Rupert Giles slammed his glasses down on the table and rubbed his eyes.  Staying up all night translating ancient texts had taken its toll.  He glanced around the Magic shop which had just opened for business an hour earlier and was still empty of customers.

Anya sat behind the counter tallying yesterday’s receipts with a “demonic” smile on her face.  Rupert couldn’t figure out whether Anya’s knack for all things financial was healthy or not.  On the one hand it was a very human trait to like money & things of value, but on the other hand, it was too close to the sin of greed for his liking.

Rupert studied his employee intently for a few moments until her head snapped up and she smiled widely.

“Giles!  I think we’re actually going to make a profit this quarter.  I really think the web site I designed is going to boost our sales through the roof!”

Giles smiled weakly at her and Anya frowned back at him.  “What’s wrong with you this morning?  You look like you haven’t slept at all and you’re not even happy that we will be able to pay all the bills this month and have enough left over to buy me a car.” 

“A car?  Anya, you don’t drive.”

“Sure I do, just not when you’re around.”  The door chime jingled and Anya jumped to attention.  “Customers!”

Willow and Tara entered the shop and Anya’s face fell with disappointment.  “Oh, it’s just them.” 

Willow rolled her eyes at the ex-demon shop girl.  “It’s nice to see you too, Anya.  Giles, you look awful!”

“Thank you, Willow.”

“No, I . . . I mean are you OK?”  Giles put his glasses back on his face and gestured towards the pile of books on the reading table.

“I’ve just been up all night attempting to translate this 2,000 year old text.  I’m thoroughly exhausted and frustrated.  I think it’s beyond my capabilities.”

“Wh-what is it for?” stammered Tara.

“It’s a chronicle of the deeds and genealogy of various demons, including some of the first recorded accounts of vampires before the age of Christ.  But it’s written in several different languages.  The later pages are in Latin and Greek, some are in Egyptian hieroglyphics and some I cannot even identify at all.”

Willow leafed through the old dusty texts and shook her head.  “If it’s beyond you then it’s definitely beyond me, Giles.  I don’t know where we would find a living being who would even have the faintest idea of what any of these languages are.”

The door chime jingled again to reveal a real customer who Anya scurried over to help immediately.  “Welcome to the Magic Box!  How may I be of assistance to you?”

The young woman dressed in jeans and a gray tank top peered out from behind her purple sunglasses and took a deep breath.  “Yes!  I would like the following items:  four focusing crystals, twelve ounces of wolf’s bane, four eyes of newt, and that’s Newt, not the cheap salamander knockoffs, thirteen drops of virgin’s tears, some jasmine incense, a black beeswax candle and a new dagger.”

She reached into her black leather backpack and pulled out an ornate, yet broken knife.  “I broke mine.  Also, do you have an on-staff witch?  Or maybe you could give me a reference of some one good in town?”

The four occupants of the shop stared at this strange woman.  She had jet-black hair pulled tightly up on top of her head in a “genie” style hairdo.  She wore black nail polish on her finely manicured fingernails and around her neck she wore a hematite crystal in the shape of a circle.  She was petite – no taller than Willow – but the direct and commanding manner in which she spoke made her seem much larger than she was.

Giles decided to step into the conversation.  “I’m Mr. Giles, this is my shop.  May I ask for what kind of spell those items will be used?”

“A demon location spell.”  She stated this matter-of-factly.

Anya looked at her nervously.  “Why would you need to do a demon location spell?”

The woman took off her sunglasses revealing her glittering red eyes.  “I’m looking for my brother.”  Giles ran to the weapons trunk and pulled out a very large ax.  “Demon!  Get out of my shop!”

The woman giggled as Giles attempted to hit her with the ax.  She grabbed a hold of the ax handle and ripped it out of Giles’ hands effortlessly.

“Chill out, Jeeves!  I’m not here to hurt any of you; I just need help in finding my brother, Charley.  He’s missing and I know he’s in this town, but there are so many damned demons here I have to do a specific spell to find him.”

“It’s Giles, not Jeeves!  Anya?  Do you have any idea what kind of demon she is?”  Anya looked the demon woman up and down.

“I’m not sure, Giles.  She might be . . . although there was talk of them dying out . . . I think she might be a . . .”

The demon sighed impatiently, “I’m a succubus!  And yes, we’re still around, what’s left of us anyway.”

Tara gulped, “A suc, a succubus?  That’s a sex demon, right?  You, you rape humans while they sleep?”

