How to play this. People continued to crowd the sidewalks, walking by them, so if he elbowed this guy in the face, he’d probably send him straight into the path of a civilian. He couldn’t risk an open assault on the street, and he didn’t think one of Anzu’s people could either. (Why would Anzu have people? Well, Gandalf might.)

So rather than take the guy out with a single backwards thrust of his elbow, he turned slowly, already knowing by smell he was just dealing with a Human.

The guy standing behind him was built like a vending machine, stocky and broad across the chest and shoulders, maybe an inch or two smaller than him but clearly formidable, a solid guy who would be hard to knock down in a fight. Well, not for him, but for others who didn't have the twin advantages of a metal skeleton and innate viciousness.

He had a broad, doughy face, the skin so pockmarked with acne scars it could have been pumice rather than flesh, his coffee colored eyes like thumbprints in dough. His thinning hair was an odd color, a very dirty blond that became almost translucent at the ends, making it look like his hair was turning invisible as opposed to falling out. On the plain dark blue canvas jacket he wore was a little tag identifying him as some type of security guard, most like a private contractor. "Pardon?" Logan replied, casting surreptitious glances around for his back up. There were none in line of sight.

The man tried on a crooked grin, revealing a snaggletooth in the front bottom row of his teeth. He looked like a Central Casting East End street tough. "I have to ask you to move along, sir. There's been some theft and vandalism in the area, and -"

"That's what I'm investigating," he lied, deciding to see if he could bluff any information out of this guy. Either he was just a Human hired by one of the bad guys or local businesses, and knew nothing of what was going on - a patsy - or he did know, and was a Human henchman being very careful about identifying himself to others. There was really only one way to find out.

That did seem to surprise him, his forced grin faltering. "What?"

Logan made a show of glancing around suspiciously, as if to make sure no one was listening, and then said, in a low whisper, "My name's Scott Summers, I'm a private investigator hired by Helos International to look into some unusual occurrences around the area. Who are you working for?"

The man seemed flummoxed, genuinely surprised, and didn't know how to answer at first. "Ah, uh, I work for Landown Security. We were contracted by the Apex Group to protect these three buildings." He indicated the skyscrapers beside the site, and the site itself. Logan wanted to point out there was no building on the site, but it would've seemed cruel.

Logan jerked his head towards the shadow of the nearest skyscraper, and walked over there without looking back at him. Both curious and nervous, the rent-a-cop followed. Bob had been right - believing was ninety eight percent of everything. And if you believed the bullshit you were spewing out, others were likely to as well. As soon as the man joined him, he said, still in a hushed and intense voice, "Look, I've only been on the job three days, and a lot of this shit doesn't make any sense. If you have any info you can share that might help me, I would appreciate it."

The man looked startled and wary by turns. "Well ... what do you mean?"

Logan shrugged expansively. "Anything that would give me an insight into the problem. Do we have main suspects? Are we looking for teenagers or what?"

The man's shoulders relaxed slightly, some of the tension draining away. "Oh, naw, I wouldn't think so. Teenagers would stick out around 'ere. Not a lot of kids in these parts."

And yet a teenager had just been on the street and walked into the construction site. Either he was lying blatantly, or had genuinely missed Anzu, through general incompetence or Anzu simply not wanting to be seen. He was a demigod, he couldn't put it past him. Of course he was seen earlier by him and several other people on the street, but that didn't mean anything; he may have simply saved it for the security around here. "Yeah, okay, but who would be doing it, then? I can't imagine chartered accountants doing this on their lunch break."

That made the man smirk, amused at the thought, and he shook his head again, relaxing even more. He was dealing with a clueless fellow security professional, and he felt superior. People usually jumped at the chance to feel superior. "We’re thinkin’ disgruntled ex-employees, people who know their way around and know what the schedule is.  They seem  to hit  late at night, and we haven’t even been able to catch ‘em on video.”

Logan nodded, putting on a serious face while jerking his head in the direction of a steel and glass skyscraper across the street. “Did ya know they were hit by a security breach last week?”

His eyes widened as he looked at the building sharply. “No. What happened?”

“Someone got inside and accessed the computer system. They’re still not sure if the firewall was breached or not, but they think that’s what these people are after.”

The man looked at him guilelessly, clearly not comprehending. “What? Computer access?”

“Corporate files. It’s espionage, man, that’s where the big bucks are.”

