Eighteen Days

Author:  Elen

Parts: 21 - 30

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~Part: 21~

Sometimes Marilyn Osborne wished that they never came to California. It was just a job and she could have refused the transfer, even if it did mean a promotion, but everyone said that it was career poison to refuse a transfer. So she took the job and sold the first house she had ever bought and pretended that it was hay fever that made her eyes run as she stood next to the dogwood tree they had planted on Daniel’s eighth birthday. He wanted to have his own tree, and he picked the dogwood because it was pretty.

It was on their way to California that they had stayed with her former sister-in-law, Linda. Crazy Linda, grown up with a family and children of her own. She was home schooling, and privately Marilyn thought it was because they could afford it and it was different. And sometime in the week and a half that they stayed with Linda, while the movers freighted their furniture across the country, Jordan bit Daniel and everything changed forever.

Her only son had shown up a little before mid-night looking like he hadn’t slept in days. He was sitting at the kitchen table with his head propped on his hand. He was picking at the black nail polish on his other hand, using the edge of his thumbnail to methodically scrape it away.

She could still remember sitting in the living room with the quiet, soft-spoken English librarian from Daniel’s school as he explained what had happened to her son. She didn’t believe it. She refused to believe it, even after Daniel patiently confirmed what Mr. Giles was saying. And then about a week later Linda called and asked in a strangely incurious way how Oz was adjusting to his new school, and then she knew, and if Linda had been in front of her, she might have killed her for what she had allowed to happen to Daniel.

She reached across the table, not quite touching him, just extending her hand, palm up. “You’re making a mess of it,” she said. “Let me do it.”

He put his hand in hers and she looked at his fingertips, the nails filed blunt, and her thumb ran over the backs of his fingers before she let go of his hand briefly to reach around to the corner of the counter right behind her to get her nail file and a bottle of nail polish remover. Placing those on the table, she dampened a tissue and started removing the nail polish. When she was done with the first hand, she got up to fill a shallow bowl with water and a few drops of dishwashing liquid. When she set it down in front of him and urged him to put his hand in the water, a ghost of a smile turned up the corners of his mouth.

“The deluxe manicure,” Marilyn joked. “Now you know how the other half lives.”

She rubbed the black polish off the fingernails of his other hand, trying not to scrub too hard. She hated the black polish. She knew it was just a fashion statement, but ever since she discovered what happened to her son when they came to California, the black nail polish seems to be more than a fashion statement. It was a badge of otherness that has leached into the ordinary days of the month.

He was home early, and she didn’t know what brought him home. Possibly they had run out of money or just tired of the grind of playing in clubs for little more than food money. The calendar in the kitchen showed the phases of the moon in a discreet corner, and she knew exactly when to expect him home. It wasn't something that they had talked about. She couldn’t talk about it. Thinking about it made her want to scream her rage and grief at the kind of God that allowed men who once were boys who planted dogwood trees to become monsters.

The silence had become habitual. It bled into other areas of their lives. When she realized that he was dating a local girl, she was thrown into a tailspin. There were times when she lay awake at night, agonizing over the possibility that unintentionally, her son might hurt this unknown girl. When she discovered her name, and looked up her picture in Daniel’s yearbook, she was haunted by her.

Willow Rosenberg. She looked the name up in the school directory and cross-referenced it to the tri-city directory, finding the phone number listed under the residential phone for Ira and Shelia Rosenberg. She flagged the address in case there were ever any deliveries to the Rosenberg home, with some crazy idea of taking the delivery herself. Marilyn finally made herself bring the topic up with Daniel, and he had given her an odd look and told her that Willow knew. Not only knew, but sometimes, when he was at the school library, locked in a cage to prevent him from hurting anyone, she stayed to make sure he stayed in.

The next time the full moon rose, and she found her son’s room neat and empty, she had made a couple of sandwiches and packed a bag with chips and soda, and she had gone to the school, to the library and found the girl in the yearbook.

The black and white photo didn’t do her justice. She was sitting on the floor in the library, in front of the cage, reading to him, her long auburn hair falling forward on each side of her face as she leaned forward, her body almost hiding the tranquilizer gun that was resting across her thighs.

They had their little late night snack at the library table, away from the cage while her son made snuffling noises, growling and whining with growing urgency. The only thing that kept her there was the tether of patient kindness that she saw in the girl’s eyes. She put some music on for him and he calmed down for a while before it started again, and then he was flinging himself at the cage, clawing at it, and she kept talking in her soft-spoken way, almost like they were in church, low and hushed. It was, Marilyn realized, a library voice, and that made her smile.

She took his hand out of the soapy water and he put the other hand in, looking bemused as she started to work on his cuticles with the cuticle stick. She looked at him, smiling a little. “I’m surprised that you didn’t go to San Jose to see Willow for a few days,” she ventured.

And he just looked at her, mute, pained, his throat working convulsively, and without thinking about it, she pushed the bowl away and took his face in her hands, pulling him to her shoulder, rocking him the way she did when he was small, her hand fisting into his hair as she felt the heat of silent tears soaking through her t-shirt. Something terrible had happened, and it would all come out soon enough.

She made soothing noises that probably sounded strange since she had started crying too, and she prayed, with everything that she had that the terrible thing that had happened to Willow was not her son.

~~~*~~~

Chris had left her two sleeping bags, a bottle of soda, and the first aid kit. Angel had left her with a cooler of pig’s blood in Styrofoam containers. She was torn by awe at his tolerance for the stuff and disgust at his willingness to subsist on it. She would drink it because she wasn’t going to starve. The demon wouldn’t let her starve, but it was like drinking Tab when you were expecting a Diet Coke.

She alternated between swigs of the Mountain Dew that had been left for her and the pig’s blood, and then was stuck with a really gross aftertaste and the caffeine high. Her sucky un-life had gone from bad to steadily worse. She was starting to get why vampires acted like Buffy was a big deal. She felt it, a queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach that worked its way up her spine until she was vamped out and trying to figure out what was clamoring at her when the Slayer walked into the crypt followed by her boyfriend.

And that was weird too. Vampire. Not even the creepy crawly sensation that she was rapidly associating with the Slayer—not Buffy, she would never, ever just be Buffy in her head ever again—could completely mask what he was throwing off. There were times when she managed to get close enough to Spike that she could pick up the subtle scent that he gave off and she felt like she was mainlining him. Pete said it was because he was older and more powerful than the others, and he didn’t seem to be bothered by it in the least. With Angel it was even more potent. It made her want to do anything to know that she might be in the presence of that smell.

Anything except trade comments with a Slayer.

Eventually Buffy had withdrawn and it had just been her, with Angel. The faint, bitter reek of the Slayer still clung to him, but she ignored it.

The willingness to do anything did not include revealing that she had attacked Willow. Angel wanted to know how Spike had found her, and Harmony stuck pretty close to the truth, but it was Georgia that went to the bathroom with Willow, and Georgia who tried to kill her, and Harmony who saved her. By the time she had gotten done with the story, she was almost convinced that it was true.

Angel wasn’t, and she knew it the minute that she looked up into his dark eyes, going for flirtatious, and freezing, wondering if sheer terror could stick to her face like that. He held her gaze for several minutes, and then nodded.

“I think I understand what happened,” he said, and his tone was so mild, so soothing that she felt confused.

“Devon said that you wanted to help us,” he told her.

“Please don’t stake me,” she blurted out.

“It’s up to you, Harmony,” he looked at her for a moment. “How long were you with Spike?”

“Not long,” she hedged. She wasn’t exactly with Spike. Pete was with Spike, and Spike barely tolerated him. She was in the less that tolerated category.

“Everything Spike knows about being a vampire, I taught him,” Angel acknowledged. “Minions that don’t keep themselves, don’t get kept. Minions that don’t follow orders, don’t live to learn better. Minions—“

“I’m not a minion,” Harmony was indignant.

“You are sire-less and unclaimed by any Master,” Angel corrected her. “Right now, you are less than a minion.”

“B-but, it’s not my fault,” she said numbly.

“I was leaving a tavern, drunk when I died in an alley, Spike died behind a stable, you died fighting to get away from the Mayor at his ascension,” Angel pointed out. “It’s never anyone’s fault. If you are useful, you stay like this. You don’t kill to feed, and you live a little while longer. It wasn’t my call. I’d have staked you when you lied to me about Willow. Buffy’s not ready to do that yet. If you ever lie to me again, I won’t ask her for an opinion.”

Staring at the blank wall in front of her, Harmony wondered what she could do to be useful.

~~~*~~~

Willow’s Email (Unopened)

To: Rosenw@clangeek.com
From: drswooffices2@aol.com

Re:

Willow,

I’m not sure if you are getting any of our email. I tried to call AOL customer support and I’m sure that they will get through to me as soon as the problem re-solves itself and they will lure me into staying with another of their diabolical 90 days of free unlimited access. Your mother and I are going to Macedonia. You have the itinerary, but I’m afraid that we will be very difficult to reach with the time difference and our schedules. We will be observing therapy sessions at several refuge camps to work on a standard of care protocol.

Your mother is sanguine. You get that from her, in case you ever wondered. I’m remembering that we are practicing medicine, or in this case, psychology, and I want to get it right.

Your mother is reading over my shoulder. She says that you get wanting to get it right from me.

We hope that your job is going well and that you are learning a lot. Your mother reminds you to call your aunt Carol if you need anything.

We miss you!

Love,

Dad and Mom

~~~*~~~

One of the blessedly few characteristics that crawled out of Wiliam’s grave with him was the ability to wake himself at a particular hour with a remarkable degree of accuracy. Spike had fallen asleep with a waking time in mind, but that wasn’t what woke him up. It wasn’t the girl, either, though he conscious of her presence even in his sleep. She wasn’t draped over him. There was no cuddling. Ever since he had teased her about her inclination to seek him out in her sleep she had devised increasingly successful ways of keeping herself to her side of the bed. She had one arm wrapped around a pillow that she was hugging to her chest to keep herself from finding something else to grab onto.

It was, he realized, a housekeeping cart, in the hallway, and the sound of a door opening and closing quietly that woke him an hour and a half ahead of schedule. He could have gone back to sleep, but he wasn’t tired. He had gone to sleep just after dawn, which wasn’t his habit. He usually stayed up until ten in the morning and then slept away the height of the day. He made a conscious effort to adjust his sleep schedule since he had taken the girl, rising earlier while Georgia and Colin were still sleeping and sleeping earlier, while Georgia and Colin were still awake, just in case she managed to get out of the room without disturbing him. Two days ago he would have discounted the possibility. Today, he wasn’t underestimating her.

He smiled a little in the dark at the memory of her leaving the club without him. He would have given a lot to have seen that. It wasn’t going to go down in the annals of great escapes, but it wasn’t bad. She should have grabbed his coat, which would have given her his car keys and wallet. She had that figured out by the next morning when she made sure to get both before she tried to walk out of the hotel. There was a pattern to it. Left alone with her guilty conscience after they had sex, she was inclined to bolt. The deal they had struck probably would not out-weigh her flight tendencies, so he started thinking about how to curb that without going back to handcuffing her to the bed or a chair.

He wasn’t totally opposed to handcuffs or electrical tape on principal, but he didn’t want her to think that his range was that limited. He wanted to nurture the idea that he was a bit more creative than that.

Taking her clothes away would send a message. It was for her own good really. There was no point in allowing her to think that his guard was down because their present arrangement included sex. A little show of force outside the door would reinforce the point and give Pete something constructive to do other than follow him around and be annoying.

The cart stopped outside their door, and after a moment, and the sounds of something quietly moved around, he could hear it rolling down the hallway. He got up and pulled on his jeans, going to the door, flipping the safety lock hook to the inside of the door frame to keep the door from shutting completely and locking him out. There was, in the hallway, a conveniently placed, brass clad table top under a fluted brass sconce. A breakfast tray with a bowl of fruit, toast, a carafe of coffee, a neatly folded newspaper and a silver bud vase with a single white rose had been left there with a folded slip of paper.

He opened the note and saw that it was to Willow, from Georgia. He tucked the note in his back pocket and picked up the tray, carrying it into their room and setting it down on the table before going back to secure the door. Georgia was not going to be happy with him for spoiling her courtship ritual, he concluded after studying the tray of food.

He put the fruit in the small refrigerator. Returning to the bedside to retrieve his cigarettes, he looked down at his bedmate and changed his mind. A vampire version of breakfast coffee was right in front of him. He discarded his jeans and got back in bed, sliding over to the center of the bed. She was wearing the t-shirt she had on earlier.

He lay on his side, careful to keep his hand on the outside of the sheet and t-shirt covering her until they picked up some of her warmth. The slow, steady stroke of his hand from armpit to her hip drew a sleepy murmur from her. He adjusted the pillow his head had rested on while he slept between them and eased her back toward him. She set one of her warm feet against his leg, above his knee, her toes flexing a bit as she shivered and stretched, rubbing her cheek against the pillowcase.

He could feel her waking up. “Sssh, go back to sleep, baby,” he crooned to her as he lifted the hem of her t-shirt, using the pull of the fabric against her arms and shoulders to get her to give up the pillow and lift her shoulders a bit as he pulled the t-shirt over her head. She settled back, her head falling on the pillow he had moved, her hips shifting as she rolled to her back, one hand searching for the blanket and sheet covering her to pull them up higher. Her fisted hand came to rest next to her cheek and she started to roll back on her side.

Under the blanket, his hand rode the curve of her hip before moving over the peachy softness of her abdomen. That woke her up with a startled sound that was abruptly cut off as she remembered where she was and why he was touching her.

He lifted his head, rolling his shoulder toward her, seeking her lips and she turned her head away from him to dodge the kiss. His lips grazed her cheek instead.

“Um . . . I haven’t brushed my teeth,” she said awkwardly, clearly perturbed by the idea of kissing prior to cleaning her mouth.

It was so guiless that he found himself smiling even as he kissed the corner of her mouth, using his tongue to coax her into opening her mouth for him. She tasted like Chambord and something slightly bitter, but not wholly unpleasant.

“You don’t need to,” he told her. Her upper lip was damp from his tongue. “You taste like raspberries.”

“I do,” she insisted. “I need to brush my teeth and . . . other stuff.”

The embarrassment clued him in to the ‘other stuff’ humans needed to do upon waking. He kissed her again, sucking on her upper lip, his hand moving up to cup her breast, and then he backed off. “Go on, then,” he said, turning to the bedside table to reach for his cigarettes.

She sat up, holding the sheet to her bare chest, looking for something to cover up with for the trip to the bathroom, and then gave a small sigh of defeat, unable to see the t-shirt at the foot of the bed. She glanced over at him, and he made a show of being preoccupied with shaking out a cigarette and reaching for the lighter that she took advantage of by slipping out of the bed, her slender, pale body glowing in the dark as she hurried into the bathroom.

Once the door was closed behind her, he grabbed the t-shirt and dropped it on the floor on his side of the bed. He was stabbing out the cigarette when she emerged from the bathroom in the robe, cheating him of the anticipated sight of her returning to the bed naked. He watched her, wondering if she would stall. She left the bathroom light on with the door ajar, and he half expected her to go to the table to get a cup of coffee, but she came back to the bed. Before she could get in bed with the robe on, he gestured to it. “Loose the robe, pet.”

She hesitated, probably working out the logistics of removing the robe and diving under the covers. His surmise was confirmed when she came to the bed, turning her back to him, resting one knee on the mattress as she untied the sash and slipped the robe off one shoulder while sliding under the sheet like a strip tease in reverse.

Lying down with the sheet pulled up snugly under her armpits an arm’s length from him, she cast him one of her wary sideways glances and he laughed at her expression and her overdeveloped modesty.

Anger and something that hinted of hurt flared in her eyes before she looked away, her chin firming up in a resolute way. She didn’t like being laughed at, he realized. No one did, but she really didn’t like it.

“What was all of that about?” he asked, genuinely curious. “I’ve seen you naked.”

Color climbed in her cheeks, “So?”

“So? Why the robe and the scurrying under the sheet?”

She looked at him for a long moment, clearly trying to decide how to answer him. He thought the answer was that parading around naked for his entertainment was not going to happen.

“I’m not used to anyone seeing me naked,” she said in a tone that suggested that it was not a topic she wanted to explore.

“Really? Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought you would go for dog boy flipping your skirt up and—“

“Please don’t do that,” she stopped him.

There was a desperate, fragile dignity to the request that was oddly compelling. Spike found himself nodding. “Fair enough,” he allowed. He leaned back against the headboard. “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of,” he began and as soon as the words left his mouth he knew it was, from her point of view, a ludicrous statement. Ignoring the obvious part of that since it had nothing to do with the point he was making, he plowed on, “You have a nice body, Red.”

He watched the color wash back in her cheeks. “Nice is a bit of understatement. You’re desirable. Sexy,” he waved in the shape of her. “Seems like you either don’t know it, or you don’t believe it, or—“

“I don’t think it’s very important?” she suggested tartly.

He raised an eyebrow, “Actually, I was going to say that it frightens you, but go on. It’s not important? Why not?”

She shrugged. “I’ve seen the pictures. I wasn’t a pretty baby.” She was practically bald until she was three years old and then the explosion of red hair. “I wasn’t a pretty child,” she added. “I had braces, and freckles, and bad hair, and that’s okay,” she said in a tone that suggested that it had not been okay at all. “I’m a lot of things. I’ll always be a lot of things,” there was more conviction there, and a hint of pride.

His gaze drifted a little as he thought about that. “Yeah, you are,” he agreed, realizing for the first time that part of what he was attracted to was not found in her hair or her eyes, or her creamy ivory toned skin, or the delicate, elegant shape of her body. She was also smart and stubborn and loyal as hell, and he liked those qualities. She had a quirky sense of humor and though he had forced her to bend to his demands, she wasn’t broken by her capitulation. There was a streak of hard-headed, almost ruthless, pragmatism to her that made her seem older than she really was.

He found himself thinking about what he was doing, picking at it for the flaw that he hadn’t found in the plan. It wasn’t a detailed insert evil slot A into evil slot B kind of plan. The lack of specifics worked better for him anyway. He liked to improvise. Boredom with the evil slot A into evil slot B type of planning and his tendency to go off on a spur of the moment tangent was something that had spoiled some of his other schemes. The plan for today was to keep the pressure on the Scooby gang with another phone call. He had mailed his packet of Polaroids before they had left for San Francisco, but he considered that moot at this point given her little escape attempt. They would be expecting proof that she was still alive.

He had to do something about his current entourage. Pete was annoying, but not a problem to manage. The surviving minion was too intimidated to do anything but follow orders. She survived because she wasn’t too intimidated to follow orders well. Eventually he was going to have to cut Colin and Georgia in on what he was after. He sized up Colin as being too lazy to try to undermine him or double cross him. Georgia, he wasn’t so sure about, but without Colin to back any move she made, she was no real threat to him.

In his post Gem of Amara life, they would be useful. They were mature and stable enough to appreciate the benefits that would be theirs if they accepted his leadership. He knew that that would change the instant Drusilla came into the picture. Minions would accept Dru unquestioningly; the age and power of a century old vampire left an imprint on the more susceptible members of their kind. Her instability was too off putting for either Colin or Georgia to tolerate, and Drusilla would not abide them. She was too territorial to allow a pair of mature vampires to co-exist with them.

Not that it was a sure thing that Drusilla would come back, he admitted to himself. Her instability made that hard to judge, but for over a century his understanding about his future was predicated on her presence in his life and the habit of thinking that she would inevitably be at his side was too strong to break.

All he had to do was stay low, keep himself off the Slayer’s radar, and complete the trade. He felt a relatively small stab of regret about placing the Slayer and her friends off limits. As desperately annoying as Buffy was, he also had a grudging admiration of her. She had fought him to a draw more than once and she hadn’t let her attachment to Angel to keep her from doing what she had to do to save the world, and as loathsome as that attachment was, he knew it was real. The girl had stones. Taking her down, one on one, in a level fight would have been a memory worth cherishing, but killing her after he had the Gem of Amara, after he had an unbeatable advantage, would not be nearly as satisfying.

So, life would go on for the Slayer and the Scoobies as long as they didn’t come after him. The girl lying next to him, under a sheet and a blanket, trying not to breath too loud and draw his attention back to her, her eyes just starting to drift shut as she sought to escape her current situation in a few more hours of sleep, would go back to whatever life he had interrupted. She had mentioned starting college in the fall. He wondered how long her conscience would allow her to keep from trying to curse him. Vampires had a certain amount of innate magic resistance that increased with age. Would the Gem of Amara increase that to a degree that would render any attempt on her part null?

He was sure of two things. As long as she was living, this Slayer was going to keep him on her list of things to do. He knew his own curiosity would move him to come back to find Red. Not necessarily for any reason other than to see what she made of herself. The longer Drusilla stayed away the more attractive Willow might become. No one could replace Dru, but he could see himself assigning some significance to the girl he was with right now once she had some miles on her to add some texture to the more interesting aspects of her.

Her eyes had closed. She wasn’t asleep, but she was willing to go to sleep if he would let her. He smiled at that. Unfortunately for her, he wasn’t sleepy.

He slid down on the bed, moving back to the center as her eyes opened to assess what this meant. Reaching out, he drew her to him with one hand on her hip, nudging her to get her to roll over on her side so he could spoon in behind her, arranging the pillow to support her head and smoothing her hair down as he tucked her in closer, her back to his chest.

She had tensed when she felt him behind her, his growing erection nestled against her ass. He stroked the arm outside the sheet down to her fingertips before threading his fingers through hers.

“What—“

“Sssh,” he rubbed his cheek against her hair. “I’m starting to get used to how warm you are,” he said, pitching his voice lower. “It feels kind of odd, but nice.”

She didn’t say anything about that, but she made a little sound that was probably as close as she was going to come to disputing the observation. He could tell by the twitchy way that she was moving her fingers that she wanted him to let go of her hand. He obliged and promptly moved his hand under the sheet to rest against her bare skin. He tucked her hair behind her ear to give his lips access to her ear, feeling her shiver as the tip of his tongue traced the outline of it.

His tongue bathed the back of her earlobe before he pulled it between his lips, sucking lightly before setting his teeth against her skin and tugging just hard enough to drag his teeth over her earlobe before reclaiming it. He felt her heartbeat speed up the tiniest bit. Pressing up against his chest, he could feel it against his skin.

Under the sheet his hand moved up, following the centerline of her body to rest on her breastbone for a moment with the slight weight of one breast pulled down by gravity to fit neatly between his thumb and index finger. He kissed the hollow under her ear while his thumb stroked the underside of her breast.

“Your skin is so soft, right here,” he said, peppering her neck with tiny kisses. “And here,” he repeated the motion of his thumb and then rubbed his hardening cock against her ass, “and here,” he kissed the underside of her jaw.

When he started playing with her nipples, he returned to her earlobe, flicking it with his tongue as his thumbnail scraped the hard peak of her breast, rolling it between his fingers as he sucked on her earlobe. Tugging it lightly away from her chest as his teeth scraped over her earlobe and repeating the process until she was unselfconsciously stretching her neck to give him better access to her, her eyes half closed, her lower lip between her teeth, probably to keep quiet.

He pushed the sheet away from her. “I need to see you,” he kissed her shoulder, opening his mouth over it, looking over her shoulder at his fingers, his chipped black nail polish stark against her skin. “You have the prettiest tits,” he pinched one nipple, twisting it just enough to make her flinch a little. “Look down. Look at yourself,” he coaxed. “Can you see it? Look at these nipples. They’re perfect. So hard and rosy against your skin,” his thumb flicked at her nipple and he took it between his thumb and index finger again, pinching it, tugging it until he felt her back tightening. He twisted it harder this time, wringing a startled gasp from her.

“Too much?” he guessed, lifting her arm to guide it around his neck. His hand moved to her other breast as his tongue tenderly laved her abuse nipple. For a moment her hand rested awkwardly on his shoulder. His tongue circled her nipple with little cat like licks. He blew on it and felt her hand tighten and then move hesitantly to the back of his neck, her fingertips gingerly moving into his hair. He drew her nipple into his mouth, licking it, sucking, the suction tugging on her nipple as his lips slid over the distended flesh, kissing the curve of her breast pulled down by her position on her side, and returning to her nipple to repeat the process.

Her fingers slid into his hair, a little awkwardly. She was still far to aware of her own reservations about what she was doing with him to be at ease about touching him, but her back was arching and he could feel the change in the way she was breathing as she shivered and flinched as he continued his oral exploration of her, savoring the warmth and the sound of her blood rushing through her pumping heart. Leaving the breast he was fondling, his hand moved back down her smooth abdomen, finding the indentation of her navel, leaving his thumb there as his fingertips brushed over the nest of curls between her legs. “Open your legs for me, Willow,” he said, lifting his head.

Her eyes opened slowly. She looked torn between obeying him because it was more or less required of her and obeying him because she knew that she was going to enjoy what he would do if she opened her legs.

And then he realized that it wasn’t just that. It was the awkwardness of doing what he wanted while she was lying on her side, and figuring out how to make that work that made her look a little uncertain. He slid his hips to the right to make room for her to shift her hips to lay on her back and saw an unmistakable flash of relief as he solved the problem for her. He kicked the sheet and blanket away from them, wanting to see her, feeling her move her leg closer to the edge of the bed. Seemingly unable to help herself, she looked down, her eyes fixing on and then skittering away from the sight of his cock.

Was this more modesty or awareness? He smoothed her hair back before bending his arm at the elbow to rest his chin on his hand. Her hand started to slide out from behind his neck and he lifted his head to catch hers before she could move it away from him, leaning in to kiss her, watching her eyelids drop as he got closer to her mouth. A flick of the tip of his tongue over the seem of her lips was all the prompting required to get her to open her mouth and let him in. She was just letting him kiss her, letting him slowly thrust his tongue into the warm cavern of her mouth. He backed off, frowning a little. Her mouth tasted strongly of cinnamon flavored mouthwash masking the more familiar taste of her. His more highly developed sense of smell made the mouthwash taste almost overwhelming.

She started to move her leg back and his foot shot out to stop her. Her eyes opened. The corner of his mouth turned up as he shook his head and then returned his attention to her mouth. Her lips were kiss swollen and reddened. Probably from the medicinal sting of the mouthwash. He licked and sucked on her lips. The mouthwash taste was less strong though it stung his nose a bit. He nipped at her upper lip until she moved her head like she was chasing his lips, and then he slanted his mouth over hers, stroking her hot little tongue until it was curling around his.

His hand moved down between her legs, parting her, finding the delicate, sleek, wet folds that complimented the texture of her mouth. A sound vibrated in her throat as she felt his fingers stroking her apart. The sound was ambiguous enough that he wondered if she was sore until his dampened fingers reached her clitoris. The sound his stroking fingers drew from her was a throaty moan. He drew back to let her breath, kissing her jaw, her throat, scattering kisses over her breasts as worked his fingers up and down her slit, keeping his touch firm but gentle.

He took her neglected nipple into his mouth, feeling her squirm a bit as she resisted the impulse to push herself against his mouth and hand. Her fingers were back in his hair as soon as he let go of her hand and her head had fallen back, unwitting exposing her throat to him. Penetrating her with a single finger he heard her whimper something that sounded like, “oh, oh, oh, oh,” and his lips tightened on her nipple, pulling on it hard as his finger moved in an out of her. The sleek tissue lining her channel felt a little swollen to him, but she was wet and getting wetter.

“Feels good, doesn’t it,” he purred, “such a hot, tight, pretty pussy you have, kitten,” his voice has deepened. He withdrew from her warm, grasping cunt and pinched her clitoris between his fingers. “You’re so wet. Feel that? Feel how wet you are?” His lips stroked her nipple between tongue curling caresses. “I need to feel that under my tongue, all that hot, sweetness filling my mouth,” he tugged on her nipple feeling her hips rise beneath his hand as he scraped her clitoris with the back of his thumbnail, making her cry out at the sensation.

“You like that, don’t you? You like having my head between your legs. You like having my mouth on you while I’m fingering your hot little quim?”

His tone of voice confused her. The things he was saying were true, and they were feeding mental images to her from last night, but he wasn’t taunting her with her responses to him. The low, intimate purr of his voice was ardent and . . . appreciative. Almost as if he was savoring the same mental images he was feeding her. The muscles inside her thighs were still a little achy. He had done that last night, gone down on her while his fingers fucked her until she came. She and Oz had experimented with oral sex. They had talked about it a couple of times before they tried it and it had been a little awkward, like a science project or an experiment with sketchy directions. She hadn’t been sure what she was supposed to feel, and he had been more concerned about her embarrassment and discomfort.

It had become a part of their repertoire, usually as a prelude to intercourse. During sex they hadn’t talked about sex exactly, other than to point out what did and didn’t work and to express feelings that had more to do with why they were having sex than feelings that actually came from having sex. The idea of doing some of the things she had done with Spike with Oz made her heart race.

Her hips rose as the idea took root and bloomed in her mind. Spike pinched her clitoris again, and she heard herself making a mewling sound. She pushed his head down in an unmistakable way. “Yes, yes,” she chanted, keeping her eyes closed. Oz’s hair was always spikey and a little stiff with gel, but when it was just washed, before he put any gel in it, it had a similar texture that came in part from the dye that was in it.

A little surprised by her shift from passive participation, Spike laughed softly at her enthusiastic response and let her push him down. Without prompting on his part she opened her legs wider to him, making room for him to kneel between her legs. Her fingers clutched her his hair, and a sharp comment about the ‘no hair pulling’ injunction occurred to him and was discarded as her other hand closed around his wrist to press his hand down harder as her hips lifted sharply.

He sat back on his heals for a moment just to admire her slim body, his gaze lingering for a moment on her flat abdomen and her small breasts with their hard nipples begging for attention. She had her eyes closed and she was panting a little, her kiss swollen lips parted.

His fingertips slid downward to the gulf of her vagina, pressing against the opening without penetrating while she ground herself against the heal of his hand. He slid his other hand under her ass. “That’s it, pet,” he breathed. “What a beauty you are,” he slid two fingers into her, slowly. They could explore the pleasure/pain principal some other time. Right now he wanted to reward her for the pretty display.

She bent her knees, heals slipping a little on the sheets as she pushed herself onto his fingers. He bent over her, feeling her fingers twist in his hair as she fucked his hand with a delicious roll of her hips. Pressing kisses into the red gold curls that veiled her cunt, he made his leisurely way down to her clitoris, listening to her moan in frustrated anticipation.

It was a variation on the way he played with her nipples as his tongue circled and licked before his lips closed around the distended flesh, sucking gently at first while his tongue flicked back and forth over her clit. Oz had fingered her before, but not like this. Two fingers. It made perfect sense. If one finger felt good, two was better, and what he was doing with his mouth . . . oh, God. It felt amazing. The way he was tugging on her clitoris, his tongue, the tip of his tongue teasing it, the flat of his tongue soothing the tickle.

She was riveted, one part of her mind busily cataloging the ‘what’ of what he was doing to her. The other racing with the possibilities that it suggested.

His fingers slid out of her and she moaned a protest at the loss as the hand under her ass urged her up higher. “I just want a taste,” he murmured, his tongue following the path that his fingers had, stabbing into her without any warning in a hungry way. His nose bumped against her clit as his tongue fucked her shallowly, curling against the walls of her vagina. She felt the hand under her ass moving down and his tongue was replaced with his thumb, forcing the cheeks of her ass apart as his thumb entered her.

He licked his way back to her clitoris, kissing it as his thumb slipped out of her. She wanted his fingers, and bent her knees, pushing her heals into the mattress, feeling an odd warm sensation in the soles of her feet.

His thumb, warm and wet from being inside of her pressed against her asshole, and the feeling of being touched there, where no one other than her gynecologist had ever ventured got her attention. “Don’t,” she choked, alarmed. “Please-“

“Sssh,” the sound vibrated against her clitoris in a wash of hot and cold sensations as the welcome bulk of his two fingers slid into her. “Not going to hurt you, baby. Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said roughly, nuzzling her. “Such a sweet girl,” his tongue swirled against her clit.

She could feel his thumb flexing as he started to push it into her while his lips clamped down on her clitoris and his fingers moved in and out of her. His lips slid over her clitoris as he tugged on it. “I’m going to make you feel so good,” he promised. “Just relax, and,” his tongue flicked over her clit, “let me fuck you. Fuck your sweet cunt and your--,” his thumb pressed deeper, and his smooth, hard teeth scraped over her clitoris, making her body jerk once as his thumb pushed deeper. His fingers moved a little faster and harder and his lips seized her clitoris, his tongue hard and demanding as he lashed her clit, forcing his thumb deeper into her.

Her orgasm seemed to start in her feet. She had a last second of clarity as an icy sensation prickled her skin from her scalp down to her feet and then her head fell back as she jerked convulsively against the pressure of his mouth.

Feeling her clamping down on his fingers, Spike opened his eyes, looking up her body, wanting to see her when she came. Her skin was damp with sweat and her hair was tousled, and when she came, her mouth opened on a silent scream, eyes flying open, unfocused and unearthly, a view that was lost to him as her back arched. He hardly had to hold her while she shook and the strangled sound of her pleasure sent a bolt of lust down his spine.

He let her fall back on the bed before sinking inside of her luxurious heat, feeling her spasming cunt grab at him. The sensation made him close his eyes and grit his teeth against the gathering knot of pressure at the base of his spine that proceeded an orgasm. When he was completely buried inside her, he carefully rolled them to the center of the bed, putting her on top, feeling her gasp for breath and shudder as the little aftershocks that were gently milking his cock worked through her. He ran his fingers through her hair and stroked her back, waiting for her to recover.

She made no effort to keep her weight off of him, and it felt good despite how damp and hot her skin was. When she started to catch her breath, he tipped her face up to him, running his thumb over her lips.

Her eyes flew open, a frown wrinkling her brow. “That isn’t the thumb that you—“

“Fucked your ass with?” he smirked, and rubbed the thumb against her lips. “No,” he said, amused by the disgust that made her small nose scrunched up. He brought his hand to his mouth, licking the fingers that had been inside of her. “These are the fingers that I fucked you with,” he closed his eyes, moving his hips under her. “God, but you taste good,” he said.

She was looking at him like she didn’t quite believe him. “C’mere, pet,” he urged her up higher in his arms, his mouth seeking hers. “Taste yourself on my lips,” he whispered before kissing her.

The smell of her own arousal on him hit her just before he claimed her lips and she made a choked sound. His fingers in her hair kept her from pulling back from his lips as he leisurely explored her mouth.

She could taste herself on him and tried to decide what it tasted like. Not bad, or good, but different than she expected. His free arm snaked around her hips, holding her as his hips moved beneath her.

He kept kissing her, barely allowing her to breath, his body rocking under hers, changing the depth of his penetration. “You’re so warm. I can feel you all around me, quivering inside, so hot and wet,” he murmured between kisses. “You’re going to do that for me, soon. Fuck me with your warm mouth. I can’t wait to see these lips--,” he kissed her again, his tongue slipping into her mouth.

He rolled them over onto her back, easing almost completely out of her body before slowly sinking back into her. “Open your eyes, witch,” he ordered.

Her eyes opened, reluctantly, heavy lidded. The earlier orgasm had taken a lot out of her, and she was tired. He could feel that too in the slight tremor in her thighs. He studied her eyes, solemn, sleepy, and pleasure dazed. He watched her eyes as he withdrew again, just the head of his cock inside of her, and let himself sink into her again slowly as she drew an unsteady breath, blinking as muscles in her face tightened and relaxed in a reaction to his slow penetration.

He rested his forehead against hers, holding her eyes. His gaze flicked briefly to her lips, damp from kissing, parted as her breath left her in time to his cock’s slow in and out stroke. He reached down to move her leg, slipping his arm under her thigh and bringing it up high watching her eyelids drift down as she absorbed the difference in the depth and angle of his penetration.

He kissed her the space between her eyebrow and the bridge of her nose. “Open your eyes,” he insisted. “I want to see it in your eyes when you come,” he said.

She shook her head. “I’m not going to,” she predicted. “Too . . . orgasmed out,” she explained. When she took in his skeptical expression she was almost tempted to tell him that she had been thinking as much about Oz as responding to him when she came before, but that seemed to be a potentially stupid thing to do. Her expression cooled. “But, I can make some really good sounds if that helps,” she said with a hint of sarcasm.

He chuckled at that. “I’ve heard that performance, and it’s not convincing.”

To her surprise, he lifted himself off her, slipping out of her body in a way that made her shudder. For a moment, he just hung there, balanced on his arms, engorged cock bobbing slightly drawing her attention as she recalled with a sense of foreboding his insistence that reciprocal oral sex was in her future.

Her eyes flew to his face. “Remember when I said that you might find that this isn’t the best deal for you because there are things that I haven’t done? Did I mention haven’t done well? I think I should have—“

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he grumbled. “This is the result of nearly universal birth control. Back in the good old days when girls went to their husbands with their hymen intact for fear of getting pregnant a good hand job or cock sucking was a lot easier to come by.”

Natural skepticism made her wonder if he was serious, even as he was pulling her back against his chest, directing her leg over his hip, the head of his cock bumping against her ass, and then her thigh before it brushed against her damp curls.

“You made that up,” she accused. “Which old days?”

His hand moved between her thighs to grasp his cock, lining himself up. He held her still as he slid into her with a happy sigh. “All of them, pet. If people ever got tired of this, you’d cease to exist,” he pointed out. His fingers found her clit. “Now, you were saying something about making good sounds?”

He kissed her shoulder, scooping her hair away from her sweaty neck, blowing on it when he noticed how hot she was. That made her get all goosepimpely again and she shivered feeling his fingers stroking her as his cock moved in and out of her. He kissed her shoulder and her neck and sucked on her earlobe until the sounds she was making were an indication that she was winding up to another orgasm.

“Are you almost there, baby?” he crooned to her, kissing her throat. “Such pretty sounds you make,” he said. “Give me some more,” he coaxed, his tongue pressing down on her neck, roughly licking the spot, then returning to suck on it, and lick again.

Neck. Vampire. “No!” she shouted, twisting her shoulders, as she tried to get her arm between his face and her neck.

He grabbed her wrist and pinned it to the bed over her head, eyes narrowing as the position she had twisted herself into tightened the muscles that were already squeezing him. He sped up his thrusts, pushing her down into the mattress. She saw his face change and tried to get away from him. His arm wrapped around her waist as he drove into her hard and fast, his head thrown back as he came with a shudder, jerking against her as he held her in place.

She could hear nothing but the sound of her own harsh breathing and a kind of purring sound that was rumbling in his throat as his head dipped and he rubbed his ridged brow against the exposed side of her breast, almost like a cat would. The purring increased in volume slightly, and then started to taper off as he rubbed his face against her, occasionally kissing her.

“Spike?” Willow whispered hesitantly. He was still inside her and his fingers were still rubbing her clitoris.

“Ssssh,” his tongue stole out between the fangs to lick her breast from the underside to the nipple.

“Spike?” she tried again, striving for a soothing tone of voice.

He responded with a dry laugh. “Oooh. The extra reasonable voice,” he said in a voice that sounded a little strained. He let go of her wrist and clumsily patted her hair. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked.

“N-no,” she stammered. “Spike?” she reached down to curl her fingers around his wrist. “Please stop,” she said softly.

“Said I’d make you feel good,” he muttered stubbornly, suddenly opening his mouth over her breast. She felt the tips of his fangs breaking her skin and tried to push his head away. The shallow puncture wounds oozed blood in two thin, bloody rivulets, the lower one dripping to her breastbone, the upper mark flowing downward to her nipple.

He licked it off, pulling out of her with a wet sound, leaving a smear of semen on her thigh as he bent her back to get at the rest of the blood on her chest. Then he bit her again on the upper swell of her other breast. It was another shallow bite, just breaking her skin. This time his tongue was there almost immediately, milking the small punctures, his fingers plucking at her clit, tugging on it.

He nuzzled her stomach, nicking her on the upper edge of her belly button and catching it on his tongue with a groan as he held her hands down, using his body to keep her down, under him. She tried to close her legs, but he only laughed at her efforts. Her face was pink with exertion and her eyes were luminous with unshed tears, and when he hungrily licked her clitoris she made a sound like a cat in heat. He sank his fangs into the incredibly tender skin of her inner thigh, feeling like he was sinking into butter. Blood filled his mouth and he swallowed it all, pushing her thighs apart to get at her, licking the swollen folds of her cunt, tasting her and him on her, tormenting her swollen, blood engorged clit with the tip of a razor sharp fang. The temptation was almost too much for him, and at the last minute, he turned his head to suckle the bite on her thigh before shaking off the game face entirely and applying himself to making her come again.

~~~*~~~

In a moment that reminded him of their aborted tryst in the club, Willow was on her side, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around herself. After she had come, he had licked every lingering trace of blood from her skin, savoring the taste of her, rich with the hormones flooding her blood. When he was satisfied that he had gotten all that she had to give without biting her again, he got up and went to the bathroom to soak a washcloth in cold water.