“No! We do not rape people!  God!  That was just a bad translation of the demonic chronicles.  It seems that whoever translated it got the phrase “make love under the cover of darkness” and “rape in the night” mixed up.  Don’t get me wrong, my kind have been know to bend the sexual rules from time to time, but we cannot physically force ourselves on a human being, unless…”  she smiled at Giles “you want us to of course.  So you can relax Mr. Giles, I won’t be fondling you anytime soon.”

Summer’s Residence, 10:15 a.m.

“Dawn!”  Buffy was agitated.  Here she had made her little sister breakfast and the little twit wasn’t answering her.  “Fine!  Your omelet is going to get cold!”

Dawn bounded down the stairs to the kitchen to see her sister standing there with her hands on her hips looking miffed.  “What?”  Dawn asked.

“What took you so long?  And why are you still in your pajamas?”

“Buffy!  It’s summer vacation!  I want to veg out!  Is there anything wrong with that?”

“No, but maybe I’m just a little jealous that you don’t have to go to summer school to make up for some of the lost time last semester.”

“I’m sorry, Buffy.  I didn’t mean to rub it in.”

“That’s OK.  School keeps me out of trouble and it could be worse.  We could have to get full time jobs.”

“True.  Woo Hoo for child support and watcher’s stipends!”

Buffy grabbed her little sister and gave her a big squeeze.  “Eat your omelet, slacker.”

“Yum!  Mushroom and Swiss.”

“Yes, I’m getting better at the whole domestic thing.  What are you going to do today, anyway?”

Dawn munched away at her omelet.  “I don’t know.  Hang around, watch Oprah, do my toenails, go down to the Magic Shop and torture Anya and Giles.” 

“Sounds fun actually.  Maybe I’ll just skip school today and live the slacker life.”

“No!  Buffy!  You already said you wanted to play catch up.  Do you want to be less behind in September or not?”

Buffy pouted.  “Yes.”

“OK, so go to school!”

“You’re beginning to sound a lot like Mom.

Dawn smiled at the thought.  “I am?”

“Yeah you are.”  Buffy patted Dawn on the head and sped out the door with her backpack in tow.

Dawn grabbed her plate and fork, walked over to the front window and watched Buffy trot down the street.  Suddenly, a knocking sound came from the kitchen startling Dawn into dropping her plate onto the couch.  Mushrooms and egg went everywhere.

“Oh, crap!”  The knocking got louder and more insistent.

Running into the kitchen with the remnants of her breakfast, Dawn whipped open the door to the basement to reveal a very unhappy looking Spike holding a squeeze bottle of Sun block SPF 100 in his left hand and a blood bag of A positive in his right.

“Is she gone?” he asked.

“Yes!  But if she wasn’t she sure would know something was going on with all your knocking noises!  Duh!”

“I know but the sun is creeping in down there and this crap does not work.”  He waved the sun block in her face.  “Look at my ear!”  Spike’s ear was black and flaky.  He’d obviously gotten burnt when he had come up the steps.

Dawn touched his ear gingerly.  “Ow!” Spike yelped and hissed at her.

“Eeww!  Gross!”

“Again, OW!!”

“Maybe some ice and ointment would help.”

“Or maybe some blood and bourbon would help more.”

“Ick!  For breakfast?”

“Breakfast of all champion vampires!  Right, can I use the microwave?”

“Yeah, sure it’s right over, there by the sunny kitchen window.  I’ll pull the blinds.”

“Thanks, Nibblet.”

Dawn went over to the window and shut the blinds over the sink.  “Why do you insist on calling me that?”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I’m fifteen and I’m taller than Buffy now, when I wear heels anyway.”

Spike walked over to the microwave, popped the whole blood bag into it and punched the buttons until it started.  “Well, Dawn, it’s just a nick name.  A term of endearment, ya know?”

“It just implies that I’m less of a person than everyone else.  Like Xander calls me Kiddo or Dawnster.  Riley used to call me kid all the time and. . .”

“What did Angel call you?”

“Angel didn’t call me anything really.  In reality I’ve never even met him.”

“Well, in your memories what did he call you?”

“Nothing.  He never addressed me at all.  Not that I can remember really.  He’d just refer to me as if I wasn’t there.  He’d say ‘what about your sister’ or ‘how is she?’.  He never used my name at all.”

Spike retrieved his liquid breakfast from the microwave and started to search the cabinets for some alcohol.  “Well I always knew the poof had no bloody imagination.  And his social skills were always lacking.  God!  No alcohol in this kitchen?  Do you have any Wheatabix?”