He “hmmed” and nodded as if that was self-evident, scratching his head as he considered how to connect what was going on outside with corporate espionage - if, in fact, there was anything actually going on out here. He still wasn’t sure if this guy was an innocent patsy, or a deliberate participant. Either he was honestly vacant, or he had an expert poker face. Logan supposed he would find out one way or another later. “Look, gotta piss off - meeting with the big wigs - but I’ll see you later, okay?”

The man looked at him with interest, one eyebrow raised, but he nodded in agreement. “Who’d you say you worked for again?”

“Helos International,” he made a very vague gesture down the street as he started walking away. “Catch ya later, bub.” He then turned around and walked away, getting lost in the crowd.

His first thought was to find a pay phone - which were becoming less and less available in the age of cell phones - but the more he thought about it, the more he realized he had to confront Ruby about this in person; he didn’t want to warn her. How good a spellcaster was she? He assumed she had some skills in that department, since that seemed to come along with being a Watcher, but he assumed it varied from person to person. For instance, Wesley relied often on spells, and Logan knew he’d cast quite a few good ones - he’d helped him when he got a little brain rattled, right? He suddenly remembered standing on the balcony of one of the torn up rooms in Angel’s old hotel, smoking a cigar and looking down on the street below, where people drove by oblivious to all the grotesqueries around them. And didn’t he, in some small way, envy them? Envy their ability to think they lived in a world that was relatively sane and orderly, where shadowy government agencies didn’t brainwash or design people into becoming living weapons of mass destruction, and where vampires and demons were relegated to the horror section of the local bookstore. Where no one thought to look behind the tarps covering a construction site, because there’s no way there’d be something as sinister as a dismembered body in a place as staid and ordinary as this.

He stopped as an almost crippling wave of sorrow overwhelmed him.  They were all gone; every single one of them. Wesley, Cordelia, Angel, Gunn, probably even that annoying fuckhead Spike - they were all dead, or at least never coming back here, barring an act of one god or another.  And did anyone even know? Or care? Angel alone had saved the world a few times, enough so that he seemed blasé about it (“Apocalypse of the week” he’d once commented to him), but did anyone know outside the small, dark sphere in which they lived?

No one knew, and no one cared. The world went on, regardless of the people who had given their lives trying to protect the damn stupid thing, which honestly wasn’t worth it anyway.  What was he doing here? Why?  Was this some stupid ass form of atonement?  Because he wasn’t  there when they needed him, and because he could only bury one of them, he was now doing a sweep up job? Mopping the floor after the bar fight is over?

He couldn’t think about this now, mainly because sorrow was mutating into the more familiar emotions of self-pity and rage, and it would get to the point where he would have to yell or hit something, and he didn’t want to do either, mainly because it was unlikely he could do them anonymously on a busy London street.

Logan started walking, taking short-cuts he knew and ones he simply guessed at, trying to concentrate on the problem at hand. Could Ruby actually be in on this? Was she a potential threat? Or did she simply miss this connection as well? Was he reading a threat where there was none? He was a paranoid bastard, there was little denying that.  Still, it wasn't as though he didn't have good reason...

He knew he should get a cab and get over to Ruby’s ASAP, but he was tempted quite sorely to get a beer instead. Just one pint; it wouldn’t take him long to drink it.  They could call him a cab while he waited.  If she was the 'big bad', another five minutes either way wasn’t going to make a difference, and he needed to get this clot of sorrow out of his throat.

He was in a more depressed area by the looks and smells of things, but there was a promising looking pub on the corner, dark and dank, with a single window that looked like it hadn’t been washed in years, But as he was jaywalking across the street to get to it, he heard slurs and cursing, hostility that carried easily over the traffic noise.

For a change, it wasn’t aimed at him, but was down the street parallel to the pub, and he saw a group of honest-to-Hitler skinheads intimidating a mixed race couple that had picked the wrong street to walk down. There were six of them, young men ranging from sixteen to twenty five, all with identical shaved heads and general bland fashion sense, some making a random stab at individuality with a tattoo on their neck or a black leather jacket. It was terrible, but Logan felt something lighten in his heart upon seeing those stupid motherfuckers; he needed to punch something and they would do nicely.

He headed down the street, and said, loudly, “I have an Indian girlfriend. Would you like to take a crack at me?”

