UNSEEN: THE BURNING Read online

  “Not much sun yet,” Wesley observed.

  “One step at a time,” Kayley said, warily eyeing him. “If I can deal with sunrise, maybe I can make it through the day.”

  “We were, uhh, we were just coming to see you,” Cordelia told her.

  “What for? Going to buy me breakfast this time?”

  “Are you hungry?” Cordelia asked her.

  Kayley gave her a smirk. “What do you think?”

  They took her to a nearby coffee shop. On the way, Cordelia introduced Kayley and Wesley. “This is Wesley,” she said. “He knows more about vampires than anyone who hasn’t been one.”

  “Do you know Kostov?” Kayley asked.

  “Well, no, I haven’t had the pleasure,” Wesley replied.

  “Have you read Anne Rice’s books? Or Laurell Hamilton’s?”

  “Er, there’s a lot more to this than . . . what’s found in books, Kayley,” Wesley said. Before he could elaborate, though, a waitress came and took their breakfast orders. Tiny Kayley surprised Cordelia by ordering scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, and oatmeal. The waitress poured coffee and brought a pot of tea for Wesley.

  “Look, if you haven’t even read the basic books I don’t see how you can claim to be an expert,” Kayley said.

  “I never said I was an expert,” Wesley rejoined. “But neither are those authors. They’re making up stories. The reality is very different.”

  “I’ve never really been sure there is a reality,” Kayley admitted. She sipped from a cup of coffee that seemed nearly as big around as her head. “I know Pat believes, and she’s convinced that this Kostov guy is the real thing, you know? But so far, he hasn’t met the rest of us. I’m not totally convinced.”

  “I wouldn’t tell you this if Cordelia and I weren’t worried about you,” Wesley said. “But we are. And it is. Real, I mean. I don’t know if Kostov is. We haven’t been able to find any mention of him in the literature. But vampires are certainly real, and they’re nothing to play around with.”

  “You sound like my dad talking to me about booze or something. Next thing, you’ll go to the bar and make yourself a martini.”

  Cordelia laughed. “I know he comes off that way sometimes,” she said. “I think it’s the British thing. But he’s right. Vampires aren’t a game. They’re out there, and their life is nothing you’d want for yourself.”

  “How do you know what I want? You don’t really know me, Cordy.”

  Cordelia looked at her, so small and fragile-looking in the restaurant booth. She saw a bit of herself there. Not that she had ever been a shrinking violet or anything. She had always been beautiful and well-loved, the apple of her father’s eye. She had skated through school, gaining acceptance to several top colleges and universities—which she couldn’t afford to go to, after her father got in trouble with the IRS—yet masking her scholarly ability sufficiently to win the popularity game hands down.

  But there were times in any girl’s life when she felt like she suspected Kayley did now. When she first heard that Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg had formed the “I Hate Cordelia” club, in grade school, for instance. She didn’t really care at the time what Xander and Willow thought of her, but the idea that anyone would think so badly of her to make it the basis of a club hurt.

  She believed that Kayley was carrying around some of those kinds of feelings. She was cast out, neglected by those around her, unwanted. Whether it was real or all in her head didn’t really matter.

  “I think I know you better than you think, Kayley.”

  “Right,” Kayley scoffed. “Now you sound like my mom. Or my mom’s shrink. Or both.”

  “You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to be, Kayley,” Wesley offered. “But if you’re going to sit here and eat our food, you might as well listen to what we have to say with a relatively open mind. You might actually hear something useful.”

  “Okay, sorry.” Kayley stopped talking as the waitress came back with their food and spread it around the table. When she was gone, Kayley continued. “I’ll stop being so judgmental. Or try to be. It’s just, you both sound a little nuts, you know?”

  “I’m sure we do,” Wesley said with a chuckle. “Perhaps we are. But then, perhaps we also know what we’re talking about. Do you really want to take the chance that we don’t?”

  “Okay, then, start talking,” Kayley said. “So there are real vampires. And their lives suck.”