“Cabinet by your knees.”

Spike found the box and sat down at the kitchen counter with the cereal and sipped on his blood.  “Hey, thanks for letting me stay here by the way.  I should be out of your hair in a couple of days.  It’s just until I find a new crypt or abandoned mansion or warehouse or sewer. . .”  Spike sighed.  “I hate house hunting.”

“I still can’t believe your crypt blew up.”

“Yeah, well when you piss off enough demons, they start to gang up on you.  Ask my ex-girlfriends.”

Dawn snickered.  “No thank you, but I don’t ever want to see Harmony again.”

“I heartily agree.  But you know what?  I can deal with the whole blowing up of my crypt, but I just cannot deal with what they called me.”

Dawn put her plate in the sink.  “What did they call you?”

“Spike, the Slayer’s pet vampire, traitor, sheep in wolf’s clothing, William the Bloody – The Big Bad turned the Big Good!  Damn it!  I wish I could go outside for a cigarette!”

Dawn started to giggle at him.

“What’s so bloody funny?”

“The fact that you get so offended by them calling you “good”.  I think it’s funny.”

“Yeah.  It’s a real laugh riot.  You don’t get it do you?  I can’t be “evil” because they won’t accept me anymore and I can’t be “good” because you lot won’t accept me either.  I’m stuck in between and I can’t seem to do anything to change it.  I don’t belong anywhere, except maybe the bloody sewer.”

Dawn sat next to Spike at the counter.

“I accept you.”

“Huh?”

“I accept you, Spike.  I don’t completely trust you because of your past, but I trust you enough to let you stay here.  I know you’re all Mr. Evil Vamp Guy, but even though you can be horrible . . . you still help us.  And I accept you for just what you are.”

“Nibblet?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”  Dawn smiled at Spike as he looked back at her crunching on his Wheatabix.

“We don’t have to get all mushy about this, do we?”

“Aw!  Spike!  Somebody needs a hug!”  Dawn grabbed him from behind and squeezed his waist then rested her head on his shoulder.

“Ugh!  Stop it!  This is getting sweet and mushy and I’m going to vomit!  Now let go!”

“OK!  I’m going to go get cleaned up and then I’m off to the Magic Shop.  You can crash on the couch.  Buffy shouldn’t be back until after four o’clock so make sure you leave things as you found them and get your dead butt back in the basement before she gets home.”

“Yes ma’am.  Wouldn’t want to end up a Big Bad pile of dust.”

Dawn skipped out of the kitchen and about fifteen minutes later ran out the front door yelling to Spike.  “Bye Spike!  Have a “Good” day!”  All she heard in response was a sleepy growl coming from the direction of the couch as Spike buried himself underneath a pink chenille throw blanket.

Magic Box, 10:30 a.m.

Giles sighed in frustration with the demon customer in his shop.  “So, you say your brother, Charley is it?”

“Yes, Charley.”

“He’s missing?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, Ms. . . .”

“Oh!  How rude of me.  Alexandra, Alexandra Beaulac.”

Willow wrinkled her forehead.  “You have a last name?”

“Yes of course, it was my father’s, although he doesn’t use it very much anymore.”

“But that is not something we’ve come across before, a demon with a first and a last name.  Don’t tell me you have a social security number as well?”  Giles laughed.

“Yes.  How else would I pay my taxes?”

Giles was very surprised now at this response.  “Taxes?  You pay taxes?  That is odd.  Anya, when you were a demon did you pay taxes?”

“Hell no!  I wish I didn’t have to pay them now.  But I know why she does.  The succubae and incubi live on the fringes of demon society.  Kinda like vampires only more human.”

“What do you mean more human?” asked Tara.

Alex sighed sadly.  “She means we’re half-breeds.  The only way we can reproduce is if we mate with a human partner.  Each one of us has one human parent.  In my case it was my father.”

Giles was beginning to think that this so called demon standing in front of him was nothing more than just a young woman frightened about a family member.  “So you’re only here to find your brother.  You’re not going to harm any humans in Sunnydale?”

“No, of course not.  I can’t unless they try to harm my kin or me.  Those are the Rules.”

“Right then, Anya, could you gather up the ingredients she needs and Willow, can you help her with her spell?”

“Uh. . . yeah sure.  Do you have the spell written down, Ms. Beaulac?”

