Ripped (1/2) - Giles/Oz.
Title: Ripped. (1/2)
Author: Amber (bentley)
Pairing/Characters: Oz/GIles.
Rating: R.
Disclaimer: Not mine! :(
Summary: Moony craved Ripperfic long before I started watching Buffy. I started to delve into the past before realising that’s not where Ripper lies, not truly. For Moony on her 20th birthday.
Warnings: BtVS spoilers (S1-S7).
Addiction never really leaves.
Magic drips indigo inside Rupert’s head. He tries to forget those dark summers, but they creep upon him unexpectedly. Standing in line at the shops and he feels himself wrapped around by phantasmal limbs. Long limbs tangled in a smoke-filled room. Lying in bed, unable to sleep, he breathes memories. Darkness so pure it blinds and fills and overwhelms. Jagged fragments rip through his days and nothing seems real.
It’s as though he has spent twenty years drawing a blade across the whetstone and only now desires to test it on his skin.
He manages, of course. Even when lucidity is long gone he still hangs the flimsy gauze of pretending in front of himself. Being there for the children. Doing his duty. Watching.
Buffy scrapes his surface and finds Giles under the Watcher, and later she finds Rupert under Giles, but she never discovers Ripper. She will never understand his guilt and his self-deprecation because she doesn’t see them - or at least, not as anything more than Giles worrying, Giles polishing his glasses and wrinkling his brow and stuttering.
But Ripper lies dormant, there and yet not, present in melancholy and glee, in reading and music and sex. Incorporated into every aspect of his life until he’s hiding behind what he’s hiding from. Giles takes tiny sips of his not-so-former self so the whole doesn’t drown him.
The memories came back with the candy but that was youth and laconic disregard for authority. Inside Giles now is a core of dark magicks and sarcasm that have grown and matured with him, as familiar as the curl of his fingers or his slowly receding hairline.
Ripper is the knife against his throat.
Watching. He has had enough of watching and enough of action, and when Buffy announces her plans to seek out the other Slayers he takes his leave. Silently in the night, a creeping rat, an outcast.
He travels to Los Angeles, driving in cool desert twilight. Something subconscious urges him to seek Angel, as though the ensoulled vampire will understand what it’s like to lurk beneath the surface of oneself. Yet he only lingers briefly on the outskirts of the city, drinking coffee and watching the sun setting over the Hollywood sign.
He turns to Las Vegas, remembering with pinpricks of remorse that he had dreamed of Vegas when he was nineteen. It has its own human darkness that called to him then and calls to him now. The night hangs heavy around him and he keeps seeing the faces of innocents across his vision, his hands unsteady at the wheel. The name Ethan Rayne rings in his ears. For whom does this bell toll?
Everything is awful. Prostitutes and cheap cigarette smoke and raucous laughter. He stays at Circus Circus and the lights hurt his eyes. People crush against him when he attempts to watch the trapeze artists. He buys a bottle of whiskey and retires to his room, where he finds Oz waiting.
“Hey.” As though it hasn’t been a few years, a few almost-Apocalypses. Rupert reverts to Giles, to courtesies and polite mouthings. He puts the bottle on the counter and trails off.
Oz answers the question he doesn’t ask. “I smelled you. I’ve got a gig nearby tonight. Or I did have…” he checks his bare wrist, then glances up at the clock on the microwave “…Ten minutes ago. No big. They probably wouldn’t have paid anyway.”
Giles looks at Oz. He is skinny, and not healthily so. Insomnia, or something worse, tracks dark rings around his eyes. His hair is black, and limp, and cut unevenly. Giles worries, and then seethes that he can fall back into old habits so easily.
There is silence. It is neither companionable nor awkward. Giles gives up and pours them both a drink.
“It’s been a long time. I suppose I ought to tell you about the shambles we left Sunnydale in.”
“I know already,” says Oz, and downs his drink like it’s water.
Giles’ eyebrows rise. “Oh? So you’ll know all about Spike’s heroic sacrifice, and our exhausted flight from the crater formerly known as home in what I can only describe as a school bus?”
Oz smiles as though Giles’ sarcasm isn’t directed at him. “No. But I know the basics. First evil, big bad, all that. I… hear things.”
“So you’re still-“
“A werewolf? Yeah.”
“Dabbling in the occult,” finishes Giles. Oz runs his thumb around the rim of the glass.
“I keep my ear to the ground, is all. There’s places around here that work the same way as Willy’s back home, and while a wolf tends to scare off some of the customers I’m not entirely unwelcome.”