She didn’t put up a fight when he used the washcloth to wipe off the lingering evidence of his orgasm and her arousal or protest the cold cloth pressed against her swollen labia. When he was satisfied that he hadn’t done any real damage to her and removed the washcloth she had glared at him bitterly.

He poured a cup of coffee for her, adding sugar and cream until the coffee was the muddy brown color she seemed to prefer. Feeling like a bit of a ponce, he brought her the coffee. Sensible creature that she was, she accepted the coffee, and refrained from dashing the contents in his face. She just stared at him with angry eyes, her hair a wild tangle around her face and called him a bastard.

That got a crooked smile out of him before he went to take a shower.

When he emerged from the bathroom, the half empty coffee cup was on the bedside table and she was under the blankets, hugging her pillow to her, curled up in a ball around it. He got dressed, leaving her alone for the time being.

She was nodding off when he sat beside her on the edge of the bed. “You need clothes. Do you want to go shopping with Georgia?”

“And spoil her vampire Barbie Doll fun?” Willow was sarcastic.

His eyebrows rose. “I’ll take that as a no, then,” he said coolly.

~~~*~~~

Willow woke up a little after eleven in the morning according to the clock beside the bed. She was alone, as in alone. No Spike in bed beside her. No Spike in the bathroom. Alone. She looked around the room for her pants and t-shirt, left on the floor last night. They weren’t on the floor, or in the closet, or in any of the drawers. With a sinking feeling, she checked behind the bathroom door, and then in the hamper, and swore under her breath.

He left her alone, without clothes. Even the robe was gone.

With nothing better to do, shewent to the bathroom and started to get ready to take a shower. Her collection of bruises courtesy of Georgia had faded and now they had friends, on her hips and thighs. The bite marks and her breasts, stomach and thigh had stopped bleeding before she wentback to sleep, and were already scabbing over.

She got into the shower. The soaps had changed from honeysuckle scented to lilac since the last time she had bathed. It was probably a thing. The fragrances were rotated or something. Or maybe Spike liked lilac. She made a face at the thought, hearing him say ‘you need clothes’ like she was some cheap Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman wanna be who would be swept away by a lot of fancy clothes purchased with money stolen from people he had killed or stolen from stores staffed by people he killed, or removed from the bodies of people he had killed.

She shuddered at the last thought and made a mental note not to wear anything that arrived without a tag.

Assuming that she was going to be supplied with clothing at all, she thought a few minutes later as she gazed in bewilderment at the hand towel she had pulled off the rack. It was the third towel she had pulled out. They were all hand towels, or washcloths, and the robe that had been hanging on the back of the door was gone.

She half expected to find that while she was in the shower, the bed linen disappeared, but when she came out it was still there, tangled up from having been kicked aside and tugged up, and balled in her hands. She yanked the flat sheet loose, folded it lengthwise, and made herself a halfway credible toga before tiptoeing to the door to look through the peephole into the hallway.

Pete and Jeannie were out there with a card table between them playing what looked an awful lot like Boggle.

Kicking the trailing edge of her toga hem, Willow paced. When she got tired of pacing, she looked in the refrigerator and found that the salad left there last night had been supplemented by more yogurt, a bowl of cut fruit covered in cellophane, and a few cans of Diet Coke. The plastic fork left with the salad and the metal in the Diet Coke safety tabs constituted the most lethal threat in the room.

She had the fruit and drank a can of Diet Coke before cracking open a second can and settling into the chair at the table, angling it to see the TV. The remote had been moved from the bedside table to the rectangular table that also served as a desk. She flipped channels, glaring at the television, hefting the remote thoughtfully. It was your standard plastic remote, but there were batteries in it that gave it a little weight on the butt end. She looked at it for a moment, staring at the buttons with a frown.

Then she looked at the buttons. Really looked at them, and then at the television, hardly daring to believe. Her thumb hovered over the round yellow button on the base of the remote, and she depressed it. The television screen flickered and then scrolled up blue with the message, “Welcome to The Hermitage Internet TV”.

It went on to say that a charge of $9.99 per day would be added to the room for 24 hours of Internet access and that additional charges might be applied for pay per view movies or games.

She hit the OK button to order now, and set the remote down to look for the keyboard, half suspecting that Spike had removed that too in his quest to strip the room of anything remotely useful. She was about to give up when she grabbed the swivel base the television was resting on and gave it a tug. It slid out a few inches and something fell with a clatter that made her heart leap in her throat while she watched the door to see if the noise would bring Pete or Jeannie to investigate.

When no one came after several agonizing moments, she reached behind the television, feeling around until the slim rectangular shape of a keyboard took form. Gingerly, careful not to make a lot of noise, she pulled it out and did a very abbreviated Snoopy dance that almost ended badly when she stepped on part of her toga and stumbled.

Victory dance later, she decided, eyeing the door. There was nothing to keep her from throwing the safety lock from the inside. It would slow anyone down who was trying to get in.

She went to the door, peered out at Pete and Jeanie again, and slammed both of her hands on the door, watching Jeannie jump and Pete glare at the door. With a cautious glance over her shoulder to make sure that the Internet access screen was not visible from the door, she opened the door. She didn’t have to manufacture ire. “Where is he?” she demanded.

Pete leaned back in his chair, smirking. “That’s a good look for you,” he told her.

“Beats shrieking ‘fire, fire’ and slapping at myself like a girl,” Willow shot back. “Right. I get it. You aren’t going to tell me where he is. Or when he’s coming back, or where my clothes are.”

“That just about covers it,” Pete agreed. “Now, shut the door, from the other side,” he ordered.

Willow slammed it shut. Unfortunately for her, the dramatic gesture fell short when her sheet got stuck in the door. “Crap,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. She tugged the door open, yanked her sheet back in, grimaced at Pete who was chuckling at this, and shut the door, threw the inside bolt and the safety lock for good measure.

“Fine,” Pete muttered. “Lock yourself in you silly bint.”

Jeannie cocked her head to one side. “What’s a bint?” she asked.

~~~*~~~

It took a bit of trial and error to get the wireless keyboard and the television lined up well enough to work with an acceptable degree of success. Willow had it balanced on her knees as she typed, working her way into her email account. It had taken her a few nail biting minutes to remember how to do this since it was not a web based account, but she figured it out.

The hotel Internet system went down while her mail was downloading, and she almost screamed in frustration before doggedly working her way back and restarting the process. Quickly scanning her email titles and addresses, she spotted several emails from her parents amongst emails from her boss, Sara Engstrom that went from lower case, “Willow, Where are You?” to upper case, “PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME FIRE YOU!”, and back to lower case, “Notice of Termination of Employment’.

Most of the email addresses were familiar to her, and then there was one that stood out. B.summers@uscs.edu. Buffy. She opened it and scanned the note. Buffy had set up her computer and sent her an email. Without a mouse, she had to use the up and down arrows to get to the Reply button. She started composing a message, packing in as many pertinent details as she could think of. They were in Sacramento, in a hotel. Called . . . . she had seen it on a notepad, on the screen, what was it? Hermitage! She kept typing steadily.

When she got to the end of her pitifully thin amount of hard data, she chewed on the tip of her pinky nail and considered what questions the email might raise as well as answers. The first question would be authentication. She closed her eyes to think of something that would prove it was her, and started typing again.

Shutting down the Internet connection and tucking the keyboard away was the hardest thing she ever did. Preserving the fact that she had access to the Internet was critical.

She shut it down.

(Buffy Summers’ Email, Unread)

To: b.summers@uscs.edu

From: Rosenw@clangeek.com

Re: You-hoo!
 

Buffy,

I’m in Sacramento. We are staying in some kind of hotel called The Hermitage. Ask Angel if there are Hyatt Hotel’s for vampires, because I’m thinking with the lack of windows, this is one. When we left San Francisco Spike was with eight vampires, including Harmony—long story. In the last day I’ve only seen four.

I’ll keep updating you as long as I have the Internet access.

Willow

~Part: 22~

With every quarter hour that crawled past after she logged off the Internet TV, Willow cursed her lack of nerve and the unpredictability of Spike’s movements while she watched television with her back to the door and an ear cocked for any attempt to open the door. She wanted to figure out how much time she had between someone trying to get in, and actually getting in, which would require her to disengage the safety lock, and possibly the bolt she had thrown. Once she had that timing down, she would be able to figure out how much time she had to log off the computer and get to the door as well as an opportunity to determine how annoyed Spike was by her locking the door.

Nibbling on her pinky fingernail, Willow thought about how to play that. Angry? You lock me in, you steal my clothes, so yeah, I’m going to lock you out, you jackass, she thought. It helped that she was angry. She was angry at Spike. She was angry at herself for the position she had placed herself in. She was angry about loosing precious time to her uncertainty about when he would return.

She made herself think constructively about her next on-line time. She would check her email first. If Buffy had not responded, she would start emailing other people who regularly checked their email to get them to call Buffy and Giles. Then she would look for a web site for the hotel, to try to narrow down her location, hit MapQuest for more information on Sacramento, and then find local law enforcement web sites.

Her mind wandered to her parents' email. The last one hinted at some frustration at her lack of response, which was put down to AOL, and not good old reliable Willow. Her father had once asked her opinion about AOL and her comments had not been flattering. He adopted the attitude, but he kept the service for the very reasons Willow wouldn’t have. AOL was for people who were casual users and browsers. It was reliable and the interface was easy to navigate. To her it was an irritating layer of program between her and the Internet.

Her parents always sent her notes every few days when they were on the road. The personal tone of the email in the impersonal medium of email irritated her. It was a glimpse into their mind set that she found unsettling, like at her parents' anniversary party, where she met her parents’ friends and colleagues. One of her Dad’s older graduate students had said something about how he felt like he knew her already because her father talked about her so much, and as gratifying as that had been it was also irritating and a little painful because she had no idea what he would say about her.

She should have known. You should know what your parents think of you without a stranger telling you.

She closed her eyes, forcing herself to stop the self-pitying train of thought. She didn’t have time for it, and as a practical matter, her parents were not only too far away to be any help, they were too out of touch with what went on in her life to understand what kind of help she needed.

She was reviewing her plan when Spike came in through the forgotten connecting door to the room with a smirking, “Lucy, I’m home,” that was probably meant to be funny.

Willow settled for a withering glare and returned to the somewhat hypnotic charm of David Venable on QVC.

Georgia brushed past him, bearing an armful of clothing on hangers that she dropped on the unmade bed while admiring the channel set ruby ring that was being shown. She cast a sidelong glance at Willow, staring blankly at the television screen, before looking at Spike and smiling sweetly.

Spike read the smile as something along the lines of ‘serves you right, you greedy pig’. He smiled back.

He walked over to the table behind Willow, emptying his pockets of the cell phone, his cigarettes, lighter, and keys before turning back to her, trailing his fingers over her bare shoulder, brushing the back of his hand over her cheek. She went utterly still, and then she very deliberately tilted her head a fraction of an inch away from his touch.

He crossed the room to hang up his coat. Was this a version of the unsuccessful silent treatment tactic? He had no doubt that finding that she was confined to the room without clothing had irritated her. It was meant to. He was making a point. Their arrangement was not predicated on trust.

“Hang your clothes up, pet,” he said.

She set the remote control down and got up from the chair to pick the clothes up and carry them to the closet. The only sound was the metallic click of each hanger as it was hung on the metal pole, and slid down with a whisper of plastic from the clothing bags. He watched her for a moment. She hardly looked at the clothing she was hanging, and didn’t ask where it had come from.

He went back to the table to get a cigarette, and leaned against the table, watching her with a small smile as she completed the task and returned to her chair, sitting stiffly. The wrinkled sheet she was wrapped up in had a certain charm. Her tousled, towel dried hair looked messy and it was an unintended reminder of what it had looked like after he had had his hands in it. The angry flush in her cheeks—he wasn’t sure if the novelty of her blushes would ever wear off—drew his eye.

She had taken a bath or a shower. He could smell the soap, but wrapped up in the sheet for hours, she smelled like them, a sweet, musky scent. He couldn’t resist playing with the ends of her hair. When she started to pull away, he though it was time to remind her that they had a deal.

She turned her head to look at him, the angry glitter of her eyes subdued. “Next time you go out, could you bring back something for me to read?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, a little surprised by the request. “Make a list,” he started to smile. “No reason why you can’t catch up on your summer reading list,” he teased.

“Thank you,” she said, turning back to the television.

He raised an eyebrow at that, picking at his chipped black nail polish. “We’ll be having drinks and dinner in the hotel,” he told her.

Georgia sat at the foot of the bed, watching them like they were a tennis match. She had already picked out Willow’s clothes for the evening and was looking forward to seeing how she would look in them. Spike hadn’t filled her in on the precise nature of the arrangement that had been worked out. He had simply told her that, for the time being, Willow was off limits.

Georgia examined her fingernails. “Did you get anything to eat, sugar?”

Willow looked at her. “Yes. Thank you,” she said.

Spike eyed the back of her head. Extra polite, with the please and thank you, and they unstated ‘bugger off’. He caught Georgia’s eye and nodded to the door. She made a face at that, her attention returning to Willow. “There’s more,” she told her. “Underwear and accessories and shoes. I thought of everything. Before dinner, I’ll do your hair,” she promised.

Willow gritted her teeth. “I imagine that this will come as a huge shock to present company, but I have been dressing myself since I was five. I can manage.”

Georgia just grinned. “Someone is in a bad mood,” she teased. “I’ll leave you two alone and pop in later,” she said, going through the connecting door and shutting it behind her.

Spike threaded his fingers through her hair, tugging her head back. “Is Georgia right, pet? Are you in a bad mood?”

She didn’t bother to dignify that with an answer, feeling his fingers twist in her hair, exerting just enough pressure to tug her head back another half inch. His lips grazed her temple. “I didn’t handcuff you to the bed or to a chair,” he tilted his head away from her. “That was a courtesy.”

Pushing off the table he was leaning against, he gave her hair a slight tug and let go of it and her. Now that she had given up being agreeable, he didn’t know what she thought was left for her to do. He was leaning toward pulling off the sheet and providing a demonstration of how unpleasant he could be if she didn’t start thinking more clearly.

He plucked the remote control from her hand and changed the channel, looking for something to watch.

“Why are we going anywhere for dinner?” she asked. “You don’t eat.”

“Food?” he glanced over at her before reaching up the unmade bed to grab a couple of pillows to wedge behind his shoulders. Propping one booted foot on the low footboard of the bed, he continued his channel surfing. “I eat.”

He glanced over at her and saw that she was looking at him, a slight frown on her face. He tried to decide what it was. Puzzlement. Curiosity. A spark of reluctant interest? Ah, the social anthropologist was rearing her head.

“I like food,” he decided to indulge her. “I get cravings for things. Like peanut butter and carrots.”

The frown deepened. “Together?”

“Yeah. It’s good,” he insisted, going back to his channel surfing. Taking her clothes had been deliberate. Leaving her without anything to do had not. It probably was not a good idea. God only knew what she’d think up with enough spare time.

“What were you up to while I was gone, pet?” he asked.

The question was unintentionally abrupt, and she was looking directly at him. There was no hiding the reaction. The increase in her heart rate would have tipped him off, but she couldn’t quite control her flinch.

She covered by rubbing her arms as if she was cold. “Shower. TV. Yelled at Pete,” she summarized with an unconvincing lack of detail. “And, you?”

He decided to let it ride for the moment and gestured to the closet. “You needed clothes.”

“You went shopping? With Georgia? In the middle of the day?” she was frowning again. “How?”

“Hotel boutique,” he told her. “You would have loved it. They had these Hobbit reject demons scurrying around. Smelled funny, but they found everything Georgia wanted.”

Willow looked at him like she suspected that he was on to her, and then she got up and walked over to the closet, taking a sudden interest in the clothing. He leaned back against the pillows, one arm behind his head, savoring the signs of her nervousness.

Willow made herself look at the clothes. He caught her off guard with the question and she was afraid that she looked as panicked as she felt when she realized that she had looked too startled. She found herself staring at a pair of Capri pants in royal blue that was on a hanger with a sleeveless white sweater. There was a giant blue chrysanthemum on the front of the sweater that almost looked like something she would have chosen for herself.

He watched her for a moment longer before rising from the bed in a predatory, back arching move, that she saw out of the corner of her eye. He walked over to her, running one finger down her bare arm.

“Anything you’ve forgotten to mention?” he prompted. “You’re an industrious sort of girl, aren’t you? Idle hands are the devil’s work shop, and all that?”

She backed up and found herself up against the open arch that framed the closet when he smoothly followed, not crowding her exactly. “No?” he mocked. “Is it more, I am what I do? Is that why you worry about your reading lists and your summer job and your lost opportunities to for earnest do-gooder activities?”

Her hands curled into fists at her sides. He had figured out that she was up to something and he wasn’t going to let go of it until he figured out what it was. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get dressed,” she said, keeping her voice as even as possible.

“And, if I do?”

She gritted her teeth. Crap. “I—“

He reached out for her, hooking his fingers into the sheet where it covered her breasts. “You?” he prompted, and then he laughed. “The look on your face, Red. Free advice? Poker is not your game.”

Without a mirror to check and see what her expression was betraying, Willow wanted to touch her face to see what it was doing that was so unsubtle. She wasn’t stammering. Stammering was usually her give away when she was lying. Damnit! Was he just fishing, or was she really throwing off an ‘I’ve got a secret’ vibe?

She considered testing out a condescending look at the hand buried in her cleavage and a ‘do you mind’ but this was Spike, and he didn’t mind, so that seemed like a bad idea. Instead she blurted out a reminder. “You hit me, I hit you, remember?”

He tugged on the sheet deliberately. “I rip your clothes off, you rip mine off?” he shot back. “I’m shocked, but game. Wasn’t thinking about beating you just yet, but give me a moment. I could get in the mood for it.”

She stared at him. There was just the tiniest hint of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. He was joking.

He sighed, and shook his head. “Yes, that was a joke,” he confirmed. “This is glib repartee, pet. When I’m not playing, you’ll know it.”

To her relief, he let her go, and unearthed the cell phone, flashing her a conspiratorial smile. “Time to call the Scoobies and find out what they are up to,” he explained. “Stick around. They’ll want to talk to you this time.”

She briefly debated about refusing to talk, just to spite him, and then decided not to. She started wondering how she could make talking to them work for her. Maybe slip in something like, read any interesting emails lately?

Too obvious. She frowned as Spike dialed a number, holding the phone to his ear. He strolled across the room to get another cigarette.

She frowned at the chrysanthemum on the sweater. Emails. Computers. It was sort of what she was known for. How to mention that? Ask about her computer? Ask where it was? If anyone had been using it—or her newsgroups and links. She looked at Spike. “Can I really talk to them?” she asked.

“Hmm?” he held up at hand. The phone was answered on the second ring. He recognized Angel voice. “Watcher.”

“Spike,” Angel gave it the menacing growl. Giles would have at least sounded bored, or weary in his aggravated Englishman talking to his favorite vampire kidnapper voice.

“Meant to call you. Just hadn’t gotten around to it.”

“We’re going to stop digging unless we know Willow is alive,” Angel told him.

Spike chuckled. “Really? So, you’re in charge of this little operation, eh? Reminds me of the good old days. You, thinking you were in charge, Darla, cracking the whip and bringing you to heal like a puppy. Speaking of which . . . according to Red, here, in some other version of Sunnyhell, you’re Red’s bitch. Makes you think about all the wonderful possibilities that she has, doesn’t it?”

“Shut up, Spike. Put her on the phone.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Spike drawled. “Because, you aren’t in charge, are you? Did they bring you in because they thought you knew how I think, or some other rot? Did you remember to point out that in recent history, I’ve beaten you on your ground twice? I beat you to cure Dru, and I beat Angelus on his wacky mission to destroy the world. Try not to chip a fang grinding your teeth, Peaches,” he advised.

“Where is Dru?” Angel asked.

There was a tiny pause. “Fuck if I know,” Spike answered.

“Left you? There’s a huge surprise,” Angel twisted the knife.

Spike responded with a harsh bark of a laugh. “Oh, right! You care? Don’t make me laugh. It’s all your fault. You, confusing her, messing with her head, ruining her. We were just fine without you and you bloody well couldn’t stand for that, could you?” he retorted.

“You’ve got issues with me, Spike? Let’s settle it. You don’t need Willow. You and me. We fight, we finish it. Last man standing walks away,” Angel offered.

Not even remotely tempted, Spike rolled his eyes. “Let me explain something to you, Angel,” he began, “your Slayer? You are probably thinking that if I get the Gem of Amara, her days are numbered, and you’d be wrong. Taking her down without it, that would be something, but once I have it, what’s the point? She’s no longer what she’s been. A worthy adversary. You, on the other hand? Piece of advice. Buy your sweetie an urn.”

He could feel Willow watching him, one hand at her throat. She looked like she was trying to plan what to say. “Put the Watcher on, or the Slayer, or Xapper—you know, someone that actually has a say in what happens?”

The winner was the Watcher. Giles came on the line a moment later while Spike silently relished the notion of the brooding one relinquishing the phone. It probably galled him to no end. Good.

“I’ll reiterate what Angel said. We want to talk to Willow and we will stop digging unless you prove that she is alive.” Giles was cool to the point of curtness.

“That’s workable,” Spike agreed. “Making good progress?”

“Willow,” Giles insisted.

He sighed, “Fine,” he gestured to her. “Pet? Say hello to the Watcher. He thinks you're less than alive,” he told her, holding the phone out to her.

She walked over to him and took the phone, holding it to her ear as one hand crept up to rest between the top of her makeshift toga and her neck in a gesture that smacked of maidenly modesty, as if the Watcher would be able to infer her mostly undressed state over the cell phone.

“Giles?”

Several hundred miles away, Giles pointed to Angel in the loft of his apartment and he quietly lifted the receiver of the phone there. “Willow,” Giles said, his tone softening unselfconsciously. “Are you all right? We’ve been very worried.”

Was she all right? “I’ve probably been fired from my summer internship, and I’m behind on my reading list, but other than that and oh, yeah, being kidnapped, I’m just . . . fine,” she said, sarcastically.

Spike threw his head back and laughed. Willow glared at him and he laughed louder. Then she frowned. “Um. Sorry! You just caught me off guard,” she began again, sounding contrite.

“No need to apologize,” Giles assured her, though he had been taken aback at the snide retort. “I’m sure it has been very difficult for you, and I want to assure you that we are doing everything to . . . effect your safe return.”

The little pause made Willow pause, at least mentally. There was something that Giles wasn’t saying, some doubt that he wasn’t expressing. Willow eyed Spike. “I know,” she said softly. “Um . . . research? You’ve probably got that covered, but if anyone thought to get my computer. I’ve got newsgroups and links that might be helpful with the research. And—“

Spike smiled and reached for the phone, “That’s enough for now,” he told her, taking the phone back.

“Satisfied?” he asked Giles.

Giles looked up at Angel, who nodded. “For time being,” he said.

“Get back to work then,” Spike suggested. “Oh, and if someone has a cell phone, you might want to give me the number.”

“You can always reach someone here,” Giles told him.

“But I don’t want to reach ‘someone’. I like talking to you, Watcher, and yanking Peaches chain is a treat, but I don’t have much to say to Xapper.”

Angel spoke, rattling off a cell phone number that Spike made himself mentally repeat three times until he was satisfied that he had it memorized.

“Ta, then, back to the salt mines. The faster you dig, the faster you get Red back,” he reminded them before disconnecting.

Willow watched him as he took a deep drag on his cigarette with an air of creamy satisfaction.

“You enjoy this,” she accused.

“I do,” he agreed. “It’s fun. More fun for me,” he rubbed his chin, “and that makes it more fun.”

He finished the cigarette while casually disrobing, which made Willow wish that she had managed to get dressed. She went back to the closet, half expecting him to tell her not to bother, but after he was finished undressing he strolled past her into the bathroom and a few minutes later she heard the shower start. She used the time to put on the sweater and pants outfit from the closet.

Once she was dressed, she went to the refrigerator to retrieve the salad that Spike had brought back last night and the second to last can of diet Coke. She was sitting at the table when he emerged from the bathroom with a towel loosely draped around his hips. He picked up the sheet she had left on the floor in passing and tossed it on the foot of the bed before going to the refrigerator and getting a beer.

He sat across from her at the table, picking up the room service menu. He ate real food, probably more than most vampires did. Breakfast foods didn’t do much for him, though he liked bagels and certain cereals. Eggs, which he preferred poached with bacon on a toasted English muffin, did not mix well with whatever passed for a digestive system. He liked the way any kind of bread smelled, but outside of bagels, bread never tasted as good as it smelled.

The dinner menu looked bland, but the appetizers were promising. He suspected that there was something more to this make nice dinner with Colin’s contacts than making nice. Colin had looked a bit cagey about that when they had talked earlier. Spike’s mind drifted over that conversation while he scanned the appetizers. Vampires were not the most trustworthy of creatures. This is where he differed from most vampires he knew. He was trusting. He trusted what he knew. Spike trusted his impressions and his instincts.

He had Colin sized up. He was lazy and willing to be led. As long as his illusion of independence was maintained and he was allowed to be useful in ways that reinforced his ideas about himself, he was manageable. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t reasonably alert, curious, or trying to figure out how to turn things to his advantage. He was lazy, not stupid. He made good decisions and he had raised in Georgia, an equal partner, which suggested a craving for order and stability. Keeping Colin focused required sharing a certain amount of information with him. Enough to reassure him that Spike hadn’t dragged him out on a limb with his childe.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with Pete and the little fledge that was Pete’s new shadow. His gut instinct was to stick and move. The longer they stayed in any one place, the more likely it was that someone would find them, or that the girl genius, apprentice escape artist picking at her salad would figure out some way to make a break for it again. He looked at her for a moment, watching her assemble a forkful of salad with all the salad food groups represented, drenched in salad dressing.

The concentration she could bring to bear on such a simple thing was interesting. He set aside the menu. “I’m going to get some sleep,” he told her. “Turn the television on, if you want, it isn’t going to bother me.”

She looked at him warily. “Thanks,” she said after a moment.

“Or, feel free to join me,” he invited, just to see how she would react.

He could almost see her on the verge of saying that she wasn’t sleepy, and then mentally reviewing that and deciding that it wasn’t a good idea. She sipped her diet Coke. Her tendency to blurt out the first thing on her mind was something he was going to miss.

“Do you want me to wake you up at a certain time?” she asked instead.

“Not necessary,” he told her. “Pete’s outside the door,” he reminded her. “Georgia will be back with the rest of the crap she got for you.”

She understood what he was getting at. Now was not a good time to escape. She gave the bits and pieces of salad a swirl with her fork, looking for croutons, while he tipped his head back, throat working as he drained the beer. There were little drops of water that clung to his shoulder, probably having fallen there from his hair, combed straight back in his familiar minimalist hair style.

He reminded her a little of Oz, though a day ago she would have said that it was impossible to even imagine a resemblance. They had a very similar physicality, though Oz was shorter. They were more lean muscle, competent but not extravagant grace, and at ease with themselves when naked. Oz had been more aware of her initial embarrassment and more considerate of it where Spike was aware of it, but he either didn’t care at all or he thought it was amusing. She had slept with exactly two men under vastly different circumstances and comparisons were inevitable, and even comforting as the contrasts she identified sharpened her appreciation of her boyfriend.

~Part: 23~

The hotel had a dining room and a lounge. The man playing piano reminded Willow of her great uncle Sheldon. His wife was her mother’s aunt Nina. They lived in Miami and they looked like they had gotten stuck in the 1950s. Sheldon wore hand tailored shirts and summer weight wool trousers that were always immaculate—perfectly pressed, falling in a break against his wing tip shoes. He had a collection of hats, all fedoras, mostly in browns and grays. When she was little, and they would visit, Uncle Sheldon would take her to the beach in her bathing suit and one of his t-shirts to protect her fair skin. They were always clean and neatly folded, smelling of cedar, soft against her skin.

He was playing a song that she recognized without knowing the name.

They were sitting at a table, Spike, Colin, Georgia, and three humans, a woman and two men, dressed in suits. Willow was dressed in clothing Georgia had picked out for her. She was wearing a fitted, sleeveless black dress that fell below the knee. A pair of low healed, pointy-toed pumps and a double strand of opera length pearls completed the ensemble. Spike had taken one look at it and rolled his eyes.

Georgia was all vampire chic in leather and spandex.

She was leaning against the arm of Willow’s chair, one hand resting on her arm, her fingers stroking the soft inside of Willow’s arm.

Pete and Jeannie were at the bar. Willow wondered what they were thinking. Was it was like being relegated to the kid’s table at a holiday gathering?

She had spent the last twenty-four hours bargaining with her body to save her friends, having sex with Spike, sleeping, having more sex, scheming to trip him up and most recently fending off Georgia’s notion of bonding over girl talk in the bathroom while Spike slept, or pretended to sleep.

Georgia chose to view her arrangement with Spike through a particularly skewed prism that was an odd echo of Buffy’s supportiveness about her crush on Xander and her relationship with Oz until Willow had been moved to point out the obvious. Spike wasn’t her boyfriend. They hadn’t eloped. This was not a honeymoon, vampire version or human. She had been standing in a bra and a half-slip at the time, and Georgia had just smiled at the collection of visible bite marks on her body.

Color crept into her cheeks and she looked down at her lap where her hands rested. She used her thumbnail to pick at her cuticles, welcoming the distraction. The muscles in her thighs felt kind of quivery and achy. Georgia had dressed her from the skin out, so she was wearing a black bra that looked like a lacy cobweb against her skin, a thong, and stockings. Her underwear drawer at home was full of practical undergarments. In the back, wrapped in tissue paper were her laundered undergarments from prom, also black but nowhere near as sexy as the things Georgia had picked out for her.