  “So to speak,” Cordelia added.

  “Not lives, per se,” Wesley clarified. “Since they’re not alive, but rather undead. Which means, first they have to die. An unpleasant activity for anyone.”

  “It’s not the sexy, exciting thing you’ve seen in the movies,” Cordelia said. “It isn’t this great-looking vampire guy tenderly piercing your throat with his teeth and then sensuously drawing your blood out of you with his incredible suction powers.”

  “That’s right,” Wesley continued. “What’s really happening, when a human is turned, is that he or she is killed, and then the human body becomes the host for a demon to inhabit. There’s very little of you left in you, mostly the demon who has taken over your lifeless corpse.”

  “So you might think it’s all good, gooey fun, at first. But when it’s over you’re not home anymore, and there’s some ancient evil nastiness walking around inside what used to be Kayley.”

  The girl shivered inside her oversized denim shirt. She hugged her own arms.

  “Not a pleasant image, is it?” Cordelia asked.

  “You know, I’m not so sure I want these eggs anymore,” she said. “I’m thinking about going vegan, you know?”

  “You’d get over that quickly, once you’d been turned,” Wesley told her. “Of course, it wouldn’t really be you. But there might be just a trace of you still inside there— just enough to be appalled at yourself whenever you took another victim. Most of the victims of vampires don’t turn themselves, they just die, the blood drained from their bodies. None of that rising in three days nonsense. That’s a fairy tale.”

  Kayley looked at both of them, in turn. “This is for real? You guys aren’t making this up to creep me out?”

  “We are telling it to you to creep you out,” Cordelia confessed. “But we’re not making it up. And we have way more experience with it than we’d care to.”

  “Listen, I think I should go. I gotta think about some stuff, you know? Maybe talk it over with some of the other girls. I don’t think Pat would even listen, but Erin and Keri might, and maybe Amanda or Jean.”

  “If they want to talk to us, you know how to reach us,” Cordelia said. “And please, don’t do anything without giving me a chance to talk to you again first.”

  “Okay,” Kayley agreed.

  “Cross your heart?”

  Kayley made an X over her chest. “And hope to die.”

  Angel couldn’t wait any longer.

  The day was still overcast, but that could burn off at any time. He had to take the chance while there was no direct sunlight. He threw one of Cordelia’s blankets over himself and made a dash for his car. He leaped into the GTX, glad the roof was up, and stepped on it, racing across town toward the Flamingo.

  When he arrived there, he pulled into the parking lot and pulled the blanket over himself again. The Flamingo was an old L.A. motor court, a collection of log cabin-style cottages arranged in rows around a cracked and weedy drive. A pool between the rows had long since been emptied, and some of the growth inside it was tall enough to be seen over the rim. The car to the door of cottage C was only a few steps, and the sun was still shrouded by clouds, so he made it without damage, the blanket only smoldering a little. Knocking once, he pushed open the door and hurried inside, glad a vampire only had to be invited over any given threshold once.

  Inside the room, Carlos stood trembling, tears running down his narrow cheeks, next to an upside-down bed. When he saw Angel he pointed at it, sobbing.

  “Isabel?” Angel asked.


  A muffled shout came from underneath.

  “She’s under there?” Angel asked. The boy nodded.

  “Hang on, Isabel,” Angel said. He went to her side, bent over, and lifted the heavy motel bed high enough for her to slide out.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I-I think so,” she said. Angel helped her to her feet.

  “I was taking a nap,” she said. “I thought I heard the door, but it was like part of my dream. Then the next thing I knew, my bed was spinning over, and I was on the floor, and then the whole thing landed on me.”

  Carlos went to his mother and threw his thin arms around her hips. “She’s okay,” Angel told him. He turned the bed over and put it back in place, lining its feet with the indentations in the worn blue carpet.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” Isabel asked, sitting on the bed. “I mean, I’m glad you came by. But why? Have you seen Rojelio?”

  “I’ve seen him.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’ll be better once he’s out of jail.”