They all looked at him, the skinheads and the alarmed couple.  Most of the boys were wearing football shirts, just like Glenn/Anzu was, making him wonder if there was a tie between fascism and sports that no one had studied yet. (But hockey was immune; or at least it was in his case.)  Looking at the skinhead’s dark, hard eyed and empty stares - they all looked oddly similar, and devoid of everything but outright belligerence, which was something he could work with - he decided to add more fuel to the fire. “Oh, by the way, my wife was Japanese, and my best friend’s blacker than Wesley Snipes. So what you got for me, boys?” He almost felt like adding, ‘And I think I fought you’re your idols in World War Two’, but that would just raise more questions he had no intention of answering.

The leader, perhaps the oldest skinhead, with a swastika tattooed in black ink on the right snide of his neck, sneered at him, lip curling up like a rabid dog just shown a injured cat. “Piss off, wanker.”

Logan put his hand to his chest as if hurt by his words, and was close enough to them that they broke off from the couple and started to take a formation stance, ready to swarm him. “That’s it? God, not only are you guys pussies, you have no originality whatsoever. But, then, what should I expect from a bunch of limp dicked Nazi wannabes?”

Now the last few surrounding the couple - a black man and a white woman - broke off and came toward him, and Logan shot the couple a look that clearly said “Go“. Although there was some hesitancy to leave him alone so outnumbered, they did and without looking back.

The leader approached him, chest puffed up like he thought he was a hard and scary man. He probably thought he was, but Logan thought he looked pathetic; he could only manage to be scary with a group. “Are you thick? Gotta death wish, old man?”

Logan couldn’t help but smirk at that. “You don’t know the half of it.”

His eyes, dark piss holes in snow, seemed to contract even further into his puffy face. “You a poofta or somethin’? You get off on gettin’ beat down, is that it?”

Logan knew he was just adding fuel to the fire, but he couldn’t help but chuckle. “Like you could beat me down. I could wait for you to call all your knuckle dragging friends, you could fill the town square, and you still wouldn’t beat my ass down, you stupid fuckhead. You are outmatched. Move on, and maybe I won’t pound you flat.”

The skinheads started to close ranks around him. He could see them out of the corners of his eye, sensed one behind him waiting to sucker punch. It was all rather sad; he bet they couldn’t actually fight for shit. The leader scoffed derisively. “Outmatched? What, can’t you count?”

“What an ugly cunt,” one of his minions on the right said. “No wonder no self-respecting white woman would fuck ‘im.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Does your mother count?”  It was way too easy a shot and he knew it, but it was just too good not to take.

That did it. The guy on the right threw a punch, which Logan saw coming before he actually threw it, he telegraphed it that badly. He caught his fist easily and twisted, snapping his arm like twig, the snap of bone as loud as a firecracker. The guy sucked in a hard breath, eyes going wide, all the blood draining from his face as he staggered back, his arm hanging at a really painful looking angle. Well, at least it was a clean break.

Skinheads were generally like hyenas, meaning one didn’t attack - all of them did - so he caught a kick coming in on his left, grabbing the boy’s boot before it could make contact and yanked up, sending him crashing back first to the pavement, where his bald head bounced like a basketball. He kicked the leader in the leg before he could make his move, a sharp shot to the tibia that made his leg buckle and drove him down to one knee. He could have given him a flat footed shot that would have broken his leg clean, but that would have ended the fight too soon, and he had many issues to work out.

Logan then spun quickly, arm extended, and knocked away the arm of the guy who was trying to sucker punch him from behind, and planted a firm kick in his midsection that sent him not only sprawling back on his ass, but also made him roll over and puke his guts up on the sidewalk. That would teach him to get into a fight on a full stomach.

There were two other skinheads, though, and one chose - very unwisely - to punch him in the back of the head. Normally that was a stupid move, as bone on bone impact was a good way to break your own knuckles, but this was bone on adamantium impact, which was even stupider. Although he had to admit the hit did hurt a bit - okay, not really, but even in his own mind he had to give the guy something for the effort - it was nothing compared to the sharp crack of the man's knuckles, which didn’t so much earn a scream as a high pitched, breathless squeak, suggesting he hurt so much he could barely muster the energy to breathe. Logan got the second one coming in from the right, landing a solid punch that caught him just under the jaw and sent him flying backwards into the wall of a chemist’s shop. He checked the punch, held back, as there was no need to shatter his jaw … unless, of course, he came back for seconds. He took the guy with the broken knuckles all the way down with a leg sweep, and as he fell, he automatically held out a hand to break his fall. From the way he screamed, it was his bad hand. Pity.

