Before . . .
No, she thought, and let everything go.
She let sleep come.
When she awakened, the Rais patriarch was laid out naked on lengths of yellow and red silk near the entrance to the room. She sat up, unseen because of the wall around the fountain, unnoticed because death was in the room, and death was always jealous of attention.
Bang Rais. He’s really dead, she thought, shivering. There were many in her country who believed he would never die. She’d already heard on the news that at least a dozen people had committed suicide out of despair that he was gone.
He looked as powerful in death as he had in life. Unusually tall for an Indonesian — six foot three — muscular from working out, jaw firm and face chiseled from plastic surgery, he had been a vigorous man.
It had been a shock when his heart had stopped beating. There had been no warning, no lingering illness. According to Jusef, who had been with him when he died — in his room, chatting with his son about the future of Indonesia — there hadn’t even been a moment where his left arm had tingled or he had complained of chest pains. He had been, and then he had ceased to be.
Many thousands of Indonesians had prayed to their gods that he would take over their country. President, dictator, king, god — they didn’t care how he styled himself. If only he would lead them, and feed them, and keep their children from dying of preventable diseases.
What would happen to Indonesia now?
What will happen to the band? Will Jusef have to take over the family, or will Slamet still run things?
Meg watched as the two cousins washed the corpse. Jusef dipped the ladle into a large glass bowl of water. Fresh yellow plumeria blossoms with red centers floated in the water, giving the room a floral odor to mask the onset of decomposition.
Jusef poured the water over his father’s chest. Slamet trailed his palm through the fragrant liquid, in a motion like wiping the condensation off a car window.
Then Jusef bent down to his father’s ear and whispered, “What is it like, Father? Are you welcome in the deadlands, or are you a stranger there?”
“Don’t,” Slamet muttered. “We’ll bring him back.”
“We don’t have the Book,” Jusef said. “We don’t know how. Besides, he’s dead. We can’t raise the dead. We can only make a living man immortal.” He ladled more water. “And that’s only in theory. After all, we haven’t ever done it.”
“You’re glad,” Slamet flung at him. “You can’t even hide it.”
“Of course I’m not.” Jusef sighed. “After all this time. My father dropped dead.”
“You know he couldn’t die. You know the god favored him. Something’s wrong. Someone is interfering with our magick.”
“Slamet, it was the turn of the great wheel,” Jusef said. “It was not his karma.”
Slamet’s right, Meg thought. Jusef’s glad his father’s dead. But what are they talking about? What about bringing him back?
Raising the dead? Immortality?
What book?
She began to tremble. A voice in her mind replied, You know what book, Meg. Mary Margaret Taruma, you know.
The trembling increased. She was falling into blackness, falling into memories. . . .
When she opened her eyes, Jusef was sitting in front of her with a candle in his hand. The warm yellow light cast blue-black highlights in his short hair.
“You okay, baby?” he asked her.
She blinked. “What happened?”
“You had a seizure,” he told her. “Don’t you remember?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember anything.”
She looked around the room. They were in Jusef’s quarters on the compound. The bed was rumpled. A pair of speakers and an amp were grouped in the vast, carpeted space between the bed and the large, spacious bathroom.
“We came in to work on the funeral dance,” he reminded her. “You started having one of your seizures. I barely got it under control.”
She touched her head. It was throbbing. “Thanks,” she said softly.
“I have to help with the funeral preparations. I’ve called our doctor. You stay here and rest, all right?”
Something flickered in the back of her mind. Something about preparing for the funeral. Seated by the pond as he and Slamet talked about . . . about . . .
She strained to concentrate. Nothing came to her.
Jusef picked up her hand and kissed the back of it. “Rest, Meg.”
She nodded and allowed him to settle her back on the bed. He fluffed up a pillow and slid it beneath her head. Then he tenderly drew the covers up beneath her chin and kissed her forehead.
“I’ll be back later,” he assured her. “Sleep, okay?”
“It must be getting worse,” she said. “I haven’t had a seizure in a long time.”
“No,” he insisted.
A sad smiled passed between them. About a year ago, shortly after they had met, Meg had begun having seizures. Specialists in Dakarta had discovered that Meg had a particular type of tumor in her brain. It was extremely rare for someone her age to have one. Among other things, it caused a buildup of fluid, which was drained via a small plastic tube that ran under her skin from her skull to her neck. If one knew where to look, one could see the slight rise of the tubing along the left side of her neck.
The tumor was inoperable. She had seen in her CAT scans that it was growing. Sooner or later, it would kill her.
Most of the time she was able to live a normal life. There were days when she forgot about it altogether. A lot of that was due to the hypnosis sessions Jusef conducted. At first he had used them to help her forget other things.
She closed her eyes.
And dreamed.
He was a man, yet not a man. He lived, and yet his heart did not beat.
If she called to him, he would come for her.
She opened her mouth and whispered, “Angel.”
“What?” Angel asked as he came out of his reverie.
“I said, she’s still not answering,” Doyle answered.