“Oh, it’s Alex, just Alex.  And yes, I have the spell right here.”

She handed Willow a parchment with strange markings on it.  “Hey, Giles.  Does this look familiar to you?”

“Yes!  It looks just like the language in the chronicle.  Alex, can you read this?”

“Of course, it’s Sumerian, post-cuneiform.”

Willow eyed the markings nervously.  “But I won’t be able to read it for the spell.”

“Flip it over. The phonetic and English translations are on the back.”

Giles’ interest in this woman was definitely peaked.  “ And you translated this yourself?”

“Yes, my mother taught me all of the ancient languages she knows.”

“How old is your mother?”

“She’ll be fifteen hundred and three next October.”

A collective gasp went up among the group.  Anya seemed impressed.  “Wow, she’s even older than I am.”

“Yes, she’s one of the oldest ones left in our clan.”

Anya thought for a moment.  “That’s right.  Something’s gone wrong with your people.  You’ve started to die off, lots of suicides.  Why is that?”

“We’re having a little trouble adjusting to the current views and trends in human sexuality.  I mean absolutely everyone’s on birth control these days.  None of the incubi can seem to get any women pregnant anymore.  Not even in the third world countries for God’s sake!  And do not get me started on “safe sex”.  Condoms are everywhere and none of us succubae can seem to get knocked up either.  It’s all very depressing.”

Willow looked up from the spell in her hands.  “Is that why you’re looking for your brother?  He’s depressed and suicidal?”

“Yes.  See, since our kind can’t do what we used to do with humans. . .”

“And that would be what?”  asked Giles.

Anya stepped over to the demon woman and smiled.  “Oh, they’d show up, find a sexually mature and fertile human, seduce them and then abscond with the offspring.  Am I right?”

Alex reacted with disgust.  “God!  You make it sound like those children don’t belong to us!  They are our kids!  Humans don’t live as long as we do so we naturally take the children so they don’t have to watch their human parent grow old and die.”

Willow was confused.  “So why is it so hard to reproduce now?  I mean humans do it all the time.”

“We can’t hurt or force a human into coupling with us.  They have to want to be with us.”

Willow looked into Alex’s red eyes and wrinkled her brow.  “Umm. . . no offense or anything, but wouldn’t a typical human be a little, ya know, frightened by the glowing red eyes and general demonishness?”

“Well yeah, but not if we looked like your ultimate fantasy.  Like this.”  Alex suddenly transformed right before the group’s eyes into a gorgeous, tall, buxom blonde woman in a red mini dress with matching red leather go-go boots.  She smiled at them and began speaking in a completely different voice with an English accent.  “You see I can be whatever they want me to be, right Mr. Giles?”

She sauntered sexily over to Giles and placed her hands on his shoulders.  “Right now I’m borrowing the image of Mr. Giles’ college day crush, Miss Olivia Wellington.  Although I think you might be over exaggerating the size of her bosoms in your head, Rupert.”

Giles shrank away from the woman in horror.  “Please. . . stop it . . . this is extremely . . . extremely . . .”

“Embarrassing?”  Alex re-morphed into herself.  “So it’s no like we can’t, you know, get any action.  It’s just we cannot make our human partner’s forget that they’re human and live in today’s society where STD’s and unwanted pregnancy can be easily prevented.  They have to love us and want to conceive with us these days.  We can’t just play the love ‘em and leave ‘em game anymore.”

Giles took a large step back from Alex wanting to get a healthy distance from the woman just wearing another’s face.  “Well that’s simply horrible for you.  Having to be so, so, so human about it.  But if you just need to be more human about your reproduction, why all the suicides?”

Alex slumped into a chair at the round reading table.  “Rejection.  We don’t take rejection very well.”

Tara sat down across from her and ventured a question.  “But, but I thought that you could be their fantasy.  They wouldn’t reject that would they?”

Alex hung her head down.  “That’s the thing.  We can’t be their fantasy 24/7.  We have to live in their reality, be a part of their lives in order to get close enough to have a long-term relationship.  And reality is this!”

Alex’s hands motioned to her body and face in disgust.  “Just me.  Plain old Alex.  The red eyes are easy to get rid of with colored contact lenses and I can always pull a glamour in a pinch, but finding a regular human being who knows what we are and still accepts us without being completely freaked out?  Not so easy.”