“Okay, that's it,” the leader snarled, getting back up to his feet, reaching into his jacket. The guy with the broken arm, the one with the broken knuckles, the one who hit his head on the street (from the groaning, he was still conscious, which meant he must have had a thick head, but he was still clearly bleeding), and the one retching behind him were all out of the fight; meaning the mini-Hitler and the guy slumped against the wall were the only two left. Oddly, Logan found it disappointing; he'd let them have it too hard, too fast. Why couldn’t there have been eight of them? Sixteen? Was twenty too much to ask for?

The leader pulled out a switchblade, flicking out its four and a half inch blade, and Logan couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re gonna make me say it, aren’t you?”

The boy looked at him, blind hate mixing with confusion, and he scowled in general belligerence. “What?”

Logan couldn’t help but grin like an idiot, feeling foolish but still unable to resist. “You call that a knife?” He held up his right fist and sprung his claws. “These are knives.”

The leader jumped back, eyes widening in shock, and the guy against the wall exclaimed, “Fuck!”

The leader looked between his claws and his face in rapid alarm, although disgust bloomed on his ugly face, hatred burning bright in his eyes. “I shoulda known, you’re one’a them, gene trash.” He spit at his feet, but missed by about six inches.

Logan could only smile. “You're callin' me trash? That’s interesting. Tell me, who just got their asses kicked?”

The leader was not interested in having that conversation. He‘d found a new person to hate. “Yer all gonna die, trash. Humans won’t stand for filth like you. You and your kind are an endangered species.”

“Let’s assume you’re an idiot. Safe bet. Evolution moves forward, not backwards; get used to us, ‘cause we’re here to stay. As are all the minorities you hate so much … they are, in fact, the majority about now. Kind of a pisser for you, huh?” He retracted his claws, and lowered his hand to the side. “ And hey, there are uglier things in this world than you, believe it or not, and us Humans oughta stick together … if you are indeed Human anymore. Wanna take your best shot with the knife, bub?  I’ll give you a freebie.”

He hesitated, clearly not trusting him. Logan urged, “C’mon, do your worst. You a pussy, gobshite?”

His scowl deepened, eyes nearly disappearing beneath his brows, and finally, in pure hate, he threw the knife. Logan popped his claws again and slashed it into pieces in midair, even though he’d thrown it very unprofessionally, and there was no way in hell it ever would have hit. Logan gave him a hard grin, one that didn’t come anywhere near his eyes. “Oh, come on, I’m not that nice.”  He popped his second set of claws, and advanced toward him with deliberate menace.

The leader and his friend with the swollen jaw took off, running down a near by alley, and Logan just watched them go, chuckling under his breath. It was evil and it was wrong, it probably made him no better than the skinheads, but damn it if he didn’t feel much better. The beer could wait.

He retracted his claws and heard scattered applause. Looking behind him, he saw a small group - mostly men - had gathered outside the pub, some still holding their pints.  He suddenly felt embarrassed, like a sideshow attraction, but he nodded and waved off the applause as he stepped over the fallen skinheads. “Uh, someone might want to dial nine-nine-nine for them, or somethin’,” he suggested.

The crowd backed off as he approached, most filtering back into the pub now that the show was over, but a big Irish guy who was still watching the puking skinhead writhe on the ground said, “For them?  Fuck ‘em, let ‘em rot. Stupid buggers.”

Well, at least at the end of the day, he could say he had a few fans.

9

He had considered just barging in, but the fact that Ruby was always paranoid enough to lock the door but the kibosh on that. He could kick the door down, but that would take away any element of surprise, and he had no idea what level of spellcaster she was. If she was really good, he’d be a goner before the door hit the floor.

So he settled for knocking on the door, and waited for her to come open it, which she did, greeting him with a hard look and a scowl. “If you’re going to be a fuckwit, you can’t come in.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of supplication, and said, “I’ll keep my smartass comments to myself.”

Her look was suspicious, lips thinning to a grim line. “For your sake, you’d better.” She opened the door wider and walked away, so he followed with a cursory look around her home. The incense smell was more intense than earlier, and Asha was sprawled out on the clean couch, looking dead, but judging from the regular rise and fall of her chest, she was just asleep. A green blanket now covered the bloody couch.