She was glad that that he had hurt her. She wished that she had bruises to go with the bite marks—more evidence of the willful and intentional infliction of harm. The choices she had made had not, in her mind, precluded the possibility that he would hurt her. Somehow it made it easier to accept what she had agreed to since he had.

~~~*~~~

Spike was bored. Face time with the humans who owned the hotel and had some connection to Colin’s mum was Colin’s gig. He had never trusted his business to humans. If he needed expertise in an area, he’d find someone to turn to provide it before he would deal with humans. The palpable lack of fear and anxiety from the three suits annoyed him to some degree—mostly, he thought they were incredibly stupid. Vampires were evil. Humans were neutral, being all soul having, they could go either way, but the ones who chose to be evil didn’t interest him particularly.

He wasn’t sure why that was so. He considered the woman with the two men briefly, objectively. She was a knock out. Tall and model thin in her tailored black suit with her graceful, swanlike neck exposed by the open collar of her blouse. Her gaze was direct, calculating, even a tiny bit amused. She had one of those accentless American voices, betraying nothing of her origins.

His gaze flicked to Willow. Georgia was playing dress up with her again. She looked absurdly demure, with her averted gaze, and a riot of hectic color rising in her cheeks. Her discomfort was obvious in the way she was trying to stay still and go unnoticed. He’d spent hours shagging her rotten, adjusting his inclinations to meet her on the relatively tame ground of her inexperience. He had all kinds of plans for her. She was interesting and amusing, and fascinating, and charmingly unaware of it, providing a nice diversion in the midst of his boredom.

The smart money said chose the evil, sexy lawyer bint, but where was the fun in that? Right now he wanted nothing more than to shed their present company and spend a few more hours between Willow’s soft thighs, fucking her senseless.

“As much as I enjoy seeing Colin and Georgia,” the older man spoke, his tone oddly soothing, “I’m here, tonight, to meet you, Spike. You are resourceful, intelligent, and your exploits are,” he smiled warmly, “legendary.”

One of Spike’s eyebrows rose. He rested his hands on his abdomen, his attention seemingly divided between the old man and Willow.

He didn’t seem remotely mollified or pleased by the . . . flattery? Willow’s hands moved restlessly. She found herself smoothing her skirt, touching the pearls she was wearing, rolling them between her fingers before her hand dropped to the skirt again, pinching a pleat.

Spike tilted his head. Her fidgeting brought his attention back to the dress. It had set him back a pretty penny, maxing out one of the credit card he had nicked the other night. The color really didn’t suit her, he decided, but he liked the cut of the dress. It left her throat and most of her back bare. The long, graceful line of the dress emphasized the delicate elegance of her body. She was a bit on the short side, but slender and gracefully proportioned. She had a smoky black scarf draping her throat, obscuring, but not entirely concealing his bite mark. She looked demure, with her eyes cast down and a hint of color staining her cheeks. Pretty, demure, innocent, and expensive.

His lips pursed at the thought. “Right,” he said slowly, his gaze flicking to the old man, a hint of contempt creeping in.

“We are aware of your . . . connections. You are part of the Order of Aurelius,” the old man continued smoothly.

Willow’s chin lifted a bit at that. Curiosity flickered in her eyes.

Spike leaned forward, picking up the leather bound lounge menu. “What of it?” he asked, sounding disinterested as he scanned the menu.

“We know enough about the Order of Aurelius to know that there is a vacuum that exists. No one has assumed leadership since the Master was . . . eliminated.”

Spike’s gaze flicked over the lawyer. “No one is likely to,” he told him curtly. What this guy knew about vampires could have been written on the head of a pin. Last of the Order of Aurelius, my arse, Spike thought. Maybe in North America where it had never counted for as much in the first place. In London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, and Venice you could find older, smugger members of the Master’s line. His one introduction to Darla’s sire had not gone down well with anyone. The Master had found nothing in Drusilla to appreciate or admire, stupid old bigot. Drusilla, and Spike by extension, were treated like Angelus’ embarrassing bastard stepchildren, an attitude that Darla did nothing to alleviate.

He had spent decades perfecting a don’t give a toss what you think attitude married to a staking on principal follow through that tended to make anyone cautious about taking that attitude with him. He wasn’t stupid, though. He knew it persisted. Fill the void of leadership? Hah. On a cold day in hell, assuming they would have him, he would delight in telling them to piss off.

He read the menu and gestured to a waiter. “You should eat, kitten,” he told Willow, sounding like some overly solicitous prat. He ordered the appetizer sampler, the chicken in peanut sauce with grilled vegetables, and more of the tea with apple and pear juice that she was already drinking for her, and a medium rare steak and a pint for himself.

Willow flashed him an uncertain look. “Guinness,” he elaborated with a wicked grin, leaning forward to run his knuckles over her soft cheek.

He sat back in his chair, having ignored Hollis or Holling, or whatever his name was to his satisfaction.

“If you find that you have need of our services,” the lawyer said, unruffled, “give us a call.”

The girl on his left took this as her cue. “We represent a large and varied clientele, including the owners of The Temple in San Francisco.”

Spike wanted to tell her to find a point and make it. He glanced at Colin, who was listening to all of this with the slightest hint of tension. Spike picked up Willow’s hand from her lap. “Dance with me, pet,” he demanded.

Without a word to the others he stood up. Her eyes went to him automatically and he smirked, pulling her out of her chair. He guided her over to the small, empty dance floor, his arm sliding around her waist, drawing her in against his body. He felt her heart speed up.

“Put your arms around my neck, Red,” he instructed, his hands moving over her ribs when she complied. “That’s a good girl,” he mocked, his mouth close to her ear, his voice pitched for her alone. “You look so pretty. Like a good little girl, all dressed up,” he husked.

“I would have thought you were less ‘Strangers in the Night’ than ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’” she observed.

His fingers splayed, feeling her through the dress. “Relax,” he shook her a little. “You’re so tense.” He listened to the music for a moment. “It’s Cole Porter, anyway. You’ve got your curious face on. What do you want to know?”

“Would you tell me if I asked?”

He shrugged. “Might. Ask. If I don’t want to answer, I’ll tell you.”

“Who are these people?” she asked. “They are . . . people, aren’t they?”

“Lawyers,” Spike’s lip curled. “And, yeah, they are people. More or less.”

“So, if we go back to the table and I say, excuse me but I’ve been kidnapped and I’d appreciate it if you could help me . . .”

“They’ll smile politely and maybe laugh,” he told her.

She frowned at little at that, but it conformed with her general impressions of the first people she had spent any time with since she had come into contact with Spike. “And you would?”

“Not have to kill them, so knock yourself out,” he suggested. “Or not.”

“They want something from you,” she guessed.

He nodded. “That’s the way of the world.”

“Do you know what they want?” she asked.

He smiled. “Don’t care,” he told her. “I please myself.”

When the song finished, he asked for another one, and they danced until their appetizer was served. Spike mentioned going for a walk, outside, after dinner and she wasn’t really surprised to find that she was looking forward to being outside, to having some point of reference beyond the blandly comfortable hotel.

All the while she kept mulling over ‘I please myself’. It sounded odd to her, like he believed it, but that maybe he wasn’t sure that it was true. There was a hint of belligerence in it. Her mother liked to say that everything she believed about behavior was predicated on the notion that people behave in ways to achieve the things they want and need, and that the reason that she had a career was that sometimes people needed help figuring out what they wanted or needed or help modifying their behavior to get it. Using the Shelia Rosenberg litmus test, which side of that did Spike fall on?

Once they were back at the table, Spike’s chief interest appeared to be the appetizer. The female attorney restarted her spiel about representing the owners of The Temple, only this time, she did get to the point. They were upset about the damage done to the club, and the bouncer he had killed as well as the vampire that had been left behind.

Harmony, Willow realized.

“How is Harm?” Spike asked, coming to the same conclusion at the same time. “Baby,” he dipped a coconut shrimp into a dip that smelled spicy. “Try this,” he suggested, blue eyes dancing with humor at his overtly distracted attention to her.

His amused gaze invited her to join whatever game he was playing. “Don’t baby me,” she retorted, and he smiled back at her.

“Pet,” he crooned.

She refused to be subjected to the indignity of being handfed, taking the proffered shrimp from his fingers.

The question about Harmony was as much as distraction as the interaction. “She’s fine. Some people she knew arrived the next morning and she left with them,” the female lawyer told him.

Spike was mildly surprised by that. People she knew? Someone from Sunnyhell that Angel had sent to check up on him? That was interesting, and potentially useful information. He could see Willow arriving at the same conclusions and made a note to ask her about it later.

The coconut shrimp was good, though the sauce was spicy enough to make her eyes water and her nose run.

“The Temple is seeking compensation for the damage, as well as the employee that you killed,” the female attorney continued.

Seeking compensation? Spike let that bland phrase roll around for a second. “How’s the calamari?” he asked Willow.

“Chewy,” she picked up a blue corn chip and stirred it in the warm artichoke dip that was just starting to separate a bit, scooping up an artichoke heart. It tasted like a fancy variation on her aunt’s hot and spicy chipped beef dip.

If the game required him to ask what kind of compensation the owners of The Temple wanted, he was not playing. Unfortunately Colin was not clued in to this. “What do they want?” he asked, taking this seriously.

“There was several thousand dollars of damage done to the club, and there’s the matter of the dead employee,” she said. “If the damages were paid, they would want compensation in the form of a new bouncer and an acknowledgement of fault.”

Colin looked at Spike who was looking at a misshapen deep fried lump of breading with a deeply skeptical expression. Giving it a pass, he moved on to the omnipresent potato skins.

Georgia shifted in her chair. She held her glass up so that the light from the candle filtered through watered down whiskey in her glass. “I never feel like I know enough about this stuff,” she said with a smile. “I knew this girl back in high school. Her family didn’t have a lot of money, and they weren’t really southern, but she read a lot. Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Kathleen O’Brien, and Eudora Welty. We didn’t run with the same crowd in high school, and after high school, she went off to college at the University of Charleston. She came home after graduating from college and was going on to graduate school at Emory—“

“The Harvard of the south,” the older attorney said with a small nod to her, his hand resting briefly on the younger woman’s arm beside her to keep her from saying something in her impatience at the drift off topic.

“Is it? I didn’t know that,” Georgia admitted. “She was working that summer at Pier One, and we went out for drinks after work one night at one of those chain restaurants, where they have the margarita drink, or theme drink specials? I ordered something blue. She asked for Wild Turkey and water. It just sounded like something, you know? Wild Turkey and water. Like, I know whiskey and I like the way it tastes without hiding it in a silly drink poured into a glass that could double for a fish tank.”

She silently toasted the older attorney. “Wild Turkey and water,” she noted. “I still don’t know what it means, but it sounds the same in my head.”

Willow’s chicken and peanut sauce had arrived and she pushed around medallions of chicken in the caramel colored sauce. Colin had relaxed a little. He was leaning back in his chair with his hands folded over his chest. The tea with pear and apple juice had made her thirsty, and she drank more of it feeling the odd sensation of pressure that she associated with an unanswered question posed by a teacher.

What the hell . . . she started to open her mouth to throw out her non-sequiter to cap Georgia’s. ‘Excuse me, but I’ve been kidnapped . . .’

But Georgia wasn’t done. “We’ll discuss it and get back to you,” she said.

That seemed to mollify the older attorney, who nodded to her and admitted that he knew very little about whiskey, but he had a wine cellar and collecting wine had become a hobby that he enjoyed.

While she picked at her entrée, Spike finished the appetizer sampler. Their waiter returned to freshen drinks and to remove the plates and Spike announced that he was going out for a smoke, motioning to Willow to join him. A few minutes later they were crossing the marble floored lobby, her heels tapping on the marble. The lobby was, she realized, the renovated lobby of a bank. The old-fashioned teller windows were still intact.

Spike held the door open for her, a remnant act of politesse that was rendered meaningless when he curled his fingers around her wrist as she walked through the door. He already had a cigarette clenched between his lips, and he lit it, pocketing the lighter as he took a deep drag. Willow found her skin prickling from the sensation of leaving the air conditioned hotel for the balmy Sacramento night, a feeling that was almost as disorienting as the streetscape that lay before her. Between the moment in the gas station and waking in the hotel room, she had seen nothing of where they were and she still wasn’t sure where they were. Colin said Sacramento, but she didn’t entirely trust that.

Tethered to Spike by his light hold on her wrist, Willow followed him as he walked for two blocks. The silence was not companionable or uncomfortable. For Willow it was simply convenient as she made herself take in street names and features of the street and its occupants that might be useful. She had taken Spike’s keys when she tried to get out of the hotel room the other day, thinking that she would take the car, not that it would slow him down. She didn’t know where the DeSoto was parked, so in retrospect, that hadn’t been such a great idea, except that it might have slowed him down, and that was a better idea.

Getting out of the hotel during daylight was her best chance at getting away. It would give her time to slow down and plan her next move.

They walked past a restaurant. Behind plate glass windows in low lighting she saw her reflection, a ghostly figure moving without reference to the still life images of people at tables or the vampire whose cool fingers were wrapped around her wrist. It made her feel not quite real, which really started at the table in the mostly empty hotel dining room where she was nothing more than an appendage.

He brought her to the wharf. The throaty wail of a saxophone drew his attention. There was a young black woman with a mane of silky braids playing a saxophone with the instrument case open at her feet in a timeless appeal. Sitting at a park bench, listening attentively was an older couple with a sleeping baby in a carrier between them. A clutch of teenagers were having a loud, multi-part conversation that seemed to be an argument about what they were going to do, and a discussion of a break-up that involved someone named Jan and Mike and that skank Tina.

Light from the wharf skipped like stones off the rippling surface of the river, turning blue-white in spots, suggesting a fast current.

“Anything you want to do?” Spike asked.

Willow twisted her wrist free. “Play scrabble, sharpen stakes, have a movie night . . . go home? That kind of thing.”

His smile was almost fond. “Stroll around, go clubbing, shag me senseless. That kind of thing.”

Her shoes weren’t selected for comfort and Willow could already feel a blister forming on her right foot where the narrow shoe was pinching the ball of her foot. Her toe, with the split toenail, was starting to throb in an unpleasant sort of way. Her left foot was only slightly better. If she put too much weight on it there was a sharp stabbing sensation that made her wonder if she had gotten all of the glass out. In the distance she could see a wide paved walk towards a park. Without commenting on her paucity of choices, she started walking towards the park and Spike fell into step beside her, finishing one cigarette and lighting another.

“Sure you don’t want to go clubbing?” he asked. “There’s a place not far from here, not as much a hole as Willie’s. There’s a juke box with anything you could want to hear—“

“Another demon bar?” she guessed.

“More or less.”

“Pass,” she said, determined not to limp. The park was looking farther and farther away and she realized that it was because the wharf was in a slight bend in the river while paved riverbank landscaping redrew the curve as a straight line. Ordinarily she would have admired the effect, but now she was thinking about having to cover the same expanding distance to return to the hotel.

Returning to the hotel meant returning to the room and an unavoidable repeat on last night and this morning. Or would it? She looked down at herself, not really seeing the attraction, at least from his point of view. The dress was nice, but it didn’t alter anything. There were no optical illusions that it achieved to make her look more voluptuous or alluring, and her few attempts at alluring in the past had mostly fallen flat. She had to concede that no matter how painful, the shoes made her feet look pretty, but that wasn’t something anyone else would notice.

Georgia had insisted on doing her makeup, and Willow suspected that the mascara was already smudged or flaking. The cream based eyeshadow Georgia had used was irritating her eyes and she knew that she had probably rubbed them without thinking about it. How many times had she sat on the counter in the bathroom in the Bronze while Buffy reapplied lipstick only to find herself subjected to a good humored blotting of smeared mascara by Buffy? A wave of homesickness swept over her.

Willow’s internal dialog of, ‘My feet hurt. I had sex with Spike. I’m overdressed for everything. I liked having sex with Spike. I’ve been kidnapped. I’m probably going to have sex with Spike again,’ was circling around the same thought. Which was probably why she was thinking that he was thinking the same thing, though it wasn’t necessarily so, because again with the improbability factor insofar as the idea that Spike was actually attracted to her for some really bizarre reason. She was pretty sure that Oz was attracted to her because she was nice, and that seemed an unlikely positive as far as Spike was concerned.

Her heel caught on an uneven spot on the pavement, causing her to step down heavily on her right foot, wrenching a gasp of pain out of her even as Spike’s hand shot out to steady her. She jerked her elbow away, hopping on one foot to keep her weight off her abused toe, aware that she probably looked ridiculous.

He watched her for a moment, and then nodded to something behind her. “There’s a park bench,” he pointed out. “Why don’t you sit for a few minutes?”

For a moment, he thought she would refuse, just because he suggested it. She had a stubborn streak that wasn’t the most obvious thing about her until you peeled back some of the outer layers of her carefully constructed cheerful, helpful, trustworthy, and loyal sidekick persona. There was a bit of bitch buried in her that probably scared her, which might have explained why she worked so hard at covering it up.

Her feet hurt. He could tell by the way she was shifting her feet inside the heals she was wearing. Inside the hotel, on carpet or the hardwood dance floor, she wouldn’t have noticed it, but on concrete, the thin-soled shoes weren’t giving her feet any protection and she had torn them up in her barefoot race through San Francisco. Her decision to walk rather than go clubbing or back to the hotel took on a slightly martyr-ish aspect.

“You made beating off limits,” he pointed out. “If it will make you feel better, we can put it on the menu. Think you might feel less guilty if I knock you around a little bit?”

She looked him in the eye. “My parents are psychologists, Spike. If I want to be analyzed, I’ll find a professional.”

He raised an eyebrow, took a long drag on his cigarette and squinted at her through the smoke that he exhaled. “Feel a little like a lab rat sometimes, pet?”

The question was so on target that a laugh escaped her. She used to read her mother’s case studies and wonder if parts were about her in a queasy kind of way. ‘Patient X is a twelve year old girl who presents with anorexia. She is an honor’s program student, and is active in sports. High achiever with typical anxieties associated with feelings of inadequacy. Denies stress, and is defensive about eating habits . . .’ Not that Willow ever had anorexia. Before she ever worried about whether she was thin or fat, she knew about anorexia and its cousins, and understood that they had very little to do with weight and everything to do with control.

Did her parents know that she struggled with feelings of inadequacy? It embarrassed her to think that they might.

He sat beside her on the bench, one arm resting on the back of the bench behind her. He smoothed the hair at the nape of her neck in a touch the tickled a little. “I used to worry a bit about it,” he told her. “Dru’s mad as a hatter, and she’s my sire, but Angelus acted like her madness was the normal thing, and I couldn’t do anything that pleased him even remotely. He had this way of looking at me like there was just something I’d never come close to being.”

Willow frowned, wondering why he would tell her something like that. He wasn’t drunk, or angry. “How did it make you feel?” she asked, and then winced inwardly at the question.

He shot her a sly sidelong glance, catching the slip. “That had to be pretty bloody annoying,” he said. “And, my ‘issues’ with Angelus or Angel, or whoever we are pretending Peaches is or isn’t at the moment, are pretty well established. He was a sanctimonious prick without the soul, and having it made him worse, not better.”

“And what are you? If Angel is sanctimonious, then what are you?”

He looked across the water, and shrugged. “That’s kind of the point of living or un-living, isn’t it? Figuring out what you are. Not because of what someone else is, but because of what you do about it.” He glanced over at her and then down at her feet. “Tell you what, we’ll sit here a bit and then go back. Colin and Georgia are going to want to chat, so you’ll have a bit of time to yourself. You can have a nice soak in the tub,” his fingers stroked her neck as he moved closer, slipping his arm under her knees and lifting her legs to rest on his. “It will help with the swelling,” he explained when she started to draw back as much as she could while keeping the skirt of her dress covering her legs. He eased one shoe off and handed it to her and then the other, pausing to examine her damaged toenail.

Willow closed her eyes for a moment, absorbing the sheer relief of being barefooted again. The only thing better might have been the fuzzy kitty slipper socks Xander gave her last year for her birthday. Or a wading pool. Or cool fingers working little circles into her instep. Her eyes flew open. He had a distant expression on his face, like he was thinking of anything other than massaging her feet on a park bench on a public wharf, and she wasn’t sure that bringing the intensity of his undivided attention to bear was a good idea.

“Your hands are going to smell like feet,” she blurted out.

He grinned to himself. Right, then. Trust Willow to address her obvious discomfort with him massaging her feet with a commonplace observation delivered in a tone that was disproportionately dire.

“Do you think it could become permanent?” he teased. “I’d hate to think that I’ll be going through unlife with the other vampires saying, I smell feet. Spike must be around here.”

Her eyes narrowed as she wondered if that could be arranged. It wasn’t a really good gypsy curse with a happiness clause, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. She wriggled her foot. “Stop it,” she said. “I’m pretty sure whatever I agreed to do, it didn’t include feet.”

“I can work feet in,” he assured her.

“Don’t put yourself out,” she grumped. “And quit being . . . foot massaging, park bench sitting, just your friendly kidnapper and coercive sex partner Spike. It’s no longer confusing. It’s just irritating in a ‘how stupid do you really think I am?’ sort of way,” she told him, getting her right foot back and sliding the shoe back on as her skirt slid down now that she was less worried about it covering her than putting a stop to whatever he was doing.

He kept her left foot in place by holding her ankle. Now that she had the one shoe on she pushed the skirt back up, not before she was flashing the lacy band of her thigh high stockings. Of course he saw that, and was looking at her like he was looking forward to seeing it again.

“I didn’t pick my clothes out,” she snapped, feeling self-conscious and a little alarmed by the lingering look.

“You let Georgia do it for you,” he retorted. “That was your choice.”

He had a lot of gall. “I’m getting tired of having my nose rubbed in the latest crappy choice between crappier choices.”

He gave her ankle a little squeeze. “Good for you. Just because we have a deal doesn’t mean you have to take any shit off of me,” he let go of her ankle and she slid her leg off of his, straightened her skirt again and slipped the shoe back on.

“In a hurry to get somewhere?” he drawled as she paused with her hands braced on either side of her on the park bench.

That was it. She had had it. Her fingers tightened on the wood slats under her hand. “Understand this. I’m not confused. I know who you are, and I know who I am, and I know what I’d choose for myself, and if I can’t chose it because it isn’t one of the crappy choices that are left to me, I still know who I am, and what I really want.”

He shook his head, laughing. “Try ‘piss off’” he suggested, standing up and offering her a hand to help her up. She ignored it and got up on her own, grimacing a little. “You start off strong, but then it’s all noise, and what the bloody hell is she ranting about now?”

“Fine,” she said. “The whole time this morning, when you were having sex with me? I was having sex with Oz, and wow! It was great,” she smiled sweetly, but her eyes were savage. “Thanks.”

He pretended to wipe a tear away. “That was cruel, pet. I don’t know if my ego will survive the crushing blow inflicted by your childish infatuation with a teenage boy. Why would I give a fuck? I’m going to have you naked later. Maybe use those pearls,” he flicked the necklace with one finger. “Push them inside your hot, wet cunt, and listen to you moan while I tease your sweet clit with the tip of my tongue,” he leaned down until they were more or less eye to eye. “If you want to delude yourself by pretending the idea of your teen crush violating you is what is really getting you off, that’s your kink, baby. It’s still my fingers, my mouth, my cock.”

Somehow he had managed to get the last word. It wasn’t fair. “Then we understand each other,” she managed to grit out.

His expression was slightly derisive. “Yeah, we understand each other,” he made it sound like it was a lot more one-sided than she thought it was.

~Part: 24~

Willow had the room to herself when they returned to the hotel. She decided to make the most of the time, flipping the hook on the safety lock on the hallway door. The connecting door didn’t have an obvious locking mechanism, which was puzzling, until she opened it and realized that it was a double door arrangement and there was a sliding bolt on the other door. It was just a thin piece of metal sliding into a slot, nothing that would really slow a determined vampire down, but she bolted it anyway after pressing her ear up against the door to see if she could hear anything.

She jumped back, heart pounding when a hand slapped the door, and then she hastily stepped back and shut the connecting door on her side, wondering who had heard her at the door.

She waited to see if anyone would bother to investigate, kicking off her shoes and checking the re-stocked mini refrigerator. Housekeeping had been in the room while they were out and the bed was remade. The refrigerator had been refilled with diet soft drinks in a wider selection. She found a can of Fresca amidst the diet Coke and diet Sprite, and diet Mountain Dew.

Concluding that her eavesdropping attempt was not going to be explored further as a few more minutes ticked by, Willow decided to risk logging back into the hotel’s TV Internet service. She got herself settled into a chair at the table with the wireless keyboard and the remote control and logged back in. The keyboard was frustratingly sticky, and she worked out the remote’s point and click utility, using the keyboard only when she had to type the URL, user name, and password to access her email account remotely.

There was no new mail from Buffy. Digging into her remote access options she looked for something that would allow her to change her email set up to notify her when her mail was read. She reset the option when the Internet connection died, taking her back to the main log in screen. She took a deep breath, fighting for calm. It was a crappy, unstable, Internet TV connection. She kept getting an Internet Service Not Available message as she tried to reactivate the connection. On the third try, she was back on line at the home page, and she tapped out the URL for her remote access again.

Finding Buffy’s last email in her in-box, she hit reply and started a new note, focusing on her observations of the lobby, elevators, and the area outside the hotel that she had seen. With that note sent, she opened Sara Engstrom’s last email and started a new message asking her to call Buffy and tell her to open her email.

Before she could hit send, she heard the lock on the door disengage and her hand moved to the direction keys on the keyboard to scroll through the buttons on the screen at a crawl while her heart pounded in her chest. Belatedly she remembered that the remote was faster, and switched to it, scrolling the cursor to the send button and hitting the select button in the center of the remote. As tempting as it was to just turn the television off, she made herself scroll through more navigation to log out even as the safety lock caught, preventing the door from opening more than a few inches.

“Red!” Spike drawled, “Open the door.”

Crap! She shoved the keyboard under the bed, where it hit something solid, a platform. The bed skirt hid it though. “I’m not dressed,” she answered, stalling.

Fumbling with the zipper, she yanked it down and it stuck, forcing her to squirm out of the dress, the half-slip and the hated thong panties, while scratching her hip with her thumbnail.

He rattled the door. “C’mon, Red. Open the damn door,” he sounded impatient.

She left the bra on and darted into the bathroom to look for a robe, yanking the robe off the back of the bathroom door. She was holding it around her as she hurried to the door to release the safety lock.

Spike watched her pull the robe tighter around her as he walked in. The belt had been threaded through the loops and was dangling unheeded down her back where the robe was bunched. She didn’t seem to be aware of it as she went to the table to pick up a can of soda, drinking from it, and her heart was racing. His eyes raked the room, looking for clues, finding nothing but a pile of discarded clothing on the floor between the entertainment center armoire and the bathroom. Her shoes were near the table. He would have let the door shut behind him, but Georgia was there, pushing it open before it closed.

It was an unwelcome distraction.

Dropping her clothing on the floor like that was off. She was unthinkingly tidy. When they were on their trek through northern California he had bought her a cheese burger and fries at a McDonalds, and after she had finished both she had stuffed the wrapper and soiled paper napkins into the empty French fry container, tucking it all away in the bag before adding an empty, crumbled pack of his cigarettes he had left on the seat to her garbage collection.

Georgia wasn’t picking up on any of this; she was too intent on the argument that he considered over. “What they want is not that big of a deal,” she was saying in a tone that was probably meant to mollify him.

The argument that they were about to have was entirely for Willow’s benefit, and he had a feeling that it was entirely unnecessary. Colin would deal with the fall out from what he was calling ‘the incident’ in San Francisco. It wasn’t on Spike’s radar, even as an annoyance. He shot Georgia a warning look, and walked over to Willow, who was still standing with her back to them, like if she wasn’t looking at them she could make herself disappear.

She flinched when he straightened the back of the robe and brought the ends of the belt around to tie them at her waist. He left his arms around her, loosely.

Georgia watched them with a puzzled expression. This wasn’t part of the plan, so she was at a loss.

He could feel the tension in her neck when he kissed her there. “Haven’t had your bath, yet?” he asked, as if there was nothing else to notice.

The soda can in her hand gave a tinny burp as her fingers tightened and loosened on it, compressing the soft metal and then releasing it. The sound made her aware that she was holding the can and she set it down on the table. Her hand, wet with condensation from the can, brushed his arm. “I was just about to,” she lied. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t in the bathtub,” she tried again, “with the door and the lock, and,” her voice was wavering a little.

He kissed her throat again. “Right,” he said, smiling a little. “You should go have your bath, then,” he said, not letting go of her.

She had no idea what to do. She knew that she needed to calm down and act normal, except that there was nothing normal about any of this. She made herself push at his arms. “I will as soon as you let go.”

His hands tightened briefly on her waist, and then they were gone, and he stepped back. Relief made her legs shake a little and she put her hand down on the edge of the table to steady herself, noticing for the first time the leather folio resting there. It looked like a mate to the room service menu. She stared at it, certain that it hadn’t been there before they had gone out, which meant that it had been placed there recently.

She made herself leave the room for the bathroom, wondering if she could get away with not quite closing the door. Not that it would matter. With the water on, she wouldn’t be able to hear anything in the other room. Filling the tub for a bath would take too long, and she had already taken a shower earlier in the day. She took off the stockings and sat on the side of the tub, rinsing them in the water as her feet soaked. She had gotten a look at the clock before she had gone into the bathroom. It was almost three in the morning. Sara would be at work by eight in the morning. If she called Buffy right away, then her email messages would be read by nine.

She squeezed the water out of the hosiery and laid it over the side of the tub to dry, resting her head in the palms of her hand, unselfconsciously rocking herself as she tried to figure out how to keep Spike from suspecting anything for the next twelve hours. It couldn’t take much longer than that for Buffy to come up with a plan to rescue her and get it underway. Or could it?

~~~*~~~

“What was that all about?” Georgia asked while Spike walked across the room to pick up Willow’s discarded dress. He stuffed the filmy scarf into one of his pockets.

Georgia walked over and took the dress from him, shaking it out to hang it up before going back to pick up the half slip and panties. “Talk to me, sugar,” she coaxed, folding the half-slip and tucking it into a drawer with the underwear.

Spike was looking around the room, still trying to figure it out. There was no phone. His cell phone was in his pocket. Just to be sure, he checked, and it was where he left it. He found his cigarettes and took one out, rolling it between his fingers as he studied the room. “She’s up to something,” he told Georgia. “It’s something in this room,” he went on, eyes narrowing as he sifted through her reactions.

Georgia looked around, and then grinned. “Bet she’s whittling a stake,” she said in a tone creamy with malice. “You’ll be a asleep and she’ll stake your ass.”

He had made a fairly thorough pass at the room to make sure that anything that could be used as a weapon was removed, but housekeeping had been in, so that was a distinct possibility. He went to the desk to check the drawers for pencils, or cutlery. Georgia went to the bed, flipping back the bedspread to run her hands under the edge of the mattress. She went through the drawers in the bedside table while Spike copied her on the opposite side of the bed before going to the closet and methodically checking the clothing hanging there for anything that might have been concealed in a pocket.

Georgia sat on the end of the bed for a moment and then started going through the drawers in the armoire and the dresser.

“Does this change anything?” she asked him.

The plan had been to use the conversation with the lawyers as a pretext for a dispute with Colin. Spike wasn’t sure if Colin was subscribing to this plan because he was going along for now, or because it presented an opportunity to split up. He was prepared to deal with either contingency. Colin, Pete and Georgia had their parts to play, all useful, but not critical in the long run. The critical piece was trading Willow for the Gem of Amara, and he was keeping that for himself. All Colin and Georgia knew at this point was that he was planning to trade her for something very, very valuable, and that their cut in this was pretty much whatever they wanted.

Before Colin could test that theory, Georgia named Willow as their price, and the beauty of it was that after he traded her for the Gem of Amara, that worked for him. He wouldn’t be breaking his word to Red in any way that counted, and he didn’t have to come up with something that would satisfy Colin and Georgia. He could enjoy the benefit of having her around on what would no doubt be a long term, un-dead basis without the annoying responsibility attached to the care and feeding of a baby vampire. It was almost too perfect. He’d agreed with only a show of irritation, knowing that Georgia wouldn’t care if he found her demand more than acceptable but that Colin would feel like they had been had if he didn’t appear to be a little put out.

He thought about it for a moment. “A bit,” he allowed. “I don’t want her to know why we are splitting up,” he said. “It might distract her.”

Georgia looked at him. “Do you really think she’s up to something? Maybe she just set the locks to annoy you and then realized that annoying you is stupid.”

It was the simplest, most obvious explanation for her behavior. He thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. “I’m not counting her out,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “You sure that you want her? She’s going to be a handful,” he warned her.

Georgia grinned. “Jealous?” she teased.

“Hardly,” he scoffed.

“Just a tiny bit?” she pushed.

Spike stuck the cigarette he had been holding in his mouth and searched for his lighter. “I give it a decade,” he said. “By then she might become something I might regret giving up,” he told her with a smirk, “and hope I don’t, pet, because your little family will last about five minutes if I decide I want her back.”

Georgia frowned at him. “That’s not funny,” she complained.

“Not meant to be,” he retorted. “Don’t taunt. It gets you in trouble,” he advised, aware that it was supremely hypocritical coming from him.

“I’ll take the decade as a part of the deal,” Georgia told him, “and we’ll make her into something that you’d crawl to have.”

He took a drag on his cigarette, hearing the water in the bathroom cut off. He nodded to the bathroom door in case Georgia wasn’t paying attention. “I don’t doubt it, petal,” he said, feeling almost fond of her. “If I had any sense at all, I’d crawl to have you.”

Georgia winked at him. “At least you know where to begin when you decide to stop being an idiot,” she tossed back. She was tempted to tell him that he had made a bad trade all around. In the last two weeks he had been completely focused. There had been no sullen, drunken moodiness associated with the loss of Drusilla or any restlessness about what he was going to do with himself until he got her back. The mysterious thing that he was trading for Willow couldn’t possibly measure up to the sheer value the girl represented as a distraction from his obsession with his looney sire. What he really needed was to put the past behind him, keep the girl, make her his childe, and start the next part of his unlife.

She was almost positive that he hadn’t had a Drusilla oriented thought in days, and she wasn’t going to invite him down that path now.

The toilet flushed in the bathroom and she could hear the sound of the tap in the sink turned on. “Otherwise, same schedule?” she got back to business, figuring that Willow was down to brushing her teeth and would be out soon.

He went looking for an ashtray, finding one on the table. “Yeah,” he agreed, flicking ash into it.

The tap was shut off and Georgia straightened the bedspread before sitting down on the bed, and lying half across it at the foot of the bed. She waggled her fingers at Spike. “Remote?”

He found it where Willow left it in the seat of a chair and tossed it to her, before repositioning the chair for easy access to the ashtray before he sat in it, throwing one leg over the padded arm, and stretching the other in front of him. The leather coat between his body and the chair reshaped itself to accommodate the position, settling around him. The coat was looking a bit shop worn, but every time he started to replace it he decided that it had a few more miles in it. He slid one hand inside the hip pocket, finding the scarf he had stowed there, sinking his fingers into it as Georgia turned the television on and started flicking through channels.

Bloody QVC, again. “Oooh! It’s Lisa. She’d make a hot vampire,” Georgia observed. “No one can sell Diamonique like Kathy Levine, but Lisa is hot.”

The temptation to ask what Diamonique was died before Spike could form the words to his intense relief. Willow came out of the bathroom, hesitating in the doorway. Georgia sat up a little, gesturing for her to join her. “Come here, sweetie. I want to get a look at your feet,” she said.

“I soaked them. They’re fine,” Willow told her.

“I doubt that,” Georgia commented. “It’s been at least three days since I did your pedicure.”

Willow gave her a long, frowning look. “Has anyone ever mentioned that you are weirdly obsessed with nail care?”

Spike smiled. “And clothing,” he added.

“Make-up,” Willow tossed in.

“Oooh!” Georgia pointed at the television. “When we get your fingernails just right, I’ll get that for you,” she said.

Spike looked over his shoulder at the television to see a marquise diamond stuck in what looked like a glob of clear glue rotating under studio lights. It was a triple shank ring with round diamonds in the shank. “A bit much, don’t you think?” he critiqued.

Willow skirted his leg and went around to the opposite side of the table, retrieving her soda can on the way. She took a sip and grimaced. Apparently refreshing citrus and toothpaste didn’t mix well.

“No!” Georgia frowned at him. “It’s pretty,” she defended her choice. “Don’t you think it’s pretty, Willow?”

“It’s too old for her,” Spike argued.

“It’s pretty and it’s too old for me,” Willow contributed, reaching for the folio on the table and opening it. She took a deep breath. It was the room charges. “I’m hungry,” she said, closing the folio and setting it on the table, reaching for the matching folio that held the room service menu.

“You picked at your dinner,” Georgia pointed out. “I don’t think they deliver this late.”

“I don’t like chicken in peanut sauce, not that anyone asked,” Willow said. She wasn’t actually hungry until she read the description of the Belgian waffles in the menu and then her stomach cooperated with an authentic rumble.

“There’s a Denny’s off the interstate,” Georgia remembered. “I used to love Denny’s.”

It beat listening to Georgia and watching QVC. “Put some clothes on, pet,” Spike said. “We’ll find you something to eat.”

Not as good as them just leaving to get her something to eat but she wasn’t going to quibble. Willow went to the closet and took out the sweater and Capri pants outfit of earlier in the day and went into the bathroom to change into it.

There was a pair of flat sandals to wear with it, and she slipped them on. The door to the connecting room was open and Georgia was telling Colin that they were going out to find something for Willow to eat.

She had to get the statement out of the folio. Spike was still sitting in the same chair and when she started to walk around his extended leg, he pulled it back, leaning forward in his chair his hands landing on her waist. “Come here,” he said, holding her steady when she stumbled a bit. “You missed a tag,” he told her, nudging her arm to get her to lift it. Grasping the sweater under her armpit and the tag, he snapped the thin plastic tethering them, careful to get the bit caught in the sweater loose. He tossed the tag on the table and turned her to face him, shaking his head at the giant blue flower over her chest.

“They didn’t have anything that came with sparkles,” he told her, flicking the tuft of yarn that formed the yellow center of the flower.

Aware that he was making fun of her taste in clothing, Willow looked down at him and realized that she would be able to answer a question that she and Buffy had pondered over the years. “What color is the flower?” she asked.

He hoisted an eyebrow. “Blue,” he answer.

Georgia had returned. “What color is Georgia’s top?”

Spike glanced at her. “Green,” he answered. “What’s this about?”

“Buffy and I wondered if you wore the same thing all the time because you were color blind,” she told him. “Guess that’s not it.”

Georgia laughed, “I guess not, but it would have explained a lot,” she said. “Daddy says you have to have me home before dawn,” she told Spike with a grin.

“I heard that, Georgia,” Colin called out.

“He doesn’t like it when I call him Daddy,” she confided. “He thinks it’s creepy.”

Willow was inclined to agree. “You’re vampires. Where’s the bad in creepy?”

Georgia cocked her head to one side, thinking about it. Spike sighed. “It’s in the un-creepy usage,” he posited. “You have to give it some incestuous innuendo for it to really work. Georgia just says it like she’s hanging off the front porch with her feet in the mud.”

Willow only looked more confused. “Huh?”

“Spike’s just giving me shit about being a redneck,” Georgia explained. “Let’s go! It’s past three in the morning. We are losing good night time,” she said, threading her arm through Willow’s as Spike let go of her and stood up. “When I was a fledge, I couldn’t stand losing any night. It drove me crazy,” she confided.

It was the kind of observation that Willow couldn’t help but be interested in. “Really? Was it a sensory kind of thing, or just wanting to get out?”

Georgia steered her away from the elevator. “A little of both. You can tell when daybreak is coming. It’s like a tingle in your spine, but days are just so long, and daytime television? Sucks!”

Willow couldn’t argue with that. “I could see how that could get boring.”

“I have my stories, and QVC helps pass the time, and Colin loves the History Channel,” she shook her head at that. “I figure I could make a fortune as a contestant on some of the game shows—seen enough of them.”

Half paying attention to what Georgia was saying, Willow was trying to keep track of where they were on the floor. There was a left and another left, then a short ramp down past a room with an ice machine, then another left into a stairwell. They went up a flight and then out a pair of double doors. No key lock there. They opened at a touch, and they were outside, on a skyway into an attached garage. Spike moved around them, leading the way to a gunmetal late model Mercedes-Benz. He got in the driver’s side and unlocked the doors for them.

Willow volunteered to sit in the back, and Georgia gave her a push towards the front seat and opened the rear passenger side door.

Following Georgia’s directions, which started from San Francisco and had to be detangled from that point of reference, Spike found the Denny’s and the three of them piled out of the car. He wondered if he should remind Willow of the rules of behavior in public places, and decided he was more curious to see what she would do without the reminder. Georgia was holding her hand as they went into the restaurant. The combined scents of coffee, bacon, and disinfectant making him grimace while Georgia rambled on about late night visits to Denny’s before Willow was even born.

A middle-aged waitress in orthopedic shoes showed them to a booth near the front windows. Georgia slid in beside Willow and he sat across from them. Willow opened the menu. She decided to go with pancakes and gave her order to the waitress when she returned, adding a large orange juice as an afterthought. Spike ordered coffee, and Willow hastily added coffee to her order. Georgia indicated that she wasn’t ordering, and the waitress left to put their orders in.

Spike let his gaze drift over the dining room. There were varieties of people after dark. The pre-ten o’clock after dark crowd was probably fairly representative of the population, though a bit lighter on children. Very small children were underrepresented after dark, though he had noticed over the last decade that people tended to take their children with them more. Between ten and two you found an increasing percentage of younger adults. After two? The herd thinned.

At the table in the corner there was a large group of men in their mid-twenties talking about a war with something called the Many. There was a sidebar discussion going on about training rates for scum. Someone else got a cell phone out and suggested that they call Penny, which got everyone at the table’s attention while they worked out time differences and the possibility that Penny would kill them if they called to ask her a game related question at seven in the morning, her time.

He glanced over at Willow and saw that she was following this exchange too, with a slightly wistful expression on her face.

There were two girls at a table opposite them, their goth chic aesthetic clashing with the Denny’s green and gold décor. Checking him out, of course. He returned the favor, running the tip of his tongue over his lower lip and allowing himself a slow smile that he had down to a science. He was so intent on it that he didn’t see Georgia lean across the table and she smacked the side of his head. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” Georgia hissed at him. ‘You’re with us,” she reminded him.

“I don’t mind,” Willow muttered.

They ignored her. Spike looked amused. “Didn’t know you cared, Georgia,” he purred.

Willow watched them for a moment. This was a less alcohol-fogged version of their pre-mating ritual at The Temple. Georgia was half leaning across the table. Spike had grabbed her wrist when she hit him and he was slowly reeling her in closer. She looked out the window when they kissed. No reflection, just passing streaks of light on the interstate that marked the passage of cars. Georgia threaded her fingers through her hair. “Feeling left out?” she asked.

Spike would have said it differently. Georgia sounded sympathetic, her thumb brushing Willow’s cheek, making her aware of the fact that she was blushing. She ducked her head so quickly that she almost put her eye out on Georgia’s thumbnail.

Georgia dropped back down on the seat beside her with an exclamation of concern. “Did I poke you in the eye, sweetie? Let me see,” she insisted.

“No, no,” Willow said hastily, mortified. She wanted to blame them. She wasn’t jealous. That wasn’t it at all. It was just disconcerting. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t used to it by now. There were times when she was out with Buffy and Angel or Xander and Cordelia when they were still dating, and they did things like that, and she felt awkward. That was all it was. “Don’t mind me,” she insisted, rearing back a little as Georgia tried to hold her head to look at her eye. “Go back to whatever you were—“

Georgia kissed her. Her shushing sound was weirdly throaty as she nipped at Willow’s upper lip. Willow tried to twist one way and then the other, reaching out with her foot to kick Spike who was watching them with a grin. He felt Willow kick him and heard her yelp when her bruised toe connected. Georgia took advantage of that by deepening the kiss.

She felt it again, the strange shock of being kissed by someone with soft, soft lips, moist, slightly sticky with lipstick, now recognizable as not unpleasant or unwelcome, and slightly unnerving because of that. Women's lips just felt different, but not bad different. In fact, it was a nice difference.

Willow’s pancakes hit the table with a cutlery-rattling thud delivered by a deeply disapproving waitress. Spike pushed the pancakes towards Willow. “Georgia, be a love and get your tongue out of my girl’s mouth, will you?”

The waitress rapidly finished unloading her tray, while Georgia broke off the kiss, smoothing Willow’s hair and kissing her forehead while she shrank in the corner and pointedly glared at Spike.

The waitress had left a carafe of coffee for them and Spike poured a cup of coffee for her. “Eat your pancakes, Red,” he reminded her as Georgia straightened and gave Spike a sly grin of her own.

His eyes turned cool. They were going to talk, later.

Willow picked up her fork and started methodically stabbing her pancakes. She picked up the syrup pitcher and doused them liberally while Spike pushed her orange juice and coffee across the table within easy reach. “Thanks,” she said, automatically.

Bearing in mind Spike’s advice to stick with something short and to the point, Willow pointed her fork at him. “I’m not your girl,” she told him. She jabbed her fork in Georgia’s general direction. “You’re a good kisser, okay? Happy now? Quit trying to freak me out. I’ve been kidnapped by vampires. Weird sex just doesn’t rate that high anymore. Oh, and your lipstick?” Willow blotted her own lips with her napkin. “It smells like crayons. Kind of ick.”

Spike toasted her with his coffee cup as Georgia sat back with a grudgingly amused look on her face.

~~~*~~~

They were working in the tunnel in three shifts, though Angel and Buffy tended to exceed the eight-hour schedule. They could work longer and harder without a break. Xander half expected them to coordinate their efforts so that they were working together, but it didn’t happen that way at all. There was a cautious distance that they were careful to maintain. He caught Angel watching her from time to time, and he caught Buffy not watching Angel. There was just too much baggage for him as far as Angel was concerned—vampire, Angelus, Ms. Calendar, menacing Willow, Buffy, and Joyce. He was never going to get comfortable or cozy with the dark and brooding one.

Angel was digging. He had what Xander thought of as his ‘thinking deep Buffy thoughts’ expression on, which didn’t vary so much from his ‘thinking deep thoughts’ expression, but there was a definite vibe, or Xander was projecting his own deep Buffy thoughts on Angel. Not that he was remotely interested in sharing.

So he didn’t talk at all. Oz was sharing part of the shift, and was being Oz. Normally the sheer pressure of the silence would have bothered him. He wasn’t all talked out. He just didn’t have anything to say. It was the kind of feeling that he could share with Willow. Sometimes when they were on the phone at odd hours, watching the same late night television show or movie, nothing would be said. They’d just listen to each other falling asleep.

Oz had noticed that Xander hadn’t said anything for hours. At first he had been grateful. He felt like his skin was stretched too tight. He wanted someone to voice one of the unacceptable thoughts that floated through his head so he could tell them and the thought to shut up. They had had a meeting earlier to discuss Spike’s latest call, and it killed him that he missed it. Giles had talked to Willow. Angel had listened in on the call. He saw the same thing on Buffy and Xander’s faces, the envy, and the anger that they hadn’t been there to talk to her, even for the shortest time. Giles had tried to be reassuring. He thought she sounded in good spirits and she wanted to help out.

Stupid, selfish questions prodded him. He wanted to know if she asked about him, asked for him. Had any message that she wanted passed on to him. He didn’t think Giles would forget about something like that, so the answer was probably no, but then he wondered if Giles was holding something back, something that would upset them more if he told them.

“If someone doesn’t say something, I think my head is going to explode,” Oz announced.

There was total silence for about thirty seconds, and then Angel shook some of the dirt out of his hair and said. “Dirt and hair gel are unmix-y,” in a dead on imitation of Buffy’s syntax that caught them all by surprise.

His expression turned rueful as he realized that his joke had fallen flat.

“Deadboy and humor are unmix-y,” Xander capped him, but it sounded a little lame, less the usual level of sarcasm and spite.

Oz looked at them and shook his head. “Well, I feel better, but mostly because I didn’t say any of that.”

Angel studied him for a moment. There were parallels that were obvious to him between his doomed relationship with Buffy and Oz’s relationship with Willow. He had been a bit skeptical about the notion that Oz would ever have anything approaching a normal life, but between the two of them, they had made it work in a way that he envied while acknowledging that the obstacles weren’t as great or as intractable. He and Buffy violated the conditions of each other’s existence.

“I would have liked to have heard her voice,” Oz said. “I keep thinking about that. What was I doing that was so important, that I had to miss that? And, before you say the obvious thing, I’m all over the illogic of it.”

Xander paused in his measuring of a two by four that he was getting ready to cut for one of the tunnel cross supports. “Me too,” he agreed. “I thought the same thing, along with, did she ask for me,” he made a face at that. “Hi, Giles, here I am, kidnapped by Spike, by the way, say hello to the Xan-man for me,” he mocked himself.

Angel started to say that the two conversations that he had participated in with Willow had mostly been about her getting away from Spike or about establishing that she was alive, but he didn’t think that contribution sounded particularly comforting. He wanted to tell them that they probably didn’t want to hear her voice, at least not the things in her voice that he had heard, but also, not comforting or reassuring.

“I think she’s okay,” he said. “She was trying to give research tips on using her computer when Spike cut her off,” he reminded them. It was such a Willow thing to do that Angel found it odd, but encouraging.

“That's so, Will,” Xander nodded.

Oz cocked his head to one side. “What could she have on her computer that would help us? Even if she does know what we are looking for, no one was looking for it before she was kidnapped, right?”

Xander bristled. “True, but she’s just trying to be research girl. Help out. Contribute,” he defended.

Oz looked startled. “Huh?”

Angel gestured to Oz to hand him one of the cut two by fours. “I actually understood that,” he admitted. “Sometimes Willow blurts out a few unworkable ideas when she’s excited about something.”

Oz thought about that for a second, and then realized that it was true. “Oh . . . then I am trying to read too much into it.”

Angel shrugged. “Did you bring her computer back with you? It can’t hurt to look.”

~~~*~~~

When they returned to the hotel, Willow wasted no time, grabbing the bill out of the folio, scanning it quickly for her Internet charges. They were unambiguously described as an Internet Access Charge nestled in between obscenely expensive pairs of shoes.

If only Spike had kidnapped Cordelia instead. Cordelia would have been thrilled with the shoes.

Georgia and Spike were conferring, probably in the hallway, possibly next door. When Spike had opened the door for her to let her in she had the distinct impression that he wasn’t planning on being gone for a long time. Folding the bill into quarters she tucked it in the waistband of her pants, torn between destroying the bill and staying put and testing the new escape route through the garage.

She grabbed the ice bucket and cautiously eased the door open, looking left, then right at the two vampires who were now watching her. She smiled weakly. “I thought I saw an ice machine,” she began.

Spike just shook his head, “Don’t lock the door, either,” he warned before she stepped back into the room.

Which left her back to square one with the billing statement and the pressing need to hide or destroy it, fast. She looked around the room for a place to hide it, or a method to destroy it. She was still working it out when Spike came in.

He put her racing heartbeat down to inner turmoil over a failed escape attempt and misgivings about taunting him about pretending he was Oz, which was possibly the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard, but if she wanted to believe it, he wasn’t going to argue with her about it. Much. She had a death grip on the ice bucket and a slightly panicked expression on her face with one hand pressed to her stomach. He frowned at her. The panic seemed a little over-developed in his opinion.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “All that sugary crap you ate disagreeing with you?”

She stared at him for a moment, and he could have sworn he saw something like an idea forming. “Uh-huh,” she agreed slowly.

It was a disgusting, but workable idea. “Excuse me,” she said, walking to the bathroom. Running might have been okay, but she made herself walk, and shut the door behind her. Dropping the ice bucket on the counter top with a mental smack for being dopey enough to carry it around, she pulled out the bill and started tearing it into small pieces, dropping it into the toilet.