  “Do you think you can get him out?”

  “I don’t know. I really came to see Carlos. To try an experiment.”

  “What? What do you want to do with him?”

  “Just watch,” Angel said. He knelt next to Carlos. “You know what?” he said softly. “I think you and your dad both have a pretty incredible ability. But I don’t think either of you knows how to control it. Controlling it comes with practice, and you haven’t practiced because you didn’t know you had it. Does that make sense?”

  Carlos nodded silently.

  “Here’s what I want you to do. Move that pillow.”

  He pointed to a pillow that had been tossed to the floor when the bed turned upside down. Carlos started to walk toward it. Angel held him fast.

  “No. From here. Just with your mind. Think about the pillow moving. Imagine it moving. See it move, in your mind.”

  Carlos shook his head, looked at his mother. His eyes were full of tears.

  “I’m afraid,” he said.

  “Angel,” Isabel said. “I don’t think—”

  “It’s important,” Angel insisted. “It can help your father. Just move the pillow. It’s not heavy. It’s not hard. It’s just a pillow.”

  “But . . .”

  “Move it.”

  Carlos stared at the pillow. Angel could feel the boy’s whole body tense. His small fists were clenched. His lips pressed tightly together.

  The pillow moved.

  Almost imperceptibly at first, scooting less than an inch along the wall, away from Carlos. Then, as if building up steam, it slid another couple of inches, and then it sped the last couple of feet to the far wall.

  Carlos was sweating. And smiling.

  “You did it,” Angel said, clapping the boy on his bony back.

  “Carlos,” Isabel said. “That was amazing!” She turned to Angel. “Does that mean . . .?”

  “It’s been him all along? Yes, I think it has. Only, like I said, he didn’t know he could do it, so he’s had no control over it. The stress of his father being arrested and jailed has been tearing him up inside, and his emotions manifested themselves in this way.”

  “Creating chaos in the household to match the chaos in his heart,” Isabel said softly.

  “That’s right.”

  She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around her son. “I am so sorry this has happened, Carlos,” she said, beginning to weep.

  “It’s not your fault,” Angel told her. “Or your husband’s, I think. But we’ll make it right.”

  “Thank you, Angel,” she said. “For this. And everything else.”

  Angel smiled. He knew what he came to find out. On his way to the door, he scooped up Cordy’s blanket.

  Chapter 10

  THE TRIP TO L.A. WAS UNEVENTFUL, WHICH WAS FINE with Willow. She’d had enough of events; as far as she was concerned, the rest of her life could fall into the uneventful category and she’d be happy.

  There were no unexplained shadows, no assaults on the car. A couple of hours after they left, they pulled onto the grounds of a palatial estate in the hills off Laurel Canyon. There was a security gate at the road. Salma entered a password into an electronic box, the gate swung open, and they found themselves driving up a thickly forested road. A quarter mile later, they caught their first glimpse of the house. It rose high into the air, three stories tall, built in the Mediterranean style so popular in southern California.

  “Wow,” Willow said. “That’s beautiful.” She continued to admire it as they closed in on it. The acre or so leading up to it was carefully trimmed, rich green lawn. “Did I say ‘Wow?’ ”

  “It’s quite a house,” Buffy agreed.

  “Thank you,” Salma said offhandedly. The car came to a stop in a cobblestoned courtyard surrounded by two outthrust wings of the house. The walls were pure white stucco, broken by wood-framed windows and balconies. Numerous chimneys poked up from the red tile roofs.

  “What’s it like to be so rich?” Willow asked. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s kind of a pain sometimes, but it’s nice, too,” Salma replied. “It means more to my parents than it does to me, I guess. They enjoy having lovely things.”

  “That’s a hobby I wouldn’t mind taking up,” Buffy said. “If, um, I wasn’t so busy doing other things.”

  By the time they were out of the car there were three servants there to get their bags. They each greeted Salma with hugs and kisses.

  Willow pressed herself close to Buffy and whispered in her ear. “Too bad they don’t like her.”

