Dark Congress by Christopher Golden

Author:Christopher Golden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse

CHAPTER TEN

The Hotel Kensington had a lounge, but it was mainly a business travelers’ hotel, and by Friday night those patrons had usually already left for home or had turned in early so they could get up and catch a plane. The guests who were ordinary tourists had better places to spend Friday night than the lounge in their hotel. Therefore, as midnight approached, the Hotel Kensington’s lounge would normally be empty. The bartender wasn’t even on duty anymore, which frustrated Giles, because at the moment a drink would have been more than welcome.

“Obviously, you didn’t leave,” Giles said, looking at Faith.

Faith scowled and leaned back in her chair, sprawled there in her carefree tough-girl style. “Damn straight. I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“They’ve been keeping all the other Slayers out of Providence,” Buffy explained. “But they made it a point not to kill any of the girls.”

“Yeah. Nice of ’em,” Faith muttered.

Buffy glanced at her. “I told Kandida if she wanted to talk to me, Faith was staying. She’d already gotten past their little blockade, and that was that.”

Micaela had gotten a scotch and soda before the bartender had disappeared, and she’d been nursing it for an hour. She sipped the melted ice at the bottom of her glass.

“I’m not sure I understand,” she said, setting down the now-empty tumbler. “We wanted to find her. Yet you essentially told the river goddess you weren’t interested in talking to her? Couldn’t Faith have gone back into the bar for a few minutes or something?”

Faith shot her a dark look and seemed about to say something regrettable, so Giles stepped in.

“I’m sure Buffy simply read the situation,” he said. “That’s always been one of her strong suits.”

“That’s me,” Buffy agreed. “But yeah, it was pretty obvious Kandida wanted to talk to me as much as I wanted answers from her. Trajabo didn’t say a word. All we heard from him was that creepy noise of the sand blowing across the road.”

Xander coughed to clear his throat. “Okay, we get it. They let Faith stick around. Can we fast-forward to what the Wonder Twins actually said?”

He and Oz were leaning against the bar. Willow and Tara were sitting together on a cushioned bench that ran along the opposite wall, with Faith, Buffy, Giles, and Micaela seated in chairs around two small lounge tables. They had all gathered within the past hour, trickling in two at a time, each with their own stories of the evening’s events. They had already detailed their particular adventures, including Xander’s troubling account of the encounter with Malik and his companions. Micaela planned to begin researching Malik that very night.

Giles had asked Buffy to wait until the others had already spoken so they could all have a clear picture of what they were dealing with, and so pertinent details would not be lost in the shadow of the interest they all shared in the appearance of Kandida and Trajabo.

Buffy had turned her chair around and crossed her arms over the back.

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