Angel shook his head. The sounds of the city penetrated the last remnants of his memories of that strange night in Galway. He remembered every detail, down to clothes, smells, sensations; remembered, too, how he had tormented himself for years after he had first regained his soul. Endlessly scrutinizing each moment, turning the memories inside and out.
Had that wish, that night, brought his sire, Darla, into his life? Had that been the moment he had been damned?
There was no way to know, of course. And it doesn’t really matter, does it?
Things are the way they are. I became, and am, whatever it is I am.
But the thing was, Angel couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t stop remembering. It was what the Gypsies wanted, wasn’t it? For him to endlessly, obsessively, regret everything that led up to his transformation into one of the foulest creatures Hell ever spit back into the world?
Confession was supposed to be good for the soul. But what good could ever come of this torment?
It will keep me from ever doing it again, he thought. As long as true happiness was denied him — or, as Doyle would say, as long as I deny myself true happiness — he would keep his soul. Remorse was the quality that separated humans from the demons, at least according to the Kalderash Gypsy clan who had cursed him for murdering their favorite daughter. Did it follow, then, that the purest form of existence was suffering?
He could not, did not, believe that.
He said to Doyle, “It’s not like her to not phone.”
“And I’ve been saying that for the last five minutes,” Doyle said impatiently. “You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said, have you?”
The phone rang. He and Doyle exchanged relieved looks as Angel picked it up.
“Cordelia,” Angel began.
“No, sorry. Kate,” the police detective said. “I think I’ve got a client of yours here. Which I find extremely interesti
ng.”
“Nira? In custody?”
“In the morgue. New arrival. Well, we got the body last night, but it’s been a while on the ID.”
On the other end she was shuffling papers. He was positive she was talking about the victim whose autopsy photo was up on his screen. It made him wonder if she actually did know that he hacked whenever he needed to. If this was her way of letting him know that she was aware of his activities.
“Thai,” she filled in. “Last name is Suchar something-something-something. S-U-C-H-A-R-I-T-K-U-L. First name Decha.”
The golden woman from my vision? “Doesn’t ring a bell. Why do you think she was a client?”
“He. Had your card.”
His interest was piqued. Not many people had his cards, despite Cordelia’s efforts at spreading the word about Angel Investigations, preferably to “helpless people we can charge.” Was this connected with what he had seen in the fire last night?
“Know anything about my new best friend Decha Sucharitkul?” Kate persisted. “Height five-ten, we’re thinking. One hundred sixty, but all the fat was consumed. I’ve got people looking into his visa situation. How much you want to bet he was here illegally?”
If that was bait, he wasn’t taking it.
“What was the cause of death?”
“That would help your memory?” she asked, obviously fishing. When he said nothing, she sighed. “Burn victim. Like I told you about. Weird stuff.”
Then she delivered the zinger: “He was the body in the apartment fire last night, Angel. He’s the one I mentioned to you.”
Angel glanced at his computer. Spontaneous human combustion, he found himself thinking, in Doyle’s voice.
He’d once seen a photo of a guy who had burst into flames. The guy had been sitting in an overstuffed chair. He’d burned in half; when he’d been found, his legs were still upright. Both he and the chair had burned completely through from his waist up. His upper half and the back of the chair had been piles of ash.
He wondered if the woman in the blue fire was related to the dead man on his screen. Maybe she was his girlfriend. Or his sister.
She probably isn’t even real, he reminded himself. I saw her through magickal means, not a video dating service.
“Don’t you find it amazingly coincidental that he was there and you were there, too?”
“What kind of ID did he have?” Angel queried.
“Believe it or not, the only other thing on him was a book with his name written inside it. English as a Second Language. Funny thing. Another burn victim of mine was his English tutor. Her name was Olive LaSimone.”
“How’d you get all that?” he asked.
“Now, Angel, you know I don’t kiss and tell,” she responded.
“I haven’t got anything,” Angel told her honestly. “I’ve never spoken to him.”
“Have you spoken to other Asian immigrant types recently?” she asked. “I understand your other client of the night, Nira Surayanto, is Indonesian.”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Okay. Hold on.” She covered the phone and talked to someone for a second.
“Sounds like I might have another one,” she told him. “Let me know if you get anything on my guy, okay? Forensics says the poor bastard was sixteen at most if he was a hundred. Meanwhile, I gotta go visit another lovely crime scene. Let me know if you get anything.”
“Sure.” Or not.
They disconnected.
“Had to be Kate Lockley,” Doyle said.
“We’re leaving.” Angel reached for his coat.
“To find Cordelia?”
Angel picked up his keys. Then he winced. The wound in his head from the serpent was stinging.
“You okay, man?” Doyle asked.
The phone rang. Angel picked up again.
“Yeah?”
“Angel? Oh, my God, it’s Cordelia!” she shouted. “I’m in . . . where am I? I’m in a homeless shelter!”
“Cordelia, if you really need an advance on your salary . . .”
“Not that way in a homeless shelter,” she interrupted. “Because the police brought me here!”
“The police?”
She huffed. “Will you just come down here? Something really weird is going on, and no way am I taking the bus.”