The group silently sympathized with Alex as she looked like she would almost start to cry.  Alex blinked away her impending tears and continued.  “Take Charley’s girlfriend of two years.  She found out what he was and she flipped out.  He tried to explain to her, but she just packed her bags and moved out.  I tried to get him to come and stay with me at the beach house for a while but he said he was fine and he’d stay in touch with me every day.”

Anya perked up.  “Ooh, you have a beach house?”

“In Malibu, yeah anyway. . .”

“Ooh, Malibu?”

“Anyway!  He was devastated, I could tell by his voice.  So I went over two weeks ago to check in on him and he was gone.  And I’ve been trailing him ever since.  I followed his trail here.”

Giles was very concerned about this statement.  “His trail?  What kind of trail does he leave?  Please say it’s not bodies.”

“Credit card receipts.  We share expenses so I’ve been following him by where he’s been spending the money.  The last couple transactions were here yesterday.  One at an ATM downtown and one at a bar called Willy’s”

The Scooby gang winced at the name.  Willow shook her head.  “Uh oh, Willy’s?  That’s a demon bar.  Lots o’ vamps and other baddies.  But he’s a demon so I guess he’d fit in just fine.”

Alex snorted angrily.  “Yeah, if he’s looking for a fight!  Our kind doesn’t mix very well with other demons, generally.”

“Why?” asked Tara.

The door chimed sounded again signaling another customer who Anya went to assist.  But as she left she answered Tara’s question.  “They’re too human.”

“Who’s too human?”  Dawn asked having just entered the shop.  Dawn shrunk back when she saw Alex’s red eyes and whispered to Anya, “Who’s the chic with the Marilyn Manson contact lenses?”

Buffy walked swiftly down the quiet Sunnydale street.

* It’s so nice here during the day.  Why can’t it just stay that way all the time? *  she thought to herself.

Coming around the corner near the cemetery where her mom was buried she noticed some commotion at the gates.  There was yellow police crime scene tape all around the entrance.  Construction workers were milling around hauling debris out of the graveyard.  “Oh God!”  Buffy muttered under her breath as a wave of guilt passed over her.  * Please tell me it’s not a murdered person I could’ve saved last night! *  Buffy approached quietly and snuck under the tape while one of the policeman’s back was turned.  She sprinted through the graves toward the small group of workers and police officers.  And that’s when she saw the blackened and broken crypt.  It had been virtually blown to smithereens.  She then hid behind one of the larger grave markers and listened in on the conversation taking place between a policeman and one of the workers.

The cop was shaking his head in disgust.  “I just don’t get people anymore.  Don’t they have any respect for the dead?  This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this kind of desecration.”

The worker agreed with the cop and said, “Yeah well, that’s not the weirdest thing.  I think some one was actually living in there!  Check out the list of stuff we found.  A T.V., VCR, bedding, an armchair, candles, a shot gun . . .”

Buffy’s heart started racing as she stared at a beheaded female mannequin being thrown on the pile of debris in a wheel barrel.  Then she saw it.  Thrown aside and crumpled in a ball next to the crypt was a leather coat.  Buffy crawled on her hands and knees over to it and snatched it up in her arms.  She ran all the way towards the rear entrance of the graveyard and sat on the ground with it.  She held it out in front of her and examined it.  It was a long leather coat for sure, but was it his?  She emptied the contents of the pockets and came up with a few items:  a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, $100 in cash, a Ramones CD and a picture.  A picture of her with Willow and Xander at the Bronze, smiling and laughing.  This was his, Spike’s coat.  Spike was dead.  Buffy replaced all the contents of the coat and gathered it back up in her arms.  She needed to go home now.  She needed to get away from there, right away.

Spike was being evil.  He couldn’t help himself.  He was in Buffy’ room, on her bed, flipping through her photo album.  He wanted to see everything.  He wanted to know everything.  Little five-year-old Buffy stared up at him with a gleeful expression on her face as Joyce tickled her little girl under the chin.  They were so happy before.  Before the divorce, before the demons came, before him.  Spike felt something suddenly, something he hadn’t felt in over a century.  He felt responsible - responsible for taking some of that little girl’s happiness away.

He looked at little Buffy again.  What would it have been like to hold her then?  To have rocked her in his arms, to have protected her from the night and all its evil?  If he had been there . . . he probably would have eaten her.  But if he had been there like he was now, he would have laid down his un-life to make sure that she never shed another tear.