Something in his tone hints to Giles that Oz has changed since they last crossed paths, and he feels an unreasonable spark of fear smoulder to life in his belly. “What are you doing here?”
“Told you. Smelled you, wondered what you were doing here, thought we might catch up…”
“Oz.”
Oz rolls his eyes. “All right, all right, so you’re not stupid. I work for someone.” At Giles’ look, he holds his hands up in a gesture that abruptly and irrationally reminds Giles of Buffy. “You’ve gotta work for someone in this town, or you’re dead. It’s not too bad. They keep me in doggie treats.” His smile is vicious.
Of course he is poor, of course he is hurt, of course he is desperate. Giles suddenly remembers what they say about cornered animals.
“What do you want.” Rupert doesn’t pose a question: they always want something. Money is power is acceptance is safety. He’s walked that underworld before. He knows.
“The usual. New President, better artists on the stereo, world peace. You mean from you?” He hisses between his teeth, thinking.
“Were you sent here to kill me?”
Oz laughs, and it’s as rare and precious and a Tsang Dynasty statue. The tension in the room snaps like ice. “Hell no. Just to threaten you, get you to move on to the next down. Sunnydale’s not the only place with bad stuff going down, and people thought you might try sticking your nose into the wrong places.”
“I’m not here to cause any trouble.”
“Won’t make a difference. You’re close to the Slayer. You’re a threat. These people…”
“People?”
“Well, demons. They’re scared, Giles. Used to be, one Slayer, thousand demons… a few casualties but they could go on. Now there’s more Slayers. The balance is fucked. War is coming.”
“I’ve had enough of war.”
“Spoken like a true soldier.” Oz rubs the heel of his hand over his forehead, tired and twitchy. “Go. Buy a plane ticket. Call it retirement.”
It would be pointless to debate that retiring from being a Watcher is impossible, no matter how many mid-life crisis soul-seeking trips he makes. Instead, Giles gives the suggestion careful consideration. He could go to Egypt, or Italy, or some other obscure place where he’d be foreign, isolated, and safe. “If I did, would you accompany me?”
Oz glances ironically at him. “Yeah, that’d be nice, if you don’t mind lugging around my headless corpse.”
“What on earth is going on here, Oz?” Giles spreads his hands. “This is hardly you.”
“It wasn’t me, back in highschool. But people change, Giles. Sometimes they leave their darkness behind. Sometimes they find the darkness within themselves.” He gives Giles a knowing glance. “Waking up three nights a month naked and hoping the blood on your lips is your own… it changes a man. I tried denying the monster with all that spiritual Buddhist bullshit, and it didn’t work.”
“Now you embrace it,” says Giles, finally comprehending. It was the longest speech he thinks he has ever heard Oz give.
“No. Now I am the monster.”
Giles grimaces, but finds himself drawn to Oz’s gaze. The darkness flickering there pulls at him. Yes, says Ripper. He is like you.
Maybe Giles is a monster, too.
Giles kisses him as though he is drawing the very life from him, all the truth and secrets and unspoken words. As though he can replace one addiction with another. He slides a thumb and then a palm over the skin of Oz’s arm and thinks - yes. Yes, he could easily drown himself in this. Sex and magick and alcohol have always been tangled in his mind and by fulfilling one bleak need he seems to sate them all. That was the secret behind Ethan, behind Olivia.
Oz pulls back first, eyes fluttering open. “I still won’t come with you.”
“Who said I was leaving?” says Giles, and kisses him again.
Oz says goodbye a while later, clothes rumples and lips red. “I’ll be back,” he almost-promises. Giles turns the light out when he leaves and sits in the dark with the rest of the scotch, thinking about thinking.
It is two days later when he runs into Oz again. Vegas isn’t all grunge and sleaze - in the middle of summer the pavement is baked beneath his feet and the sky is a clear unalterable blue. A couple of children ride by on bicycles, shrieking wordlessly at each other. After the sound and fury of Sunnydale’s destruction, everything seems loud and chaotic. Oz is sitting on a park bench with a paper bag and a black eye. Waiting.
“What happened?” Giles asks immediately.
“It’s nothing.” Oz offers him the wry smile Giles remembers so well and it strips years from his careworn face. “Werewolves heal quick, don’t you know.”
Giles plucks the bag from his hand, but the bottle is mostly full. Oz shrugs away the question he doesn’t ask. “I’ve gotta while away the time somehow. From what I hear, you were a fairly proficient alcoholic yourself.”