He followed Ruby to her small kitchen, which smelled strongly of tea, bergamot, and vanilla. He saw a cup of tea sitting on the sideboard, as well as a saucer of cookies, mostly the shortbread kind. He snagged one of the cookies, and pointed at the cup of tea. “You drinkin’ this?”

Her glance seemed sharper than necessary. “Help yourself. You’re probably going to anyway.”

“I’d prefer a beer.”

“And I’d prefer a reasonable person, but we can’t always get what we want, can we?”

He snickered as he took a gulp of tea (Formosa oolong, a pleasantly delicate tasting tea), and admired Ruby’s general chutzpah.  Oh sure, he’d probably be sick to death of her in two day’s time, but her bluntness was kind of refreshing. She was looking at two different books, both of which were open on her kitchen table, and occasionally sipping a diet Coke. “Any luck?” he wondered, mainly because she was curious what she would say.

She made a negative noise, flipping through a few pages. “I scryed for a power center, but I couldn’t find it. Anzu and his sorcerer mate have locked things down tight. What about you?  Did you tail Glenn, or simply hang out in a pub and pretend to be useful?”

“I tailed Glenn, and I know where something’s happen, if not exactly what.”

She glanced at him sidelong, as if he wasn’t quite worth a full look. “Oh?  Where?”

“The business district.”

She finally looked at him, but with a menacing glare that probably would have made the skinheads piss their pants. “I thought you were done with the bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit. I tailed him to a construction site in the business district, where there’s a Human head and some scattered entrails laid out in a ritualistic manner behind some weatherproof tarps.”

She straightened up, and finally seemed to be taking him seriously. “On a construction site? Why the hell would they pick there? Seems rather conspicuous, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, that occurred to me, but this isn’t just any site; it’s special.”

If she knew what he was getting at, he saw no sign of it yet. “How?”

“It’s the old Watcher’s building, you know, your former HQ.  The place that blew up.”

Understanding dawned on her face with all the signs of shock. It unfurled in her eyes, made her jaw slack, and she turned back to her books with a look of horror. “Oh god, why didn’t I think of that?” She started flipping through the pages violently, threatening to tear onion skin thin paper.  Either she was an excellent actress, or she really hadn’t had any idea.

“So what are we looking at here, a revenge scenario? Who hates the Watchers that much?”

She scoffed, shaking her head, but never looking up from her books. “Ninety nine point nine percent of the demon population, and perhaps a handful of gods.”

“Well, I think we can safely eliminate the gods here, can’t we?  They wouldn’t need rituals; they’d just crush us.”

“Yes, fine, but the playing field is still wide open.”

It was, there was no getting around that. Except …“Okay, so what do we know?  They hate Watchers, they hate vampires, they ain’t very fond of Kali either, and they‘re happy to get into bed with Anzu. Does that narrow the list down at all?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “Most demons think of vampires as parasites, something beneath them because they need a host body to survive, so they are the among the most disliked demons around. As far as Anzu goes, I can’t think of anyone quite that stupid, or power hungry.”

“How good a spellcaster are you?”

She gave him a hard glance, but sighed, as if about to confess to a major crime. “I’m rusty. I was on leave from the Watchers when the place went up, more devoted to my duties with MI-5.  After becoming a werewolf, I became very disenchanted with Watching. Isn’t that hard to believe?”

“Look, you know as well as I do that Meldane isn’t enough. We need someone with good magic skills, and we need them tonight.”

She straightened up, her left hand clenching into a fist at her side. “You want to hit them tonight?  Even though we still have no idea who we’re dealing with?”

“If you’re right, we won’t have any idea who we’re dealing with until we do hit them.”

“So we go and get slaughtered?”

“Not with enough magic behind us, and not with an army. You have to admit they’ll never expect an attack.”

“Anzu. Forget about him?  He can kill us all before we get close.”

Logan scratched his neck, and figured that Ruby probably was one of the good guys, just a foul tempered one. “And what if I tell the Vilkacis he’s been draining Kali’s energy? What then?”

Her look was surprised, but also, strangely enough, almost admiring. “Turn the Vilkacis on Anzu?  Dear lord, you are ruthless, aren’t you?”

“Will they survive?”

“Does it matter?” She rubbed her forehead as she considered it. “Demigod on demigod. Yes, they have a much better shot of fighting him than anything mortal.”