“Okay. Give me the address.”
“His card was in my purse!” Cordelia wailed.
“Stay calm.” Angel had no idea what she was talking about.
“Calm? I had a date for a really rich guy’s funeral!”
“Okay, Cordy. We’re leaving now.”
As she gave him the address, Doyle watched with obvious concern. Angel hung up and Doyle said, “What about the police?”
“We’ll find out when we get there.”
“But she’s all right.” Doyle frowned at him. “She is all right, right?”
“Let me put it this way. The thing she was most worried about was that she’d lost some guy’s phone number.”
“Oh.” Doyle looked relieved. “Oh.” And hurt.
“I think he might have been dead,” Angel added.
“Oh?” Doyle brightened. “Those things never work out. A girl like Cordy, a dead guy would bore her to tears.”
Smiling faintly, Angel led the way out of the office and down the hall toward the covered car lot, where his convertible was parked. They got in and Angel peeled out.
Suddenly Doyle moaned. His demonic face — a sort of blue Pinhead affair, with spiky things protruding everywhere — whipped into existence. The demon convulsed and shook wildly. Angel kept driving, knowing that Doyle was having a vision. There was nothing Angel could do but wait for it to run its course.
Doyle’s human face reasserted itself as he exhaled, groaning as he did so.
“What did you see?” Angel asked.
“This one was bad,” Doyle moaned.
“Painful?”
“To see, I mean.” He grimaced. “It was a really lovely girl.” Doyle frowned hard. “I guess you’d say a young woman. And she was burned, Angel. Like that autopsy photo on the computer screen.”
“Was she dressed in gold clothes?”
Doyle looked at him curiously. “She was.”
Angel hung a left. “I saw her, too. Last night.”
Doyle was clearly startled. “You did? That’s a new one.”
“I saw her dancing.”
“She was definitely burned in my vision. Not a pretty sight.”
Then Doyle groaned and closed his eyes. “She’s in a club,” he said. “Club Ko-something. Didn’t get it all.”
Angel frowned. That was the way Doyle’s visions were sometimes: rather vague and unfocused, but ultimately, always accurate. They were images of the people The Powers That Be wanted Angel to rescue.
A burning woman, he thought. A vision Doyle and I shared. That was something new.
And it felt like something big.
A police officer materialized after the screaming started. He went dashing off and Cordelia yelled at him about her purse, but had no idea if he heard her.
It was his partner, named Jason, who walked her to the shelter. He was on his police guy phone the whole time, rattling off numbers instead of words, so she had no idea what was going on.
After she called Angel, she took off her panty hose, washed her feet, and put her shoes on without the panty hose. Now she sat on a metal folding chair with a cup of coffee in her hand and a powdered-sugar doughnut on a paper napkin on her thigh. A man was facing her — not Mr. Change Guy, who had refused to come into the shelter — but someone just like him.
“I was just a kid when Pearl Harbor was attacked,” an old man was telling her. “Kid like you. Now my son sells computers to the Japanese. Tell me about that.”
“Um,” Cordelia said. “What would you like to know?”
“Says he’s in love with the country. Wants to move to Tokyo.” He wagged his finger at her. “Now, you tell me about that.”
&
nbsp; She scrunched her face at him. “Same question?” she repeated.
All of a sudden police cars came screeching to a halt in front of the plate-glass window of the shelter. Police officers were piling out and running past.
“Wow, what’s going on?” she said, half-rising.
“Lotta crime,” the man said. “What do you think about that?”
“I think you should relocate to someplace nicer,” she said, watching the police. That person I heard screaming must be . . . badly hurt.
She crossed her fingers and hoped that that was all it was.
The men around her were oblivious. It was almost dinnertime, according to her Pearl Harbor friend, and that seemed to be the only thing on their addled minds.
She was unnerved. She kept thinking about her old boyfriend, Xander, okay, who had not been her boyfriend by the time she’d left Sunnydale. She’d always half-expected him to end up like one of these stinky old guys. But he was helping Buffy and Giles do the ghost-busting thing, and from what she’d heard, he was actually useful.
A Zeppo no longer, she thought, a bit wistfully.
The cops were still coming. And going. And talking into their walkie-phonie things. Cordelia was getting more and more nervous.
There was a stir among the men.
Goulash time, Cordelia guessed. Mac and cheese. And I’m so hungry I’d eat it if they offered me any.
And if they eat off paper plates.
But the stir was caused by the arrival of Angel and Doyle. Angel towered in the doorway, looking tall and good, but also very serious and take-charge. He had that air about him, like he could and would take care of your problems.
And preferably, charge you money, Cordelia thought as she waved. After all, people spend hundreds of dollars on their pets. Angel saves people’s lives.
She stood. “Angel, over here!”
Her doughnut fell on the floor. Her new old friend divebombed for it and popped the entire thing in his mouth without even wiping it off.
“Ew,” Cordelia said. Then, a little frantically, “Angel!”
The two men saw her this time and rushed over.
“Cordelia, what happened? What are you doing here?” Doyle demanded, all worries and frowns.