The little pieces floated on the surface and she took a deep breath and then leaned over the toilet, breathing through her nose. How hard could it be? It was the dieting method of choice for hundreds of thousands of teenage girls? Aside from that, just thinking about what she was about to do was making her feel a little sick. She opened her mouth and cautiously slid one finger in, not really sure about the mechanics of making herself vomit.

On her third try she managed to gag convincingly, producing an authentically gasping, retching sound accompanied by nose stinging stomach acid hitting the back of her throat. She flushed the toilet and watched a third of the billing statement float back up.

Spike tapped on the door. “Are you okay in there?” he asked.

Willow’s head snapped up. She didn’t even have to summon the fake sick voice that she had down cold from three years of extracurricular demon research and slayage. “Uh . . . yeah,” she managed. Shuddering with disgust she stuck her finger down her throat, finding the back of her tongue and pressing down.

Pancakes, coffee and orange juice came back up in a stomach churning tide as the bathroom door opened. She swiped the back of her hand over her mouth, grimacing at the foul taste in her mouth. “Go away!” she managed to spit out, hugging herself with her free arm.

Her nose had started to drip from the stomach acid irritation and her eyes were watering. She pawed at the flush to void the contents of the toilet and the fresh blast of vomit scented air made her stomach heave.

Spike turned on the tap at the sink and filled a water glass for her before wetting a washcloth. He handed her the glass. “Rinse and spit,” he said.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a piece of the billing statement floating back up and wanted to scream. She rinsed and spit into the toilet, hugging it, waiting for the water pressure to equalize so she could flush it again.

Spike reached for her arm. “Let’s get you off the floor,” he said, sounding almost soothing, and she held onto the toilet.

“I’m sick. Leave me alone,” she gasped.

“I can see that,” he reached around her, sitting on the edge of the tub as he pulled her back, flushing the toilet again. She turned towards him awkwardly and he pulled his head back to avoid her vomit-scented breath. “Hold still, will you,” he said, picking her up under her armpits and giving her a push toward the sink. “Wipe your face off and brush your teeth,” he suggested. “You’ll feel better,” he grabbed the ice bucket. “I’m going to go get you some ice,” he told her, relatively sure that she wasn’t going to be making a break for it.

She looked like she might throw up again, so he beat a hasty retreat.
 

Settled on her side of the bed with a cup of ice chips and ginger ale, Georgia’s contribution to her upset stomach, Willow had to wait until Spike fell asleep before she could allow herself to gloat. She had managed to work out a good escape route, get two messages out to reveal her location, keep Spike from seeing the incriminating billing statement, and disgusting vomit-y girl was apparently not a big turn on. That was useful information.

Feeling inordinately pleased with herself she was actually looking forward to what tomorrow would bring.

~Part: 25~

“I’m dreaming,” Willow reminded herself.

For the longest time her sleep had been dreamless.

“I wasn’t tired enough,” she realized.

That was only true in part. She was tired in the way you could be tired and yet never really sleep. Something about kidnapping and the occasional apocalypse energized her. In a crisis she could function on amazingly little sleep and she could sleep, like a soldier, anywhere, anytime.

She was in the eiderdown depth of sleep that was made for dreaming. In her dream, they were coming. Buffy and Xander and Giles and Angel. They were coming.

She almost felt sorry for Spike. Well, she actually did feel sorry for Spike, and a little scared for him. It would have been easier if he had been a little more cartoon character evil bad guy. She tried to will a thin mustache and an evil laugh onto the dream version of Spike who was smoking, again and watching talk shows, unaware of what was coming, to no avail. Wasn’t his non-stop cigarette smoking enough of an evil guy prop for her? In a demony kind of way, he really wasn’t that bad.

“Yes, he is,” Willow argued with herself. “He’s that bad and a bag of chips, sister,” she snorted, not liking this part of her dream. The guilt part. Free floating guilt was deeply embedded in her psyche if she could feel bad for Spike.

She watched herself drift across the room in a dress that looked like something out of Swan Lake. Oh, no, it was pink. Not the tasteful pale pink of ballet leotards but a livid bubble gum pink with a giant W across her chest in glitter. Her hand moved through his hair, messing up the combed back orderliness of it, making him look cute and tousled. He caught her hand, holding her palm to his cheek for a moment before looking up at her with a smile that held no trace of spite, or temper, or humor at her expense. It was verging on affectionate. He kissed the palm of her hand.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Willow critiqued. “This is all wrong.”

She watched herself do a twirl, miles of tulle billowing around her. Reaching the door, she watched herself turn and ask if there was anything she could get for him, and then, before he could answer, she walked out the door.

This was more like it, Willow decided.

~~~*~~~

Joyce woke up at five in the morning and discovered that she couldn’t go back to sleep. When she was married she would make the most of mornings like these and slip out of bed before anyone was awake to enjoy being alone. It felt different now, and not just because Hank was a part of her past. Lying awake alone in the early morning hours meant that she was alone with her thoughts. She got up, slipped on her robe and walked down the hall, pausing outside of her daughter’s room.

“Be there,” she whispered before she pushed the door open.

“Mom?”

Joyce’s hand went to her throat. Buffy was standing behind her in her pajamas with a slightly smart-alecky, knowing grin on her face that quickly faded. “I couldn’t sleep,” Buffy admitted.

“Me either,” Joyce said.

They stared at each other, and Buffy bounced on the balls of her feet. “Well, we are awake and unperky, so coffee?”

They went down to the kitchen together and Joyce started making coffee as Buffy went to the refrigerator to examine the contents. With the overhead light off, standing in the wash of light from the refrigerator in her pajamas, Joyce had a glimpse of a younger Buffy.

“Do you want me to make something for breakfast?” she asked as she filled the coffee maker water tank.

“Nope,” Buffy got the eggs and milk out. “I’m making you something,” she announced. “Something egg-y,” she brandished the eggs, setting them on the counter with the milk. She moved around the island to peer into the breadbox. “Raisin bread French toast?” she suggested.

Joyce smiled. “That sounds wonderful,” she agreed, noticing for the first time the bandage Buffy had wrapped around her hand. “What’s that?” she asked, gesturing to Buffy’s hand.

She flexed her fingers around the bandage. “Blisters,” she said, and then shrugged. “No big. They’ll be gone in no time, all a part of the nifty Slayer package,” she pointed out as Joyce reached for her hand. “Really, Mom. It’s no big deal,” she reminded her, skipping the ‘had worse’ catalog of injuries that her mother actually knew about and the longer and heavily edited list of what she sort of knew about.

She cast a sideways glance at her mother. “Eggs, milk, bread,” she cataloged. “Um . . . how do you make French toast?”

It became more of a joint project and a half an hour later they were eating raisin bread French toast over coffee at the breakfast bar while Joyce explained how she once enjoyed early mornings alone until she realized how it sounded, which she blamed on not having enough sleep. Buffy was sitting with her cheek in the cup of her hand, staring out the window, nodding along, even after Joyce stopped talking, and then she nodded once too hard and snapped out of her half awake doze with a startled yelp.

They looked at each other and started laughing. “You want to watch morning TV?” Joyce asked.

Buffy nodded, yawning, and they rinsed the dishes, refilled their coffee and went into the living room to half recline on the couch and argue over the Today Show versus the Cartoon Network. They ended up watching black and white re-runs of the Munsters for a quarter of an hour before agreeing that it was just bad, and then settling on Bryant and Katie on NBC’s Today.

Buffy finished her coffee and went upstairs to take a shower. Her blistered hand was almost completely healed, but still sore. She wanted to get back to work on the tunnel early. She was getting out of the shower when she heard the phone ring downstairs. After a moment, her mother called up to her. “Honey? Phone. It’s Angel.”

“I’ll take it in my room,” she yelled back, grabbing a tube of bacitracin before shuffling down the hall in her bathrobe and the oversized duck slippers that Xander had given her for Christmas last year. Flinging herself across the bed with an unflattering groan from the metal bed frame, she picked up the receiver, hearing her mother and Angel talking.

“I’m here,” she announced. “What’s up?”

“Hey,” he greeted, his voice softening. “Joyce told me that you aren’t sleeping,” he said.

“Thanks, Mom,” Buffy muttered as her mother hung up the extension downstairs. “I’m not sleeping. Giles isn’t sleeping. Xander looks—‘

“He’s sleeping,” Angel told her. “Oz got home and found him crashed in the back of the van,” he told her. “Giles is here. He’s got Devon and Chris. Dan is coming back later with Oz. I think we are getting close, Buffy.”

“Yeah?” she perked up. “Close is good,” she enthused, holding the phone between her shoulder and chin as she uncapped the bacitracin and squeezed out an oily glob onto her blistered palm. She started working the ointment in, wondering if it was possible to actually see the wound heal the way superficial wounds closed with vamps.

“Yeah,” Angel was more cautious. “I’d feel better about close if there was a plan,” he told her.

“Right. Got to get a plan. It’s on my list of things to do today. Are you going back to Giles?”

“I’m good for a few more hours,” he told her, “look, can you make a blood run? We need enough for me and Harmony, though, I’m still for staking her.”

Buffy frowned. “I know. It’s Harmony,” now that she was done applying the ointment, she used her index finger to push her cuticles back. Her fingernails were a mess. “Okay, blood run, and make a plan, and think about staking Harmony,” she ticked off. “Do-able. Give me a couple of hours, and I’ll be there.”

After she got off the phone she made her way down to the basement and found that the jeans and t-shirts that she had thrown in the washing machine last night had not magically migrated to the dryer, so she heaved them into the dryer and got it started before going back upstairs. There appeared to be one cup of coffee left in the coffee maker and she debated whether she should drink it while she phoned the butcher shop to place a blood order.

Joyce walked into the kitchen in the middle of that call and cast a sideways glance at Buffy. She had changed into slacks and a softly draping white blouse for work. She glanced at the coffee pot, guessed that there was one cup left, and decided to take it. Buffy pouted. “I would have asked if you wanted it,” she hissed.

Joyce smiled at her. “It’ll stunt your growth,” she said sweetly.

“No short jokes!’ Buffy protested as the butcher came back on the line and asked her if she was bringing a cooler.

After she got off the phone she went looking for her mother, finding her in her bedroom putting on her make-up. “Can you take me to the butcher before you leave for work and then drop me off at Giles?”

“Sure, honey,” Joyce agreed. “Do you think you’ll be home for dinner?”

Buffy looked like she didn’t have an answer, and Joyce shook her head. “You have to eat. You all have to eat. Bring over who ever you want. I’ll make Lasagna,” she offered.

“I’ll call you and let you know,” Buffy promised. “I will,” she insisted when Joyce looked unconvinced.

The phone rang again and Joyce glanced at her clock. Everyone was up early this morning.

~~~*~~~

Sara Engstrom made a habit of getting to work by seven-thirty. She didn’t have a reserved parking space, and all the good parking was gone by eight. She made her way to her cubicle and found that her phone was already ringing. She answered it and found that it was her sister, calling to read a letter to her from the ‘unreasonable bitch’ that declined her student loan deferment request. Actually, it was a pretty funny letter. Apparently when her sister had filled out her deferment form she had listed among her monthly expenses $200 for hair care and $300 for her investment portfolio.

“You have an investment portfolio?” Sara asked.

“That’s not the point,” her sister interrupted. “Get this,” she read from the letter, “while we certainly appreciate your interest in your long term solvency, we are more concerned with your failure to meet your obligation to repay your loan which is not abrogated by your request for a deferment.”

Sara could hear the offending letter being wadded up over the phone line. “Abrogated? Who uses a word like that?”

“I don’t know, Jules,” Sara said, trying not to grin. “How much is the monthly payment?”

“That’s not the point, either,” her sister argued. “Why did they give me two deferments and then all the sudden I can’t have one?”

Sara opened her email client. “I don’t know,” she said again. Really, she didn’t know. Was a student loan deferment a divine right? Did you use the ‘can’t afford it’ excuse and the federal government gasped at your embarrassing confession of financial distress? There was a girl in accounting that used that one to cadge a free lunch on a pretty regular basis. Scanning her unopened email. She saw Willow Rosenberg’s personal email address in her unopened email and went to it, opening it up and reading the message.

“Oh, this is weird,” she said. “Remember my intern that just didn’t come back to work?”

“The one who had the guy with the Australian accent calling in for her?” her sister identified.

“No my other intern that disappeared,” Sara retorted. “English accent, but yeah. Willow. She sent me an email at 2:43 a.m. and is asking me to call someone named Buffy and tell her to open her email. That’s her response to my I had to fire you note. What the hell?”

“Let’s pretend it’s Australian,” Julie suggested. “Who is really hot and English these days? Name one man or woman.”

“Julie!” Sara sighed, knowing her sister wouldn’t give it up.

“Hah, you can’t!” she said triumphantly. “Because there aren’t any. None!”

“Jude Law,” she tossed out.

A short silence hummed. “Possibly counts as both,” was the best her sister could come up with for a comeback.

“Me-ow,” Sara grinned.

“Okay, mysterious missing intern, that’s different,” her sister flashed back to the subject of Willow. “Are you going to call her?”

Sara thought about it. “Yeah, I guess I am. I’m really . . . I don’t know. I really liked her. She did good work. She wasn’t here long, but she seemed . . . not insane-o. I told you her boyfriend came by a couple of days ago, and no English accent.”

“Uh-oh,” her sister clucked. “You think she met someone and, maybe there’s like a deal with the ex-boyfriend who doesn’t know he’s an ex, or maybe does know and is stalkerish? Did he seem stalkerish?”

“I don’t know. He seemed what you’d expect. Nice, a little odd, but real, as opposed to half the internet dating people around here with not so real significant others,” Sara said, lowering her voice a little. She had to work with these people, after all.

“Well, call now, and then call me back and tell me the scoop,” Julie urged.

“You don’t even know her,” Sara argued.

“Oh, come on. Even I know that your missing intern is more interesting than my student loan deferment letter,” her sister said. “Call now, and then call me back.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll call you back,” she hung up and dialed the number on her screen.

~~~*~~~

Buffy answered on the third ring, and a woman asked for her. A name like Buffy had inherent advantages. There was a tone of voice that could be read as slightly skeptical, the ‘is your name really Buffy?’ voice. No one that actually knew her used it, so when she heard it, it was a tip off.

“Buffy’s not home right now,” she said, reaching for a note pad. “Can I take a message for her?” she asked.

“Uh,” there was a pause, “Is there another time when I can reach her?”

“She’ll be in and out all day,” Buffy said, doodling. It wasn’t even eight o’clock. Who would be calling her before eight that didn’t know her?

“No,” she replied, “There’s no message. It’s probably just a stupid prank,” the woman on the other end of the phone said.

Shrugging, Buffy hung up the phone and went upstairs to detangle her hair before it completely dried. She rummaged through her closet and found a pair of overalls that she hadn’t worn since her junior year of high school. Perfect for tunnel digging. She was still getting dressed when Joyce stuck her head in the door. “Almost ready?” she asked.

“Almost,” Buffy agreed, slipping her socks on, and looking up at her mother admiringly. “You look nice,” she told her.

Joyce smiled. “Thanks, honey,” she started to step back into the hallway, “Oh, who was on the phone?” she asked.

Buffy grimaced. “I don’t know,” she shook her head. “It was one of those people who say ‘Buffy’ like they are sure it’s not a real name,” she pouted. “Buffy’s a real name. It’s my name. It’s a perfectly good name.”

Joyce smiled at her. “I like it,” she agreed. “If you were a boy we were going to get a dog and name it Buffy,” she teased.

“Hey! Why didn’t I get to have a dog?” Buffy yelled after her.

When she finished dressing, Buffy went down to the basement in search of a cooler and found her mother in the hallway waiting for her. She followed her out to the SUV parked in the driveway. The old guy across the street, who would have constituted the crazy neighbor in any place other than Sunnydale, was out, shirtless, mowing the lawn in all of his blindingly white, large, hairy, flabby man breasted glory.

“Now, I’m scarred for life,” Buffy hissed as Joyce choked back a laugh and waved at the crazy neighbor.

Who waved back. Buffy looked away. “Eeeew. There was definite independent chest movement going on there,” she muttered as she walked over to the passenger side of the car.

“Hush,” Joyce scolded.

“Who gets up at eight o’clock in the morning to mow the lawn?” Buffy grumbled.

“Speaking of which,” Joyce gave their overgrown lawn a pointed look, and then retreated from the position. “Never mind. We both have more important things to worry about right now,” she said.

She drove Buffy to the butcher shop and waited with the engine running, listening to the traffic report as Buffy hurried inside carrying the cooler. It was going to be a hot day. She made a mental note to remind Buffy to drink lots of water.

Ten minutes later Buffy emerged carrying the cooler and Joyce got out to open the passenger side door for her. She stopped at the gas station to fill up and gave Buffy her credit card with instructions to pay for the gas and bottled water. Buffy came back with the bottled water and a box of donuts. “Okay, we’ve got the supplies,” she said.

Joyce drove her to the dig site. It never ceased to amaze her how it was possible for a middle aged librarian, a vampire and a bunch of teenagers managed to go about demon hunting and slaying in plain view, unnoticed by the rest of Sunnydale. Buffy kissed her on the cheek after she got out of the car with her purchases neatly stacked at the entrance of the sewer tunnel that led to the beginning of the tunnel they were digging.

“I’ll call about dinner,” Buffy promised, waving, as Joyce put the car in gear and pulled back onto the road.

~~~*~~~

Willow was back in the gas station, back to the first time she almost escaped, but it was daylight, and she was trying on sunglasses, trying to find something that would go with her dress.

“Elton John doesn’t have sunglasses that go with that dress,” Spike told her.

“You’re dating yourself, and worse. I’ll bet Giles didn’t like Elton John when he was my age.”

He sat on the counter and started singing ‘Levon’ which was all kinds of weird, because she could imagine Giles singing that. When Spike stopped abruptly, looking out the window, Willow half expected Giles to be there, maybe behind a white grand piano wearing a duck suit because she remembered watching an Elton John concert with her parents on cable and he had a duck suit. Spike turned back to her, picking up a pair of round pink sunglasses, carefully tucking them over her ears before letting them settle on the bridge of her nose.

“Do they make me look smart?” she asked, diverted by the sunglasses. Glasses did that for people. Everyone said it.

He shook his head, and started to say something but the door opened and Oz walked through it. He didn’t look at Spike. He just held out his hand, chipped black fingernail polish streaking fingernails that were thick and calcified and curving into claws. She looked at his hand. It looked different to her, and the same. Short, stubby fingers. Not the same as—she frowned at the unfinished and disloyal thought, banishing it.

“It’s time to go, Willow,” he said.

She didn’t look back at Spike, but she couldn’t stop herself from seeking out his reflection in the glass door, but he wasn’t there. And neither was she.

~~~*~~~

She woke up with the sense of having dreamt something that had no purchase in wakefulness, and by the time she was awake, it was already gone.

She thought Spike was too, but when she rolled over she found that he was there, lying beside her, utterly still and she couldn’t stop the recoil. Whatever she had dreamt, waking up next to a corpse hadn’t been part of the conclusion.

He was so still. No breathing. No moving. Inert? She found herself sticking a tentative finger out to test the theory. Would he feel dead at the basic level? Lack of muscle tension, or rigor mortis? She hesitated, trying to remember what he had felt like against her. Not dead, because she was pretty sure that she would have noticed that. She had touched him before while he was asleep, though at the time she hadn’t been thinking about it. What did he feel like when he was asleep?

If everything went well today, she would never have another chance to find out.

“Hit me, I hit back,” he spoke. “Poke me,” he caught her finger, opening one eye to peer at her. “I poke back.”

There was no mystery to what sort of poking he was referring to, but there was no intent, malice, or humor either. He held onto her finger when she would have pulled it back, turning his head toward her slightly.

His lip curled. “You smell like maple syrup scented vomit,” he told her. “Do something about it, will you?”

She smiled, her disgusting but highly effective billing statement disposal triumph fresh in her mind. Yanking her finger out of his grasp, she got out of bed in the t-shirt and panties that she had put on to sleep in and went to the bathroom.

After she brushed her teeth and decided that imminent rescue deserved all out personal grooming attention, she went through the drawers below the sink as well as the tasteful basket of sample-sized products that were on the vanity. On the inside of the basket lid was a hand printed note that said that the basket was a product of Peru and that it was traded for a fair market price. “Well, would you look at that,” Willow murmured. “A demon hotel with social consciousness.”

There was no one there to appreciate the observation. In the basket she found a clay based facial mask, toner, moisturizer, a foot scrub and leave in conditioner. While the bathtub filled she read the directions on the facial mask and toner. The facial mask seemed to be the product that was supposed to go on first. She washed her face and then leaned over the sink until she was a few inches from the mirror to study her complexion, smoothing her fingertips over her damp skin. There was a pimple forming near her left eyebrow, almost hidden there.

Squeezing cool grayish green goop on her fingers, she painted it over her nose and forehead, then over her cheeks. Squeezing out more she dabbed it on her chin, smoothing it over her jaw, painting a grayish green circle around her mouth. For a moment she was tempted to run her fingers through her hair and turn herself into something primitive and feral.

She emptied a small bottle of bath oil into the water and rummaged around until she found Spike’s razor and a nearly empty package of razor blades. Ejecting the used blade, she snapped a fresh one into place to shave her legs and under her arms, keeping one eye on the rising water level of the bathtub.

Before she got into the tub, she washed her hair over the side of the tub and rinsed the now dry and flaking facial mask off, letting out some of the water in the tub, which was almost too full now. She took off her t-shirt and panties and got into the tub with the conditioner and moisturizer, working the former into her hair as she soaked, and smoothing the later over her now almost unpleasantly tight skin. The only thing missing was a cup of coffee she decided as she let the heat sink into her, yawning hugely.

She closed her eyes, wishing that the lights were off altogether. She felt like she could sleep for a million years. Now that her ordeal was coming to an end, she was starting to get an idea of how tired she was, mentally and physically. It would take the gang the better part of the day to work out a plan and get to Sacramento. If they decided to recon the hotel, it might take longer. She had to be ready to react, but not appear to be waiting for something to happen. Spike wasn’t stupid. If she was too obvious, he would figure out that something was up.

She made herself go through the motions of bathing, wanting nothing more than to sleep a few more hours. She was examining her torn toenail when Spike came in.

“You’ve been in here for an hour,” he noted, leaning against the sink, eying her shiny face and conditioner-slicked hair.

“Kidnapped by vampires, weird sex, sleeping, Denny’s . . . is there something really exciting that I’m missing out on?” she asked. Beneath the upper half of her toe nail the nail bed was blue black. “Of all the gross things that have and could happen to me, the idea that my toenail might fall off is really freaking me out,” She made a face, shuddering at the idea, squeaky sounds of distress punctuating the freak out.

She missed a slightly offended look that crossed his face as he realized that he was probably on the list and loosing to a toenail.

~~~*~~~

There was a pan of monkey bread on the kitchen counter when Oz came through the back door, having left the van, with Xander crashed in the back, under the overhang on the side of the house. He called Angel’s cell phone to tell him that he had found Xander sleeping in the back of the van after he got home and that he was going to get a few hours of sleep himself.

When they lived on Maroneck Drive in Louisville, he and his mother made monkey bread, rolling balls of dough in sugared cinnamon and placing them in a baking dish. His favorite had been the fluted bundt pan that made a monkey bread castle, drizzled with sticky glaze. The pan was enamel coated in classic sunset gold. He closed his eyes for a second and let his mind sift through the lingering impressions of that kitchen. It had had an oven set into the wall and he remembered clipping the top of his head on the open oven door when he came in the back door and charged up the two stairs into the kitchen.

He touched the sides of the pan and found that it was still warm, and then he found a tea towel to cover it with and carried it out to the van, waking Xander up.

There were times when Oz was moderately surprised at his lack of animosity towards Xander. Cordelia had held Willow equally responsible for their little flirtation last year, but Oz had seen it differently. He had always known how Willow felt about Xander and had forced her to confront it before anything happened with them, so it was Willow that he was angry with, and Willow that he came to terms with. Xander’s part in whatever had happened between them had been, at least in his mind, less than important.

Or maybe he had simply been reassured by how quickly and completely Xander had forgotten about Willow after Cordelia had fallen on the rebar.

“Wake up, Xander,” he said, nudging his foot.

Xander’s eyes opened and he stared at Oz in a puzzled, half asleep way. “Wake up,” Oz repeated, patiently. One of the things Xander and Willow had in common was an ability to sleep almost anywhere. Willow was much more alert when she woke up, though. It usually took Xander a few minutes to wake up and while he was in this half-asleep state, you could get him to talk about almost anything. He had seen Willow do that too.

“Do you have keys to Will’s house?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Xander said, his eyes drifting shut.

“Let’s go there,” Oz suggested.

“Go to Will’s?” Xander nodded. “Yeah. Good idea.”

“Are the keys with you?”

Xander patted at his pocket. “Yep,” he said. “Go there every day to pick up the mail,” he confided. “Put it away,” he mumbled.

For some reason that bothered Oz. He wasn’t that surprised, and it made sense that Xander would have been enlisted to pick up mail for the Rosenbergs, but he had had keys to Willow’s house and had never mentioned it before. Oz frowned at him. “I’m going to get Willow’s laptop and then we’ll leave.”

~~~*~~~

Devon’s enthusiasm for the dig was a little surprising to Chris and Dan. Oz hadn’t noticed it yet, but that was understandable. Devon was quite possibly the laziest person on earth. He was perpetually tired and a little bit of a hypochondriac about it. He had read about Epstein-Barr syndrome, and for a while he was convinced that he had it. He was completely into the dig. He had gone out to an army surplus place and gotten a bunch of crap for it, like the hardhat with a light attached to it that he was currently wearing as he worked with a shovel behind Angel who was breaking up the tunnel face with a pick axe. Chris was in charge of the wheelbarrow that carried the dirt away to be displaced on the floor of the sewer access tunnel.

Under the hardhat, Devon had a headset on and was listening to the Rolling Stones, and singing ‘Salt of the Earth’. Yesterday it was the Who's, Who’s Next album. Chris was holding out for Queen because Devon doing Freddie Mercury was just funny. Mr. Giles interrupted his dirt shifting to enlist him in taking some measurements, which pulled Devon out of the tunnel they were digging into the sewer access tunnel that was their entrance to the new tunnel and staging area to get the latest update on the progress they had made.

The idea of it, the treasure hunt quality of the dig, had captured Devon’s attention, and despite the hard work involved, Chris found himself able to relate to it. He felt bad for Oz, and guilty about how worried Willow’s friends were, but on some level he could savor the sheer adventure of what they were doing. They were digging a big tunnel under Sunnydale to find something buried, according to Mr. Giles, hundreds of years ago. How cool was that?

Mr. Giles’ friend from UC-Sunnydale, Dr. Holbroke, was expected to come by later that day to help.

Buffy showed up while they were looking over the map and as if he knew that she was there, Angel emerged from the tunnel, shaking dirt out of his hair. He grabbed a quart sized Styrofoam container from the cooler Buffy had carried down and walked a few yards away from them, his back to them as he popped the lid and drank the contents.

Devon was momentarily distracted from the map, realizing that the container probably held blood. He looked over at Buffy, wondering how weird it had to be to have all this knowledge about the feeding habits of the undead, especially when you were dating the undead. But she wasn’t paying any attention to Angel. She was listening to Giles explain how much progress they had made. He was certain that they were within a few feet of the floor of the chamber they were seeking. Dr. Holbroke would be arriving later with heavy equipment and a generator that they were ‘borrowing’ from the University.

Buffy was going to feed Harmony and then come back and help with the digging. By then Angel had finished his breakfast or dinner, or whatever meal it was to him, and joined them around a makeshift table of sawhorses and uncut lumber. It was his contention that when it came to the work with heavy equipment that he should take that, alone, pointing out that if there was a cave in he didn’t have the same need for oxygen that they did.

With the plan for the next few hours established, they went back to work.

~~~*~~~

For someone who had spent a brief but unpleasant portion of the evening hugging the toilet, Willow didn’t appear to be sick, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t willing to get as much mileage as possible out of her potential illness.

“I think I have the flu,” she announced, pressing her hand to her stomach.

Spike, who never considered himself a genius at acting, let himself look disgusted. “The flu?” he repeated. “Well, that’s just wonderful.”

Gleeful triumph gleamed in her eyes as she faked a cough, waving a tissue at his stream of cigarette smoke. The sniff that followed was almost convincing. “Maybe it was something I ate,” she allowed. “I’ve read that an immediate and violent reaction to food is a sign of food poisoning, “she said in the rote manner of one retrieving an obscure fact.

She was up to something. He had sensed it last night and set it aside while she was throwing up. He was reminded the moment he had woken up. There was a current of nervous energy that she was floating in. After her bathing extravaganza she dressed herself in a pair of black walking shorts paired with a creamy off white sleeveless blouse. Despite her supposed stomachache, she slugged down another Fresca and looked like she was hungry, but resigned to skipping a meal to further her illness pretense.

It was moderately entertaining, watching her try to contain her restlessness. He hadn’t a clue as to what she was so keyed up about, and he really didn’t think it was going to change the outcome. The simplest solution was to change their current location, and he planned to do that tonight, anyway. If that didn’t throw her off, then he would start to worry about what she was up to.

~~~*~~~

A departmental meeting kept Sara from getting back to her sister about the strangeness that was her call, at Willow’s request, to her friend. Once she got back to her desk, the email was still there and she re-read it a couple of times, wondering what it really was all about. Clicking the reply button she wrote a note back saying that she had tried to call, but Buffy wasn’t home and she had not left a message. That begged a question that made her hesitate before sending. Should she try to call again?

She thought about it for a few minutes, staring at the screen, and then picked up the phone and called the technical services bullpen, getting Kevin on the second ring. Kevin was a huge Star Wars freak and he bore an ever growing resemblance to Jabba the Hut, but he was one of the sharpest techs and he could be relied on not to blab. She told him about the odd email from Willow and he said that he would look into the origination point and get back to her.

She sent her note to Willow, deciding that she would wait to see if she had any further requests to make before she called Buffy again.

~~~*~~~

Xander was in the passenger side front seat eating the monkey bread when Oz came back with Willow’s laptop. Oz got in, stowed the laptop between the seats and started the van, backing out of the drive.

Xander asked him to stop at a drive thru to order a soda and, realizing that the Rosenberg’s refrigerator would be empty, Oz ordered one too.

“Why are we going to Will’s?” Xander asked.

He could have connected to the Internet using one of the phone lines in the house, but Willow had a docking station to which he would connect the laptop, and he had an idea that it might be easier to figure out what she might think would be useful if he was at her desk. She had a tendency to leave little notes lying around. Mostly, though, he just wanted to be near her things.

Xander interpreted the delay in the answer as a kind of answer. Oz wanted to go to Willow’s for reasons that were too complex or inexplicable to verbalize. He shook his head. “Never mind. The why isn’t important,” he said.

They parked in the empty driveway and Xander pulled out the keys to let them in the front door, automatically stopping to empty the mailbox before he went in and disarmed the burglar alarm. Carrying the pan of monkey bread with the mail tucked under his arm, he went down the hall to the kitchen, nodding to the stairs. “Why don’t you go ahead and go up,” he suggested to Oz. “I’ll put this stuff away.”

Oz went up the stairs. He had been in Willow’s room before, though he had always felt a little self-conscious about being in there. Her room was a little on the conventionally frilly side. It always struck him as a room that she had grown out of but hadn’t noticed that she had grown out of.

His mother had adopted Amy, the rat, while Willow was out of town, having no idea why Willow was so adamant about her care and feeding. The place on top of Willow’s dresser where Amy’s cage normally rested was the only bare surface in the room. Her books and neglected stuffed animals were scattered around. Her Sunnydale High School yearbook was lying on her bed where she had left it before she had gone to San Jose.

He slid the laptop into the dock and powered it up, turning the monitor on as he got comfortable sitting at her desk. There was a brown envelope, one end torn open, on her desk and after a moment’s hesitation, he picked it up and looked inside.

It was proofs from their prom pictures, back from the photographer with an order sheet that she had started filling out. He would have passed on prom if he could have without ruining it for Willow. He looked at the pictures of them, posed in front of a backdrop of potted plants, looking like kids playing dress up. Objectively, he decided that he didn’t look that bad. Short guy in a tux was flirting with an ‘aw cute’. Willow looked endearingly awful. She had pulled her hair up too tight in a knot that was all wrong for her and the dark red cleavage baring dress was a bad color for her. He traced the outline of her heart shaped face. She hated having her picture taken and the photographer had said something that had made her laugh, and he caught her with a wonderful, Willowy smile that lit her eyes up.

He looked up at the pictures glued inside the back of the shelves that toped her desk like a collage at about the same time that Xander wandered in, sitting on the end of her bed. He picked up the yearbook and started leafing through it. “What’s that?” he asked, nodding to the envelope Oz was holding.

“Prom pictures,” he replied, returning them to the envelope. “Do you want to look at them?” he asked.

“Nah,” Xander declined. “I was there. We were looking pretty spiffy,” he said, laying back on the bed and looking up at the ceiling. He didn’t say it, but he thought Willow looked prettier in the dress that she had tried on for homecoming. The one that had led to illicit kissing and badness. He wondered if she had deliberately chosen a dress that she didn’t look as good in for prom, or if it was because they had been so busy that she hadn’t had time to find something that she did look good in.

Oz redirected his attention to Willow’s computer. He opened her browser and clicked on history to get a look at the web sites she had visited most recently. Scanning the list, he didn’t see anything that really jumped out at him. It was a mix of technical sites related to work, and a few demony research references with some browsing mixed in.

She had several instant messaging programs loaded on her computer that had started as soon as the machine had booted and dialed into her internet service. Feeling like he was potentially invading her privacy he started clicking through the messages. She must have been using her AOL messenger for work, because most of those messages were about work, from people looking for her. Her ICQ account was older and packed with alerts and messages from on-line acquaintances. Little references in these notes sometimes required scrolling through the message history to eliminate anything that sounded promising. There were two notes from a guy named Mange about research on an artifact that turned out to be something that he was asking Willow about related to witchcraft.

An hour later, he was still working his way through the backlog of ICQ messages when a message popped up on the AOL Messenger.

“Where the hell are you? I tried calling your friend, Buffy, but she wasn’t home. What’s going on?”

He frowned at the message. He was pretty sure that impersonating Willow on her IM program was considered a breach of net etiquette, but he was deeply tempted to do it anyway.

“When did you try her?” he typed back, quashing his ethical dilemma.

“Right after I opened your email this morning.”

Oz felt the hair on his arms lift as a wave of gooseflesh swept over him. Email! That was the answer. Willow had found a way to get online and she had sent email to someone.

He double clicked on her email program and waited for it to load as another message flashed on the screen.

“What’s going on? Are you okay?”

He frowned at the screen. Xander had fallen asleep on Willow’s bed, clutching her yearbook to his chest.

His hands hovered over the keyboard as he stared at the screen name on the AOL messenger. Who would Willow have written to? He took a deep breath and started typing, figuring that it was time to come clean. “Willow is not okay. She’s been missing for two weeks. This is Oz. She got a message to us and made me think that there is something on her computer she wants us to see.”

He hit send and held his breath, and then shook his head at how stupid he was and started typing again. “Can you forward a copy of her email to her email address?”

He drummed his fingers on the desktop, waiting to see if an answer would be forthcoming.

In the meantime, he opened her in box. There was a ton of unread mail that was still loading.

A new message flashed.

“If you are really on Willow’s computer, why don’t you look in her sent mail?”