Spike was so lost in his thoughts that he did not hear the front door open and close downstairs.  He was unaware of any presence in the house until the faintest sound reached his ears – the sound of a woman’s tears.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Spike tiptoed down the staircase quiet as the dead, well as quiet as the undead anyway.  There was Buffy leaning against the front door sobbing and clutching a leather coat.  She buried her face into the collar and slid down the door to the floor.  Slowly she began to rock back and forth holding the coat and keening like a wounded animal.  Her cries were heart wrenching.  Spike felt sick to his stomach at the sight of her in so much pain.

* Why is she so upset?  Who ever did this to her will die a slow and horrible death, as long as they’re not human. *

Spike debated with himself as to whether he should make his presence known.  Should he hide like Dawn had told him to or should he attempt to comfort the sobbing slayer?

Spike descended the staircase and knelt down in front of her.  “What’s the matter, pet?  Why are you crying?”

Buffy gasped at the sound of his voice and looked up into his face.  “Spike?”

“Yeah luv, what’s wrong?”

Buffy’s upset expression melted into relief and then quickly to anger.  “Spike!  What the Hell are you doing in my house?”

“Dawn let me in.  What are you doing with the coat?  Is that my coat?”

Spike wrestled the coat from her hands and quickly put it on.  “Whew!  That’s better!  I feel naked without it.  Where did you find this?”

Buffy could feel her anger/embarrassment begin boil over.  “Again Spike!  What are you doing here?”

“I needed a place to hide for the day.  Some demons blew up my crypt.  I had to leave in a hurry.  Thanks for gettin’ my leather back.  I just can’t be ‘Spike’ without it.”

“And Dawn just let you in?  I’m going to have a little chat with her.”

Spike felt a tiny pang of guilt at getting his little hostess into trouble.  “Hey, go easy on Bite Size.  She was just helping me out.  She at least has some sense of charity left in her.”

“Yeah, I’ll knock some ‘sense’ into her.”

Spike attempted to redirect the conversation to another topic other than the fact that he was in her house - again.  “So tell me Slayer, why were you crying?”

Buffy looked up into Spike’s piercing blue eyes.  *  He can see right through me, I know it.  *  Buffy stood up and went nose to nose with the vampire.  “None of your business, Spike!  Now get out!”

“I can’t!  If you’ve forgotten then let me remind you.  It’s three o’ clock in the bleedin’ afternoon and sunny Sunnydale is raining down vampire fatal sunshine!”

“Buy an umbrella!”

“Oh c’mon Slayer!  Sundown is in four hours.  I’ll stay out of your way.  I’ll be as quiet as the dead.  See?”  Spike shut his mouth and pressed his lips together tightly.

Buffy shook her head.  “I really should just push you outside and toast some marshmallows over the flames.”

Spike shot her his best little lost puppy dog look and tried to plead with her.  “Please Buffy?  I don’t have anywhere else to go right now.”

“Fine.  Stay, but I’m leaving.”

“You don’t have to leave.  I’ll go hangout in the basement or the pantry or maybe the linen closet. . .”

“No, I have to go to the magic shop and get Dawn anyway.  You just stay here, but I want you out at sundown, got it?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“And stay out of my room!”

“God Buffy!  I don’t need to go into your room . . . anymore.”  Spike smiled evilly at her.

Buffy sighed in frustration.  “Just don’t do anything I’d have to stake you for.  And I mean it!”

“Why Slayer?  Is it ‘cause you’d miss me?”

“Yes, I’d miss you . . . like a bad hair day, Spike.”

Buffy opened the door and began to leave.

“Isn’t everyday a bad hair day?” Spike asked as he blew her a kiss.

“It’s beginning to look that way.”  Buffy slammed the door in his face.

Spike took off his coat and examined it for any fire damage.  It was dusty, but it seemed to be all right – nothing a good spit shining wouldn’t help.  It smelled like Buffy.  All over it – like she’d rolled around on it.  Spike noticed the collar was still wet from her tears and there was a long smudge of lipstick on it also. 

*  Why was she crying?  How did she get my coat?  Did she think I was dust?  Is that why she was crying?  *

Spike pushed these questions out of his brain.  The Devil would be ice skating in Hell before Buffy shed any tears for him.

Buffy entered the Magic Box and looked around for Dawn.  Anya was ringing up sales while the rest of the gang was sitting around listening intently to a dark haired woman typing furiously on Willow’s laptop computer.  As Buffy looked at this stranger the hairs on the back of her neck raised up in warning.  Dawn was sitting right next to this woman.  Dawn was in danger!