“Hardly,” says Giles. Not by Sunnydale standards, anyway.
“Uh huh. So, you’re still in town?”
“I was waiting for you to return.” Giles is surprised by the quiet intensity in his own voice. He must not forget that this boy is a means to an end, not to mention quite a few years younger than himself.
“You know, you don’t have to look out for me,” says Oz after a pause, his expression as unreadable as always. “Whatever you came here for, it wasn’t that.”
And there it is, that empathic acceptance of all of Giles, even the secret crevices that house his darkest subconscious. Giles bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.
“Do you want to get some lunch?” Oz asks. At Giles’ nod, he stops in his tracks and turns back the way they’ve been walking. “I found a brilliant little Japanese place a few weeks ago. C’mon, we can catch the bus.”
Japanese, to Giles, means raw fish and rice, but Oz orders for him and Giles is surprised to find out how much he likes the simplicity of his udon noodles, the broth and meat and vegetables. Oz handles chopsticks like he’s been using them all his life, but his hands shake and when Giles hesitatingly suggests returning to his hotel room, he declines.
“Places to be, people to watch,” he explains.
He pays the bill from a thick wad of twenties.
The next time they speak is over the phone. Oz calls his room, and Oz on the phone is a wholly unnerving experience; his words seem clipped without the graceful charisma of his body language behind them.
“I can’t do this.”
Giles cradles the phone in his collarbone as he flips the omelette. He’s raised an eyebrow before he remembers Oz can’t see it. “Us? Why not?”
“You wouldn’t get it. There are people in this town who’d sell their mothers, or worse.”
“I think you’d be surprised how well I understand,” says Giles.
“Then understand that you make me vulnerable,” says Oz, and hangs up.
The omelette burns, but Giles eats it anyway.
People like Rack are easy to find in the big city. The building looks dilapidated on the outside, but plush on the inside. Giles steps over the twitching body of a young girl whose breathing is coming fast and shallow, and pushes past the other demon waiting.
“Whaddya want, old man?” The boy inside can’t be more than fifteen. He chews gum and radiates power. It could’ve been Giles, twenty years ago.
“The usual. A place in the world. A new suit. World peace.” The Ripper sneer falls easily into place. “Oh, from you?”
The boy barely glances up from the heavy tome he’s reading, feet propped up on his desk. “Information, or magic?”
“Both.”
“It’ll cost ya.”
Rupert pulls out his wallet and the boy laughs. “Do I look like I need cash?” He finally puts his book down. “Let’s start with something easy. Whaddya wanna know?
“Who runs this town?” Rupert demands. “How many demons live here? Why have they banded together? What are they planning?”
Studying him closer, the boy stands. “You’re British,” he says, tone decidedly unfriendly. “I think I know who you are. Might be I’ve been warned about you.”
“Might be,” says Rupert. “If so, then you know I need some protection.”
A harsh bark of a laugh. “Protection? From those guys? Sure, gramps, I can give you some protection. Five hundred bucks and I’ll protect you right outta town.”
“I’m not leaving.”
The kid seems to lose interest. “Whatever, man. Look, I’m a dealer, not an informant. I’ll trade you a few rites for a spoonful of blood.”
Giving away his blood to strangers - especially magic-using strangers - is beyond dangerous. But he isn’t leaving this town without a scrawny werewolf by his side.
Rupert nods.
Twenty-four hours later, he’s in the back of a warehouse drawing a circle of protection on the grimy concrete.
Three days after that he has a meeting with the people who run Vegas. There are ways of getting attention among magic users. Rupert has used all of them. While driving to the rendezvous point he spots a familiar figure shifting from foot to foot on the sidewalk of the strip. He pulls over.
“Get in,” he demands, and Oz does.
“Where’re we going?” he asks, drumming his fingers on the dashboard. His wrists are dark with rope-burn and there’s blood under his fingernails. “You’re not kidnapping me, are you?”
“Hardly.”
“Shame. Could’ve been fun.”
“We’re going to see a lawyer about a dog,” says Rupert, and Oz freezes, his hands curling into balls.
“Don’t mess with the law firm, man,” he says. “Those guys are bigtime.”
“They might be our way out of this situation,” says Rupert as though nothing his wrong.
“Or they might be at the heart of it. Are you insane?”
Giles knows it’s a rhetorical question, but he answers anyway.