He started to say that it was obvious. Willow didn’t have her computer and hadn’t sent mail from it, but he clicked on sent mail anyway and scrolled down to the bottom. There were three emails from Willow within the last day, addressed to Buffy and to her boss.

~~~*~~~

With nothing to read and nothing to do but wait and wonder what was happening in Sunnydale, Willow found it hard to sit still. Spike had taken an all too brief shower after she had let him have the bathroom, and she hadn’t been able to do much more while he was in the shower than check to see if her internet account was still active using the remote. She was going to run out of time in a few hours, but she could order another 24 hours of service and deal with the bill when it arrived.

When she heard the shower shut off she went back to channel surfing. Spike emerged from the bathroom, barefoot, in jeans, but no shirt and he claimed the remote, switching the channel to the hotel’s main menu channel with its four viewing options, the in-house cable, the pay per view movie channel, Game Station, or Internet access.

He went to the pay per view and started scrolling through titles with the remote while she stared at the television screen in a fixed sort of way, hardly daring to breath. The breathing issue might have resolved itself when he didn’t appear to notice anything about the internet connection option, but her brain took that moment to remember that the keyboard was beneath her, hidden only by the bedskirt.

“Oh, crap,” she muttered.

Spike tore his attention away from the television to look at her. “Problem?”

“I—“ Willow shook her head, “Um, I forgot to put in my request for dormitory housing, for college, and if I put it in late, I’ll get a late person for a roommate. I’m really more an on-time person or a fifteen minutes early person,” she rambled on. It was a good pick up, because it was true. She had forgotten about mailing her request for dormitory housing. “And all the best dorms will be full,” she added.

He gave a spare shake of his head. “Yeah, I can see how that would weigh heavily on your mind,” he said dryly.

She frowned at him. “You asked,” she muttered, not having to put any energy into sounding cranky.

“Speak up if you see anything you like, pet,” Spike said, sounding mild. “Stomach still bothering you?”

“Uh . . . yeah,” she nodded slowly, watching the movie titles go past.

“See anything that jumps out at you?” he asked, tilting his head back to look at her. He was sitting in one of the armchairs, pulled away from the table. She was sitting on the end of the bed.

She shook her head, avoiding his eyes, scooting back towards the headboard. “We could go out to see a movie, tonight,” he suggested, just tossing it out there to see what she would do with it. “Seen Gladiator yet?”

She rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said slowly, “movie theater, popcorn and syrup odors,” she gave a spare shake of her head. “I’m not sure I’d be up to it, though if you want to go, you should.”

It was impossible to keep a straight face through this diffident little performance. He smiled, “I wouldn’t dream of going with out if you aren’t feeling well,” he replied, making no effort to hide his amusement.

The corners of her lips turned down and she looked up at the ceiling, one hand pressing down on her stomach, which was starting to get rumbles. “Vampires. No snot issues. I bet you don’t ever get sick,” she complained, and then warmed to the theme. “It’s not fair.”

He turned the television off, leaving the chair, and walking around to what had become his side of the bed to lay down beside her. Braced on one arm he loomed over her, but only to shut off the light on her side of the bed. “I didn’t design the world, I just un-live in it. Lay down, Red,” he rearranged her pillows behind her.

Warily, she scooted down, resting her head on the pillow.

“That’s a good girl,” he murmured, kissing her forehead. “Close your eyes and try to get a bit more sleep, now,” he suggested, tucking her hair behind her ear, the backs of his fingers rubbing her cheek before following the shape of her jaw down to her throat. If she wanted playacting, he would give her playacting. He smiled lazily as his fingers skimmed the pulse pounding in her throat. “Want me to order something for you? What sounds good?”

Her treacherous stomach growled, and she blurted out the first thing she could think of, “Jello.”

He nodded. “Jello? How about a bit of toast, too? And some juice?”

She nodded, feeling him trace the v-neck of her top. For someone who ate food as a hobby, Spike had pretty good food for sick people instincts. The last time she had the flu and her parents were out of town, Xander brought her pizza and chocolate milk for dinner. She made herself look at him. The only lamp left in the room that was lit was the one on the table, and it was over his right shoulder, leaving most of his face in shadow, but there was just enough light for her to see the cool gleam of pure calculation in his eyes before he ducked his head and peeled her top back to place a kiss on the upper inside of her breast, and . . . how dumb did he think she was anyway?

His hand moved down to rest lightly on her stomach, rubbing it in small circles as he placed neat, relatively dry kisses in a line that made the most of her unimpressive cleavage. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at his overly neat hair, dried in furrows. The scent of the conditioner that she had used reached her, which explained why his hair didn’t feel more straw-like given his hair-coloring penchant.

What was that look about? It wasn’t actually an ‘ah-hah’ or a smug ‘gotcha’, but it wasn’t matching up to the solicitous act either. Or she was reading into it. She was looking for things that weren’t actually there. It was possible.

“Sure you wouldn’t rather have a cheeseburger?” he asked, lifting his head and propping it up on his bent arm in time to see the question register. Her stomach answered for her and he gave her a quizzical look. “Cheeseburger?”

“Probably not a good idea, with the grease and everything,” she said.

“You’re up to something, aren’t you, Willow?” His eyebrows lifted and his gaze drifted to her mouth. “I’ll figure it out,” he told her. As he saw it, he was still holding the best hand.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, making herself look him in the eye.

He didn’t look impressed with the eye contact aspect of her strategy. “Right,” he drawled. “Jello or a cheeseburger?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Cheeseburger, with fries,” she said, pushing his hand off her abdomen. “If I end up throwing it all back up, that works for me too.”

He was getting off the bed when she said that and he paused to look down at her. When he came back to the room last night after telling Georgia that her little games with Willow had better come to an end unless she wanted to make a fight of it, Willow had been scared, and he had been fairly sure that it had to do with the lame ice bucket escape attempt. Her careful attention to her surroundings had not gone unnoticed. He also thought she might have been replaying her remark about dog boy and worried that he would even the score.

She didn’t quite grasp the cut and thrust of slagging someone back. It didn’t necessarily mean that there was going to be follow through, though from her point of view, she had no reason to think that there wouldn’t. He had implied as much on general principles. It was sort of like telling Georgia to back off. He didn’t actually have a Willow problem with Georgia. He told Georgia what he had agreed to, and she was putting him in a position where he had to make it stick. It was a challenge, pure and simple. He really didn’t care if Willow wanted to pretend that she was shagging her boyfriend, but getting the last word in on the subject was unacceptable.

He reviewed that thought. He cared enough to enjoy the prospect of making her regret telling him something that could so easily be turned to his advantage, he allowed.

Is that what had tipped the scales in the upset stomach business? He’d left her alone last night because snuggling up to a vomit scented human didn’t appeal. Had she decided to take that as a hint and run with it?

He went to get his coat, throwing it across the foot of the bed as he sifted through his impressions. She had been nervous before they went out to get her something to eat, he recalled.

Willow watched him moving around the room, collecting his cigarettes and lighter, checking his wallet. He pulled something out of his coat pocket and she saw that it was the scarf she had on last night. He was going out, she realized.

She glanced at the closet, assessing the probability that there would be a repeat of the leaving her without clothes strategy. Probably not, though she could count on some combination of vampires at the door to the hallway. Yesterday, he said that he would get her something to read, but between forced vomiting and her celebratory bath, she hadn’t had time to make a list. She wasn’t planning to stick around to do the reading, but that was all the more reason to renew the demand.

“Spike?”

The tone of voice was cautious. He glanced over at her, wondering what was rolling around in her head now.

“Yesterday? You told me to make a list of books. I haven’t,” she noted, “but—“

“Sod the list. Give me a theme,” he countered, her bunched up scarf in his hand. “There’s a gift shop downstairs.”

“Mysteries,” she said. It sounded safe. The way he was sort of rubbing the scarf was making her nervous. “Oh! The Star,” she nodded to herself. “It has a huge crossword puzzle.”

“You read tabloids for the crossword puzzle.” It actually sounded just about right.

“It’s a big crossword puzzle,” she defended her choice.

He dropped the scarf on the bed and went to the armoire, taking something from one of the armoire drawers that was cupped in his hand when he returned to the bed. She caught the glint of metal and reacted on instinct, rolling to the right to elude him.

He grabbed her around the waist, throwing her back to the headboard hard enough that her head smacked against it, making her cry out as much in anger as in pain. He snapped one handcuff around her left wrist and threaded it through a metal bracket before wrestling with her for her other wrist. She tried a Buffy-esque head butt and got nothing for her troubles but mind numbing pain when her forehead smashed into his chin.

He snorted. “God, but you are stubborn,” he muttered. “You should have stuck to insults and brevity. You were starting to get good at that.”

Her response was to ram her left knee into his ribs, and she was almost positive that she heard and felt something give. Which was gross, and she grimaced, feeling slightly revolted and grimly pleased that she had managed to hurt him. A second later, his hand was at her throat, squeezing meaningfully as the back of her head was pressed painfully into the metal of the headboard.

She felt him dragging her free hand up and made herself use her knee again, only this time it was her right knee. He was sort of straddling her thigh, and she tried to get enough leverage to knee him somewhere it would really hurt. Alert to that trick, he dodged it by sliding up, and letting some of his weight press down on her leg above her knee.

“Try that again and you won’t be walking for a week,” he promised.

“What do I get if I actually knee you there?” she demanded.

He chuckled, his finger’s tightening ever so slightly on her throat. “That’s adorable,” his eyes bored in on hers. “A less than thirty second head start and a vast education on the recreational uses of handcuffs,” he said with a smirk.

He cocked his head to one side. “Tell me what you’ve done, and we don’t have to do this,” he offered, nodding to the handcuffs.

Not remotely tempted, Willow glared at him, wishing that she could produce a good lie.

Reading the scheming look that crept into her eyes, he gave a short laugh and took his hand off her throat long enough to clamp the other cuff around her left wrist. He sat back, pretending to admire his work. “Something we haven’t tried yet,” he smirked, catching her leg before she could try to knee him in the ribs again.

Her checked knee to the balls and knee to the ribs maneuvers had made her slide down a bit on the bed, increasing the pull on her shoulders, which was going to get painful. He slid his hands under her ass and lifted her up enough to push her back against the headboard and was rewarded with a little huff and a wiggle that made him press his leg between hers.

“Don’t stop,” he urged, “this is starting to have possibilities.”

Her nose wrinkled in an expression of patent disgust and for a moment he considered driving home a few pointed reminders that she wasn’t as immune to him as she liked to think.

He leaned forward, grasping her chin to force her to meet his gaze. “Unfortunately, my plans for today don’t include entertaining myself by fucking you into the wall. Maybe later,” he told her dismissively.

He climbed off of her and paused to feel his side. He was pretty sure that she had managed to crack a rib or two, not that it would slow him down. He went over the last day in his head, trying to figure out what she might have accomplished, unsupervised in an empty room without a phone or during their two outings. He came up blank. That was more annoying than the cracked ribs.

~Part: 26~

By the time Buffy arrived to feed her, Harmony was willing to tolerate any kind of company, even if it was accompanied by the physical discomfort of the bugs crawling under her skin sensation that came with the Slayer. She was suddenly getting why other vampires were at least uncomfortable around a Slayer, even if the fear factor hadn’t quite reached her. In a lot of ways Buffy acted like any other unwitting human being. She unlocked the cage, opened the door and bent over with her back to Harmony to get something out of the cooler she had brought with her.

Acting on instinct, Harmony went for her and the open cage door. The next thing she knew she was sliding down the opposite wall vaguely aware of having met an opposing force. She looked down at her bedraggled pink dress and found a dusty footprint.

“Where are you going to go?” Buffy asked, sounding exasperated. “It’s daylight out there,” she pointed out, leaving a Styrofoam container on the floor.

Harmony tried to brush off the footprint, which only made it worse. Now it was a big smudge of dirt.

When no answer was forthcoming, Buffy shrugged and exited the cage, snapping the padlock over the hasp. The long term downside of keeping Harmony locked up was starting to work its way into her thinking. It wasn’t helping. Slaying the annoying and inconvenient really wasn’t part of the whole sacred duty package, and there was the remote possibility that Harmony could prove useful at some point in the near future.

She sat down on the cooler, watching her, feeling more than a little creeped out by the notion that Harmony Kendall was a vampire. There was also a small amount of curiosity. It was inevitable. She had hardly known Xander and Willow’s friend Jesse when he had been vamped. She had known Ford, but his illness and his fantasy of undying had turned him into something that was unknowable before he had died and there wasn’t anything to talk about when he rose. She just staked him.

“How did this happen?” Buffy found herself asking.

She didn’t really expect an answer. “I don’t know,” Harmony admitted. “I just woke up this way. I don’t remember . . . dying.”

Buffy gestured to the Styrofoam container. “It’s blood. Pig, I think. I didn’t ask,” she admitted.

Harmony picked herself up and retrieved the container. It wasn’t human and it was cold, but she was too hungry to pass it up.

“How did you get hooked up with Spike?” Buffy asked.

Harmony growled at her. “I don’t want to talk about Spike. Or Willow. You’d think the whole world revolves around them,” she complained. “And I don’t want to stay here. It smells funny, like wet sheepdog, and it’s dirty. I’ve been wearing this dress for days,” she went on, sounding like a fretful child. “And this is disgusting,” she said of the blood that she had gulped down.

“I didn’t ask for this. I don’t deserve it, and Angel was like, no one asks for it, but what is that supposed to mean?” she demanded of Buffy. “All I wanted was to graduate from high school and maybe go to France, and I’m back in Sunnydale.”

It was an odd echo of Buffy’s sense of being trapped by her destiny.

~~~*~~~

She was crossing the elementary school parking lot to the tunnel entrance when she spotted Oz’s van speeding across the parking lot, bouncing over a speed bump with a metal stress rattle. The van barely came to a complete stop when Oz and Xander piled out, waving to her.

“Sacramento,” Oz said. “She’s in Sacramento.”

He had a handful of paper and he looked a little wired. Xander was practically bouncing. “Show her the email,” he urged.

Oz shoved the papers into her hands. “Somehow, she got internet access and logged into her email account,” he explained. “Sara’s trying to track that down, to see if they can track an IP address back to the physical address,” he was speaking computer gibberish now and Buffy was trying to figure out what they were talking about. Who was Sara?

“Will sent you two emails, and when you didn’t answer them she sent an email to her boss in San Jose and asked her to call you and tell you to open your email this morning, but you weren’t there,” Xander explained.

The telephone call, before eight o’clock in the morning. Buffy’s eyes widened. “No, wait—“ she said with a mounting sense of unease. Willow had asked someone to call her, and she had blown them off because she thought it was someone who didn’t know her?

“I’m an idiot,” she groaned. “I answered the phone, and I said I wasn’t home because—they asked for me, but they did that ‘Buffy?’ voice, so I thought not anyone I want to talk to, but it isn’t even eight o’clock in the morning and who would call before eight and I let them hang up. I’m so stupid. You must be someone I don’t want to talk to,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Xander and Oz stared at her for a moment. “Okay,” Xander said slowly. “You may want to work on the telephone manners, Buff, but let’s get past that and focus on the important.”

She made herself focus on the pages that Oz had given her. She had two new message, her first emails, and they were from Willow. She could beat herself up about missing them later.

~~~*~~~

She had been left handcuffed to the headboard with a piece of duct tape over her mouth, a reward for her untimely re-discovery of screaming, for four hours and twenty-eight minutes according to the digital clock above the television. She had managed to get her legs under her, which lessened the pull on her shoulders. Her hands had gone numb two hours ago. She was hungry, thirsty, and oddly, grateful.

Over the last four hours Willow had time to reconsider her rescue from several angles, and this—the one where she was found handcuffed—was the one that she preferred. She didn’t think for one moment that anyone would question it if she didn’t appear to be ill used, but the handcuff motif precluded any doubt about her status as the victim of the crime.

The complexities of her victim hood preoccupied her. To a certain extent she was proud of what she had managed to accomplish in an uneasy sort of way. She had almost escaped twice and gotten a message out to facilitate her rescue. She had managed to affect a bargain with Spike that would keep him from coming after her friends after they made the trade that her kidnapping had made possible for him. That deal would be void. No trade, no truce. Which meant that Spike probably would come after them, especially if he thought that Buffy or Giles had found this mysterious thing that he wanted so badly.

In which case when the taunting of friends and boyfriend started, the handcuff inducing lack of credibility would be hard for Spike to overcome.

She spent a few hours stewing over her preoccupation with how her behavior would be perceived and her lack of scruple about twisting things to show herself in a better light. It was dishonest and cowardly, and yet, she didn’t think that she could bear to see the looks on their faces if they knew what she had done, even armed with reasons that were still compelling to her way of thinking.

When she had dispatched her uneasy musings on how she was going to deal with the being rescued and lying through her teeth, she indulged herself with a few happy notions of Spike, foiled again, and then with the problem of retrieving the keyboard and returning it to its mostly accidental hiding spot behind the television.

When the door from the hallway opened, it was Spike, carrying a plate of food. The smell reached her and her dry mouth was suddenly flooded with saliva. She almost didn’t notice Georgia and Colin following Spike through the door.

Spike brought the plate over to the bedside table and set it down before unlocking the handcuffs. Her shoulders cramped as her arms fell to her sides. Spike picked up her wrists, examining them briefly before rubbing her arms to restore the circulation while Colin went to the refrigerator to get a beer. Georgia was standing with her hands on her hips looking from Colin to Spike like she was waiting for something.

“Hold still,” Spike warned, picking at a corner of the duct tape he had slapped over her mouth.

She tensed, half-expecting him to rip it off, but he pulled gently, easing a finger under the tape to press against her skin as he peeled the tape away. It wasn’t comfortable, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to hurt her, which was probably a good sign. The whole ‘you’re up to something’ surmise had the potential for something ugly if he really thought that she was up to something.

He wadded up the tape and tossed it to the ground before going to the refrigerator to retrieve a bottle of water and a beer for himself.

Colin looked at Georgia, who shrugged. “This is ridiculous,” Colin said. “Start breaking a couple of fingers and she’ll crack,” he predicted.

Willow found herself looking at him, recalling what he said when they had played backgammon. It was nothing even remotely personal. Colin stared back at her, looking like he had concluded that she had not gotten the lesson he had meant to impart. This was the something ugly that she had been afraid was coming.

Spike opened the bottle of water for her and handed it to her. His closed off expression didn’t say much about what he was thinking. Her hands felt like they belonged to someone else, but she managed to bring the bottle to her lips. The rush of cold water filling her mouth made her want to gulp it down.

“Don’t fucking ignore me, Spike,” Colin warned. “I’ve been patient, and I’ve gone along with this so far, but the big pay off you keep hinting is coming is always a little farther away, and I don’t fancy playing games with a Slayer.”

Spike used the end of his t-shirt to twist off the cap of the beer bottle. “I’m not ignoring you,” he countered. “I don’t agree with you, and since we are not living in a democracy—you might be, but I’m not—what you think I should do doesn’t particularly interest me. I do as I please.”

His gaze was redirected to Willow. “Don’t gulp, pet. You’ll make yourself sick,” he told her. “Eat your supper.”

Georgia approached the bed from Spike’s side. “We don’t have to mark her up,” she said.

Willow sighed. Fear was the enemy. Fear of being hurt or humiliated. She eyed the three of them suspiciously. “We have ways of making her talk,” she mocked in a deliberately bad accent. “This is some kind of good cop, bad cop,” she looked at Georgia pointedly, refusing to flinch as she crawled across the bed toward her, “When you do the creepy throat licking thing, please keep the slobber to a minimum, because it’s not creepy. It’s just gross.”

Spike’s eyebrows rose. “Kitten, we’re vampires. Don’t delude yourself. It’s bad cop, bad cop, but nice try, and good tip about throat licking. I suggest that you eat because we are leaving, as soon as it’s dark.”

Frantically calculating how close she might be to being rescued, Willow stared at him, horrified by the simplicity of it. Leaving. It was the easiest and most obvious solution from his point of view. He didn’t know what she was up to, just that she was up to something.

Spike chuckled. “Really, if you could see your face,” he teased. “Aghast doesn’t begin to do it justice.”

“This isn’t funny,” Georgia interjected. “We need to know exactly what is coming,” she insisted. “A century of dodging a stake with Dru may have blunted your survival instinct, but mine is fully intact,” she said brusquely. “And if you can’t bring yourself to getting it out of her, I’ll volunteer,” she moved toward Willow, who was still on her good cop, bad cop theory despite Spike’s claim to the contrary, and frantically trying to think of ways to slow him down.

Spike took a step toward Georgia just as Colin moved, maybe to cut him off. They would never know. His foot caught the edge of the keyboard and it banged against the foot of the bed and Willow winced at the sound before she could stop herself.

Colin bent over and fished the keyboard out. “Well,” he said. “Three guesses?”

“What did you do?” Georgia demanded, reaching for Willow, who scooted off the bed so fast she might have fallen if Spike hadn’t caught her arm and hauled her to her feet.

“Georgia? Leave her alone,” Spike sounded weary. “For the love of Christ, people, she’s not exactly Mata Hari. She figured out a way to get a message out. That’s not so hard to work out. She’s got her hopes pinned on the Slayer and her band of do-gooders coming to rescue her. It’s inconvenient, but we weren’t hunkering down for a cozy vacation,” he pulled out the cell phone. “Watch and learn,” he said, speed dialing the number Angel had given him.

~~~*~~~

The excavation operation had not come to a complete stop. Devon, Chris and Dan stayed on task with Dr. Holbroke after Giles, Angel, Buffy, and Oz left, regrouping at Giles apartment to gear up and work out a plan. Oz went to work re-vamp proofing the van for the afternoon drive to Sacramento. Buffy’s plan included using Harmony. Worst case scenario, she got staked. Best-case scenario, she would be able to help spot Spike’s crew so they could pick them off and take them down.

Using Willow’s computer and some help from the technical support team that Sara was coordinating, they were able to locate a set of plans for the hotel that was put up on a hastily constructed web site. It wasn’t a true hotel according to some more information that was dug up from a search of public records. It was a privately held building that operated as a club, which kept them from having to follow the laws on public accommodations, nixing Giles' original notion of simply calling the hotel to make a reservation and once they were checked in and issued key cards, using them to penetrate the elevator key card security system.

Xander and Buffy took the van to retrieve Harmony while Oz continued downloading information as fast as it could be streamed to him from the San Jose office where Sara was coordinating their research. The IP address was a floater that belonged to an Internet service provider that handled corporate accounts.

Within two hours they were on the road with the vamps in the back, Oz driving, and Giles in the passenger seat. Harmony disputed Willow’s count of the vampires, a detail that concerned Giles. They were going in outnumbered and there were still security issues with the hotel that remained unresolved. He knew that Buffy, Xander and Oz were running on emotion, and would be all for recklessly charging in and fighting their way to Willow if necessary. Since this was likely to get them killed as well as Willow, he was advocating a reconnaissance. After dark the vampires would leave the hotel to hunt, and that presented opportunities to retrieve one of the key cards that would give them access to the elevators.

They were a half an hour outside of Sacramento when Angel’s cell phone rang. The digging team had the number, as did Sara Engstrom in San Jose, and Spike. Angel answered it.

~~~*~~~

Angel answered the phone on the second ring, and if Spike hadn’t guessed that they might be on the way, the background clutter on the line more or less confirmed it. “I love these cell phones,” he started without preamble. “Bloody brilliant invention. You can talk to anyone, anywhere,” he said. “On the road, Peaches?”

“What do you want, Spike?” Angel asked. He was much better at this than Willow, a point Spike considered sharing with her, but decided it would keep. “Just calling to deliver a friendly message,” he said. “I know that you’re coming. If I catch a whiff of that cheap cologne Xapper bathes in, or get that delightful Slayer tingle, then you’ll be getting the witch back in pieces and I’ll be very, very angry.”

“How do you know we aren’t there right now, waiting for you to make a run for it?” Angel countered.

“Don’t really care if you are, mate. She’ll be dead before you can finish growling my name in that ridiculous way you have. Am I supposed to wet myself?”

“How do we know she’s still alive?” Angel asked.

Spike chuckled. “Thanks for asking,” he said. “You don’t. Turn around and go back to Sunnyhell and I’ll get in touch with you. Until then, you can think about it.”

~~~*~~~

To Harmony, stuck in the back of the van, out of direct sunlight, with Angel, the conversation Angel was having was not one-sided. She could hear Spike’s voice on the cell phone. It wasn’t the cleanest connection and she had to concentrate, but it was definitely Spike.

When Spike hung up, Angel snapped the cover on the phone closed and held it clenched in his hand for a moment. “He knows that we are coming,” he announced.

~~~*~~~

Spike pocketed the phone. “Simple,” he pointed out. “Now we leave.”

He pinched Willow’s chin. “Told you to eat, didn’t I?” he mocked. “Too late, now. You’ve got ten minutes—an actual ten minutes—to get what you think you might need together before we leave.”

Georgia looked from Spike to Colin and then went to the connecting door to enter the other room.

Spike gave Willow a little push. “Tick tock,” he reminded her.

For a moment she just stared at him, thinking furiously, and then she went into the bathroom. The wastebasket in the bathroom was empty and there was a clear plastic liner in it. She picked up the wastebasket and started tossing toiletries into it without any regard to what she was taking.

She had no idea how close her friends were, but she was positive that they would not turn back now. They would come, and she had to figure out a way to be here when they arrived.

The wastebasket was half full and she added the toilet paper off the roll, a hand towel and a washcloth to it before sliding the edges of the plastic bag over the top of the wastebasket. She made two ends and tied them together in a double knot.

When she left the bathroom, Georgia was transferring an armful of clothes from the closet to the kind of bag with handles that Willow associated with expensive stores and Pete was standing in the open doorway holding a set of keys that looked vaguely familiar to Willow.

She could hear Spike’s voice. He and Colin must have gone into the other room for something. Willow set her bag of toiletries down. She went to the small refrigerator, staring at the contents, looking for anything remotely useful. The beer bottle Colin had been drinking from was resting on the top of the refrigerator. She picked up a can of diet Coke, holding it for a second, testing the weight of it. The long necked beer bottles had more potential for damage, she concluded.

Setting a couple of the beer bottles on top of the refrigerator, she walked back to the bed, picked up the keyboard and when Georgia bent over to stuff another plastic sheathed garment into the bag, one hand buried in the bag to smoosh the contents flatter, Willow swung, two-handed, with the keyboard.

Georgia heard it and rose into the descending keyboard and then staggered a bit. Willow gritted her teeth and hit her again, hearing Pete coming. She expected that and darted to the end table to grab the plate of food, throwing it at his chest. When he started brushing off the food decorating the front of his dark red t-shirt she made a grab for the keys as she feinted right as if to dive across the bed to avoid him. He had the presence of mind to make a grab at her arm, and she brought her knee up, hard, ripping the keys out of his hands as he froze, waiting for the pain to catch up to him. She skirted him as he crumpled, avoiding a hand that flailed at her, as she bolted for the door to the hallway.

Less than six months ago she had levitated a pencil across a room and staked a vampire. The beer bottles were bigger, her eyes were open, and she was moving. Pushing all of those considerations aside she reached for the power that she had used to levitate the pencil, thinking less about the how of it than the what of it.

She was through the open door as her beer bottle missiles flew, catching Georgia by surprise. A very startled Jeannie was there with a luggage cart and Willow grabbed one end of it with a sound very like a growl. She pushed it with all her might and the startled vampire stumbled back when the cart caught her at her midsection.

The luggage cart skirmish cost time she could not afford to lose at this point. Repeating the litany of directions to the parking garage in her head, Willow took off at a dead run, bare feet flying over the carpet. Over the sound of her feet on the carpeted floor, and the sound of blood rushing through her head, she could hear feet, behind her.

The temptation to duck into a side hall to elude pursuit beckoned. The distance they had walked so quickly last night while Georgia chattered about soap operas and QVC seemed to have stretched and Willow started to wonder if she had taken a wrong turn somewhere when she reached the stairwell that went into the garage. There was a plastic garbage can with a lid inside the landing and she shoved the keys through the swinging lid and flew down the stairs. Last night they had gone up to the parking garage level where the car Spike had been driving was parked. She had no illusions about getting to the right car that matched the keys she had grabbed from Pete. She was gambling that the stairway would take her back to the lobby.

From the lobby, she would make a run for daylight. Judging by the digital clock in the room, it was still daylight and she had a couple of hours to work with before the sun set.

~~~*~~~

Swearing under his breath, Spike was on the elevator. He hadn’t been terribly specific about his injunction to keep Willow from exiting the hotel, and if Pete or Jeannie caught up to her, he could only hope that they didn’t get carried away. The parking garage was a trap, and he was counting on her to recognize it. It was covered, so it presented no particular danger to them, and the open floors and concrete would turn it into an echo chamber. Hiding between cars would buy her time, but that kind of hide and seek was a vampire’s natural milieu for hunting.

He was betting on her making for the outdoors, a big patch of warm sunlight, and the nearest pay phone. As soon as the elevator doors opened, he was moving, and finding himself on the second floor with two of the three lawyers they had dinner with standing at the doors, looking startled by his sudden lunge out of the car.

“In a hurry?” the woman asked, looking amused, as she followed him back inside the elevator car. Her companion, the younger of the two male attorneys had the wit to look slightly nervous.

“Lilah, we can take another elevator,” he hissed, hesitating outside the doors.

She stuck her hand out to keep them from closing. “Get in,” she snapped at him, sounding irritated. “We’re already late.”

Spike shrugged. Using what was at hand was his strong suit. He wrapped his arm around the woman’s neck, hauling her back. “It’ll keep,” he told her companion as the doors slid shut.

“Hey!” she protested.

“Very eloquent. Right up there with ‘duh’,” he retorted. “Now, shut up and listen. You can tell your clients that I’ll visit them personally to settle up if they’d like,” he told her. “I’m busy right now, but I’ll get to it, so if they want to start packing their bags, that might be a good idea.”

As threats went it didn’t lack for subtlety. Lilah started to speak and his arm tightened. “If I hear anything other than please don’t kill me, I’ll give you a reason to start begging,” he promised as the elevator doors opened.

His senses were immediately assaulted by a second rampant heart beat and a familiar scent, heady with adrenaline and fear. A flash of red hair caught his eyes as Willow emerged from a side hallway on cue.

“Scream,” he ordered, and to make sure that she complied, he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head to one side and was rewarded with a blood-curdling shriek.

Willow’s head whipped around and she stumbled, but she stayed on her feet. His notion of using her best tendencies against her died a quick death. He saw the hesitation, the twist of guilt and grief that rippled across her face as she realized that she had signed someone’s death warrant, but she barely slowed on her path to the revolving doors and he didn’t have time to fuck around with a quick kill to make a point.

Shoving Lilah away from him he dove after her, closing ground fast. A diving tackle slammed her into the glass panel of the revolving door and the momentum nearly spilled both of them into the sunlit street. As it was, he was forced to scoop her up, one arm around her midsection and the other around her neck, and push the door through the cycle before the sunlight scorched him.

The impact with the door split her head open right under her hairline and for a moment she stared at the lobby spinning back toward her in furious disbelief, swaying a little, and then she went down like a sack of potatoes as Pete skidded into the lobby in hot pursuit. The collapse seemed genuine enough, though after Spike picked her up, she started coming back around and twisted violently to get out of his arms until he got tired of trying to keep her from throwing herself down on the marble floor and threw her over his shoulder.

She grunted, cutting off a rambling tirade. Spike returned to the elevator and Lilah sidestepped him with a glare. Willow lifted her head enough to see the attorney they had had dinner with the other night. Their eyes locked for a moment.

“Help me,” Willow begged. “Please.” Remembering that Spike had had his arm around her neck, a threat that Willow ignored implicit in the gesture. “It will really mess things up for him,” she threw out the one thing that she thought might move the attorney.

Lilah gave her suit coat a firm tug and looked away, pretending, like the staff behind the front desk, that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. The vampire hadn’t hurt her. He had been bluffing, and she thought no less of Willow for calling him on it. She made a mental note to find out who the red headed girl was as the elevator doors closed.

~Part: 27~

The mood in the Giles apartment had been euphoric while they were making plans to rescue Willow. The hours on the road to Sacramento had taken the giddy edge off as the focus began to narrow down on the task at hand. This didn’t stop Xander from offering a non-stop stream of bad jokes and quips or Buffy from occasionally joining in while rolling a stake between the palms of her hands. It was the way they coped.

It nearly drove Giles mad at times. All too often the car pool to the Apocalypse made him feel like he had unwittingly trapped himself with teenagers that he wouldn’t have had anything to do with when he was their age. Except perhaps Oz, who rarely spoke, but almost always had something interesting to say when he did, and was in a band. They might have been friends. Then he would catch himself thinking this way and be annoyed at the absurdity of it.

After Spike’s call the mood in the van became grim. Oz drove, pushing the fully loaded van to the limit. Xander argued without having a real argument. Before they returned to Sunnydale he would be picking at the scabs of their failures. The email time stamps that had been ignored before now, the missed phone call that might have put them on the road at least three hours earlier, their failure to pick up on the broad hint that Willow had managed to work into the last, brief conversation that he had had with her. They were all thinking about these things, but Xander would be the one who would eventually say them and Giles hated waiting for it to come.

They were too close to Sacramento to turn around now, and it was possible that they might pick up important clues or that Willow would continue to demonstrate a degree of resourcefulness that they had been unable to fully exploit to figure out how to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow.

They kept talking like they had something to do when they got to Sacramento.

“It’s a hotel,” Angel pointed out. “That means lots of rooms, hallways. We are going in blind. Willow says the doors and elevators are key locked on both sides,” he pointed out.

“Sewer access?” Buffy asked.

“A hotel that caters to demons?” From the front passenger seat, Giles shook his head, “They’ll be on to that,” he pointed out. “Our best chance was to catch them leaving and ambush them, and they can’t know how close we are. There’s still a chance we can catch them,” he said, and he knew it was thin. On the other hand, it was vital that they be alert to the possibility.

“We may be walking into a trap,” Angel warned, echoing Giles thoughts on the matter. “He knows that we are coming,” he reminded them. “Spike kills as many of us as he can, and he goes back to Sunnydale to get the Gem of Amara,” he posited.

Harmony looked perplexed by that. “Why do that when he can make you go back and find it?”

Buffy found herself in the odd position of agreeing with Harmony. “He wouldn’t have called you,” she pointed out. “He wouldn’t have given up the element of surprise.”

Giles cleared his throat. “Angelus might have, for the very reasons that you suggest, but I agree with Buffy. Spike is more direct.”

Angel shifted awkwardly on the floor of the van. They were right. It was something Angelus would have done that Spike would have bitched about. “He cleared out as soon as he got off the phone,” he conceded. He hated sitting on the floor of the van. It wasn’t just the discomfort. It offended his sense of dignity to some degree. “If we can figure out a way inside, then it’s worth getting a look around, but if we don’t find anything, we need to get back to Sunnydale and wait for him to get in touch with us.”

Oz was silent during this discussion. Somewhere between the phone call and this re-invention of their priorities he had started thinking about what really needed to be done. He didn’t know how Willow had managed to get online, but it suggested that she had some freedom and that she was being treated relatively well. Her notes to Buffy were organized, methodical, and very precise. She had seen a lot of her surroundings, so she wasn’t being kept in a closet, tied up, with a bag over her head.

If she kept this up, she would be, or worse. What he knew about Spike didn’t inspire confidence in his restraint.

~~~*~~~

Pete and Jeannie had been left behind to watch. It was a task that Pete accepted without really knowing what he was supposed to be watching for. Spike explained it to him, but there was a needle in a haystack quality to it that had him reaching for excuses before he failed. He was pleasantly surprised to get a hand from the people he was supposed to be watching for in the shape of a girl in a bedraggled pink evening gown.

“Harmony,” Jeannie recognized her too.

“Yeah,” Pete was delighted. “Harmony,” he grinned. “Poor baby. She looks like she’s hungry.”

They were sitting on a rooftop behind the Victorian façade of one of the buildings abutting the hotel that they had checked out of earlier. Georgia had been a good sport about Willow hitting her over the head with the keyboard, but the fact that the human was still breathing and largely unhurt, and that Spike had no intention of changing that, was the last straw for Colin. He and Georgia had taken off before Spike had finished giving his instructions. Jeannie and Pete were to stay behind and shadow the Slayer and her crew, following them back to Sunnydale.

“What happened in the room?” Pete asked.

He had gotten ejected on the hunt for the girl and wound up in the covered parking garage trying to get a fix on her. Jeannie had been back in the room when he had given up and reluctantly returned, remembering what happened to three minions in San Francisco.

“Colin was pissed,” Jeannie reported. “Georgia was kind of mad, but not as mad.”

“No,” Pete shook his head. “What did he do to her?”

“Willow?” Jeannie made a dismissive sound. “That’s why Colin was mad. Spike was like, so what she tried to escape. It’s my problem. I’ll deal with it. And Colin was like, if you dealt with it this wouldn’t have happened.”

Pete grinned. “Oooh. I missed that? So, what happened next?”

“You know that part. Spike took off, and took her with him, of course.” Pete had encountered them in the hallway while Spike was half dragging her. He finally got fed up with her fighting him every step of the way and punched her. She went down like someone had cut her strings.

Below, the knot of people and vampires broke up. The two vampires entered the hotel while the younger human males got back in the van and drove around the corner at a crawl, leaving a girl and an older man on the street.

“Slayer?” Jeannie guessed, feeling a little shiver work its way up her spine.

“I think so,” Pete was staring at the pair on the sidewalk below. “This is so cool,” he said. “I’ve heard of them. Everyone has, but I’ve never seen a real, live Slayer. It’s kind of like seeing . . . the Easter Bunny.”

Jeannie shot him a sideways look. “What did your Easter Bunny look like?”

“Bugs Bunny, but cuter, and more like a girl,” Pete was sufficiently distracted to admit. “Aw, look at her little pony tail and her overalls. She’s so . . . small and cute! I bet she walks through cemeteries looking like that and it’s all ‘please don’t hurt me scary vampires, and then when you are just about to sink your fangs into her—poof! You’re dust.”

His enthusiasm struck Jeannie as ghoulish. “Okay,” she muttered under her breath. ‘You are really strange.”

The Slayer was walking away from the hotel entrance, slipping between the hotel and the next building where they lost sight of her. “Come on,” Jeannie urged. “Spike said that if we lost her we’d probably find her on our backs. We better move.”

Pete stood up and led the way across the roof. “I’m thinking that we should just skip the following them part and go to Sunnydale,” he said. “We can stop somewhere on the way for a bite, and get there in time to find that place Spike mentioned where we can hole up.”

“What are you going to tell Spike?” she wondered.

“They looked around, they went home,” Pete summed up. “I get the feeling sometimes that he doesn’t think I’m very smart, so it’s not like he’s going to be expecting detailed analysis of what they were doing.”

Jeannie didn’t dispute Pete’s read on Spike’s opinion. It sounded right to her.

~~~*~~~

Willow woke up to a smell that was irritatingly familiar. It was the aged scent of stale beer, blood, cigarette smoke, and dirt that had been ground into a weathered leather coat and activated by the moisture in the air. There was a window open over her head and she could feel warm, humid air all around her. Her head hurt. She was lying on her side, with her legs curled up, and her head hurt enough that she allowed herself one tiny whimper of pain.

Or maybe she had already been whimpering, because she felt the pressure of a hand on her hair, smoothing it before adjusting an ice pack separated from her skin by a damp, cold piece of toweling.

Someone was taking care of her? Her eyes flew open. Rescue. She hadn’t gotten outside of the hotel, but that was always a long shot. Slowing Spike down, making him waste enough time for the gang to get there and save her had always been more likely.

Her nose wrinkled. It was dark. Night dark, densely dark, with flashes of light and the sound of tires moving over asphalt. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, and then realized that it was because her hand wasn’t precisely in front of her face. It was resting on the surface that supported her head. Her fingers moved, identifying wear-softened denim. The hand that smoothed her hair, tucked the length of it back behind her ear and the attached fingers gave her earlobe a tug.

“Coming around, Red?”

It was Spike.

She flung herself back fast enough to dislodge the compress and make her vision swim a bit as the pain in her forehead surged in time with her pulse. Her stomach cramped, swamped by nausea and hunger, as her hands went to her head.

“Head hurts?” he guessed. “Evidence that it is still attached, and should you want to keep it that way, you should put a bit of effort into working on your ‘I’m harmless, and helpless, and just trying to get along with the undead’ persona,” he said, adopting a mocking girlish register.

Willow heard him, she just couldn’t be moved to do much more than hold her head and wait for the pounding to subside.

He made an exasperated sound. “Silly bint. You were all comfy and quiet and you had to go move around and make yourself feel worse,” he chided, patting the seat beside his hip. Something plastic crinkled in his hand. “Frozen peas,” he told her. “It will help with the swelling. You went head first into a solid glass door. Lay your head down and close your eyes.”

She turned to face what she now realized was the seat back of the front seat of the DeSoto, resting her head against the plastic bag. Her hand went first to her forehead, feeling the dried blood there and then to her bruised jaw. She remembered hitting the plate glass revolving door. The sore jaw took longer to come together in her mind. After they had returned to the room and Spike had dumped her on the bed he had gotten into an argument with Colin. Then what? She remembered getting up with an idea of going into the bathroom to look at her forehead and Spike saying her name sharply.

“You hit me,” she concluded.

“Yeah,” he cracked a window and lit a cigarette. “You’ve gotten off light so far. Fortunately for you the sheer inconvenience of keeping you alive after I beat the hell out of you occurred to me before I beat the hell out of you.”

He didn’t hit her then. That happened later. He grabbed her arm in a grip that wasn’t just meant to keep her near him or steer her in a direction, though that had been a part of it, second to inflicting pain.

“And that’s it?” She wasn’t buying it for a second.

He chuckled. “Possibly. That’s up to you, pet. Kidnapper, kidnappee. You’re supposed to try to escape, and I’m supposed to stop you. Remember? We’re just doing our parts. You’re getting better at it, and good for you, but this isn’t Peewee League. I do keep score, and I’m winning. I intend to keep winning.”

If her arm was bruised, it wasn’t registering as competition for her head. She pondered the possibility of having a concussion. The sports analogy threw her, and then creeped her out. “Eeeew! Don’t tell me that you lurk around playgrounds watching Little League games because that’s just—“

“Evil? I’m a vampire. Evil,” he reminded her, and then he grinned. “Nothing like a soda pop sweetened sweaty little appetizer. You know what they say. The salt brings out the sweetness.”

She turned her head to look up at him in horrified disbelief. “That’s disgusting.”

He looked down at her. “You didn’t think I was bluffing about killing that lawyer in the hotel. You decided that it was an acceptable loss if you got away. I’m not burdened with morality, Red. You however are, so thanks for the helpful victim selection tip.”

With a stab of unease, Willow realized that she really hadn’t thought that he was bluffing and that if she had it to do over, she would probably have made the same choice. It was a value-oriented decision. The three lawyers they had dinner with had gone into the bad guy column and she had not been willing to sacrifice her shot at escape for one of them. Could she bluff?

“You kill people all the time. It’s what you do, and it’s what you’ll continue doing,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “I’m past caring what moves you to kill, or what I might or might not have to do with it.”

He smiled at that. “Nice try,” he told her. “But if it was true, you wouldn’t have told me. You would have held on to that as a trump in case it happened again.”

Bluff called. She gritted her teeth and considered telling him that since he thought she was bluffing, it was just as effective if he was wrong. That was too convoluted for her aching head. Instead she probed the margins of the goose egg on her forehead. It felt spongy and sore, which made her press on it to see how sore and spongy it was. Not one of her better ideas. Her vision swam with funny black spots and she found herself breathing through her mouth to cut down on the stinky car smell while she worked on remaining conscious.

“Where is Georgia?” she asked after a minute.

“Took off with Colin,” he told her.

“And the others?” Might as well figure out what she was up against.

He ignored that. “Harmony? I think they found her in San Francisco and took her back to Sunnydale. What a treat that must be, trying to get something useful out of her.”

Willow shifted around, trying to find a more comfortable position. She settled for bracing her feet against the passenger side door and crossing her arm over her waist to shift her weight away from the edge of the seat.

Snarky comments about Harmony. She had traded them with Buffy and Xander and Cordelia and most recently, Georgia. She wasn’t forgetting that Harmony got her into this mess, and she was still grateful that she wasn’t dead, which she grudgingly credited Spike for. Still, snide comments about Harmony lacked their normal appeal. She had the distinct impression that being a vampire wasn’t working out so well for her childhood nemesis. She closed her eyes, half expecting him to shake her awake. She was tired and hungry and cold, though the interior of the car wasn’t cold at all. It was possible that she was genuinely sick or maybe she was bleeding internally and would go to sleep and not wake up again. She had read somewhere that that could happen with head trauma. The way her luck was running lately, she’d wake up with brain damage.

~~~*~~~

No one was saying it, but Buffy had screwed up. Hugely. The missed telephone call had cost them at least three hours. It may have cost Willow more. The drive back to Sunnydale was conducted in silence so thick that Giles had been moved to turn the radio on. Oz was in the back. Angel had taken over driving for him. Xander was pretending to be asleep, but since he tended to sleep with his mouth open and he wasn’t, it was a given that he was pretending.

She wanted to tell them that she was sorry, but every time she tried someone changed the subject or Xander made a joke.

The only good that had come out of the trip to Sacramento is that they were now less a vampire. Harmony and Angel had gotten inside the hotel lobby, and once there, Harmony had stubbornly refused to leave. Angel might have made an issue of it, or at least staked her, but then a pair of vampires entering the lobby rescued Harmony and volunteered that Spike had taken off for parts unknown with Willow less than ten minutes ago. The older male vampire wished him luck in finding him, which hinted that Spike, never able to play well with others very long, had lost some allies. He even went so far as to describe the car that he thought Spike was driving, and said that he was pretty sure that he was heading to Los Angeles.

Outnumbered and not entirely disappointed to be rid of Harmony, Angel had decided that the information was a fair trade and backed out of the lobby. There was a less than graceful moment with the revolving door followed by a startling impression—the sharp scent of a strong cleaning solution that almost, but not entirely masked the scent of blood, and then he was on the street, alone. Oz and Xander were circling the block in the van. Buffy would be doing a perimeter sweep with Giles.

He had an itchy feeling that Spike had just barely gotten away, that he was still close.