“Dawn!”  All eyes turned to Buffy including Alex’s glowing red ones.  Buffy went into attack mode and charged towards Alex knocking her off the chair.  Alex skidded across the floor where Buffy pounced on top of her.

Buffy’s fists pounded into Alex’s face and chest.  “Get away from my sister!  You demon bitch!”

Alex head butted Buffy stunning the Slayer briefly.  Alex kicked her off and Buffy flew across the room slamming into the display counter.  Alex put her hands up and backed away, but never took her eyes off of the very pissed off Slayer now standing up and advancing her way.

Alex’s eyes pleaded with the group to help her. “Mr. Giles!  Please!  Tell her that I’m not here to hurt anyone.  Especially a child!”

Giles stepped in between the two women.  “Buffy!  It’s all right! She’s, she’s . . .”

Buffy stopped him with a wave of her hand.  “She’s a demon!”  Buffy grabbed her trophy Troll hammer out of the corner and approached Alex menacingly.

Alex backed away more trying to get some distance between her and the Slayer.  Alex pointed at Buffy accusingly.  “She has some serious anger management issues!  A human with demon strength and the temperament of a vampire – let me guess, she’s the Slayer?”

“I do not have the temper of a vampire!”

Alex laughed.  “Oh yeah, ‘cause you usually introduce yourself with a sound beating instead of a handshake?”

Buffy shook the Troll hammer at Alex.  “Shut up or I’ll make you shut up - forever!”

Giles put his hand on Buffy’s arm and used his most scolding voice on her.  “Buffy!  Stop it!  You cannot hurt her.”

“Can’t I?”

“No!  She only came here for help.  We don’t turn away people in need especially when they can be so useful to us.”

Buffy lowered the hammer.  “Fine, explain.”  Buffy motioned to her little sister.  “Dawn come over here by me.”

Dawn hung her head down in embarrassment.  “Geez Buffy!  Overreact much?”

Buffy was not in the mood for this from Dawn right now.  “Shh!  We’ll talk about my overreaction later.  And anyway, we have a lot to discuss!”

Dawn was confused.  “Huh?”

Buffy gritted her teeth and mumbled to her sister.  “Bleach blond British bad boy as a house guest ring a bell?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’.”

“Buffy, you don’t understand he . . .”

“I said we’ll discuss this later.”  Buffy turned her attention back to the matter at hand.  “Now tell me, what’s with Marilyn Manson’s girlfriend here?”

Alex rolled her eyes and looked at Dawn.  “I see the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, eh?”

Dawn giggled.  Buffy squeezed her sister’s hand to silence her.

Anya stepped out from behind the counter.  “This is Alex.  She’s a succubus and she’s looking for her brother.  If she doesn’t find him soon he’ll probably kill himself and if he does then she’ll be the only one of her family line left alive.  Not to mention he’ll probably end up hurting some unsuspecting human girl in the process.”

“Also, she’s offered to pay us in information, Buffy.”  Giles interjected.  “She has vast knowledge of ancient languages that no living human being could possibly have.  Her help would be an invaluable tool for us.  She could unlock secrets that would help us fight so many . . . we could have a detailed analysis of . . .”

Buffy held up her hand to her watcher.  “Whoa Giles!  Stop drooling!  And back up, I need the whole story.  Especially the details on how her brother might be hurting unsuspecting human girls.”

Giles pulled out a chair for Buffy.  “Sit.  We’ll tell you.”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

            Buffy wrinkled her brow and looked at the woman with the red teary eyes.  “O.K. so what you’re saying is we need to find a love sick and suicidal sex demon before he goes on a breeding binge then what?  Jumps off a bridge or something?”

            Alex nodded.  “Well, sort of . . . when my kind gets this despondent they go into sexual overdrive.  This basically means they try to mate as much as they can, but there’s a catch.  They throw our Rulebook out and become as evil as they can get.”

Buffy snorted at the word – Evil.  “Evil as in what?”

“They’ll do anything to have whoever they want and if they can’t fool the human into mating, they will rape them.  After that happens, there’s no going back.  It is the duty of the next of kin to such an incubus or succubus to carry out their sentence for breaking our sacred law.  It would be my duty to kill my own brother.  I don’t want to have to do it.  That’s why we have to find him before he . . . before he . . .”  Alex’s voice cracked and a single tear fell from her eye.  “He’s all my mother and I have left.  All the rest of my siblings are already gone.”

Dawn handed Alex a tissue.  “How many brothers and sisters did you have?”