“Oh,” says Oz, relaxing again. “I guess that makes two of us.”
Author: Amber (bentley)
Pairing/Characters: Oz/GIles.
Rating: R.
Disclaimer: Not mine! :(
Summary: Moony craved Ripperfic long before I started watching Buffy. I started to delve into the past before realising that’s not where Ripper lies, not truly. For Moony on her 20th birthday.
Warnings: BtVS spoilers (S1-S7).
Addiction never really leaves.
Magic drips indigo inside Rupert’s head. He tries to forget those dark summers, but they creep upon him unexpectedly. Standing in line at the shops and he feels himself wrapped around by phantasmal limbs. Long limbs tangled in a smoke-filled room. Lying in bed, unable to sleep, he breathes memories. Darkness so pure it blinds and fills and overwhelms. Jagged fragments rip through his days and nothing seems real.
It’s as though he has spent twenty years drawing a blade across the whetstone and only now desires to test it on his skin.
He manages, of course. Even when lucidity is long gone he still hangs the flimsy gauze of pretending in front of himself. Being there for the children. Doing his duty. Watching.
Buffy scrapes his surface and finds Giles under the Watcher, and later she finds Rupert under Giles, but she never discovers Ripper. She will never understand his guilt and his self-deprecation because she doesn’t see them - or at least, not as anything more than Giles worrying, Giles polishing his glasses and wrinkling his brow and stuttering.
But Ripper lies dormant, there and yet not, present in melancholy and glee, in reading and music and sex. Incorporated into every aspect of his life until he’s hiding behind what he’s hiding from. Giles takes tiny sips of his not-so-former self so the whole doesn’t drown him.
The memories came back with the candy but that was youth and laconic disregard for authority. Inside Giles now is a core of dark magicks and sarcasm that have grown and matured with him, as familiar as the curl of his fingers or his slowly receding hairline.
Ripper is the knife against his throat.
Watching. He has had enough of watching and enough of action, and when Buffy announces her plans to seek out the other Slayers he takes his leave. Silently in the night, a creeping rat, an outcast.
He travels to Los Angeles, driving in cool desert twilight. Something subconscious urges him to seek Angel, as though the ensoulled vampire will understand what it’s like to lurk beneath the surface of oneself. Yet he only lingers briefly on the outskirts of the city, drinking coffee and watching the sun setting over the Hollywood sign.
He turns to Las Vegas, remembering with pinpricks of remorse that he had dreamed of Vegas when he was nineteen. It has its own human darkness that called to him then and calls to him now. The night hangs heavy around him and he keeps seeing the faces of innocents across his vision, his hands unsteady at the wheel. The name Ethan Rayne rings in his ears. For whom does this bell toll?
Everything is awful. Prostitutes and cheap cigarette smoke and raucous laughter. He stays at Circus Circus and the lights hurt his eyes. People crush against him when he attempts to watch the trapeze artists. He buys a bottle of whiskey and retires to his room, where he finds Oz waiting.
“Hey.” As though it hasn’t been a few years, a few almost-Apocalypses. Rupert reverts to Giles, to courtesies and polite mouthings. He puts the bottle on the counter and trails off.
Oz answers the question he doesn’t ask. “I smelled you. I’ve got a gig nearby tonight. Or I did have…” he checks his bare wrist, then glances up at the clock on the microwave “…Ten minutes ago. No big. They probably wouldn’t have paid anyway.”
Giles looks at Oz. He is skinny, and not healthily so. Insomnia, or something worse, tracks dark rings around his eyes. His hair is black, and limp, and cut unevenly. Giles worries, and then seethes that he can fall back into old habits so easily.
There is silence. It is neither companionable nor awkward. Giles gives up and pours them both a drink.
“It’s been a long time. I suppose I ought to tell you about the shambles we left Sunnydale in.”
“I know already,” says Oz, and downs his drink like it’s water.
Giles’ eyebrows rise. “Oh? So you’ll know all about Spike’s heroic sacrifice, and our exhausted flight from the crater formerly known as home in what I can only describe as a school bus?”
Oz smiles as though Giles’ sarcasm isn’t directed at him. “No. But I know the basics. First evil, big bad, all that. I… hear things.”
“So you’re still-“
“A werewolf? Yeah.”
“Dabbling in the occult,” finishes Giles. Oz runs his thumb around the rim of the glass.
“I keep my ear to the ground, is all. There’s places around here that work the same way as Willy’s back home, and while a wolf tends to scare off some of the customers I’m not entirely unwelcome.”