~~~*~~~

Stupid, Stupid. Stupid. It matched the dull ache throbbing in Willow’s head. The keyboard. How could she have forgotten the keyboard? How had it not occurred to her to hide the keyboard and the billing statement behind the television?

They were staying at a Marriott Express off the highway. There was no restaurant, but given their early morning check in the desk clerk had given them extra coffee for the coffee maker in the room, juice in foil sealed plastic cups, and a paper plate with bagels, lite cream cheese and melon slices from the complimentary continental breakfast bar that would be set up in the lobby in a few hours.

The room was equipped with a multi-line phone, data ports, and a television with game station and Internet TV. Spike was exploring the later. He was laying on his stomach at the foot of the bed with the keyboard in front of him as he typed, using the hunt and peck method.

The padded headboard that was bolted flush to the wall didn’t provide any bondage opportunities, so she was handcuffed to Spike. Naturally, he waited until after she had used the bathroom, because otherwise she would have come up with another gross bodily function to inflict on him.

She chewed a piece of dry skin off her lower lip while she conducted an internal debate with herself on how disgusting she was willing to be. It was a train of thought that was more pleasant than dwelling on the conversation they had had earlier on the balcony that kept trying to push through to the front of her brain.

She was on her back, looking up at the popcorn ceiling, feeling the small movements of Spike’s fingers on the keyboard through the handcuff. Her arm was extended over her head, curling around the top of her head. She considered yanking her wrist back just to annoy him and concluded that it was preferable to being disgusting but potentially more painful for her.

She jerked her elbow to the side.

For her troubles he rolled away from her and then resettled himself half on and half off her, holding her chin. “Getting bored?”

~~~*~~~

Spike hadn’t given a full ten seconds thought to any idea of beating the hell out of Willow. After they had gotten on the road and it had gotten dark enough to make a quick stop at a store for cigarettes and the bag of frozen peas that he had made a compress of, he had gotten her sorted out with her head on his thigh so he could mind the compress and drive.

The blow to her head had put things in perspective. She was too easily damaged, Georgia wasn’t around to take care of her, and he still needed her alive and relatively mobile. He really didn’t fancy carting around a badly injured girl. He also had to face the fact that threats of violence simply were not effective. She was all to aware that he was motivated to keep her alive and he strongly suspected that she lacked the capacity to understand how badly he could hurt her, which could only be established by doing enough hurt to get her attention.

Getting a bit seared in the revolving door had driven home the fact that if not for some incredibly good luck on his part, this was the second time she had managed to make a break for it and she damn near got away. He was going to have to find another way to establish and maintain control, and the most effective way to do that was to make her do it for him.

He drove until a little after four in the morning and found a cluster of hotels around an outlet mall off the highway. There was a low hanging mist that shrouded the road, and the headlights cut through it, making the mist glow. Heat from her body had turned the peas under her head to mush. He combed his fingers through her hair to wake her up and she cried a bit before she realized where she was.

Walking unsteadily, with his hand on the small of her back, she looked like a mess, hair tangled, clothes wrinkled from sleeping across the front seat in them, her forehead and jaw bruised. Big green eyes, luminous with unshed tears, completed the woebegone aspect of her appearance.

The desk clerk had taken in her battered appearance. Spike had offered no excuses or explanations. It was interesting. People were funny. In this decade domestic violence was no longer a dirty secret and neither were the things that adults sometimes did with children. You could see the suspicion forming and then something approximating good manners and an unwillingness to subject themselves to someone else’s problems took over and the victim became invisible. Or in the case of the desk clerk, a collection of needs that could be addressed with a hastily assembled plate of food and some plastic juice cups and sample sized packages of aspirin and antibiotic ointment.

After they were checked in, they had gone back to the car to get things for Willow. She seemed relieved to find the bundle of toiletries and the hastily packed bag of clothes. At random she tugged a plastic sheathed garment on a hanger out of the bag. It was another Capri pants set in pink and white check. She frowned at it, and he really didn’t need her to say, “blue jeans, t-shirt, sneakers,” under her breath to guess at what she was really thinking about the silky pink and white ensemble.

Once they reached the room, she fell on the food. She hadn’t had a meal in over twenty-four hours. She ate two plain bagels with cream cheese without complaint, though from the expression on her face he could tell that she didn’t think much of the bagels. All the while she was alertly studying the room, despite the headache that made her push her fingertips into her eyes occasionally as if she could blot out the discomfort.

Then she retreated to the bathroom, which gave him a moment to study the room rather than watch her to see what she was picking up on. It was a fairly generic hotel room in a building that was less than five years old. There was a vestibule from the door to the room proper that held a closet space and a small mini refrigerator in a utility configuration with an ironing board that hung on the wall from a bracket that supported an iron. A small four-pot coffee maker rested on top of the mini refrigerator with a basket of coffee things, two glass mugs, an ice bucket and another pair of glasses covered with pleated paper coasters.

He opened the door to put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign out and shut it, throwing the dead bolt and the safety lock for good measure before checking out the rest of the room. Claiming that she could stake him by levitating a pencil had gotten his attention. Having heard about her little beer bottle missile success had him studying the room for potential hazards. The light fixtures were attached to the walls and ceiling. He went through the drawers of the two bedside tables, dresser, and entertainment center, collecting two pencils that went into an inside pocket of his coat.

He found the game station controller and a keyboard. Curious about her adventure with the Internet, he made a mental note to find out more about that.

Before she was out of the bathroom, teeth cleaned, face scrubbed, he was there with the handcuffs, pushing her against the wall hard enough that her breath left her in a rush. He snapped a handcuff on her right wrist and fastened the other cuff to his left wrist. She pressed herself flat against the wall, obviously bracing herself for more, her heart rate increasing in little spurts as her imagination started working against her.

“I never promised not to try to escape,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “We’ll talk about that,” he dismissed the claim, rooting in his pocket for the packet of antiseptic and the aspirin. She had blotted away the dried blood on her forehead and the lump that had formed had decreased a bit. Like most head wounds, it had bled a lot and looked much worse than it actually was. Her skin was broken above her hairline and about a half inch into her forehead. He tore the antiseptic foil with his teeth and squeezed out a bit of the ointment on her forehead, dabbing it into the cut.

He gave her the aspirin. She needed something to wash it down so, awkwardly tethered by the handcuffs, he was forced to follow as she got a glass and went back into the bathroom to fill it from the tap. In a way, it confirmed his earlier thoughts on the matter. Being tethered to her twenty-four hours a day was going to get old fast for both of them. He watched her in the mirror as her eyes darted to the toilet, probably wondering if she could convince him that she needed to use it so soon after she had come out of the bathroom. While she was sorting that out, he was eyeing the bathtub with manufactured interest.

She took the aspirin and refilled the glass of water. He refrained from rolling his eyes and gave her handcuffed wrist a tug to get her moving. Bypassing the queen sized bed, he walked over to the north facing sliding glass door, pushing the drapes and blinds aside to unlock and open it. There was a tiny balcony with a pair of metal-framed lawn chairs around a small glass table. He stepped out on the balcony and for a moment they got tangled up. He caught her fingers in the hand that was tethered to her and turned to lean against the railing, finding a cigarette while she perched on the edge of a chair, looking out at an outlet mall strip that had been visible from the highway.

He lit his cigarette. They were on the fourth floor of a six-story hotel. He ran his fingertips over his jaw, testing the beard stubble that was coming through.

“It’s going to be light soon,” she observed.

He nodded. “It’s about twenty minutes away,” he estimated without reference to the sky. His gaze fixed on her. She was leaning forward enough that her hair was falling around her face, veiling her expression.

“I’ve been wondering about something,” his voice was deceptively mild. “What do you think is going to happen if I don’t get what I want?”

After a moment of hesitation, she lifted her head to look up at him with a blank expression.

He smiled. “You’re tired, your head hurts, and you’ve been wondering when I’m going to do something to hurt you for hours,” he summarized. “Try to pay attention? This is one of those things that’s more important to you than me,” he said, sounding like a guidance counselor. “Do you think that if you manage to get away from me that old Spike is going to give up?”

He watched comprehension forming in her eyes. He nodded. “That’s right, kitten. I’m not going to stop. I’ll keep coming back,” he paused to take another drag on his cigarette, exhaling a lungful of smoke before he resumed. “You don’t want that, and if there’s another way to do this, I’ll go along. That makes us on the same side.”

“What is it that you want so badly?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It’s not important. What’s important is that I want it and that I’m willing to give a little to get it. That’s free. That’s a free piece of meaningful information. You’ve made your priorities clear. You want to go home, and you want me to leave your mates alone. Fucking you, as delightful as that has been, isn’t worth trading on without getting what I want. It’s a distant second, at best.”

She put the glass on the small table beside her and then wished that she hadn’t. Holding the glass had given her something to do with her free hand.

“You are going to get yourself hurt. You are going to get people killed if you keep this up,” he told her. “That works for me, too, but I think you are going to have a hard time living with it, and Red? Push it, and I’ll make sure that you are the last one standing.” He reached out with the hand tethered to hers, pushing her hair away from the side of her face. “I’ll make sure that you are around to watch.”

Later, when she started squirming around while he was surfing the Internet, he figured that she was probing at the boundaries that existed between them. She couldn’t help it. Partially it was boredom and a need for distraction from a furiously scheming brain that she couldn’t shut off. He had a notion of what she might try next.

He pushed the keyboard off the end of the bed, letting it fall to the floor with a sound that made her flinch. According to the clock above the television it was seven in the morning. By now the Scooby gang would be back in Sunnydale. He found the key to the handcuffs and unlocked them, climbing off the bed to retrieve the cell phone from his coat.

“Angel’s phone is on the speed dial, and you know the rest of their phone numbers,” he pointed out. “I’m going to go take a shower. Call them. Walk out of here, if that suits you. You can do anything you want. I’ve told you what I’ll do,” he pointed out, tossing the phone to the bed beside her, feeling her watching him as he left her.

~~~*~~~

She didn’t quite believe it. Even as she heard the shower come on, she reached out for the cell phone, half expecting him to appear. She held it for a moment and then flipped open the cover, staring at the buttons in a numb sort of way. Were the keys to the Desoto in his coat? She slid off the bed to check and found them, his wallet and the confiscated pencils. Out the door, with the phone, and the keys, and money with a good idea of what direction she had to go to get home, she could be there in a matter of hours. She had been a little surprised to find that Spike had left Sacramento and driven south, which made them closer to Sunnydale.

Not that it solved any of her problems. Not like the pencils could. She held them in her hand for another moment and then slipped them back into the pocket. The drapes and blinds had already suggested a kind of final solution. She didn’t have to get to them to move them. All she had to do was wait for the right moment.

From now on, she was on her own. As much as she wanted to talk to Buffy or Giles or Xander—but not Oz, she wasn’t ready to talk to Oz—she was on her own.

She called Angel instead, using the speed dial that Spike had pointed out to her. He answered right away, probably expecting a call. Spike had said something about calling them. He thought it was Spike calling and answered the phone that way, but he quickly caught on, and his tone of voice changed. “Willow?”

“Uh-huh,” she confirmed. “You really don’t like Spike, do you?” she observed. It was a neutral topic. “I guess this is the ‘I’m alive’ call,” she went on. “Alive, and . . . I’ve been better, but I’m okay,” she said.

~~~*~~~

After they returned to Sunnydale, Buffy said something about making a quick patrol. Normally Angel would have gone with her, but Giles spoke first and it was clear that he thought that he needed to talk to her. She was beating herself up about missing the call that morning.

That left Angel, Xander and Oz together again in Giles living room. Oz had finally gone to sleep in the van, but he looked like hell. Xander had slept through most of the trip back and was already moving to the kitchen to find something to eat. Oz gestured to him. “Why didn’t you go with?”

“You know why,” Angel pointed out. “She needs to hear this from Giles,” he looked at Oz. “And, maybe you. She thinks it is her fault that we didn’t get there in time.”

Xander peered at them in the living room through the opening above the breakfast bar. “It isn’t her fault,” he defended Buffy. “She’s wiped out. She had other stuff on her mind. It could have been any of us.”

The expression on Oz’s face was unconvinced, but he didn’t want to argue with Xander, and it didn’t matter who was at fault. It was just slightly less stomach churning to think about than what happened when Spike found out that she had gotten a message through to them or where she might be now, or why they didn’t do anything but tell her to hang on because they would have the Gem of Amara soon and that was the safest of all options.

“He’ll call here, won’t he?” Oz guessed.

Angel nodded. “I think so.”

Oz sat on the long couch. “I’m not leaving then.”

He was asleep by the time Giles got in from a patrol that included walking Buffy home and staying to tell Joyce what had happened in Sacramento after Buffy had gone up to her room to get a few hours sleep.

Unlike Xander, Giles had let Buffy talk, and let her accept the responsibility for their failure. It was never easy, or always fair, but she needed to get past it and he didn’t see that happening as long as Xander was making excuses or Angel and Oz were not commenting.

He felt old when he came home to find Oz sleeping heavily on his couch. Xander had gone to the tunnel to find out where they were on the dig. Angel was planning to leave while it was still dark. Giles got ready for bed and lay awake, listening for the phone. Like Angel, he was convinced that Spike would call here to make sure that they had actually returned to Sunnydale.

~~~*~~~

Angel was cutting through an alley to get to an access tunnel that would take him to the tunnel they were working in when his cell phone rang. He checked the number and was surprised to find that it was the same number that Spike had called from earlier.

Who was the bigger idiot? Spike telling them to high tail it back to Sunnydale, or else and then calling a cell to check up on them? Or him for assuming that his grand childe was smarter than that?

“I should have staked you the first time you called me ‘mate’,” he told him in lieu of greeting. There was a long pause before Willow started talking in a rush. He hardly heard what she was saying to him.

“Where are you?” Angel asked, stopping in the middle of an alley. “Is he there?”

Her eyes went to the closed bathroom door. The shower was still running. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s here,” she closed her eyes. “Look, just give him what he wants, okay? It’s the only way to make this work without anyone getting hurt or worse.”

“Oh, Willow,” Angel was disappointed for her. She sounded like she was ready to throw in the towel. “You don’t know what he wants, do you?”

“It’s some artifact thing-y, right?” she shook her head. “Just give it to him. He’ll—we have a kind of agreement that he’ll leave us alone,” she said, her voice thickening as her throat tightened.

“You can’t trust him,” Angel picked up on the change in her tone of voice. A sense of urgency swept over him. He knew what Spike could be like. He could bully and charm his way into getting what he wanted almost more effectively than he could fight.

“You have a better idea?” she found herself asking, wanting to cut him off before he got warmed up to a rant on the subject. “Because I’m running out of good ideas here,” frustration crept into her tone of voice. “I’m doing my best, but—“

“You don’t know what he wants,” Angel insisted.

“I don’t care what he wants,” a fine thread of hysteria had crept into her voice. “I want to come home, and—“ she made herself stop before she said the words that were forming in her head. Her two best escape attempts had involved them. Instead of finding a car and driving away from the gas station in San Francisco, she had waited for the police Angel had sent to arrive. She had sent three emails and waited over twenty-four hours for someone to come get her, and she would have been better off if she had emailed the Watcher’s Council, not that they had ever impressed her with being quick to react.

“I know,” he said. “Calm down, okay? Willow the only reason he’s let you talk this long is because he knows that hearing you like this is going to upset everyone even more. It’s emotional blackmail.”

An awful idea starting forming in her mind. Whatever Spike wanted it wasn’t something they were willing to give him, even to save her. No. That couldn’t be right. Buffy, Xander, and Oz wouldn’t go along with that. Giles wouldn’t. Angel wasn’t saying what she was imagining.

“He’s threatening to kill me,” it was a little dramatic, but essentially true. “Why does he have to resort to emotional blackmail on top of that? Is the idea that he’s going to kill me less upsetting if you don’t know that I’m upset about potentially being dead, or undead?”

Angel winced. “That’s not what I mean. Whatever he’s telling you, it’s a lie, Willow. He’s manipulating you. You can’t trust him,” he insisted, alarmed by the tone of her voice. “You’ve gotten away from him once, and we almost had him tonight. You can do this. You’ve proven it. That’s why he’s telling you that he’ll leave your friends alone if he gets the Gem of Amara, but you can’t believe him.”

“What is the Gem of Amara?” she asked, sounding a bit calmer.

“It’s something vampires have been seeking for centuries,” Angel began. This was wrong. Spike had put her on the phone before but never for more than a few seconds. “If he gets his hands on it, he’ll be unstoppable. He’ll say anything, do anything to get it. You can’t trust him.” His sense of just how wrong it was that Spike hadn’t cut this off was setting off alarms. “Why is he letting you talk this long?” he demanded. “Willow? Where is he?”

Panicking at the tone of his voice, Willow cut him off. “I’ve got to go, Angel,” she said.

“He’s not there, is he?” Angel guessed. Damn it! “He’s—Willow, get out. Wherever you are, it’s day. Get outside. He can’t follow you. We’ll come get you. Don’t help him, don’t—“

She found the ‘end’ button and pressed down on it so hard that the phone beeped and she dropped it, burying her face in her hands. Angel was right. She was helping Spike, and it was stupid and cowardly. She darted across the room and stopped, making herself go back for the phone. She needed the phone. She grabbed his coat, dropping the phone as she frantically searched for the two pencils in the inside pocket, hearing the shower cut off.

No more time. She ran for the door, twisting the knob and pulling it back only to have it hang up on the safety lock. The bathroom door opened and Spike reached around her to push the door shut. Water from his arm dripped on her as he unfastened the safety lock.

He tugged the coat out of her hands. “I’m fond of the coat, pet,” he reminded her, making no move to stop her as she sidestepped him, bumping up against the mini refrigerator. He had a towel draped around his hips. Calmly, completely unruffled, he hung up the coat, giving her his back. She clutched the pencils in her hand tighter and lunged. He seemed to be expecting that too, effortlessly deflecting her arm and then seizing her wrist in an unbreakable grip.

Backing her into the corner, he held her wrist against the wall, exerting just enough pressure that her wrist started to ache. Moving with careful deliberation, he pried the pencils out of her hand. Her knees went out from under her when he swung his arm, half expecting him to back hand her, but the when the swing was completed the two pencils were embedded in the drywall backing of the closet and she was sliding down the wall to sit on the floor with her knees pulled up.

He tilted his head to one side, looking at her like he didn’t know quite what to make of this behavior. Spotting the phone on the floor, he picked it up and checked the last number dialed. She had called Angel. Not the Watcher or the Slayer or her beau ideal, Oz. She had called Angel. A solid choice in an emergency when you needed a clear, cool head—even as much as he detested Angel, he had to give him that.

“What did he say to you?” he asked. She was shaking a little, and aware of it, so she was trying to keep it under control. Her breath was coming in hard, shallow gasps.

“Hmmm?” She had her arms around herself like she was cold. “What ever he said to you,” he felt his way through it cautiously, “I’m thinking, getting yourself killed wasn’t the main theme. Right?”

“Did I mention that you can do anything you want short of taking my coat and staking me?” he asked with a hint of asperity. “I thought the later was more or less implied,” his voice trailed off as she lifted her head.

“Shut up,” she gritted out, pushing her hair out of her face. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “We aren’t friends, and I can’t do anything I want without staking you, and you know that as well as I do.”

He started to smile, “Worked it out on your own?” he sounded oddly approving. “You’d make a hell of a vampire, pet.”

“Actually, not,” she retorted. “She screwed everything up and she was pretty much a disaster, and Buffy kicked her ass,” she muttered, which made her sound loonier than Dru until he remembered that she had told him about meeting herself as a vampire.

She scowled at him, turning away, letting her head rest against the cool exterior of the mini refrigerator while she tried to remember everything that Angel had said. The artifact was the Gem of Amara and it was something vampires wanted and had sought for a long time. Angel said it would make Spike unstoppable, but so far, Spike was unstoppable, so it was hard to get how much worse it could be. She half expected to find out that he was looking for something slightly less scary. Like an ancient artifact that would help him get Drusilla back or make him the evil Indiana Jones of the vampire set. If you paid attention to the movies, Dr. Jones never really dug up much of anything. He was usually stealing stuff from people who did. Evil people. Since this was Spike, the whole thing was inverted and he was stealing something from the good guys.

What did Angel mean when he said unstoppable?

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the all too familiar sound of duct tape being torn off a roll and lifted her head to see Spike with the duct tape in his hands. He gave a spare shake of his head. “Only for you in a round about way,” he told her and walked across the room to tape the panels of the drapes together and around the sliding glass door until they were secure.

Her head thumped down on her chest as she realized that he had already figured out that she had considered the danger that the windows posed for him, say at high noon. She stared at him wearily as he walked back over to her to lay the roll of duct tape on top of the refrigerator. He was still wearing nothing but the towel and it was sort of droopy around his waist. The droplets of water on his skin had mostly dried.

He found a comb inside one of his coat pockets and dragged it through his hair until it was in its normal combed back configuration. Returning the comb to the inside pocket of his coat, he held one hand out to her. “Not planning on staying there are you?” he asked when she didn’t take his hand immediately.

She placed her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet. He gave her a little push to move her away from the refrigerator and got a juice cup for her before going to the bed and turning the side near the door down.

He was shaking the juice cup with one hand and loosening the towel with the other while she hovered just outside the vestibule. He tossed her the towel. “Hang that for me, please,” he requested as he got into bed, making himself comfortable.

She hung the towel in the bathroom. His jeans and t-shirt were in on the floor. She unbuttoned her blouse and slipped out of the walking shorts, folding them neatly and leaving them on the vanity. She picked up his t-shirt and put it on to sleep in before she came out, picking up the keyboard from the foot of the bed to put it away. Her wardrobe choice elicited no comment from him.

This connection was much more stable than the one at the other hotel. It hadn’t timed out even after a fairly long period of inactivity. Her email account was still set up for remote access, but she decided not to try it. She considered backing out of the chat and going to a search engine to look for information about the Gem of Amara. She sat on the foot of the bed with the keyboard, her back to him.

A private message popped up on the screen and she scrolled the screen to get the name of the room he was visiting. The title of the room was ‘Brits in America’. “Someone is inviting you to chat with them,” she pointed out. He read the message on the screen.

“Hello,” he was amused. “Say something back?” he made it a question.

She squinted at the screen and shrugged, testing out ‘hello, I’ve been kidnapped by vampires’.

Spike found his cigarettes and lit one. The t-shirt she was wearing was a new one, not yet stretched out of shape with wear. The color didn’t suit her. He read her message and rolled his eyes.

The reply appeared. “How’s that working out for you?”

Spike gave a short laugh.

Discouraged, Willow logged out and turned off the television. She left the keyboard on top of the dresser the television rested on.

He turned down her side of the bed and let her get settled before handing her the juice cup, “In case you get thirsty,” he explained.

“You are very thoughtful,” she said, bitterness underscoring the comment.

~~~*~~~

Angel was swearing at himself, knowing that he had screwed up, and considered redialing the number. His hesitation in the alley had cost him a bit of time and he was in a hurry to get to shelter with the sun rising. There were enough buildings in this part of Sunnydale to provide shade and he moved through the shadows like a pedestrian in a crowded city, finding a path, and moving swiftly to clear it before it disappeared. He redialed the number, but no one answered.

He had been caught off guard by Willow calling him, but he knew that he was right about what it suggested. Spike was starting to wear her down, to convince her that it was in everyone’s best interests that she go along and be a good hostage. Any advantage that had been gained when Spike lost the support of the vampires that he had following him had been neutralized.

He knew how it worked. He’d done it himself more times than he cared to recall.

~~~*~~~

They were lying side by side in bed. Spike was willing to go to sleep. He was tired. Willow had slept though much of the drive, but mentally and physically she was exhausted, and she dreaded going to sleep. It was hard to believe that twenty-four hours ago she had been congratulating herself on her imminent rescue.

“Damn it,” Spike swore, making her flinch. “I got your copy of the Star and I left it behind.”

“Oh,” Willow wondered what made him think of it now. She felt a strange desire to say something like ‘it was the thought that counted’ even as she was telling herself that it really wasn’t.

“Giant crossword puzzle,” he reminded her.

“Yeah.” Her mind was not in crossword puzzle mode.

“What’s a—“ there was a pause, “ten letter name for Christopher Robin’s bear?”

That was too easy, even for her numbed brain. “Edward Bear.”

He nodded. “Your turn.”

She thought for a second. “Tom Sawyer’s girl friend. Twelve letters.”

“Becky Thatcher,” he turned toward her. “What’s the name of Bianca’s suitor in The Taming of the Shrew?”

“Which one?” she stalled.

“The one who wins her,” he prompted.

“Bernardo?”

He propped his head up on his bent arm. “Your turn.”

“For Whom the Bell Tolls refers to a line in a poem. Who is—“

“Donne,” he said before she finished asking. “There are two poems that begin with the line, ‘Come live with me and be my love’. One is by Donne. Name the other poet.”

“Christopher Marlowe,” she said. She turned her head to look at him. “Have you ever just read the cards from Trivial Pursuit?”

He gave her a long, amused look. “Isn’t that cheating?”

Maybe, a little. She made a face. “It’s not like I can remember the answers to the sports questions.”

The air conditioner kicked on with a hiss of cold air. He picked up a piece of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. “Does your head hurt?”

She didn’t look away. “A little, but mostly I’m just not looking forward to having sex with someone who punched me in the face. I’m odd that way.”

“Yeah? I’m all over you trying to stake me, or get me staked,” he told her.

She didn’t believe that for an instant. “That’s big of you.”

“I’m a hundred and twenty-six,” he pointed out. “I don’t hold grudges. At least not for very long,” he amended when her expression turned incredulous. He thought about telling her that he wasn’t interested in sex, though as soon as he had the thought it died. It wasn’t a lack of interest that he was feeling. She was just so beaten down at the moment. It probably wasn’t going to last very long and he knew he ought to consider it an accomplishment, but he didn’t like seeing her like this.

It didn’t make him want to say anything cheerful and encouraging, which would have really been unnerving.

He smiled at the tone of voice. “There’s a story that starts in Paris, not that it matters. It could be anywhere. Two lovers at a park. The story is about the woman, so all the details are about her.”

He sat up, pushing aside the sheet, grasping the hem of his pilfered t-shirt. Her arms moved, as if to hold the t-shirt in place, but his eyebrows rose and she realized that she was going to loose before an argument began. He pulled the t-shirt up over her head, and she cooperated insofar as to lift her arms and shoulders off the bed. He tossed the t-shirt to the foot of the bed while she settled back against her pillow, feeling the cool air from the air conditioner blowing across her arm and her stomach.

“Park, Paris,” he reminded himself. “Right, then. So, there they are, sitting on a bench at the edge of a park. She’s wearing a suit and a silk blouse and long gloves that come up over the sleeves of her suit. That was a good look for women,” he recalled with a half smile, thinking of Dru in a hat with a net veil, her lips painted scarlet. The things she could do with a hatpin were not to be believed.

She thought she knew what he was talking about from old movies on cable and the sensibility they reflected that put Barbara Billingsley in a slim skirt and silk blouse with a pearl necklace at the base of her throat while she vacuumed the floor in an episode of Leave it to Beaver.

“There’s a hired car at the corner, and he takes her to it, though she didn’t know they were meant to go anywhere in particular. Inside the car, he pulls down the shades—this was before tinted windows,” he elaborated when he saw her lips twitch at this detail.

“Shades? Like on a roll, or mini-blinds?” she looked at him like she thought he was teasing her, but she was listening to him with a tiny frown that puckered the space between her eyebrows.

“On a roll, of course. Mini-blinds?” he shook his head at that. ’He tells her to take off her garter belt and her knickers—“

Willow snorted, rolling her eyes. “Sure,” she said, looking annoyed. “And she does that, in a cab?”

He laughed at her expression. It wasn’t disapproving, just highly skeptical.

“It’s a game,” he scolded. “Well, it seems like it’s a game,” he amended. “And, yeah, she does that.” He didn’t bother to tell her the amazing things French women did during and after World War II when everyone in Paris existed in suspended time. The Germans were outwardly polite, in a relentless sort of way, and they controlled everything. After they were gone there was the lingering residue of the war, the desperate celebratory excess combined with an unstated longing for someone to please give it all meaning.

He waited for her to comment, but she just shook her head in denial, the product of a different generation, and a different sensibility. The thing that was so hard to imagine about those years was how quietly so many people went and did exactly what they were told to.

His fingers traced the skin just above the waistband of her knickers. They were black to match the shorts she had been wearing, mismatching the flesh-toned bra she wore. “She’s sitting there, not on her skirt or slip, but against the cool leather. It’s very discreet,” he teased.

Again with the skeptical look, more highly developed. His index finger lazily extended, tracing the outline of her through the silky panel of her underwear. “He just lets her sit like that, feeling the cool, slippery seat under her, not touching her at all while she wonders where they are going and what this is about.”

She wanted to tell him to stop it. This isn’t subtle. He’s swamped her with difficult choices tonight and it’s all deliberate. A part of her is stuck on the floor next to the door wondering if he would have stopped her if she had gone out the door, or if he would have done exactly what he claimed and let her go.

“There’s another version of the beginning of the story,” he said. “It’s more to the point, but there’s no mystery in it,” he concluded, hooking his finger in the waistband of her knickers and tugging them down past her hips before leaving them there, curious about what she’d do about it. His fingertips drifted up her thigh, over her hipbone where it jutted out a bit.

A small, slightly disgruntled sound escaped her. She sat up so abruptly that she nearly collided with him. Her arms went behind her back to wrestle with the hooks on her bra and she took it off. The knickers followed, both items dropped on the floor beside the bed. She flopped back down with more energy than he had seen in her since he had explained that he wasn’t going to stop coming after them until he got what he wanted. Her expression was grimly martyred.

“What wouldn’t you do for those people?””

That was the question. She didn’t answer, but she didn’t look away, though she was trying to keep her face blank. All it accomplished was to draw more attention to her eyes.

He felt something, a little used muscle that twisted under his chest. It wasn’t affection, though that was there too, though he didn’t examine where it was coming from. He spent too much time with envy not to recognize it right off, so he was almost relieved to see it now. That was what he was feeling: envy.

The look in her eyes drew him. It was irresistible. He combed his fingers through her hair, kissing the space under her eye, near her nose, and then the tip of her nose, and then her lips, feeling her discomfort like a third presence in the room even as she fought her own instincts to try to relax and accept what he was doing.

“It’s not a long drive, and she’s expecting something that explains the darkened car, but he’s talking about everything and nothing in particular while she sits there. And it’s hot. Inside the car, just on this side of uncomfortable. She can feel the sweat trickle down her chest, feel the seat below her growing warmer, and damp. She’s sticking to it a little. It’s distracting. He hasn’t kissed her, or touched her yet.”

She was listening now, despite the distraction of the cool air-conditioned air, turning her skin cool, even to him.

“Then the car stops. One mystery solved when the driver opens the door and she sees that they have come to a house. It’s nothing grand, just a town home in a street full of town homes. He takes her hand and tucks it in the crook of his arm and she can feel the slip and the skirt brushing the backs of her legs with each step. It’s not a bad game, and they’ve played a lot of them.”

He rested his arm on the mattress beside her head, holding his head up with his hand. “On the stairs, in front of the door, he paused, turned to her, and told her he loved her.”

She shook her head. “Oh, that’s so sweet. And then, they go into the house and it’s full of vampires, because he’s a vampire, and she dies.”

He smiled crookedly. “That’s another version of the story without the mystery.”

~~~*~~~

Buffy lay in bed staring at the wallpapered wall in front of her, the blue white glow of her computer monitor registering in her peripheral vision. Before she went to bed, she sat in front of her computer reading her email. The messages seemed different. Printed on paper they had seemed less real, less authentic.

She was supposed to sleep. Giles said so. He pointed out that a lack of rest and the concentration on the tunneling had played a part in all of them missing the clues that had been dropped. He was in ‘I blame myself’ mode, but willing to spread it around, and share it with her. Their relationship had evolved a lot in the year since she had sent Angel to hell. All of her relationships had. Her mother knew she was the Slayer and had learned to accept it, more or less. She had gotten through some rough spots with Xander and Willow during their senior year. Her relationship with Angel had evolved into a non-relationship.

That was the oddest part of the last two weeks. They had been together nearly every day, and there were times when she looked at him, and she knew exactly what he was thinking or feeling, and it felt so familiar. At the same time, it was like looking at someone she used to know—not that he had changed that much. He hadn’t really changed at all, but when she used to look at him she saw forever, and now she looked at him and saw now and no more.

If Willow was here, they would have walked home tonight and talked about it, and in her eternally optimistic way, Willow would have made it seem like there was a reason to hope that somehow, someway, someday, there was a future and that she would find her way.

Could she make this anymore about herself and what she needed?

Willow had been depending on her. Banking on her. If anything terrible happened to her, Buffy would never forgive herself.

~~~*~~~

Willow pushed Spike away from her, and he let her, rolling over on his back as she sat up, pulling the sheet up and reaching for the t-shirt he had taken away from her. His hand lifted, almost touching her back. Such a pretty back, unmarked by anything save the freckles that were thickest across her shoulders and a dark, flat mole that was centered between her spine and the right side of her back. She was turning the t-shirt right side out while holding the sheet to her chest.

He went after her. She held the t-shirt away from him, thinking that he was going to take it away from her and gasped when his hands bracketed her rib cage and he kissed the mole on her back instead.

“Yow! Hands! Cold!” she yelped. His hands had picked up the cold from the air conditioning, and she squirmed to avoid them.

His hands moved over her warmer skin to her breasts. “They’ll warm,” he said between kisses.

~~~*~~~

Oz woke with a start. He was on the couch at Giles and it seemed like he was alone there, but he couldn’t be sure. He had some idea that something had woken him, but that it wasn’t the phone.

The door shut behind him. Giles offered him a weary looking half smile. “I didn’t mean to wake you, though I don’t expect you slept well,” he said, holding what looked like the newspaper, folded in thirds, and his mail. “I kept dreaming that the bloody phone was ringing. Must have answered it a dozen times,” he explained with a grimace.

“He hasn’t called?” Oz asked. That sounded bad.

“No,” Giles set the mail and the newspaper down on the counter and went into the kitchen. “I expect you’ll want to stay by the phone,” he guessed. “I’ve an appointment with Luke Holbroke at noon, to get caught up,” he said. “If he hasn’t called by then, will you stay?”

He made it sound like it was a chore that someone had to perform, and Oz found himself agreeing as he walked over to the counter.

Giles put water on to boil and started going through his mail. He got to a crumpled catalog envelope that felt bulky and flipped it over to examine the address before tearing it open. Aside from four badly lit Polaroids of Willow looking terrified with duct tape over her mouth, there was no message. The pictures spoke for themselves. He considered dropping them back into the envelope without making a fuss about it, but Oz was watching him all too closely.

“It’s not as bad as it might be,” he reminded him before he relinquished the Polaroids.

The phone rang and Giles went to answer it, half expecting Spike. It was Angel, calling to say that he had gotten a call on his cell around dawn from Willow and asking Rupert to meet him at the tunnel as soon as possible.

~~~*~~~

There was a voice in her head that was telling her that she didn’t want this. It was like the long night after they left San Francisco. Clinical and dispassionate, except that he kept talking to her, and his voice was easier to listen to. Between kisses he prodded her to talk to him and she had a vague memory of him encouraging her to go back to being harmless and helpless.

It was like the story he had told earlier. It was all a big evil set piece. It was nothing more to him than a game that he intended to win. And what he didn’t seem to understand is that she did read the answers to all the categories in Trivial Pursuit. When winning was important, she would win, even if it required a little prep work and the retention of a useless piece of sports trivia.

So she kissed him back, because when he was kissing he was no longer talking, no longer insinuating his way into her head. Oz hadn’t been the initiator of sex, she had. She had raised the issue, and pushed them towards a more intimate relationship that he had been more wary of. He had made her feel like a beggar, and sometimes she hated him for that. Spike didn’t love her or care about her or need her and Oz never loved her or cared about her or needed her as much as she wanted him to.

No one did. No one could.

When she took him into her mouth, he didn’t stop her, or suggest that they slow down or talk about it. He adjusted, tangling his fingers in her hair, huskily inviting her to have her way with him.

When she lifted her head to tell him to shut up, he seemed to get it, and he laid a finger across her lips, looking more serious than she had ever seen him and after that he confined himself to the occasional direction or muttered encouragement until they were grappling with each other to reach a climax.

Spike rearranged them so that she was laying on her side, her back against his chest, her head tucked in under his chin, one arm loosely curled around her body. She didn’t settle against him, didn’t relax into the embrace. If anything she tensed and he waited, feeling it coming, like an earthquake, because he was a part of nature that felt them coming. She tried to hold it in, and that made it worse, made her body shake with the effort of keeping it inside.

He didn’t say anything, not when she was shaking, or when she was crying, or when she was cried out and she wiped her nose on the back of her hand. When she moved away from him to get the juice cup and blow her nose, he kept one hand on her hip, his thumb moving in circles as he waited for her to take a chance on leaving the bed, getting dressed and walking out of the room. He wasn’t surprised when she settled back on the bed beside him. She had made her choice. He pulled the covers up around her to give her more cover from the air conditioning, luxuriating in the heat of her body.

“Wake me up when you are ready to eat,” he said, closing his eyes, ready to sleep. She was a strange girl, no doubt about it. The desire to say something kept him awake even as she settled into a fitful sleep. If he had to pick one quality she had that he was drawn to, it was her loyalty, foolish and overdeveloped as it was.

~Part: 28~

After Angel left the hotel, Harmony spun around. Her hair flip was made less effective due to dirty hair. Colin was at the desk, settling a bill. Georgia was not looking at her and Harmony had a feeling that nibbled on the edges of her awareness that she was in danger of being ignored. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. Her parents had never had a lot of time for her. It wasn’t personal. They had jobs that kept them busy and they provided her with more than acceptable substitutes for parental attention: credit cards, clothes, membership at the country club, and casual approval.

Cordelia had provided her with a role model—at least until she had gotten involved with the Sunnydale High geek squad, which in retrospect wasn’t as geeky as Harmony once thought. Willow still dressed badly and Xander was hopeless, and Buffy had serious issues, but given the whole fighting demons and vampires gig, they seem a lot less weird and slightly more interesting now that she was a vampire. She didn’t feel particularly evil on most days, but she got how people might have that impression when she was eating them.

She scrubbed at Buffy’s smudgy footprint.

She told herself that Georgia’s effort to ignore her wasn’t personal. It just meant that she needed to try harder to get her attention and ignore the fact that Willow had gotten it without even trying. Not that she wanted the kind of attention that Willow had invited. If you had to pick a side of the predator and prey relationship, predator was the side to be on.

“You wouldn’t believe the stuff that I’ve been through,” Harmony told her.

Georgia didn’t ignore this opening. Most people would have. Ignored it, hoped that if they didn’t participate it might go away, while smiling in a patient kind of way. She wasn’t most people. She was a vampire.

“I don’t care what you’ve been through,” Georgia was blunt. “You weren’t lost in San Francisco. You were left there,” she told Harmony, though unkindness didn’t move her to do so. There wasn’t anything wrong with Harmony that a dose of reality or a stake couldn’t cure in Georgia’s point of view.

Colin heard her and looked over his shoulder at Harmony to see if she was getting the message. Her mouth was open, her face twisting in a childlike mask of astonishment, hurt and frustration. He shook his head at the performance. It probably worked like a charm once upon a lost lifetime ago.

“Fine,” Harmony spat, eyes narrowing. “I’ve got stuff I could be doing. I know what Spike’s really after. I know what it is and where it is. Maybe I’ll just go back to Sunnydale and get it!”

Colin signed the bill and looked over at Harmony. “You look like crap,” he told her. “Are you coming with us?”

She had him at the claim that she knew what Spike was after. Georgia had more than a passing interest in the subject, but she was weighing the cost of getting the information out of Harmony who was throwing Georgia a slightly triumphant look.