“Two hundred and seventeen.  And now they’re all gone.  Charley and I are the youngest.  My mother will die if anything happens to either of us.  And if my mother dies, I will perish.”

Buffy thought of her own mother’s death and how lost she would be if she didn’t have Dawn to lean on.  It would definitely kill her if she were left all alone with no family.

“Alex, I’ll help you find him.”

Alex looked up at the young Slayer and smiled through her tears.  “Thank you.”

Buffy stood up and tried to take command of the situation.  “O.K.  We should stop sitting here talking about finding Charley and start looking.  Let’s go!”

“Um, Buffy?” Willow asked quietly.

“Yeah?”

“We were just about to do a location spell on Charley.  And as soon as that is done we’ll be able to pinpoint his location.”

Buffy’s face turned a light shade of pink.  “Oh!  And I came in and interrupted you guys with the kicking and the punching didn’t I?”

Buffy sat at the reading table with Dawn as they waited for Willow, Tara and Giles to complete the spell with Alex.  Anya was busy with a customer and completely oblivious to the heated exchange going on between the two sisters.

“I can’t believe you just let him in the house without asking me!  He may have a v-chip in his head, but he can still be dangerous in the creepy ‘I wanna bop Buffy’ kinda way.”

Dawn pouted at her older and very bossy sister.  “He just showed up all beaten up and dusty begging to hide in the basement.  And after all he’s done for us lately, I couldn’t say no.  And anyway you weren’t supposed to be home until after four.  He was going to find a new place tonight, so what you didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“I don’t care, Dawn!  You know how I feel about letting vampires in the house, especially Spike!”

“Buffy!  You invited him back in again, it’s not like he couldn’t have just broken in if he’d wanted to.  At least he asked one of us.”

Buffy was speechless.  After the whole taking a beating from Glory and not giving Dawn up, Buffy had re-invited him on the condition he wouldn’t come in without permission.  “But . . .”  Buffy searched for an argument to her sister’s point.

“But what?  I know you don’t like him or whatever, he knows that.  But I like him.  He’s saved my butt on more than one occasion and I’m not going to forget it.  If he needs my help well then damn it, I will help him even if it pisses you off!”

“God Dawn!  Harsh much?”

“Well what would you have done if he’d woken you up at five in the morning telling you some random demons blew up his crypt?”

“I . . .”

Dawn didn’t let her finish.  “You would’ve told him to drop deader and shut the door in his face.  And you know what the saddest part is?  He’d still say he loves you, he’d still die for you and you couldn’t care less.  So don’t tell me I’m harsh!”

Buffy was livid and about to blow in a major way.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Dawn!  How I feel about Spike is my own business.  I’m the adult here and I make the decisions about who can and cannot stay in our house!  And who are you to say that I wouldn’t have let him in?  Did you ever think that maybe it pisses me off that he asked you instead of me?”

Dawn didn’t know what to say.  Did her sister just say she was upset Spike went to her little sister instead of her?

“Huh?”

Just then Willow came scurrying out from the back room.  “Hey Anya?”

Anya looked up from the cash register.  “What is it?”

Willow looked a little pale.  “Um . . . do you have a band aid or something?”

“I’ll get the first aid kit.”  Anya rummaged underneath the counter for it.

Alex stepped out of the back room holding her arm.  “You might want to get a mop and bucket too.”

Buffy looked at the blood dripping down the demon girl’s arm.  “What did you do?”

Alex sighed.  “I let Giles do the ritual bleeding.  I told him I could do it myself.  I am so not paying for his dry cleaning!”

A shocked and blood covered Giles emerged from the back room followed closely by Tara.  His shirt, jacket and face were splattered with blood.  He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and began to wipe the blood off of his spectacles.  “I think that went well.  Right, so, the spell is complete.  We have two possible locations of where you brother might be.”

Alex looked very confused.  “Two locations?  There should only be one location.  That is unless I have other relatives running around town.”

Buffy looked very annoyed.  “Great!  Are they horny and suicidal too?”

Alex chose to ignore the Slayer’s comments.  “Where are the locations?”

Tara put their map of Sunnydale on the table and pointed to the two locations circled in red.  “According to this he’s either in the area around the Southside Auto Body Shop or in the area around the Bronze.”

Alex smirked.  “Do single girls hang around auto body shops?”

Buffy thought a moment.  “Only girls like Amy Fischer.”

Alex grabbed her backpack and put her sunglasses back on.  “The Bronze it is!”