Something in his tone hints to Giles that Oz has changed since they last crossed paths, and he feels an unreasonable spark of fear smoulder to life in his belly. “What are you doing here?”
“Told you. Smelled you, wondered what you were doing here, thought we might catch up…”
“Oz.”
Oz rolls his eyes. “All right, all right, so you’re not stupid. I work for someone.” At Giles’ look, he holds his hands up in a gesture that abruptly and irrationally reminds Giles of Buffy. “You’ve gotta work for someone in this town, or you’re dead. It’s not too bad. They keep me in doggie treats.” His smile is vicious.
Of course he is poor, of course he is hurt, of course he is desperate. Giles suddenly remembers what they say about cornered animals.
“What do you want.” Rupert doesn’t pose a question: they always want something. Money is power is acceptance is safety. He’s walked that underworld before. He knows.
“The usual. New President, better artists on the stereo, world peace. You mean from you?” He hisses between his teeth, thinking.
“Were you sent here to kill me?”
Oz laughs, and it’s as rare and precious and a Tsang Dynasty statue. The tension in the room snaps like ice. “Hell no. Just to threaten you, get you to move on to the next down. Sunnydale’s not the only place with bad stuff going down, and people thought you might try sticking your nose into the wrong places.”
“I’m not here to cause any trouble.”
“Won’t make a difference. You’re close to the Slayer. You’re a threat. These people…”
“People?”
“Well, demons. They’re scared, Giles. Used to be, one Slayer, thousand demons… a few casualties but they could go on. Now there’s more Slayers. The balance is fucked. War is coming.”
“I’ve had enough of war.”
“Spoken like a true soldier.” Oz rubs the heel of his hand over his forehead, tired and twitchy. “Go. Buy a plane ticket. Call it retirement.”
It would be pointless to debate that retiring from being a Watcher is impossible, no matter how many mid-life crisis soul-seeking trips he makes. Instead, Giles gives the suggestion careful consideration. He could go to Egypt, or Italy, or some other obscure place where he’d be foreign, isolated, and safe. “If I did, would you accompany me?”
Oz glances ironically at him. “Yeah, that’d be nice, if you don’t mind lugging around my headless corpse.”
“What on earth is going on here, Oz?” Giles spreads his hands. “This is hardly you.”
“It wasn’t me, back in highschool. But people change, Giles. Sometimes they leave their darkness behind. Sometimes they find the darkness within themselves.” He gives Giles a knowing glance. “Waking up three nights a month naked and hoping the blood on your lips is your own… it changes a man. I tried denying the monster with all that spiritual Buddhist bullshit, and it didn’t work.”
“Now you embrace it,” says Giles, finally comprehending. It was the longest speech he thinks he has ever heard Oz give.
“No. Now I am the monster.”
Giles grimaces, but finds himself drawn to Oz’s gaze. The darkness flickering there pulls at him. Yes, says Ripper. He is like you.
Maybe Giles is a monster, too.
Giles kisses him as though he is drawing the very life from him, all the truth and secrets and unspoken words. As though he can replace one addiction with another. He slides a thumb and then a palm over the skin of Oz’s arm and thinks - yes. Yes, he could easily drown himself in this. Sex and magick and alcohol have always been tangled in his mind and by fulfilling one bleak need he seems to sate them all. That was the secret behind Ethan, behind Olivia.
Oz pulls back first, eyes fluttering open. “I still won’t come with you.”
“Who said I was leaving?” says Giles, and kisses him again.
Oz says goodbye a while later, clothes rumples and lips red. “I’ll be back,” he almost-promises. Giles turns the light out when he leaves and sits in the dark with the rest of the scotch, thinking about thinking.
It is two days later when he runs into Oz again. Vegas isn’t all grunge and sleaze - in the middle of summer the pavement is baked beneath his feet and the sky is a clear unalterable blue. A couple of children ride by on bicycles, shrieking wordlessly at each other. After the sound and fury of Sunnydale’s destruction, everything seems loud and chaotic. Oz is sitting on a park bench with a paper bag and a black eye. Waiting.
“What happened?” Giles asks immediately.
“It’s nothing.” Oz offers him the wry smile Giles remembers so well and it strips years from his careworn face. “Werewolves heal quick, don’t you know.”
Giles plucks the bag from his hand, but the bottle is mostly full. Oz shrugs away the question he doesn’t ask. “I’ve gotta while away the time somehow. From what I hear, you were a fairly proficient alcoholic yourself.”
