Resurrecting Ravana (24 page)

She groaned again as she left her room and went down the hall.

“The police didn’t seem too concerned,” Joyce was saying into the phone. She was sitting on the sofa, which was upright once again with cushions in place. In front of it, the coffee table was back in place. The living room looked a little better, although the walls were still bare. She didn’t notice Buffy come in. “My house looks like it’s been through a major earthquake, but they just sort of shrug it off while they take a few notes. I probably interrupted one of their doughnut breaks. Maybe because there was no sign of a break-in. I think he probably picked the lock. Though why anyone would go to that trouble to get in here is — no, nothing was stolen.”

The clock wasn’t in its usual place on the wall, and Buffy didn’t see it anywhere in the room.

“Mom? What time is it?” Her voice cracked with unshed sleep.

Joyce started. “Hang on,” she said, and pulled the cordless phone from her ear. “I didn’t hear you come in, Buff. I completely lost track of the time.” She looked at her watch. “It’s almost twenty after eight.”

“What?” Buffy’s eyes widened. “I’ve gotta get dressed!” She hurried back to her room.

“I’ll call you right back, Beth,” Joyce said, standing. After she hung up, she followed Buffy. “You’ve still got time. And I’ll drive you to school.” She stood in the bedroom doorway as Buffy searched for her clothes.

“I need to see Giles.” She made a growling sound. “It looks like somebody’s garage sale blew up in here.”

“Want some breakfast?”

“We had breakfast earlier, remember?”

“You should eat something before you go. I’ll fix you a couple of Pop Tarts. If the toaster still works.” On her way to the kitchen, she hit the redial button on the telephone.

Buffy finally found a blue long-sleeved top and a pair of pants that hadn’t been too wrinkled by spending the night in a pile on the floor. She dug her books out of the mess and put on a black jacket. In the bathroom, she quickly washed up, brushed her teeth, and ran a brush through her hair a few times. There was no time for makeup; that bruised lump on her forehead would just have to stand out for all to see.

In the kitchen, Buffy found that her mother had swept up all the broken glass and china. Some of it remained piled in the corner, out of the way, but the floor was clean and safe.

Two Pop Tarts popped up in the toaster on the counter. Still talking on the phone, Joyce put them on a small plate and handed them to Buffy.

“I’ll eat them in the car,” Buffy said. “Let’s go.”

“I’ve gotta go, Beth,” she said, nodding to Buffy. “I have to take Buffy to school, then I’ve got to finish with this mess, which will probably take all day. Okay, that’s fine, thanks. And let me know if you hear any more from that crazy woman and her ugly Indian art. ’Bye-bye.” She put the phone on the counter and said, “All right, let me get my keys.”

Buffy had already taken a couple bites of one of the Pop Tarts and was chewing. It was delicious and made her realize how hungry she was in spite of the big meal she’d eaten in the earliest hours of the morning.

She stopped chewing abruptly, staring intently at nothing in particular.

What had her mother said on the phone? Had it been something about Indian art? Native American, most likely. Yes, that was probably what she’d meant. Buffy had seen some Native American art the last time she’d visited the gallery.

“You ready?” Joyce asked, keys jangling from her hand.

Buffy tried to speak, but her mouth was full. She chewed quickly, then swallowed. “Did I hear you say something about ugly Indian art on the telephone?” Buffy asked.

“Yes.”

“As in Native American, right?”

“No, as in India. That kind of Indian. I thought you were going to eat those in the —”

Buffy dropped her Pop Tart onto the plate and put the plate on the counter. “What Indian art?”

Joyce looked at her reproachfully. “Buffy, I’m standing right here, there’s no need to shout.”

“What. Indian. Art?”

“Phyllis Lovecraft’s collection of Indian art. At least, she says it’s Indian. But it’s so ugly, I’m not sure if —”

“Her art? You never said it was
Indian
art!” Buffy’s voice had risen again and her eyes were suddenly frantic.

“I-I didn’t realize it mattered, and . . . and . . . you never asked.”

“What kind of art?”

“Indian, you know . . . elephants and Hindu gods and —”

“What did they look like?”

“Why is this so important to you, Buffy?”

“It just is, Mother, now please, tell me, what did they look like?”

