise. One moment... sorry. Sorry." He fumbled, tried to balance and wedge the tiny phone between his shoulder and his ear, waved his hand towards the notebook. Lockley interpreted the gesticulations correctly and passed it over, complete with pen. He balanced the book on his knee, open at a fresh page, and poised to write. "Right. Yes. I'm ready. Please go ahead."
The cellphone slid off his shoulder and down into his lap. Mouthing silent curses, Wesley balanced the pen a moment to retrieve it. Lockley took it somewhat delicately from his fingers and held it to his ear, thus introducing him to brand new depths of crushing humiliation. But Giles was talking, relating valuable information, and what was the more important issue here?
"I'm sorry, I missed that. Could you--?"
"What on earth's going on?" Giles demanded.
Wesley admitted to dropping the phone and brushed the matter aside. "Please, tell me what you've discovered. The likelihood is Penn will kill again tonight unless we can stop him."
A sigh carried over the connection. "All right. I did a good deal of research on the vampire, and additionally asked Willow to use her computer skills to look for information about the murders. It very much looks like this fellow Penn has been doing this a long time. He's even been in LA before."
Giles related historical data, information from numerous textual sources including the Watcher Diaries that he quite frankly should not have access to anymore (and Wesley reflected a little bitterly on the fact that it had never occurred to him to make copies, and wondered if there was any possible reason he could think up to get Giles to send copies for himself without letting slip his unintentional charade), as well as old newspaper reports and the police reports that he'd already had access to (he hoped Detective Lockley couldn't overhear too much, and tried to heavily hint that Giles skip those). Squinting in the dim light, Wesley wrote down the hotel names and locations of murders from Penn's previous tenure in Los Angeles. When Giles' information eventually ran down to a halt, the cellphone was hot against his ear, Lockley had switched hands countless times and looked to be in some discomfort as well as extreme impatience, and his hand ached clutching the pen.
"That's everything?" he asked wearily, abandoning his notes and taking back the phone. Lockley stood up and walked around the room, wincing as she stretched her limbs.
"Everything," Giles confirmed hoarsely. "Now if it's all very well, Olivia happens to only be in town a few days and I'd very much like to get back to spending some time with her."
"I really am terribly sorry to have troubled you," Wesley began.
"No." The other Watcher sighed. After a pause, he added, "I've been unnecessarily sharp with you. It's I who should apologise. It isn't your fault that the timing of this is inconvenient. You're trying to do a good thing, and you're not personally responsible for my grievances against the Council. I need to remember that. Look, if you need help again, you only have to ask. Let me know how things work out. Good luck, Wesley."
"Thank you," he said, astounded. He stared blankly into a distance that was much removed from the stained wall of his apartment, the cellphone still held to his ear for a good many seconds after Giles had rung off.
After he'd put down the phone and awkwardly thanked Detective Lockley for her assistance, he studied the notes he'd made while intermittently breaking off to answer more of the woman's questions. After about half an hour there was a rap on the door, and Lockley rose unasked to let Costas in before he had chance to protest her presumption.
"Jack. Wow, you look like shit."
"What the - what are you doing here?"
"Working my case."
The snap had a silencing effect and Costas warily sidled past her, shucking his jacket off his shoulders and tossing it onto a chair. Wesley noticed that Lockley's brusque observation wasn't far wrong. The man looked tired, if you knew how to look for the signs behind the casual front. As he was learning.
"We... appear to have acquired another ally," Wesley said weakly, flapping his hand towards Lockley. "She did return with useful information about Angel's efforts to deal with Penn last night, however."
Costas massaged his forehead with his fingers and looked pained. "Yeah. Okay. Fine. Just... get on with it."
"As you say." Wesley proceeded to outline the information he'd gathered together while Lockley shifted restlessly and Costas smoked. The latter interrupted when he was going through the details of the previous murders and investigations.
"Those are the same hotel."
"What?" Wesley said blankly.
"The Clover Wood Apartments and the Regent Garden Hotel. Same place, different name, different decades. My grandfather worked there for twenty odd years after it reopened as Clover Wood in the fifties. He used to tell dozens of stories. It's the same damn hotel."
"Right." Lockley was nodding, catching onto whatever had excited Costas judging by the sudden light in her eyes. "Serial killers, they'll often follow a pattern, and even if this one's a vampire, he's sure got pattern - I mean, same rough demographic in the group of victims, going right back to the original family. So if our guy's in LA again, and this place is still open for visitors--"
"He could be there," Costas finished.
The two cops looked at each other. "Are we gonna do this now?" Lockley asked, taking her gun out and checking it with the air of a decision already made.
Costas nodded. "We got about six hours before it gets to the timeframe the other victims were killed in. We can still stop there being a number four."
Watching them together, Wesley felt himself dwindling into the background, a feeling all too familiar. He had patterns too, set and established in Sunnydale, and it tore inside to realise that he was the outsider again now. He stood abruptly, snatched up his leather jacket and shrugged it on over whole and cut-off shoulders alike. "Yes. We should go now."
"Not you," Costas said. "Not this time. You're damn well staying here. I'm not carrying you home again. Especially not in a body-bag."
"I'm coming with you." He glared at the detective. "I'm the one possessing the knowledge about these creatures. I've barely had time to tell you a fraction of the things you need to know. I'm not sending you in to fight blind without me."
"You're not sending us anywhere," Costas snapped. "You came to me to pass on information. I don't remember any part of that that included giving me orders. You're a civilian, and you're staying here."
"I'm not going to wait around here like some useless piece of baggage!"
It was perhaps just as well Lockley interrupted before he got to hear Costas' poised response to that. "He's right. He should come," she said. Her eyes fixed to his, and he recognised the look in them. "He has a say in this. We're not leaving him behind. Just... stay out of the way if it gets rough, Mr. Wyn-- uh, Wesley. Whatever."
"Wyndham-Pryce," he filled in quietly, nodding slowly as her gaze of understanding lingered. "'Wesley' will suffice, though."
"You--" Costas shifted his anger between the two of them for several incoherent seconds, then sighed and gave up. "Great. Just... freaking... fucking... great." He spun and marched for the door.
Wesley, snatching together those papers he thought might be useful, reflected to himself with satisfaction that, as Giles had singularly failed to see, he had stopped being a Watcher when he stayed behind to help fight the Mayor... and in more ways than one.
He had involved himself, and involved he would stay. It was already too late to back out. Involvement had already taken of his flesh.
He wondered how much an arm weighed. A good deal more than a pound, for certain.