“Great, he’s taken care of for the moment. Do you know any former Watchers or witches or anything that you can call in to help us?”

She bit her lower lip and turned away, glancing down at her books but staring straight through them. Her shoulders sank as if in shame, and finally she said, “I do know someone. He’s retired to the Cotswolds, but he’s got better magic skills than I do, and I’m pretty sure he’s connected to a coven of witches, which should be extremely useful.”

“Will he come?”

“The city’s in danger. He’ll come. But what about this so-called army?”

“Don’t worry, that’s where I come in,” he told her, hoping he could indeed pull this together.  He'd damn well better, or they were all going to be sorry. Well, if they lived long enough.

***

It turned out the vampire who sounded like Michael Caine was a six foot four black man named Euan, who had shoulder length dreadlocks and “Love” tattooed on the knuckles of his left hand.  Logan had to ask where the “hate” was, which earned him a funny look. “I don’t ‘ate anybody,” he claimed, finishing off a cheese sandwich he’d picked up at the pub where they’d met before sunset. “That’s negative energy, and that’ll kill ya, sure as shit.”

“But you’re a vampire.”

“So? Doesn’t mean I ‘ate people. Kill ‘em, sure, but that’s a survival thing.”

He also had an iPod tucked under his long black leather jacket, and from what Logan could hear bleeding from the tiny earbuds, he was listening to Parliament Funkadelic. While Logan approved - at least he had good taste in tunes - that wasn’t exactly appropriate “going into battle” music, was it? Unless they planned to dance their way in there.

Euan was just among the first guard of vampires, the one in charge of the group going with him as soon as the sun was safely down. Hashim would be leading the second guard, the ones who would appear out of nowhere like a nightmare … well, if everything went according to plan. And really, there wasn’t much of a plan, was there? The key was to go in hard and hot, and simply overwhelm them, throw them off their strategy in a crippling way. Hashim thought it sounded suicidal, but he admired the simple balls to do something like that, so he agreed to take part. He also had to go get the Vilkacis, which was much harder than it had initially seemed, and took up most of the day. Finally he found them, sharing a floor of suites at the Savoy Hotel (seriously - they were demigods with expensive tastes), and although they were reluctant to assume Humanoid forms and talk to him again, he fed them the bullshit story about Anzu, in Human form, draining Kali’s energy for himself. They were so agitated they had a hard time keeping a coherent form, their skin looked like it was bubbling, sliding off their bones, and they were so furious they wanted to go off and kill him now.  He was able to talk them into waiting, and just barely, so he wasn’t sure if they’d go in early or not. But even if they did, they’d come to the rendezvous point, simply because the address he gave him was actually an empty reservoir, and there was nothing and no one there. If they really wanted Anzu, they had to join him.

Among the group of vampires who met them at Hyde Park (the rendezvous point) after sunset was a handful of serpent-esque Ressiks, green and copper alike, standing off by themselves and looking surly. According to Euan, they owed the boss “a favor”, and he was cashing it in. Although he didn’t trust that particular breed as a rule, at least they were vicious motherfuckers, and that was helpful right now.

Meldane also showed, and while he tried to convince him he wasn’t necessary, he didn’t buy it, and seemed miffed. “I am so a good spell caster,” he protested. “I saved your hairy ass from the Vilkacis the other night, didn’t I?  I’m good.” But after he started getting pointed looks from Hashim’s people, he shut up and stood in the back, smoking a Galois and looking cranky.

Ruby showed up before the Vilkacis, with a guest in tow. Logan was shocked to recognize her guest, the tweedy British man from Wesley’s funeral, the one who'd turned suicide bomber on him in that alternate world: Giles. Giles seemed surprised to see him too, straightening his wire rimmed glasses more out of affectation than necessity. “You’re …” he began hesitantly, clearly trying to remember his name. “ I’m sorry, I forgot. We met at Wesley’s funeral.”

He nodded. “Logan.”

“Rupert Giles,” he said, in case he didn’t remember his name. “I had no idea you were the, uh …”

Just by the way he stopped short, as if appalled by what he might say, Logan knew it was bad. He glared at Ruby. “What did you call me?”

She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter, but she was smiling ever so slightly, enjoying this. “Weirdo.”

“Ruby was never known for her tact,” Giles offered, embarrassed.

Really?  He never would have guessed.