“I don’t know, she had a lot of different pieces. I thought you were in a hurry to get to school.”

“Please, Mom, you’ve got to remember . . . was there a small statue of a thing with ten heads and twenty arms?”

Flustered, Joyce sighed as she looked quickly around the kitchen. “She gave me some Polaroids, but I can’t remember where —”

“You have
pictures?”
Buffy asked, clutching her mother’s upper arms.

“Buffy, would you please calm down? You’re scaring me!”

“Listen, Mom, please listen. That statuette I told you about at Denny’s last night? It’s very old, and it’s Indian, and it’s somewhere here in Sunnydale. We have to find it, or more people are going to be killed, more people are going to be eaten. So, please, Mom, tell me —”

“Eaten?”

“The photos, Mom. Do you have the photos?”

“The photos,” Joyce muttered, going to the junk drawer at the end of the counter. She opened it and shuffled through the contents. “I put them in here, but that was before I cleaned up this mess, and . . . I don’t remember seeing them —”

“He didn’t take them, did he?” Buffy asked. She felt a sudden tightening in her chest.

“Here they are,” Joyce said, taking an overstuffed business-size envelope from the cluttered drawer. Before she could hand the envelope over, Buffy reached around and snatched it from Joyce’s hand.

Buffy took the Polaroid snapshots from the envelope so fast she almost dropped them. The first one was of a woman with several arms, and Buffy quickly transferred it to the bottom of the stack, doing the same with the next few. Elephants, more unfamiliar gods, some kind of palace carved in stone.

She stopped shuffling the pictures abruptly and gasped, stared open-mouthed at one in particular.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed.

Glaring at her from the Polaroid snapshot was the Ravana statuette, surrounded by six small Rakshasa.

“She has it,” Buffy said, her whispered voice trembling. “Lovecraft.”

Chapter 18

"Y
ES,THE NAME IS FAMILIAR,”
G
ILES SAID TO
B
UFFY
. He was seated behind the front desk, and the others — including Oz, who had arrived shortly before Buffy ran in, wide-eyed and breathless — were standing around, leaning against it. Xander was sitting on it, rubbing Cordelia’s shoulders as she stood between his knees with her back to him. “Not only is the name Lovecraft familiar, but Phyllis Lovecraft, as well. But I’m not certain why.”

Giles stood and went into his office. There were shuffling sounds as he looked for something.

Willow turned to Buffy, who stood beside her. “How’s your owie?”

Buffy touched the large, discolored lump gently with her fingertips. “Ugly, but painless. Unless I touch it.”

“Don’t,” Oz advised.

“You look better than I thought you would,” Buffy said, smiling at her.

Willow shrugged one shoulder. “A little makeup.”

“I didn’t have time for makeup,” Buffy said. Her smile was gone and she frowned, suddenly distracted again, as she had been since arriving.

“You okay?” Willow asked.

Buffy nodded but said nothing.

“Benson Lovecraft was an art collector,” Giles said as he came out of the office. He was paging through a book that was, for him, surprisingly normal-looking. It was an average-size hardcover, and while it was worn and far from new, it was not ancient, like most of the books he used as a Watcher. “But he was actually much more than that,” Giles continued. “He collected only art that was, in one way or another, connected to the occult, which was his true interest.” Giles returned to his seat and continued looking for something in the book.

“Yeah, but how long ago was that?” Buffy asked. “This woman is, oh, I don’t know . . . maybe in her mid-forties, something like that.”

“That was some time ago,” Giles said. “If he were alive today, Lovecraft would be well over a hundred years old. But there is no record of his death. Over the years, it has been rumored that he is still alive on his private island off the Washington coast. Ah, here,” he whispered to himself. He placed the open book on the desk before him and scanned a page as he continued distractedly. “Lovecraft was born into great wealth and was known as a notorious — and obsessively reclusive — practitioner of the black arts. He was a contemporary and friend of the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley, as well as the author of several journals said to contain some of the most powerful and dangerous incantations ever written.” He fell silent and concentrated on the book for a moment. “There is no record of Lovecraft beyond his ninety-fifth birthday. According to this biography, he had many children, most of them illegitimate. Ah, yes, here it is. Lovecraft’s youngest son had a daughter named Phyllis.”