  “Yeah,” Buffy said dryly. “The lack of love is palpable.”

  With the greetings over and their suitcases carried into the house, Salma turned back to Willow and Buffy. “I think you’ll like my grandmother, Willow,” she said. “Doña Pilar. She’s a bruja.”

  “A what-ha?” Buffy asked.

  “It’s like a witch,” Willow explained. “Mexican folk magic.”

  “Because this looks so much like an old cabin somewhere in the Mexican outback, or whatever it’s called,” Buffy said.

  “My grandfather made a lot of money in industry,” Salma told them. “But he and my grandmother both come from very poor families. My grandmother lived in a village deep in the interior. Her mother was the town’s bruja before her, and passed down her skills.”

  “I can’t wait to meet her,” Willow said cheerfully.

  “I’ll introduce you. She’s probably in the kitchen. She nearly always is.”

  After an hour of meeting relatives and sitting down to a gigantic lunch, Buffy excused herself and went to the room that had been offered to her. She was tired and just wanted to veg out for a while before dark. That was when she would be needed, if she was at all.

  The room was as gorgeous as the rest of the house. The furnishings, Salma explained, were all antiques from the Spanish colonial period, shipped up from Mexico. They had belonged to the wealthiest Spaniards in the country, rich landowners. Buffy lay back on the bed and closed her eyes for a while, slightly troubled by how much history this bed, and that armoire, and the rest of the furniture in the room, must have seen.

  It all reminded her of Angel. He had also seen a lot of history.

  Which, although she didn’t really think of herself as “history,” included her.

  She was painfully aware that she was in his town now. And no matter how awkward it might feel, she had to see him, as soon as she had an opportunity.

  When it became clear that sleep wasn’t likely, she decided to get up and check out the house. Salma had impressed upon them that nothing was off limits, that they should make themselves feel completely at home. While Buffy knew that she would never be really at home in a palace like this, she thought it was worth making the effort.

  Besides, maybe there was something she could learn about Nicky. Something that would help her track him down. He had lived most of his life here, and maybe the things tha
t had started him down—well, whatever path he was on—had left some traces here. Giles had always told her not to overlook someone’s past if she needed to predict their future. She left her room and went out into the vast adobe-walled, wood-beamed hallway.

  She felt like the house was a place where she could be lost and never found again. It was castlelike in that respect—there seemed to be whole wings that went unused, although they were furnished and spotlessly clean. As she passed from one wide corridor into another, through heavy wooden doors that were at least nine feet tall, she felt as if she were passing into some foreign land from which return was not guaranteed.

  It was here, looking for Nicky’s room, or suite, or wing, or whatever he had, that she found the library. The room must have been fifty feet long and almost as wide. The walls were lined with shelves that reached twenty feet high. Partway up was a brass rail that a tall ladder slid along to make the higher shelves reachable. In the center of one end wall there was a big stone fireplace, tall enough for Buffy to stand up in. The only wall that wasn’t covered in bookshelves was the outside wall, which was broken by gigantic casement windows, easily a dozen feet high, some of which were open to catch the day’s breeze. Leather chairs were spaced randomly around the room, each one with its own reading light and small chair-side table.

  Giles would love this room, Buffy thought. She roamed the room, scanning the shelves as she went. The books seemed to be a diverse mix—fairly recent bestsellers shelved alongside complete leatherbound editions of Shakespeare, Dickens, and other classics. One entire wall was nonfiction, including everything from literary biographies to cookbooks to treatises on how to survive in the wilderness.

  “Miss Summers?”

  The voice startled her. She turned to the door. A young man, mid-twenties, maybe, had come in. He wore a maroon polo shirt, the sleeves of which were straining to hold in his biceps, with khaki pants. His thick black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. His handsome face was placid and open, with well-defined features and a strong jaw. He smiled at Buffy and extended a hand as he walked toward her.

  “I wanted to introduce myself. I’m Elfredo,” he said. “I work for the de la Natividad family.”