“I guess,” Harmony agreed, wondering where they were going and deciding that it really didn’t matter. She didn’t have anyplace to be. If she had stayed with Angel they probably would have taken her back to Sunnydale and thrown her back into the stinky cell with a ration of pig’s blood. A sense of how desperately maltreated she was returned. She had some scores to settle, with Georgia, who had always treated her like crap, and Pete, for dumping her, and Oz for being really, really mean to her, and Buffy—it was a long list.

~~~*~~~

The heavy equipment brought in to complete the tunnel included a portable generator with a long tube of ventilation hose to keep the fumes out of the sewer access tunnel that was their staging area. They worked slowly. Dr. Holbroke stopped periodically to inspect the tunnel to make sure that the vibration from the specialized drill and saw that he was using were not compromising the tunnel.

For a group of amateurs, Giles and his crew had worked amazingly fast.

When the floor of the vault was found, Dr. Holbroke drilled several holes and insisted that they clear the tunnels, leaving two large fans hooked up to the generator to ventilate the tunnel. Working with a lamp for light, he made new notes on the maps and charts that had been assembled during the dig and told Devon about the projects that UC-Sunnydale had scheduled for archeology students.

Devon had enrolled in college because that was where his fans were. It wasn’t a large group and he was sure he knew all of them by name—except for the thin dark haired girl with the streak of blue in her hair who turned up at too many of his gigs for it to be coincidence, but never spoke to anyone. He had seen her on campus too, black hair with a flash of blue, but she was always on her way somewhere. He didn’t worry about not having a major because he knew what he was going to be and it had never occurred to him to question it. But there was no reason that he couldn’t be an archeologist too, he decided as Dr. Holbroke told him about a dig he had been on in college in Arizona. Their find had amounted to little more than broken pottery shards, but it was buried treasure, and Devon got that, the same way Oz savored flatted fifths.

Angel showed up a bit after dawn, coming through the tunnels. From the clay clinging to his feet it was obvious that he had come through the part of the sewer access tunnel where they had been spreading dirt from the excavation site.

“Did you find her?’ Chris asked.

He gave a spare shake of his head. “No. Oz is at Giles’ place in case there is a call,” he said, deliberately vague in front of Dr. Holbroke, who didn’t have the whole story.

Angel waited until they left to get breakfast to open the cooler and find a container of pig’s blood packed in melted ice. He knew from the look of the ice that the cooler had been repacked at some point.

~~~*~~~

Vampires dream. Spike’s dream followed the narrative of the story he had started to tell Willow. It was a dream he had had before and the woman who began with him in the park was almost always Drusilla, which was fitting. It was the beginning of a story that he used to read to her that always ended at the same place: at the door. It evolved as all stories told to Dru did, because while she liked to be read to, she had no patience for it and would inevitably take over the story. Over time it was adjusted again, and again until the story was about them and it stopped at the door, with him telling her that he loved her before they went into the house.

She loved all the details, which remained his contribution even after she assumed control of the plot. Vampires don’t sweat, but the sense memory of feeling almost unpleasantly warm—distinctly different than the sudden and searing sensation of being in sunlight—the complex impressions formed by a bead of sweat tracking over skin, were things that they shared with each other. Things that they remembered about being human was a game that he had started, otherwise they would have had nothing to talk about on her worst days when she was hard to reach. He had found that it was possible to distract her for hours with the beginning of the story in the park.

Sometimes he made it spring with the scent of flowers on the air. They had spent an afternoon before television ninety years ago trying to make each other sneeze and then cataloging the sensations that sneezing produced. Dust and pepper still worked, but flowers didn’t, though he distinctly remembered that when he was human flowers had made him sneeze. At other times he made it fall. It was one of the things he missed most about being human. Autumn leaves had a rich scent that was worth savoring, but he missed the way they looked in sunlight, blazing with color, and so did Drusilla. She would bring home different leaves to look at during the day when they were stuck indoors. She might have accompanied him out on those days when he would accept the discomfort of being out in sunlight, and stand in the shade with a blanket held over his head like a tent to look at the sunlit world, but he feared that she would forget that sunlight was deadly to them.

And it was unlikely. Drusilla’s sense of self preservation was intact, even in her worst moments.

It was Drusilla’s story after the door. The narrative was not always possible to understand, but she never tired, never struggled to find something inside the house that pleased her.

He really was not surprised to see that the girl with him in this version of the dream was Willow. It didn’t bother him. He was even amused to find that it was impossible to imagine her in anything suitable to the period. She was wearing overalls and a t-shirt that he knew would be in two colors that should never be brought together but were in Willow. He was curious about what would be inside the house. She had unwittingly written the ending when she cut him off by saying that the house was full of vampires and the girl died.

It was the ending that was most likely for her, without the mystery. She couldn’t understand that there was, behind the door, the potential for all kinds of endings. It didn’t have to be mundane or even particularly sad. In Paris, after the war, there was an appreciation of having died well that came with having lived unwell through a time when dying was possibly preferable. Or at least a lot easier to explain later in the post war years when people wondered about the why and the how of what they had done or failed to do.

Even in his dream, she proved stubborn and practical. The heat made her sleepy. She balked at the door. When he started to run out his tender declaration, she rolled her eyes. He found himself amused by and annoyed with her. It was a game. She bloody well knew it, too, and was being a spoiled brat, refusing to play, but making her own game of that. She sat on the stair instead until the door opened and Drusilla came out to see what he had brought home to her.

She could be unpredictable. That was part of what he loved about Dru, but he was certain that she would approve of the girl that he had chosen to bring home.

~~~*~~~

Over breakfast Luke Holbroke found himself rigorously quizzed about the protocol for opening the vault. Venting the vault was a first step. He planned to cut the floor of the vault in a single section. It was the quick and dirty approach, but Rupert Giles had stressed that speed was an over-riding consideration and when he talked to Dr. Parrish about the project that Giles was working on, he had stressed that no matter how uncredentialled or unconventional the former high school librarian might appear to be, he was an authority on artifacts associated with religious practices and paranormal rituals and had belonged for over twenty years to an association of scholars based in England that occasionally published in the journals.

It remained to be seen if Devon’s interest would last through a few semesters of hard course work. He seemed to have a genuine aptitude for the field work. As Luke laid out the principals of setting up a grid inside the excavation space, Devon was following along, asking good questions. He immediately grasped the reason for leaving everything in situ and working in a pattern to catalog items. All order tells a story. Even the random, unthinking order of things that people once used, has a story to tell.

Breakfast food and a certain amount of boredom with the minutiae of their efforts was pushing Chris and Dan into sleepy lassitude. Luke offered to give them a ride home. He had a meeting with Giles this morning to make before getting some much needed sleep.

~~~*~~~

Giles found Angel outside the entrance to the tunnel they had excavated. He was able to conclude from the equipment that had been assembled overnight that the floor to the vault had been reached.

“We could finish this now,” he guessed. A vampire could make short work over the last few inches of stone separating them from the vault, and since air was not an issue for Angel, air quality was also not a concern.

Angel nodded. “We need to talk,” he said. “Willow called, on Spike’s cell.”

“Thank God. Is she all right?”

Angel frowned. “She said that he hadn’t hurt her, or something like that. He’s made some kind of promise to her that if he gets what he wants, he’ll leave her friends alone.”

Giles frowned. That was, if it could be believed, all very well and good for his charges, but hardly acceptable for the people that would suffer in consequence. He did not find it hard to understand why Willow would find it persuasive. There had always been an attitude between Buffy, Xander and Willow that demanded that they limit themselves to the immediate crisis and work from there. It kept them from getting overwhelmed by the sheer challenge of some of the obstacles they had overcome.

He was a Watcher, even if he was unemployed. He could not afford to think that way. “What are you thinking?”

“She’s breaking down,” Angel was blunt. “She’s half way to helping him. He doesn’t have to hurt her. All he has to do is convince her that he will hurt Xander or Oz or Buffy, and that she can keep that from happening, and we’ve played her into his hands already. Right now her confidence in Spike making good on what he is promising is higher than her confidence in us.”

Giles toed a clod of dirt. “Well, yes, it’s been one cock up after another,” he admitted tiredly.

Xander came forward, hands shoved into his pockets. He came to a halt, rocking back on his heels. “We can’t keep screwing this up,” he observed. “We have to have a plan. A plan that is about saving Willow—and keeping Spike from going on a murderous rampage.”

Giles felt the skin across the back of his neck tightening with irritation. Xander was not being deliberately annoying in his state the obviousness. People said that boys were easy and girls were hard, but Giles found the opposite to be true. The girls might chatter happily about mindless teen drama, but ultimately they were steadier in a crisis and pragmatic. With Xander everything was black and white with undertones of frustration.

“She’s not breaking down,” he told Angel. “Not Willow. No way. You think you know us, but you don’t. I know Willow. She might not stand up for herself. When she started getting into the mojo, she didn’t start cooking up ways to even the score with the Cordettes or make herself something she wasn’t. It didn’t even occur to her. That’s Willow. She won’t give up.”

Giles removed his glasses. He found a handkerchief in his pocket and started polishing them. It could be argued that Xander had no idea of the pressure that could be brought to bear on her. The psychology of kidnapping was a subject that would have drawn out his scorn and skepticism. He stubbornly chose to live in a world of absolute moral certainty. Unbidden, the memory of Willow’s triumphant grin as she pulled the pages she had separated from the Books of Ascension came to him. It didn’t mean that Xander was wrong.

“We can’t give up on her,” Xander insisted.

~~~*~~~

When Spike woke up he was alone in bed and the shower was on. He got out of bed and walked to the bathroom door, finding it unlocked. His jeans were in there, left on the floor when he undressed last night. He lingered at the door a moment, listening until he was sure that what he was hearing was water sluicing over a body, not just water running. He really would not have put it past her to figure out how to buy herself some time by making him think that she was in the shower, and that made him smile even as he registered that the door to the hall was locked from the inside.

Without a care for whoever might be in the hallway, he opened the door and found a newspaper at the foot of the door. There was a plain envelope on top of it. Tossing the newspaper on the unmade bed he opened the envelope and read the computer generated message that had been left for him. The Sunnydale super hero team had arrived too late, launched a dispirited recon, and left. Harmony was back. Colin and Georgia had taken her with them.

They now knew what he was after, what he was trading Willow for. He crumpled the note up and tossed it in a wastebasket, checking the time and turning on the television to check the weather. He was hungry and the slightly stale scent of Willow was clinging to his hands, mixed in with nicotine. Business first, and then playtime.

He went to his coat to retrieve the cell phone, checking the battery setting. It was nearly out of power. He needed to find a new cell phone and replace some credit cards before they were put on hold or maxed out. It was one of the reasons that he had selected the hotel, anticipating finding your better class of business traveler.

His habit was to call the Watcher, but he was curious about where Buffy was. Not once since he had taken Willow had he talked directly to the Slayer. What was going through her head right now? Was she aware of how utterly she had failed Willow? Was she cuddled up with brood boy having a frustratingly incomplete snog? He decided to call the Summers residence to see if she was there.

The phone was answered almost immediately, and from the sound of her voice, he could tell that she had been woken by it. “Rise and shine, cutie. Oughten you be out finding the Gem of Amara for me, or are you worried about chipping a nail?”

“Spike,” she woke up fast to the sound of his voice.

“Buffy,” he found himself relishing the taste of her remarkably silly sounding name. If she wasn’t a Slayer and the bane of his existence, he would have found her nearly as amusing as Red. “Have a nice drive back to Sunnydale?”

“I want to talk to Willow,” she said.

“She’s having a shower,” he reported. “Tends to stay in there a bit, I’ve found. She likes to have a nice soak, and it's one place where I don’t have to worry about her coming up with something creative to escape.”

There was a pause. “Is she okay?”

“She’s got a nasty bump on her head,” he told her, pacing a bit. “Do you know how close she got? Even after I was on to her, she got to the revolving door. She’s made it interesting. Don’t beat yourself up too much about it,” he said, twisting the knife. “I wasn’t that impressed with her to start with either, but I’m all caught up. She’s a clever little thing. Too smart for her own good. It’s up to you and me to keep her from getting herself killed trying to save herself, and you.”

He gave it a beat. “That’s not true,” he said. “I’m not going to kill her—well, it could come to that, but she’s far too interesting to be left dead. Don’t tempt me to experiment, Slayer. I’ll send her back to you to stake. She’s smart and resourceful. I’d give her even money on taking out half of your little gang first.”

“I’ll hunt you down,” she promised.

“Right, then,” he sounded monumentally unconcerned by that prospect. “So, we understand each other? You want Red back alive and in one piece, and I want the Gem of Amara, and here’s a bonus—I’ll consider Sunnydale off limits until the inevitable happens and someone, vampire, demon, careless driver, takes you out of the equation. I’m not going to destroy the world, love. That’s Peaches' thing. So as long as you keep your knickers on, you don’t have any worries.”

He heard the shower shutting off in the bathroom. “I’ll check in later,” he said, thumbing the off button before she could formulate a response to that.

Returning the cell phone to his coat pocket he was left to wait for Willow to emerge from the bathroom. Never patient, he smacked the surface of the door and heard her give a stifled yelp. “Shake a leg in there, or toss out my clothes, will you?”

She decided to follow through on the later and the door opened, letting out a cloud of steamy air. His jeans and t-shirt were bundled in her arms and she looked like she was ready to throw them at him when he barged in. She had a towel wrapped around her head like a turban and another wrapped around her body that barely covered her.

“Get out,” she squeaked, backing up hastily, trapping herself between the long counter beside the sink and the toilet, the top of her towel turban hitting the metal towel rack that was largely empty now. There was a hand towel and a washcloth left unused. She was clutching his clothes to her like they were going to save her from whatever she thought he had in mind.

A drop of water ran down her neck, drawing his attention. He let it go for the moment, ignoring her defensive posture as well. Leaving the bathroom door open to let out the steam, he moved toward her and laid his hand on her cheek. “Hold still,” he admonished, when she tried to press back into the wall, further dislodging her turban. He started to push it back to get a better look at her head and gave up, unwinding it.

She had a nasty bruise, but the swelling had gone down and the cut was pulling together on its own. “Does it hurt?” he asked, running his other hand lightly over her bruised jaw.

“Yes.” Confusion, wariness, and something like gratitude competed for a hold on her. He thought that he understood the gratitude. She was hurting in more ways than one and if he didn’t notice it, then it went unacknowledged. Even if he was the cause of her discomfort, it didn’t make it less comforting that he recognized it.

He smoothed his thumb over the mink of her eyebrow. “Have you taken anything for it?” he asked.

She focused on the wall behind him, the open door, and the de-fogging mirror, anything but the closeness of him. He was naked and completely unselfconscious about it, and she found that she had started to become accustomed to this without loosing any of her awareness of him being naked. The towel she had wrapped around her hair hadn’t fallen to the ground. It was partially trapped between her shoulder and the wall. The cold of the tile was seeping into it, creating an odd assortment of textures at her back where her skin was prickling with gooseflesh as he examined her face with fingers that were now gentle but potentially violent or just calculating.

“I’d like to dry my hair and get dressed,” she said.

He smiled a little at her tone. “I’m not stopping you,” his hand left her face and dropped to the clothes she had clutched to her chest. He gave them a small tug to remind her to let go of them.

He took the jeans from her and stepped back to pull them on, leaving the fly open. The t-shirt went on next, smoothed down over his hips before he started working on the fly. “What do you want to do?” he asked. “I was thinking about going over to the outlet mall. We can probably find food for you there.”

She peeled herself away from the wall. The bag of toiletries that she had hastily packed before they left Sacramento was sitting on the countertop, open, the contents spilling out. Her post bathing ritual had been disturbed. She had an order to the things she did after she got out of the shower. The skin over her shins felt tight, in part due to the soap that she had used and the leg shaving from yesterday. She picked through the contents of the bag, trying to get organized despite the audience.

In one of her thinly veiled efforts to get Oz to notice that she was ready to have sex with him she had made a big production of moisturizing her legs while they were sitting on the couch in the family room, watching television. He had scooted away from her after a few minutes and it reached her, belatedly, that the expensive scented moisturizer that she had taken from her mother’s bathroom was bothering him.

It would probably have the same effect on Spike she decided and sat down on the toilet seat with a sample-sized bottle of one of the floral scented moisturizers she had snagged from the hotel. Careful of keeping the towel covering her, she started working from her feet up and the strategy seemed to pay off when he stepped out of the bathroom and went to get something out of his coat.

It was the last of the packages of ointment. He squatted down at her feet and picked up the foot with the split toenail, tearing open the package and using the foil to dab it on as she tried to keep the towel in place. When he was done with her toe, he ran his hand up the back of her leg.

“I asked you a question,” he reminded her, seeming to enjoy the discomfort he was causing.

“You answered it, so I didn’t think it was a real question. I’d like to go home now,” she said pointedly, and then cocked her head to one side. “That’s not going to happen, is it?”

He kneaded her calve muscles, leaning forward to kiss the inside of her knee. “You know where the door is,” he pointed out, using his other hand to nudge her legs apart while she stubbornly held the towel to keep herself covered. “There are all sorts of interesting things that we could do to pass the time,” he mused. Kissing the inside of her thigh, just above the crease of her knee. “Watch the telly,” his blunt teeth nipped at her skin. “Have a chat about your adventures on the computer,” he licked the spot he had just nibbled on, pushing her legs further apart.

She made herself push his head away from her, absorbing an impression of his hair against the palm of her hand that corresponded to a memory of clutching at it while his head was between her legs from last night. It made her close her eyes for a moment, feeling guilt and panic swirl in her belly. She knew without even thinking about it that there were things that were loosening and tightening inside of her, responding to him. She made herself stand up, even though it meant that at least for a moment she was awkwardly straddling him where he was on the floor at her feet.

She picked up the most prosaic object on the counter, uncapping the pale blue oval shaped deodorant to apply to her underarms as he uncoiled to stand behind her, close enough that she could feel him, but transparent in the wet mirror. His hands bracketed her rib cage, pressing the damp towel into her skin as he bent his head to kiss her neck. “We can do anything you want within reason,” he said. “Go to a movie,” his fingers were flexing lightly over her ribs, parting the towel as she recapped the deodorant.

“Find a club,” he took her earlobe between his lips and the deodorant clattered to the surface of the counter.

He had never given a lot of thought to where he had seen her the first time. He hadn’t taken any particular notice of her before she had conveniently placed herself in his path at the Magic Box when he had come back to Sunnydale looking for unholy revenge over the loss of Dru. It came to him now. She had been there the night he had sought out the Slayer at the Bronze, her long hair falling forward around her face as she earnestly and sympathetically played her second banana role to Buffy, and later got up to dance with less grace than awkward enthusiasm. It was something about the tension in her body that reminded him of it now. He found it fascinating. With his hands on her rib cage, he could feel it humming inside of her, the tangible evidence of the constant restraint that held her together.

Watching it come apart was amazing. Whether she was unraveling in his arms, or making a split second decision to let him kill someone in her place, or trying to kill him, when she lost the restraint he found aspects of her that were surprising and intriguing, all the more so for being so contrary to her carefully cultivated outward aspect.

He used the mirror to his advantage, tugging the towel free. In the too harsh overhead light and the white tile of the bathroom, she was flesh tinged pink from the heat of her shower and the rush of blood through her body. Accustomed to his lack of reflection, he could appreciate hers. The towel that briefly draped his arm before he pushed it away gave him momentary substance and then there it was just her in the mirror, staring at his lack of reflection in appalled fascination as his hands cupped her breasts, filling his palms with the now familiar shape of her.

She looked down, unnerved by his absence in the mirror while she felt him touching her, bitterly aware of the fact that her body was responding. His hands were cool. Even as she watched him pinch her nipples between forefinger and thumb, she wanted to point out that the coolness of his hands was causing that reaction and then the light tug on her nipples made her close her eyes and press her lips together to keep from making some horribly embarrassing sound that would please him.

Last night, or this morning, her day/night clock was becoming increasingly out of whack, he had told her that he liked the sounds she made. It wasn’t the first time he had said something like that, but it was the first time he had said it without making her feel like he was rubbing her nose in it.

“Lean back against me,” he whispered in her ear. She could feel the towel that had been wrapped around her sliding down the backs of her legs and tried to grab it before it fell beyond her reach. She bent forward from the waist, not really thinking about how it would push her hips back into him as she grabbed at the towel and tried to tug it back up around her.

With a speed that was logic defying and frightening, he spun her around and picked her up, and she barely had time to register the cold porcelain under her when he swooped in on her mouth, open to offer a feeble protest. Her hands slipped on the counter as she tried to find something other than him to hold onto and the back of her head would have crashed into the mirror if he hadn’t gotten his hand there first to hold her head still. The towel had become tangled around her leg, the toweling catching on her split toenail making her teeth clamp down hard on his tongue when she felt the weight of the towel pulling on her toenail. Her flailing arm sent toiletries and a water glass she had used earlier when she was brushing her teeth, flying.

It was hard to say who was more startled. Spike, who immediately let go of her, or Willow whose head smacked into the mirror before she got her left leg up enough to push him away from her while she frantically tried to free her foot from the towel, falling off the counter in the process, narrowly avoiding a collision with Spike, who had figured out that something other than a nagging conscience had set her off. He sucked on his bleeding tongue.

“Bloody hell!” he complained as she grabbed her foot, swaying unsteadily on the other leg, sounding out of breath as she whimpered. “You bit my tongue!”

“Stupid vampire,” she shot back, holding the back of her head with her free hand. “I’m going to end up with brain damage.”

The glass she had knocked off the counter had bounced harmlessly off the fiberglass surround of the bathtub and onto the soaked bathmat without breaking, but the way she was sort of hopping around in a punch-drunk stagger made him reach out and grab it before she accidentally stepped on it. He kicked a few more objects littering the ground away from her and then gave up on the project, picking her up over a storm of protests, and carrying her out of the bathroom to deposit on the bed.

She was still clutching her toes and he had some idea that she had managed to re-injure herself. “You may be the clumsiest person to have ever walked the earth,” he told her. “How you’ve managed not to break your bloody neck while tripping after the Slayer is a miracle.”

“Hurts, hurts, hurts,” she chanted.

“No doubt,” he agreed sourly, “you’ve got a death grip on it which probably isn’t helping,” he tried to pry her fingers loose. “Let go,” he insisted.

“No! It’s gone. My toenail is gone,” she wailed. “It’s going to be all,” she grimaced, unable to come up with a description for it, “gone,” she shuddered at the idea.

“Come on,” he sat on the bed next to her. “Tell you what? Just let me look, okay? We’re going to have to do something about it. You don’t want it getting all septic and then die of blood poisoning from a stubbed toe because that would just be a ridiculous way to die, right?”

“Oh, shut up! What do you know about it?”

“Been dead,” he reminded her. “Of course, I didn’t die ridiculously. I was very manly. No squealing and carrying on about my toenails,” he said dryly. Actually, he had been limited to what he now recognized as a fairly standard litany of ‘ow’ and ‘oh, God’ but she didn’t need to know that.

“Let me see,” he coaxed, prying her fingers loose.

The release of pressure from her fingers sent blood back into her toe and she fought to restore the pressure while he pushed her hand away. It didn’t look any worse as far as he could tell but it obviously was hurting. He dragged her foot to his lap and pressed his thumb down at the base of the toenail.

“Is it gone?” she quavered.

The idea of loosing her toenail really seemed to freak her out. “Nah,” he replied, wondering at the weird way her mind worked. “It’s still there,” he said. “Maybe we should get something to wrap it up in so it doesn’t catch on things.”

“Does it really hurt that bad?” He looked back at her and found that she was checking the back of her head. He picked a lock of wet hair off her jaw and separated another one clinging to her throat.

“Yes!” she glared at him, pointing at her head. “Head injuries. Plural. My bruises have bruises. My toenail is going to fall off, and,” she made a face at that, “yuck! It’s not all about you. I’m hungry, my head hurts, and you keep asking me stupid questions about what I want to do,” she held up a hand and counted off her supposed options, “Shopping at an outlet mall,” she made a face, as she held up one finger, “Movie?” she rolled her eyes. “Clubbing with the undead—not!” she waggled her ring finger, “sex on a bathroom counter,” her pinkie came into play. Discretion made her shut her mouth before some artless pre-verbal sound of disgust and denial escaped her, but it was plain what she thought of the last choice.

His attention returned to her foot. “I don’t think your toenail is going to fall off, but if it does, it will grow back,” he predicted. “So, shopping or a movie, yeah?”

She wriggled her foot free of his grasp and got up, moving gingerly on her injured foot while he watched her with a baffled expression. She went back into the bathroom to finish getting dressed and he lit a cigarette, turning the television back on to channel surf while she got dressed. He would have let her go to sleep this morning if she had just settled down and slept, and she had been far from an unwilling participant after she made her mind up that they were going to shag—have sex—he mentally air quoted, using her favored neutral terminology.

The blow drier came on with an annoyingly high pitched whine, but she was quick about it, using the drier to speed up the process of drying her hair without making a production out of it. When she came out of the bathroom in her pink and white outfit, which consisted of silky pink and white checked Capri pants and a matching top that was meant to be tied at the waist to show a bit of midriff but had been tucked into the waistband of pants tugged up to meet the hem of the shirt he started laughing, helplessly.

She checked her waistband arrangement. “What’s so funny?” she demanded, looking around for the shoes that she had found in the bag Georgia had packed. She was afraid that despite her best efforts her tummy, once described by Cordelia as resembling the underbelly of a fish, was showing in all of its stark white glory.

“Hunch your shoulder’s forward a bit,” he suggested.

Suspicious, she complied, and that just made him laugh harder at the picture she presented. He put the cigarette down, the glowing end hanging off the edge of the nightstand, and got up to walk over to her. He tugged the shirt out of the waistband of her pants and tied the ends together the way they were clearly meant to be tied.

She crossed her arms over the strip of skin that was showing. “It’s hideous,” she said. “I hate this,” she plucked at the top, which was slightly too big for her. It looked to her like it was missing actual breasts to fill it out.

He shrugged, going back to his cigarette. “Shopping then,” he said, “though, if you had gone when I suggested it, you wouldn’t be wearing pink. It’s not hideous,” he added.

“I’m hideous,” she muttered under her breath.

He glanced over at her. She probably did have a headache and what was shaping up for a wide range of reasons to be a fairly shitty day, but the nervous, fidgety way she kept tugging at the top smacked of something else. He shook his head, finding what he thought was going on in her head tedious. When she was like this, he found the notion of Georgia taking her off his hands and spending a few years eradicating her insecurities enormously appealing.

~~~*~~~

There wasn’t any reason to think that there would be more email from Willow, but Buffy checked anyway. She hadn’t bothered to undress when she fell across the bed dosed up on an ounce of Nyquil, the Summers sleep aid. The phone didn’t wake her up completely, nor did talking to Spike, which had taken on a slightly unreal quality. It was up to the two of them to save Willow, and that actually made sense to her, which had to be wrong on so many levels.

She had an impression that Spike really didn’t want to hurt her. Giles and Angel would have told her that this was a dangerous way to think for a Slayer since Spike had made his reputation killing two Slayers, but ever since he had come back to Sunnydale and kidnapped Willow and Xander, she had this odd feeling that wherever Spike was in the world he was not spending a lot of time thinking about ways to kill her.

Everything they had pieced together about what might have happened in San Jose suggested that this was a truly random event. Opportunity dropped into his lap, and he took advantage of it, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to hunt them down. He sounded more amused by Willow’s nearly successful escape attempt than anything else.

There was no new email, which was hardly a surprise, and she turned the computer off and went down to the basement to find clean clothes. The drier was empty, so she trudged back upstairs and found her clothes folded in a basket in front of the couch. Her mother must have done that last night while she was left to wait around to find out what was happening in Sacramento.

Buffy skipped a shower and dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and an old flannel shirt before brushing her teeth and pulling her hair back into a ponytail. She splashed some cold water on her face to wake herself up and then went to her bedroom to call Giles. Oz answered the phone and told her that Giles had gone out to meet Dr. Holbroke and that they were keeping the line open in case Spike called.

She sat down on the edge of her bed. “He called me,” she told him. “I guess it was my turn.”

“Did you talk to Willow?” he asked.

“No,” she made a crease in her jeans over her knee, debating about what to tell him. “He said that she was okay, taking a shower, and that she hit her head on a door trying to escape, but that it wasn’t that bad,” she paraphrased.

“Do you believe him?” Oz asked sharply.

“Yeah,” Buffy shrugged. “I don’t know why, but yeah, I think that the program is pretty well established at this point. He wants the Gem of Amara, and all he has to trade is Willow, so he’s going to make sure that she’s there to trade.”

Silence hummed over the line. “Are you okay?” Buffy asked.

“No,” Oz was blunt. “I’m not okay.”

“Me either,” Buffy admitted. Her head felt numb, but her chest hurt. “I’m sorry, Oz,” she said, biting her lower lip to keep from crying because he didn’t deserve that. “I let Willow down and I’m sorry.”

“It was a group effort,” he reminded her. “I keep thinking that if I talked to her, she’d say something I’d get and I’d be able to find her, or I’d know if she is really okay, because I’m thinking that she’s not. I’m thinking that she’s scared and hurt and—“ he ground to a halt. “We have to get this done.”

“Yeah,” Buffy took a deep breath. Some of the tightness in her chest eased. “We will,” she promised.

~~~*~~~

In high school, Willow had made her mother the scapegoat in her fashion disasters. It served two purposes. It made it sound like her mother did personal things for and with her, like shopping for clothes, and it deflected the criticism away from her. In a weird way it hurt less and made it possible for her to pretend that what hurt did show was for the implied insult to her mother.

She even used a version of it with Spike, who believed her and taunted her about her parent’s lack of understanding of her, probably not at all getting how icky it would be if her parents understood what passed for insight into her character on his part at that particular moment.

Her mother bought some of her clothes. She bought things that she found when she was traveling. They were usually small things that fit into her luggage. Sweaters, since her mother knew that she liked sweaters, scarves, a hat or purse, handcrafted jewelry or a belt. In her own fashion sense, or sensible lack thereof, her mother stuck to things that didn’t require a lot of thought to pull together. Things that were sold in sets or collections and could be mixed and matched. The theme was taupe.

In direct contrast, Willow’s choices were all about color and the non-mix and matchedness of things, though occasionally she did go for matching, but usually in a slightly over-the-top sort of way.

They had been shopping since sundown. There was a midnight madness sale at the outlet mall. Fortified with an order of chewy nacho chips and cheese from the snack bar and a soda, they had gone to the Gap outlet and Spike had bought more versions of his monochromatic wardrobe of choice and a package of socks, also black. He didn’t hover or follow or offer any opinion on anything she was inclined to pick up to look at. Most of the time she wasn’t sure that he was there. Wandering from the back to the front of the Gap she spotted him outside, blithely smoking in defiance of the signs that said smoking in designated areas only.

She got two pairs of jeans and he appeared to pay for them, using cash. They stopped at a shoe store to get a pair of sneakers, and then wandered for a bit longer until he caught her elbow and steered her into an Ann Taylor outlet and toward a short, dark green suede jacket on a rack with a collection of paisley print tops that incorporated the green.

It was a cliché. Green. Red hair. It reminded her of catsup on green beans, a Harris family variation, aside from which, she wasn’t a vampire and it was summer, so a suede jacket was pretty out of the question. She walked over to a rack of t-shirts and picked a couple at random in her size. When she looked around for Spike to go to the register, she spotted him talking to two girls. One was a short pudgy blonde that Willow recognized as ‘the friend’, a role that she had been relegated to throughout the length of her friendship with Buffy. There was Buffy and Buffy’s friend Willow. The other girl was only slightly taller with hair dyed a shade of red even more improbable than Willow’s and cut short to frame her face.

She was laughing at something that Spike had said like it was the funniest thing that she ever heard.

The pudgy blonde was looking at him like she had already decided that he was out of her league, but it didn’t hurt to look.

Spike was holding the green suede jacket up to the red headed girl, who struck a little pose and laughed some more while he eyed her with a blend of interest and speculation. Which the red headed girl was aware of. Willow marched over in her hideous pink and white outfit, sandals slapping on the fake wood floor.

She held her hand out. “Money?” she demanded, startling everyone, except Spike. He just gave her one of those warning looks.

She interpreted it as a warning not to scare off his dinner, and ignored it. The memory of her mostly demented but highly effective performance at the gas station popped into her head and she found herself warming to the notion of a repeat performance.

“His name is Spike. He has a three pack a day cigarette habit. He’s unemployed and unemployable. I don’t ask where the money comes from,” she said and then pointed at her face with its two visible bruises. “His work,” she pointed out cheerfully as she plucked the wallet Spike had fished out of his hip pocket out of his hand. “Got to go pay for this. Have a nice time getting to know each other!” she caroled before scooting off to the register.

At the register, she paid for her purchases, keeping an eye out for Spike. The two girls hadn’t lasted long after her announcement and he was just standing with his arm across the top of the rack, waiting for her.

When they were outside again they walked in tense silence to the car.

She wasn’t sure what she expected when he got into the car. Handcuffs, more threats, hair pulling. What she did not expect was a terse reminder to fasten her seat belt. Given Spike’s style of driving, it was a practical point. When she was traveling handcuffed to the door she had been grateful for the security of the seat belt since she was likely to loose her hand if they were involved in an accident.

A few minutes later they were on the highway and she was relatively certain that she had seen the last of that particular Marriott Express. Spike hadn’t bothered to check out and what had been left behind were the clothes that she had worn yesterday and her bag of toiletries that were still mostly scattered around the bathroom.

Her nacho snack had taken the edge off her appetite, but she was still hungry. It didn’t seem like a great time to mention it, so she folded her hands in her lap and stared at the claustrophobia inducing black painted windshield in front of her, feeling the Desoto eat up miles under her while she came to the conclusion that he was much better at the silent treatment than she was.

Her verbal excesses sprang from her discomfort with silence. It started with her parents, who never had much to say to her. As soon as the thought came, she grimaced. The teen angst fodder her parents represented was getting old and it wasn’t entirely fair, either. Running down her parents was a bad habit she had gotten into with Xander, who had infinitely more to complain about from his parents.

If she had wanted to go to Europe with them, all she had to do was ask, but the truth was that she had still been holding out for spending an unsupervised summer with Oz. By the time that she realized that wasn’t going to happen, her plans had been too far advanced to back out of.

And, okay, they were kind of goofy parents, but she knew that it was partly because they were afraid of ruining her or limiting her personal growth. When your professional life was all about dealing with the damage that was done to people emotionally it wasn’t hard to see the fabric of relationships as a minefield that had to be negotiated with care. There had been some definite manipulating of that on her part, especially when she was in high school.

There were all of those unopened emails from her parents. She had barely looked at them. What if they were the last thing she ever heard from them?

~~~*~~~

She was crying again, very quietly, eyes fixed straight ahead, her face telling a tale of guilt and grief. He didn’t imagine that she was stewing over depriving him of a meal, so it was probably inner turmoil over the misery of being kidnapped and guilt over fucking him.

He knew that she was hungry. She had hardly had anything to eat for over a day and a half and the veering back and forth between sluggish sleepwalker to fretful crying suggested that physically, she was on the ropes. He had been inclined to pay her back in kind by letting her go hungry. Food was comfort, and while he had no intention of drying her tears, the effort of feeding her was worth it if it cut off the waterworks.

He started scanning signs on the highway for a likely place to stop and settled on an all night truck stop. He needed to fill up the Desoto, figure out where they were going to go to ground for the day and stock up on supplies. He filled up the Desoto first, leaving her in the car. Once the tank was topped off, he found a space to park and grabbed her wrist, giving it an attention getting squeeze. “We’re going in, and you will behave,” he warned her.

The restaurant was attached to a convenience store. There was a bathroom between the store and the restaurant and he pointed it out to Willow, who took the hint and trudged dispiritedly to the ladies room. He browsed the aisles, picking up a bottle of aspirin, a couple of sandwiches from the refrigerator section, beer, soda, and a couple of magazines. He was paying for the gas and purchases when she emerged from the ladies room, red-eyed, clutching a handful of toilet paper that she used to blow her nose.

She came to stand awkwardly beside him. The clerk behind the counter was a twitchy looking guy in a faded high school football jersey. He eyed Willow with a hint of puzzled curiosity before his attention reverted back to Spike. They didn’t add up right. The pink and white outfit had the unanticipated consequence of making her look entirely too wholesomely pretty and banged up. The wholesome part probably was intentional. Georgia had picked out her clothes and she tended to play up that aspect of Willow at every opportunity.

He paid for their purchases and picked up the two bags, nodding towards the restaurant. “Get a table, Red. I’ll be back in a minute,” he told her.

She looked at him for a moment, and then at the restaurant. It was mostly empty at this time of night. He could see the wheels and gears starting to turn. She blew her nose again and scrubbed at it with the wadded up toilet paper and then walked into the restaurant to find a table.

He stowed his purchases in the boot of the Desoto and went back into the restaurant to join her. There were two coffee cups on the table and she had ordered a cheeseburger and French fries while he was in the parking lot. Rather than sit across from her, he sat beside her, draping one arm over the back of the booth behind her shoulders.

“What the hell is your problem?” he asked, the irritation that had been nagging at him for the better part of the day evident.

She gave him an incredulous look. “Everything,” she said lowly.

From her point of view, that was probably an accurate assessment. His hand lifted from the back of the booth, hovering over her head for a moment. He gave a sigh as he went with the impulse and smoothed her hair back, kissing her temple. He smiled at how ridiculous it was. “Fair enough,” he said, as she sniffed and coughed a little to clear her throat.

She ate her dinner and drank two cups of coffee while he helped himself to her French fries and eyed the customers in the restaurant in a purely predatory way. His preference was to find someone who was alone and less likely to be immediately missed. Easier said than done. Eating was a communal activity.

The back of his fingers stroked the side of her neck as she ate. It wasn’t doing a damn thing for his growing appetite, but it was oddly calming. He had set an effective curb on one set of impulses that had threatened his plans, and before the evening was done he was probably going to teach her a lesson about interfering with him that she would not soon forget.

When he noticed that she had slowed down on eating her cheeseburger, he started stroking her hair with just enough pressure to coax her into letting her head rest against his shoulder.

“I got you that magazine that you wanted, with the crossword puzzle,” he told her.

“Yeah?” she tilted her head back to look at him. “My mom doesn’t really pick my clothes out. Sometimes it seems easier to be child of a geek and not the geek.”

He wondered what made her tell him that. He had a feeling it had something to do with what was bothering her so much tonight. He smiled crookedly at her. “I want to push on if you are done here,” he said.

“Okay,” she nodded, sitting up.

“Why don’t you go to the ladies before we hit the road. I’ll take care of this,” he indicated the table.

~Part: 29~

The sound of the saw that Luke Holbroke was using to cut through the floor of the vault drove Angel out of the tunnels. He wasn’t surprised that Buffy followed him. Without actually discussing it they fell into step, side by side.

“Patrol?” she asked as they crossed the small playground where two children had been found a year ago, kicking off the Mother’s Opposed to the Occult incident that had nearly gotten Willow and Buffy burned at the stake by an angry mob. He had missed most of that and had gotten the denouement secondhand from Buffy and Willow on a night not unlike this one, only Willow had been on Buffy’s other side, occasionally breaking into an odd skip at a particularly exciting point in the narrative.

She had a very quirky and sometimes inappropriate sense of humor that made an awful kind of sense after he had met vampire Willow. If Spike turned her, Angel knew that he would make it his mission to hunt her and stake her. She would be entirely too dangerous to be left to make Spike rue the day he had come up with that bright idea.

“Patrol,” he agreed.

Buffy made a face. “It’ll be boring,” she predicted. “Post-apocalyptic demon activity is way down. The big battle at the high school thinned out the local demon population, I guess. It’s been quiet, except for Spike. Not that I’m complaining,” she added hastily. “Quiet is good.”

“How are you holding up?” he asked. She seemed preoccupied.

“Aside from feeling really stupid?” she asked. She had gone home at dinner time to check her email and the only message that she had was from Sara Engstrom, wondering if they had found Willow and if there was anything that she could do to help.

Buffy had composed a highly edited version of last night’s failed rescue mission with a postscript that she would keep Sara up dated.

Angel didn’t respond with a platitude about how it could have happened to anyone, or how they had all screwed up, or anything like that. He seemed to be thinking about something. though.

“Angel?”

He snapped out of it. “You aren’t stupid,” he said, and then realized that it sounded too prompted. “How do you see the exchange going down?”

She rolled the stake in her hand against her thigh. “It has to be face-to-face,” she said. “I’m not handing anything over to him without Willow being there.”

“What if he insists on a blind drop?” he asked.

She nodded, “Yeah, I thought about that, but I’ve got a hunch about this. I think he really means to make a trade,” she glanced over at Angel, wondering when he would disagree with her. “He said that he would stay out of Sunnydale after he made the trade,” she told him. “I think that he thinks he means it, which might not last more than a few months, but—“

“He kept his word for a few months after he offered to help you defeat Angelus,” Angel finished the thought for her.

“You think I’m being naïve,” she guessed.

He smiled down at her. “If you had said that you thought that his attention span would extend past a few months, I’d think you were naïve,” he corrected. “Willow said he made a similar promise to her.” They had been over both conversations a couple of times already, sifting through what was said for significance.