“Hardly,” says Giles. Not by Sunnydale standards, anyway.
“Uh huh. So, you’re still in town?”
“I was waiting for you to return.” Giles is surprised by the quiet intensity in his own voice. He must not forget that this boy is a means to an end, not to mention quite a few years younger than himself.
“You know, you don’t have to look out for me,” says Oz after a pause, his expression as unreadable as always. “Whatever you came here for, it wasn’t that.”
And there it is, that empathic acceptance of all of Giles, even the secret crevices that house his darkest subconscious. Giles bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.
“Do you want to get some lunch?” Oz asks. At Giles’ nod, he stops in his tracks and turns back the way they’ve been walking. “I found a brilliant little Japanese place a few weeks ago. C’mon, we can catch the bus.”
Japanese, to Giles, means raw fish and rice, but Oz orders for him and Giles is surprised to find out how much he likes the simplicity of his udon noodles, the broth and meat and vegetables. Oz handles chopsticks like he’s been using them all his life, but his hands shake and when Giles hesitatingly suggests returning to his hotel room, he declines.
“Places to be, people to watch,” he explains.
He pays the bill from a thick wad of twenties.
The next time they speak is over the phone. Oz calls his room, and Oz on the phone is a wholly unnerving experience; his words seem clipped without the graceful charisma of his body language behind them.
“I can’t do this.”
Giles cradles the phone in his collarbone as he flips the omelette. He’s raised an eyebrow before he remembers Oz can’t see it. “Us? Why not?”
“You wouldn’t get it. There are people in this town who’d sell their mothers, or worse.”
“I think you’d be surprised how well I understand,” says Giles.
“Then understand that you make me vulnerable,” says Oz, and hangs up.
The omelette burns, but Giles eats it anyway.
People like Rack are easy to find in the big city. The building looks dilapidated on the outside, but plush on the inside. Giles steps over the twitching body of a young girl whose breathing is coming fast and shallow, and pushes past the other demon waiting.
“Whaddya want, old man?” The boy inside can’t be more than fifteen. He chews gum and radiates power. It could’ve been Giles, twenty years ago.
“The usual. A place in the world. A new suit. World peace.” The Ripper sneer falls easily into place. “Oh, from you?”
The boy barely glances up from the heavy tome he’s reading, feet propped up on his desk. “Information, or magic?”
“Both.”
“It’ll cost ya.”
Rupert pulls out his wallet and the boy laughs. “Do I look like I need cash?” He finally puts his book down. “Let’s start with something easy. Whaddya wanna know?
“Who runs this town?” Rupert demands. “How many demons live here? Why have they banded together? What are they planning?”
Studying him closer, the boy stands. “You’re British,” he says, tone decidedly unfriendly. “I think I know who you are. Might be I’ve been warned about you.”
“Might be,” says Rupert. “If so, then you know I need some protection.”
A harsh bark of a laugh. “Protection? From those guys? Sure, gramps, I can give you some protection. Five hundred bucks and I’ll protect you right outta town.”
“I’m not leaving.”
The kid seems to lose interest. “Whatever, man. Look, I’m a dealer, not an informant. I’ll trade you a few rites for a spoonful of blood.”
Giving away his blood to strangers - especially magic-using strangers - is beyond dangerous. But he isn’t leaving this town without a scrawny werewolf by his side.
Rupert nods.
Twenty-four hours later, he’s in the back of a warehouse drawing a circle of protection on the grimy concrete.
Three days after that he has a meeting with the people who run Vegas. There are ways of getting attention among magic users. Rupert has used all of them. While driving to the rendezvous point he spots a familiar figure shifting from foot to foot on the sidewalk of the strip. He pulls over.
“Get in,” he demands, and Oz does.
“Where’re we going?” he asks, drumming his fingers on the dashboard. His wrists are dark with rope-burn and there’s blood under his fingernails. “You’re not kidnapping me, are you?”
“Hardly.”
“Shame. Could’ve been fun.”
“We’re going to see a lawyer about a dog,” says Rupert, and Oz freezes, his hands curling into balls.
“Don’t mess with the law firm, man,” he says. “Those guys are bigtime.”
“They might be our way out of this situation,” says Rupert as though nothing his wrong.
“Or they might be at the heart of it. Are you insane?”
Giles knows it’s a rhetorical question, but he answers anyway.
“Oh,” says Oz, relaxing again. “I guess that makes two of us.”