“What does it say about her?” Buffy asked.

“Nothing other than listing her name and identifying her as Lovecraft’s granddaughter.”

“Well, she’s a lot more than that,” Buffy said. She removed a Polaroid snapshot from her jacket pocket and slapped it onto the countertop.

Giles stood and leaned forward as the others moved in to see.

Willow gasped. “That’s it!”

Giles picked up the photograph and his eyes narrowed as he studied it. “Where did you get this, Buffy?”

“From my mother.”

They stared at her, waiting for her to continue. But she said nothing as a smile grew on her face.

“Buffy,” Giles said, “I do hope you intend to explain further.”

Buffy did explain. She told them about Phyllis Lovecraft and her determination to display her collection of Indian art.

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner, Buffy?”

“Because I didn’t know! My mom’s been complaining about it all week, but I didn’t find out the art was from India until this morning.”

She told them about the albino, as well. The limousine intrigued Giles.

“A white limousine,” he muttered. “Ethan was wearing a very expensive suit when I saw him, and he seemed quite proud of the fact that he was doing rather well for himself.”

“You think it’s his?” Buffy asked.

An explosive breath came from Giles as he shook his head. “I don’t know. Quite frankly, I don’t have the foggiest idea what most of this means. Someone is using the statuette right now, or we wouldn’t be dealing with the Rakshasa.”

Willow said, “If this Lovecraft woman is using the statue to summon Ravana, why would she be worked up about exhibiting it in the gallery?”

“Maybe she’s not the one summoning Ravana,” Oz suggested.

“Then who is?” Willow asked.

“And, if Phyllis Lovecraft has the statuette,” Buffy said, “what are they using to summon Ravana?”

“Could there be more than one of these statuettes?” Xander asked.

“If there are others, they’re fakes,” Giles replied. He stood and leaned forward on the countertop. “According to the information Willow pulled off the Internet, there is only one, and it was last seen in a London museum around the turn of the century. It is, however, quite possible that Benson Lovecraft obtained it for his collection. The statuette is precisely the kind of thing that would interest him. In my younger days, I read everything I could find on Lovecraft. I remember coming across a partial list of his acquisitions, and being astonished by the pieces he was able to find, some of them thousands of years old, some thought to be lost forever. If this woman is, indeed, Benson Lovecraft’s granddaughter, it’s possible she has access to his collection. That might be where she got it. But that doesn’t explain why she would want it to be exhibited in the gallery.”

“The last time I saw her,” Buffy said, “she was pretty desperate about that. I mean, it almost sounded like she was afraid of
not
getting her collection into the gallery.”

A silence settled over them as they all stared at the picture of the Ravana statuette. The door opened and a small group of students came into the library, talking and laughing as they went toward the stacks.

Giles sighed as he stood up straight, and the others followed his lead. “Buffy, is it possible to contact Miss Lovecraft?”

Buffy reached into her pocket again and removed a page torn from the small spiral-bound notebook her mother kept in her purse. She placed it on the counter and the others leaned forward again to read it.

“She’s at the Rocking R Motel?” Xander asked, squinting his eyes and pulling his upper lip back. “I think it’s pretty safe to say the white limousine isn’t hers.”

“Before we go any farther,” Giles said, “we need to talk with her.”

“Let’s go now,” Buffy said.

“No, Buffy,” Giles said firmly. “I don’t want you to miss any more classes this week. I’ll have to —”

Just then Miss Beakman’s junior Lit class swarmed in to the library, armed with books and highlighters.

Buffy said nothing. But she looked over at Willow to find that Willow was looking at her. They exchanged small smiles. Without a word, they both knew they were going together to see Phyllis Lovecraft.

Now.

“What can they do?” Oz asked as he drove his van through town. “Hold me back
again?”

“Buffy’s the one taking the biggest risk,” Willow said. “If Principal Snyder found out about this, he’d squash her like a bug.”

“And then my mom would squash my squashed remains,” Buffy said quietly, seriously. “Especially if she found out I was going to talk to Phyllis Lovecraft.”

After they left the library earlier that morning, Xander and Cordelia had wandered off together promising to cover for Buffy and the others if asked.