Angel’s theory that Willow was now on the road to actively assisting Spike had seemed a moot point to Buffy. Willow couldn’t be held entirely responsible for anything that she did under duress and Spike wouldn’t hesitate to use every weapon at his disposal to frighten her. She didn’t quite buy it either. Everything Willow had managed to do so far argued against her helping Spike in any way.

“You think he’ll make the trade and go on his merry way,” she concluded.

“No. I think that he’ll make the trade and start settling old scores and you and I are at the top of his list of old scores,” Angel told her. “But, I don’t think he’ll torture and kill all your friends. It’s not his style. Direct, to the point, and pretty much immediate.” Unlike Angelus who would have turned it into a big, hairy, evil production number.

Buffy nodded. “I can deal,” she insisted.

“I know,” he told her. He did know it. In the back of his head he had a few ideas rolling around about how to spare her all of this and deal with the responsibility that Spike was to him. There was a time, in China, a century ago, when he could have erased the worst of the legacy that he had visited on humanity by taking Dru and Spike out of the equation, and they would have never seen it coming. There were other times in the last century. He had always kept his ear to the ground for rumors about them, and it would have been so easy to have hunted them down.

He never did it. He never gave it a lot of thought, and every day or every other day, someone died somewhere for that. His desire to stop Spike now didn’t have anything to do with making sure Buffy was safe from him. It had everything to do with the responsibility he felt for what Spike did. What Angelus taught him to do. What he suspected that Spike was doing and would do in the future if he had decided that Willow was a nice, shiny bauble to play with.

“I don’t know if I can,” he admitted. “I’d do anything to bring her home for you—except set Spike free to do whatever he wants without any way to stop him.”

Buffy stopped. “There is no except,” she said. “There is no except. We did this before, and we found a way. We will find another way.”

She was waiting for him to agree with her, and he considered lying to reassure her. Forced to make a terrible choice once before, she had done the right thing, but not without cost. He had come to Sunnydale to help her bear those burdens, before he had ever really known her. Now he did know her, and he had seen her walk this fine line before without failing. The soul had given him many things, some of which were almost unendurably painful, but the purpose sprang from her existence and the hope sprang from her resolve.

“We’ll find a way,” he agreed.

~~~*~~~

There was a pay phone between the two restrooms. Willow had noticed it the first time she had come back to the ladies room by herself, and now she stared at it. She didn’t have any money. Did you have to have money to make a collect call? What was the point of making a collect call from a place that they were leaving anyway? With a sigh, she went into the bathroom. She really didn’t have to go, but she wasn’t sure when they would be stopping again, so she made herself go through the motions and then washed her hands and her face for good measure.

Her best ideas hadn’t worked out very well, which didn’t stop her brain from manufacturing more ideas. They sounded increasingly ineffectual and stupid to her. It was depressing.

There was a certain amount of stalling involved. Then she came out of the bathroom and stood in the open archway, looking into the restaurant and the convenience store. Spike was nowhere in the vicinity. She looked from right to left, moving out of the doorway, wondering where he was. When she felt his cool hand on the back of her neck, she gave a little yelp of surprise that made him laugh. He gave her a nudge. “Let’s go,” he said.

He had come from behind her? Vampires went to the bathroom? It seemed unlikely. She started to say so but when she turned her head, looking up at him she noticed the way he was licking his lower lip.

She looked around the restaurant, trying to figure out who was missing as the hand at the back of her neck pulled her along with him. It was her imagination. He hadn’t just killed someone. There hadn’t been time for it. Had there?

When they got to the car he walked her around to her side and opened the door for her before walking around to the driver’s side, looking like he was in no particular hurry in the glimpses she managed to catch of him through the streaks of paint. Once behind the wheel he looked over at her questioningly. “Seat belt?” he reminded her, and then smirked, “Unless you want to slide over here?”

She fastened the seat belt, half convinced that she was imagining things. She knew that he had been feeding all along, but without Georgia or a minion to baby-sit her while he was gone, she had no intention of making it easy for him to kill.

It wasn’t much, but it was something. The depression that she felt in the bathroom started to lift a bit. She could be a liability.

He lit his umpteenth cigarette and Willow rolled the window down on her side of the car. The fresh air hitting her face and the improved visibility were nice. “Where are we going?” she ventured to ask.

“South,” he sounded vague about it.

“Where are we stopping?”

“Haven’t decided,” he said, and then gestured to the glove box. “There’s a map in there if you want to pretend that there’s a plan and that you are participating in the decision.”

She tilted her head to one side. “You pretty much live in the moment, don’t you?”

He flicked ash out the driver’s side window. “Pretty much,” he agreed. “You are thinking, if I were a vampire—“

“No, I wasn’t,” she refuted.

He glanced over at her. “Sure you were. If I were vampire, I’d know exactly where I would be at dawn,” he mocked. “Except it isn’t that complicated. The world’s full of places to get out of the sun. You know this. You live in Sunnydale, and it’s a rabbit warren of tunnels, crypts, the mall, movie theatre, and so on. Stayed in a movie theatre once. Me and Dru. We went to a late show, and we stayed after it was over. Killed everyone but the projectionist and made him run the movies for us and then sold tickets and ran the concession stand for the matinee.”

It was an insight she could have gone without. “Who ran the concession stand?” She really could not see Drusilla waiting on people.

“Dru,” he said. “Sort of. She pretty much told people to take whatever they wanted, which, in retrospect, was a bit of a mistake, because that’s where the profit is at the movies.” He chuckled at the memory.

“What happened to the projectionist?”

“Probably killed him,” he said. “I don’t remember. What was the name of the cow you just ate a part of?”

She frowned at that. It probably was all the same from his point of view, but it reminded her of something that a farmer had said on a field trip that she went on in middle school when she was toying with becoming vegetarian. He pointed to a field of cows and said, “If you didn’t eat them, we wouldn’t breed them, and they wouldn’t exist.”

It didn’t change her mind about being a vegan. Bean curd accomplished that, but it did make her decide that there was more than one side to the moral issue of consuming animals.

People would still be there if vampires didn’t exist to eat them. And people would still die whether vampires killed them. Dying was inevitable. She had taken anatomy and physiology in her senior year and had been struck by how much the skeleton was like armor. It wasn’t just a piece of physiological architecture. Skulls and rib cages protected the most vital organs. Virtually every organ system had defenses that had evolved to meet the most common threats to survival.

These were not perfect defenses. People died of disease, old age, or from injuries. People died. Sometimes they were killed. People killed people. Living in Sunnydale, it wasn’t the most obvious thing, but it happened. People killed people. Vampires killed people. Why people? Angel survived on animal blood without any ill effect. Why kill what you once were? It was like a form of cannibalism.

He was right. If she were a vampire, she would have a plan. She gave Spike a sideways look. He had kind of not so vaguely alluded to the possibility that he could kill her and turn her. Then she’d be ‘make a plan’ second banana Willow to Spike’s ‘I do what I please’ live in the moment approach to things. Wow. No wonder Angel and Spike had issues. Angel was probably big on making lists and rules.

To give herself something to do, she got the map out. The glove box was the kind with a light bulb, so she used the open end of it to prop the map on so that it was enough in the light to read. She had to loosen the seat belt and wriggle forward to read it. After consulting the map and checking road signs and mile markers, Willow concluded that they really were traveling south and that they were approaching Fresno. She refolded the map and put it away, sitting back in her seat.

It didn’t mean that they were going to Fresno. “If I ask a question, are you going to tell me another story about killing people?”

He smiled at that, but didn’t bother to add the modifier. “What’s the question?”

“You aren’t going to Sunnydale, are you?”

“Right now? No,” he shook his head. “Though, I have lots of stories about killing people in Sunnydale. Like that night at your school—“

“I was there. Skip the replay,” she cut him off. “You said that you’d leave everyone in Sunnydale alone,” she plowed on.

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I said I wouldn’t kill your friends,” he corrected, “which is off if they are trying to kill me, but I don’t think we’ll make a trade in Sunnydale, if that’s what you are getting at. There was a time when I wouldn’t have said this, but Sunnydale is the Slayer’s territory. You don’t go into your enemy’s territory with something they want with anything less than an army.”

She pursed her lips. “No, that’s not what I was getting at,” she said. “Why not go to Sunnydale? This thing—the Gem of Amara? It’s there, isn’t it? Why not go there? You said it yourself, there are a lot of places to hide in Sunnydale, and,” her voice rose a bit, “no one would expect you to be there.”

“Where do you feature yourself being in this scenario? Hanging out with your good friend Spike in a vampire lair in Sunnydale?” he shook his head at that. “Nice try, pet.” He tried to remember when he had ever mentioned the Gem of Amara in front of her and couldn’t. Maybe when he was on the phone with the Watcher? He thought back. “How do you know about the Gem of Amara?”

“Angel told me. Gem of Amara. He said it would make you unstoppable—whatever that means, because Angel and Buffy haven’t been big with the stopping of you. They have the thwarting, but not the actual stoppage.”

His eyebrow lifted. “Don’t suck up, Red. I know I told you to go back to being harmless and helpful, but sucking up is beneath you. Your Slayer put me in a wheelchair,” he sounded grim.

“It was pretty much a bad year all around,” she put in. “Major trauma—I’m not sucking up. That’s true. You might have been in a wheelchair, but you got out of it.”

“Got out of it, beat the crap out of Angelus, lost Dru,” he summed up. “What’s your damage?”

She propped her feet on the dashboard, frowning. It was hard to explain, and it shouldn’t have been. Ms. Calendar was dead. Kendra was dead, and though she hadn’t known her nearly as well, she died trying to protect them. Well, mostly Willow, as she tried to complete the curse. In the immediate aftermath of the confrontation at the mansion, Willow had been sure that the curse had worked and that Buffy and Angel had been reunited. Days passed, stretching into weeks, and that confidence had crumbled.

“Knowing that even when you win, that the cost of it never really goes away,” she said after a long moment.

He glanced over at her, moderately surprised that she had an answer at all.

~~~*~~~

Harmony was more than happy to tell them what she knew; unfortunately, since she didn’t know what was important to tell them they were forced to listen to a blow-by-blow account of her adventures from getting ditched in San Francisco to her arrival in Sacramento.

Colin seemed patient, but for the death grip he had on the steering wheel as Harmony droned on, her chin propped on her arms resting across the back of the front seat of the Mercedes-Benz that Spike had left them with, mostly to spare himself the trouble of ditching the car. The lawyers had taken care of the license and registration issue. There were new plates on the car and the owner listed on the registration had been. Before they had settled the bill the female lawyer had a lot of questions to ask about Willow, and unfortunately Harmony had been there so she answered them.

Georgia now had her last name, home address, and the names of her friends, including the Slayer. She was embarrassed about letting Willow get the best of her, but that didn’t necessarily rule out her long-term plans.

The Gem of Amara was, from Colin’s reaction, a fairly big deal. How big a deal she would find out later. Colin’s reluctance to talk about it in front of Harmony meant that it was too important to discuss in front of her, and that Colin had decided that she was potentially useful, so talking in front of her and staking her later was not an option in the immediate future.

They had gone back to San Jose. Harmony’s new obsession was how to de-minionize herself. Apparently the older vampire they had encountered, who was almost certainly the infamous Angel or Angelus, had let Harmony in on the fact that she was a sire-less minion. Georgia thought it was one of those silly snobberies that you found amongst older vampires, but she had never been cast in the same position, so it was easy for her to dismiss it as a minor issue. Colin actually seemed a bit . . . not exactly sympathetic, but more willing to acknowledge that it was a big handicap.

A chipped fang was a handicap.

At least in San Jose it was possible to get away from Harmony, only she was actually starting to prove to be more entertaining than Georgia would have thought. Her plan was to put flyers up at a few demon bars advertising for minions. It was one of the dumbest and funniest things that Georgia had ever heard of. The whole interview to be a minion concept seemed to be largely based on an ex-boyfriend interviewing drummers and Harmony’s cheerleading career. She was poring over magazines to get an idea about how to build a more professional-looking wardrobe and she had her hand-lettered flyer designed and ready to go to Kinkos after she managed to build up enough money to get it done.

Georgia suggested that she go with the vampire retail model and just kill a late night Kinkos clerk, but Harmony had pointed out that she didn’t actually know how to operate a copier, and how could you argue with that?

~~~*~~~

They pulled off the highway on the other side of Fresno and Spike chose a run down hotel that from the shape of the raised letters on the painted over sign towering in the parking lot had once been a Hyatt Hotel.

“I don’t want to stay here,” Willow balked.

“What?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Let’s find another place,” she said firmly.

He turned to her, one hand on the steering wheel. “What makes you think that I care about what you want?”

Her eyes widened indignantly. “You did. You asked me what I wanted to do,” she told him, and then when he looked blank, she shook her head. “I knew it! You didn’t care about what I wanted to do—I mean, obvious! If you cared about what I wanted to do I wouldn’t be kidnapped. It was just a lame excuse to have sex on the bathroom counter and for those of us with body temperature who bruise—no, thank you.”

He looked at her like she had lost him a mood swing ago. “The jury is still out on the brain damage issue,” he muttered. “That was hours ago, and I asked you what you wanted to do, not what you didn’t want to do.”

She crossed her arms over her abdomen and then grimaced and wiggled away from the seat back with a small suction sound were the skin between her shirt and the waistband of her pants parted with the Naugahyde. “Fine. I want to go to an all-night drug store. Or Walmart,” she said. “I need stuff.”

“We went shopping earlier,” he pointed out. “What stuff could you possibly need?”

“Toothbrush, dental floss, mouth wash, a brush, deodorant,” she tried to limit herself to true necessities.

“For Christ’s sake,” he grumbled, realizing that she had had all of those things but since he hadn’t told her that they would not be returning to the Marriott, she hadn’t brought any of them with her when they left. A mental picture of Willow walking around with a plastic bag filled with toiletries and a fresh change of underwear made him smirk.

“Well, that’s a lesson to you to be prepared next time,” he told her.

“I’m human and sweaty. I ate a cheeseburger with onions,” she argued. “I don’t have your overdeveloped sense of smell, and by tomorrow morning—“she shook her head, “I mean afternoon,” she corrected herself, “I’m going to gross me out. And you’ll be stuck with me in the Bates Motel,” she gestured at the building in front of them.

It was a winning argument. He put the Desoto back in gear and pulled through the overhang outside the hotel while Willow developed her rationale for her aversion to the hotel. “It’s creepy looking and Hyatt Hotels are highly over-rated, and it’s not even a Hyatt Hotel anymore.”

“Shut up,” he growled at her. “We’ll go get the crap you need, but we are staying here,” he told her. “Be glad that it’s not a crypt or a cave or the former home of a nice family of five and their silly sodding little dog—because that can be arranged.”

Two interstate exits later he found a CVS that was open all night and followed Willow as she made a beeline for the dental products. She was quick about it. No wandering around looking for more crap that she didn’t necessarily need. He grabbed her elbow and steered her towards the medical supplies, tossing a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a tube of antiseptic ointment, a package of gauze and a roll of white tape into the plastic basket she had picked up at the door.

He paid at the register and let her carry the bag out to the car.

There was a Best Western a block in front of the interstate ramp and he gave up, glancing over at her to gauge her reaction. She was trying to look like she wasn’t noticing the change in plans. After they were checked in and the car was unloaded, Willow fled to the bathroom to take a shower. Deciding that she was safely preoccupied, Spike picked up the ice bucket and went to look for dinner. Despite being a public accommodation, a hotel room door was relatively secure. The fire code demanded that they be fireproof and while the locking mechanisms were no obstacle for a hungry vampire, they tended to leave definite signs of forced entry that would draw lots of unwanted attention.

The other hotel looked better for a late-night crowd. This one was quiet. Smiling to himself he spotted the sign for the ice machine and cocked his head, listening for a second. He picked a door near the ice machine and gave the doorknob an un-stealthy rattle before walking on. He filled the ice machine and went back the way he came.

A sleepy-looking woman in her late forties was standing in the open doorway, bending down to pick up her complimentary newspaper. When she saw his feet, she stood up, clutching the paper to her chest looking alarmed.

“Woke you up?” he guessed. “Bloody security guards checking the locks. It sounds like someone is trying to get in your room, you know? I’d call the desk and complain,” he told her.

She pushed a wave of frosted blond hair away from her forehead, relaxing slightly. “I will,” she said. “I hate sleeping in a strange place, and that doesn’t help at all.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Spike agreed. Too easy, and a little too old for his tastes, but that was the luck of the draw.

~~~*~~~

Getting ready for bed had not become less awkward. Willow brushed her teeth, flossed, and brushed her teeth again. The Best Western was not the sort of hotel that provided fluffy complimentary bathrobes. She had rinsed her undergarments in the sink and they were hanging on the towel rack to dry. That left her with the silky pink and white outfit she had worn all day that smelled like cigarette smoke to sleep in, or one of her new t-shirts and jeans, which was bound to be uncomfortable.

She put the Capri pants and top back on, leaving the ends that tied in front loose. When she came out of the bathroom, she found Spike sitting in a chair that he had pulled over to the foot of the bed, sorting out the first aid supplies he had added to the basket. He gestured to the foot of the bed. “Have a seat,” he said, getting up to go into the bathroom. He came back with a towel that was still folded into a compact square and he set it on the end of the bed.

“I can do it myself,” she said when he picked up the bottle of rubbing alcohol.

He ignored her. Big surprise there. She thought he would wet one of the gauze pads that he had laid out with the alcohol but he just dribbled it over her toe instead, holding her foot still with one hand. The excess alcohol was trapped by his hand. “Hold still,” he said, wetting both hands with rubbing alcohol before setting the bottle on the floor.

The coldness of the alcohol had made her flinch, but it wasn’t as stingy as she might have expected. He shifted her foot, slipping one hand under the heel of her foot to cup it in the palm of his hand and started rubbing the base of her great toe in a circular motion.

“You don’t want to tape up your toe and trap a lot of dirt under the bandage,” he explained.

She had stopped noticing how sore her foot was from trying to stay off the toe, but the soreness was being massaged away and it felt so good that a moan escaped her lips. Her eyes flew to his face and the corners of his lips twitched a little with a suppressed grin. Smacking him wasn’t an option, so she closed her eyes instead and tried not to moan again when he started working on the underside of her toe. The alcohol felt cool and dry. Periodically he paused to add more, not stopping with her great toe, but working around all of her toes and the ball of her foot while the hand cupping her heel rotated.

She leaned back on her elbows, a little stunned by the fact that he was doing this, and not completely sure that his motives were purely philanthropic. She was sure they weren’t. It was a reduction of foot pain seduction technique, and God, didn’t that sound weird in her head. It was going to work, but then the awkwardness of getting ready for bed was solely in relationship to the probability that once she was in bed they were going to have sex and it was going to be a lot better than it ought to be.

When he was finished with the alcohol foot rub, he dabbed antiseptic ointment on her toe and wrapped it in gauze before taping it up tight enough to be secure without cutting off her circulation. She wiggled her toe experimentally while he swept the supplies back into the plastic bag.

Then he stood up and started undressing, which she took as a signal to retreat to the other side of the bed. She didn’t get much farther than rolling over on her hands and knees to crawl over to the other side of the bed when he caught her ankle and tugged her back. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She looked over her shoulder at him, feeling her heart speed up. He sounded amused, but he wasn’t smiling. Uh-oh.

His hand left her ankle and he finished taking his t-shirt off. She shifted one knee forward, inching away from him. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” he told her, unfastening his belt. He drew it through the belt loops, folding it in half in his hands. “What do you think is going to happen if I don’t feed?”

She closed her eyes, cringing inside when she felt the doubled-over belt move over the curve of her ass, her mind a great big blank.

He tapped the leather against her ass. “That was a question,” he reminded her.

“I don’t know,” she tried not to panic.

“That’s not an answer,” he said patiently, sounding almost like her father for a moment. I don’t know was not an acceptable answer to her father. He wasn’t mean about it and her parents did not believe in any form of corporal punishment, but the patient phrase made her stomach knot with tension. Her parents never hit her, but sometimes, after a marathon family meeting, she wished that they had.

“Tell me what you think might happen,” he purred.

“No,” she shook her head vehemently, scooting across the bed, the slippery silk pants sliding on the quilted polyester bedspread. Her goal wasn’t specific. Away from him pretty much summed it up. His arm went around her waist and she found herself sliding backwards, the stupid silk Capri pants provided no traction on the quilted polyester bedspread. For some reason it reminded her of one of those movies from the sixties with Doris Day shamelessly mugging for the camera as she was forced to do something stupid for the sake of a bad script.

“I’m not playing the vampire version of twenty questions with you,” she told him. “If you are going to hurt me, then just do it, but don’t you dare think that I’m going to cooperate while you hurt or humiliate me.”

He gave a mirthless chuckle, but he dropped the belt, which was a huge relief until she found herself pulled back against his body, one arm snug around her waist.

“Right then,” he seemed to come to a decision. He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back and to the side. “A healthy human can feed a single vampire for days,” he told her. “Angelus kept one alive for three weeks once,” his upper lip curled. “Lot of trouble if you ask me. The secret is in the diet. You have to feed a little bit of the blood back to them. Inevitably, they die. Anemia, disease, heart failure,” he rattled off a short list of the causes of death. “But before that happens it’s like they get everything human sucked out of them until there’s not enough left to turn.”

The whole time he had been talking she could feel his lips hovering over her neck and she tried to pry his arm away from her waist, using both hands and as much leverage as she could get by simultaneously pushing her shoulders into him while she arched her back trying to break his hold on her. When she felt his tongue on her throat she shuddered and clawed at his arms with her fingernails.

She wasn’t aware that she was the one chanting a litany of “No, no, no,” in rising pitch and volume until he gave her a slight shake to get her attention. “Scream, and I kill anyone who decides to be nosy,” he told her.

Figuring that he had finally gotten through to her, he gave her a little shove that sent her sprawling to the bed.

Her foot lashed out and caught him in the stomach. It hardly registered.

Blood oozed from a half dozen small scratches on his forearm. He licked it off. She tried to kick him again and he batted her foot aside effortlessly, laughing a little at her expression. If looks could kill, he’d be a big pile of dust.

She stared at him for a moment. One part of her brain was processing the implied threat. He couldn’t think that any power on earth would induce her to drink blood. Or that she was going to say, now that you’ve explained it, go kill someone and have a nice night. The other part of her brain was registering the fact that he thought this was amusing. A more primitive part of her brain saw him licking the blood off his arm and was deeply satisfied to have drawn it.

She should have been properly cowed, down for the count, but he could see the resolution firming up in her face. He had frightened her, he had no doubt of it. The whole time he had held her against him he could feel the frantic beat of her heart and the way that she was breathing in hard gasps. She was furious about being frightened. It was one threat too many, and if she could have backed it up, she would have kicked his ass. It was just her bad luck that she was badly overmatched.

He met her when she launched herself at him with a low cry of pure rage. She was smart enough to go for his eyes, the somewhat chipped French manicure that Georgia had provided her with, stained with blood from where she had gouged his arm. A single hard punch to her chin would have snapped her out of it, but he found that he really didn’t want to hurt her. He grabbed her wrists and used his weight to take her down, straddling her hips to keep her from kicking him again. The slippery silk worked for her at first, and he waited for her to figure out that she was losing, but the way that she was twisting under him to throw him off of her was extending her chest and neck in a way that was making the prospect of her hurting herself all too inevitable.

He sat up, releasing her arms. She swung at him wildly, and he blocked her with one arm. “The deal is off then?” He made it sound like a conclusion based on her behavior.

It didn’t register at first, but when it sank in, she stopped struggling, staring at him in furious disbelief that slowly faded as the import of the statement reached her.

He felt something. It wasn’t pity exactly. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it made him shake his head. “Oh, don’t!” he scolded. “I’m a vampire, you silly bint. A little pre-shag fight is like foreplay,” he joked. “I just wanted to get your attention before you hurt yourself.”

Her chest was rising and falling unevenly. He hoped it wasn’t the harbinger of another crying jag. She wasn’t particularly dainty or tragic about it when she was crying. She was all hiccupping sobs and a runny nose.

When he was sure that she had calmed down enough not to resume hostilities, he eased his weight off her hips, rolling to his side next to her. “You fight like a girl,” he told her, fondly contemptuous. “You do better when you aren’t angry. Taking Pete and Georgia down with a sneak attack? That was brilliant. Made me proud of you,” he said propping his head on his folded arm.

She flinched when his hand came near her face, but he ignored it and pushed her still damp hair off her brow. “They were probably thinking that I’d lost it, not being able to keep one small human from being a pain in the ass.“

Colin’s views on the subject flashed through her mind. Her own mixed feelings about her captivity settled like a weight on her chest. She turned her head slightly to look at him. “I don’t understand you,” she said.

He smiled at that. “You’re a bit of a puzzle to me,” he told her. “What don’t you understand?”

“Colin said that I ought to be kept on a diet of bread and water and—“ the rest of what he said had to do with being fed on regularly and used as a sex partner, only the way he said it was a bit more crude, and that wasn’t really something she wanted to put out there between them.

He could fill in the blanks. He traced her hairline, smoothing his thumb over the widow’s peak that gave her face a sweetly heart shaped aspect. “Yeah,” he sighed, making a face. “Not really my thing, pet,” he told her. He started to tell her that she was either food to him or she wasn’t. There was not a lot of middle ground for him in that determination, but he was pretty sure that she wouldn’t get it. He leaned over and kissed her, feeling the tension creep back into her body.

The strong taste of cinnamon flavored mouthwash almost completely obscured the taste of her to him. He took her lower lip between his, tracing it with the tip of his tongue until he got used to it, exploring the contours of her face with his fingertips. He wasn’t being entirely honest with her. The idea of her on her knees at his feet had a certain appeal, but he recognized that he had pulled back from that on more than one occasion with her. He felt her breath fluttered against his upper lip as her mouth became more pliant under his, lips parting. The tip of her tongue brushed his, and retreated. He didn’t chase it, switching his attention to her upper lip with its crisp bow shape.

She was—he liked her the way she was. She didn’t quit, she didn’t know how to quit. She’d give in, but she never entirely gave up and when it was all said and done, when she went back to her life in Sunnydale to fight the good fight—and he recognized now that he probably would see to it that she got home—she would never know that not giving up had made a difference to him.

Georgia was going to have her nose out of joint about that.

His hand left her face. She could feel it touching her almost randomly, his thumb moving over her and then under the opening of her top as his hand cupped her shoulder. His thumb rested briefly in the slight notch between her arm and her collarbone before slipping out as his hand moved down her back, and it was impossible to say if it was his hand turning her to her side or if it was her turning into him until she laid her hand on his side, feeling his rib cage under her hand.

The lack of movement from breathing was disconcerting, but at the same time it made her aware of the subtle play of muscles under his skin. The smallest movements of his arm changed the aspect of the muscles under her hand, and she tentatively explored the shape of him.

When he started kissing her she had closed her eyes out of instinct. Her eyelids drifted up while he kissed the corner of her mouth. In the confined space of her field of vision she saw his cheek, the faintest shadow of beard stubble and then she closed her eyes again, kissing him back, not nearly as well or as creatively. He moved the arm folded under his head to curl it around her head, moving her hair away from her neck.

Distracted by the gooseflesh inducing stroke of his fingers over her neck, she lifted her head a little, drawing back from him, trying to gauge his intentions.

“Are you going to bite me, beat me, hurt me?” he voiced her fears.

Feeling like he was mocking her again, Willow pulled her hand off him.

He caught her wrist and dragged her hand back to his mouth. There was blood drying under her fingernails from where she had scratched him. She noticed it about a second later than he did and curled her hand into a fist, trying to hide her fingertips. He gave her wrist a small shake. “Oh, come on,” he pouted. “It’s mine,” he pointed out, bringing her hand to his mouth, his tongue tracing the seam formed between the base of her thumb and her palm and then the exposed underside of her pinkie, trying to loosen her grip.

His blunt teeth delicately grasped her pinkie, tugging on it until she uncurled her finger the slightest bit and he took it in his mouth, curling his tongue around it while he held her gaze, steady and sure, teasing her finger with his tongue, letting his teeth lightly scrape the underside of her finger, sucking on the tip. The pull of his mouth on her pinkie had loosened her grip. He moved on to the next finger, making a small sound of pleasure when he found a trace of his blood on her finger.

Willow shivered and closed her eyes, and behind her closed eyelids, the lamplight in the room was almost like sunlight. She could almost pretend that she was lying on the lawn outside of the high school, under a tree, with Oz. It occurred to her then, in an odd moment of recognition, that Oz liked her hands. He hadn’t ever said it, but sometimes when they were curled up together, he would slip the back of his hand under her palm and lift her hand up, opening his fingers for hers to slip in between. When they were in the library, researching, he would find her hand under the table and run his fingers over the back of her hand.

But he had never done anything like this, and she wished that he had as Spike reached her third finger, pausing to nibble on the base of her thumb and to nuzzle her damp fingers before gently biting the tip of her middle finger, his tongue flicking over her fingertip in a caress that she recognized that made her squeeze her thighs together. Her eyes flew open. Spike was no longer holding her wrist. His hand was resting lightly on her rib cage, his thumb moving back and forth over the silk top, molding the fabric to the underside of her breast.

Belatedly she understood what he was doing. He was seducing her. She could see it in his eyes. Patience, and intent wedded to a slumberous desire and a hint of amusement. It stung a little, that he thought she was so oblivious.

“You must think I’m stupid,” she said.

He snorted, shaking his head around the finger that he was sucking on like it was a candy cane. “Hardly,” he contradicted when he let her finger slip from between his lips. “I think you are amazing,” he told her with a small smile. “One small, clever, not-so-harmless girl.”

He leaned in to kiss her mouth. His hand moved from her rib cage to the small, flat buttons that held her blouse closed, undoing them one at a time between soft, lip biting kisses. When the blouse was open he slid his hand inside without pushing it out of his way, lightly stroking her skin with his fingertips, absorbing impressions of her warm, downy skin pebbling lightly with gooseflesh at the almost teasing lightness of his touch. He watched her eyes, curious about how she would react, and took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, pinching it, careful not to pinch too hard and bruise her.

A tiny frown puckered her brow as she tried to process the sensation. His fingers relaxed, sweeping around her breast before tightening again and tugging on her nipple.

“What are you doing?” she asked, sounding wary.

He smiled, kissing her again. She was clever, and it was the third or fourth best thing he liked about her. “What’s it feel like?” he asked.

She blinked a couple of times, obviously having a hard time putting it into words. “It feels like you are conducting a survey,” she said.

He laughed at that. “That’s good,” humor and approval warming his tone. He twisted her nipple, making her gasp. “I’m figuring out what you like,” he said. “You like that, don’t you?”

“It's better than being beaten with a belt,” she conceded resentfully.

He took her chin in his mouth, sucking on it while his fingers tugged and twisted her nipple with gradually increasing force until a pained sound escaped her and she tried to shift away from him. Immediately he stopped, pushing back the fabric covering her and bending his head to her breast to lave her abused flesh, a soft, soothing sound rumbling in his throat.

He took her nipple into his mouth, sucking on it and then releasing it. She found herself watching as he repeated the action, eyelids drifting closed, his face a picture of rapt concentration and pleasure that was as arousing as the sensations his mouth was creating. She knew with a sense of bewilderment that her body had started preparing itself for what would come. He eased her over on her back, kissing his way down her abdomen to the waistband of her pants, slewing around at the waist, going to his knees, his half undone jeans slipping down his hips as he rubbed his cheek against the front of her pants, his chin grazing her clitoris. The silk clung to her because she was wet there and he did it again, much more deliberately this time, pressing a small kiss to the slightly damp spot that was forming while he found the button over her left hip and the zipper, releasing both and pushing the fabric out of his way.

He sat up then, no longer playful. Grabbing the open sides of her blouse, he pulled her up to sit and then pushed the blouse off her shoulders. It fell to her elbows and he would have left it there, trapping her arms as he pulled her pants off her legs, but she finished taking it off, drawing her knees up to her chest when she was naked. The air conditioning in this hotel room didn’t run as cold as the one at the Marriott had or the room wasn’t sealed as tightly. There was a hint of humidity in the air.

She wrapped her arms around her legs as he sat in front of her, his legs open on either side of hers, bent at the knee. She could have used his knees for arm rests and found herself looking down at one of his feet, curving in, almost touching her hip. Oz had feet like a duck, with a narrow heel and a wide instep and toes that were almost pretty. He had let her stencil piggies on his toes once in the pre-Xander betrayal phase of their relationship.

Spike’s feet were longer and narrow with a well-developed arch. His second toe was slightly longer than his great toe. He was still wearing his jeans. That figured. She was naked. He was not. Not that she wanted him to be naked, but equally naked. It was an issue of parity, not nakedness.

He picked up her injured foot to make sure her toe didn’t get squashed under him. “What are you thinking about?”

“Feet,” it was a more neutral topic than equal nakedness.

“Feet?”

She nodded. “Your feet aren’t hideous. No obvious deformities. No bunions. No disgusting toenails. Feet. The humble and unattractive body part.”

She shot him a quick, uneasy look. “Don’t say anything.” It was the sort of conversation that she might have had with Oz or Buffy or Xander and she felt odd and stupid about starting it with Spike, like she had inadvertently opened the drapes on something private.

She looked a little sad and a distance had crept into her eyes that had a lot to do with the fact that she was avoiding his eyes and anything else she deemed unwise to look at.

His hands cupped her ankles. “It won’t be much longer,” he speculated. “They’ll find the Gem of Amara and we’ll meet somewhere to exchange barbed comments and precious artifacts,” he leaned forward, lifting her hair to check the bruise on her forehead. “Let’s make the most of it. We can consider it a holiday.”

She looked skeptical. “A holiday?”

“Sure,” he found himself subject to her scrutiny.

“Isn’t your whole life pretty much one big holiday? It’s not like you have a job you need to get away from,” she pointed out. “Which explains Angelus wanting to destroy the world. He has that in common with Angel. Needing to have a mission and a job. Destroy the world, save the innocent. It’s all the same quixotic quest thing that is the unifying theme.”

He didn’t gape at her. He was a vampire, and evil, and not easily surprised—and how the fuck had he not noticed that? She was right. Good or evil, Angel made a job out of everything. He grinned. “That must be why he hates me so much. No work ethic,” he shifted his hands up her calves and watched her squirm a little as the back of his hands brushed the back of her thighs. It was a ticklish squirm. “What do you want to do?”

“Sleep in my own bed. Meet Buffy for mochas. Go to the beach and sit under a big umbrella with a book. Go to the Bronze,” she shrugged.

“Oh, come on,” he urged. “You can do better than that,” he coaxed. “What do you want to do?”” His hands returned to her ankles, gripping them lightly before tugging one ankle up, disturbing the modest arrangement of her legs. Scooting forward, he moved her ankle to the other side of his hip.

There was a flash of consternation on her face as she worked it out in her head like a series of moves on a chess board, calculating precisely when she would be sitting face to face with him, nearly in his lap, with her legs open wide enough to give him unimpeded access to her. The corners of her lips turned down and color climbed into her cheeks.

He ran his hand up her leg to where her arm was still wrapped around it just below her knee. Her pale upper arm was dappled with light brown freckles. It was hard for him to imagine her in sunlight. With her coloring, she probably burned easily. In the dark she had an ivory and pink glow that was distinctively human but no less attractive in contrast to the bluish whiteness of his skin. He dragged his fingernails over the underside of her arm, not hard enough to scratch her, but enough to dredge a reaction that spread down her rib cage to her breasts, judging from the way she hunched her shoulders.

Smiling to himself he moved her other ankle, forcing her arms to loosen their grip on her legs. It was more or less exactly what she had anticipated and for a moment her arms lifted, hovering uncertainly, trying to figure out some position that would support her posture and make her feel less exposed. She let her arms fall between her knees, crossing above the wrist, her hands bracing on her shins.

He grinned at her. “I thought you weren’t a circus performer,” he said, mocking her contortions.

She was too pleased with her solution to do anything but shrug her shoulders. “I’m comfortable.”

He lifted up and scooted a bit closer. With her arms laced through her open legs, there wasn’t a lot of anything she deemed important that was at his disposal, but her sides were unprotected, and she was very ticklish.

A wicked gleam lit up his eyes and Willow wondered what he was up to.

A second later she figured it out when his hands came to rest on opposite sides of her rib cage. For a moment his hands simply rested on her. Then he tilted his head to one side and his fingers started moving, very slow, and sometimes fast, just grazing her skin. She reacted instinctively, starting to draw her arms in and then she stopped when she realized what he was doing.

She gritted her teeth, concentrating on the increasingly smug smirk on his face when she twitched as his fingers found a particularly sensitive spot.

He flexed his fingers and she sucked in a startled breath, flinching. He laughed. Bastard. In a way, he wasn’t very good at it. Xander could have reduced her to breathless laughter and pleading in less than ninety seconds. His swirly, feathering, fingertip technique wasn’t laughter inducing, but it was making her skin prickle and the sensation was spreading, like an itch, working its way up her chest, making her close her eyes, gritting her teeth as the sensation crawled up her spine, to her scalp.

“Argh!” she let go of her legs, wriggling as she pushed his hands away from her.

In the next second she was on her back with the quilted polyester bedspread under her, which she took advantage of by moving to rub her goose pimpled skin against the bedspread. Spike loomed over her, settling his weight partially between her legs and making an appreciative sound that made her open her eyes and glare at him. He moved his hips suggestively and one of the buttons from his half undone jeans pinched her.

“Ow!” she complained, loudly, putting more into it than the actual discomfort that was felt. The goosepimply feeling was doing odd things to her. The weight of him pressing down between her legs made her want to wrap her legs around him. It was a horrifying thought.

He was holding both of her wrists in his hands, on either side of her head. He leaned forward to nibble on the underside of her arm. “Faker,” he sounded amused. “You get pitchy when something really hurts,” he told her. His eyes drifted over her naked chest, lingering on the small scabs on her breast where he had bit her a few days ago.

She saw where his attention had drifted and squirmed to shift herself out from under him, using her feet on the mattress for leverage. The seams of his half-unbuttoned jeans rubbed against her, applying friction where the lower half of her body craved contact. He bent his head to the spot and kissed it, running his tongue over the scab, chucking when she shuddered in fear and revulsion.

“Calm down,” he ordered. “I’m not going to bite you,” he lifted his head. She had her eyes squeezed shut and her head was thrown back as she tried to work her way backward, away from him.

His little lecture on the feeding habits of vampires might have been too effective, he decided. He meant to scare some good sense into her, but he had just scared her. He frowned, relaxing his grip on her wrists. With an inward shrug, he adjusted his position to let his elbows take most of his weight and let go of her wrists. The tempting curve of her neck beckoned, and he started kissing her throat. That got her attention.

Her hands went to his shoulders to try to push him away from her. He lifted his head to look at her. “Despite your efforts, pet, I’ve fed and I’m not feeling particularly hungry, so you are safe at the moment,” he told her.

Wary skepticism, a flash of something, like she had an idea of when he had fed, and he was only confirming her surmise, and a hint of relief followed by appalled recognition of the relief, worked their way across her face. She was so easily read that it should have been boring, but he found himself fascinated by the expressiveness of her face.

“I knew it,” she said, sounding resigned.

He wondered what she thought she knew. Her eyes had gone unfocused, and he thought that she was probably going back over the evening to when she thought that he had fed. He cupped her cheek, touching her lower lip with his thumb to loosen the grim line of it. He thought about asking her when and who she thought he had eaten. It was like sharing the kill, savoring it all over again, but she wasn’t a vampire and she wouldn’t be able to appreciate it. It was probably better if she didn’t know.

Her eyes were getting a little glassy. She was going to start crying again. He slid his hand under her neck, his fingers making small, soothing circles at the base of her skull. Telling her that she made him work for it was not going to make her feel better. He kissed the corner of her mouth and went back to her neck. It was a pretty neck. He worried at the scabbed-over bite mark on her neck with his lips and tongue, feeling the tension in her body increase with her heart rate. It was going to leave an unmistakable scar. He had mixed feelings about that. He really didn’t care for the notion of some human walking about with a bite mark of his making on their throat. Especially a bite mark like this one. He had bit her with only one real thought in mind—to subdue her.

That was part of how vampires kill. That first hard bite usually was enough to put a victim into shock, punching through an artery to use the natural processes of the circulatory system to get them to bleed out into your mouth. It wasn’t complicated, though when he was first taught to hunt, he made a mess of it like Harmony had. If he had meant to kill her he would have bit her again, seeking the artery that he had missed and it would have been quick.

A sobbing breath vibrated in her throat near his lips and he stroked her face and her hair, blindly. “Sssh,” he soothed. Yesterday she had been different. He hadn’t had to do anything to get her to cooperate with him. He showed her what he wanted when she faltered, moving her hand to the base of his cock and showing her how to stroke him when she took him into the warm cavern of her mouth for what was possibly one of the most inept blow jobs he had ever participated in. His hands had supported her upper body and guided her uncertain rhythm when she climbed on top of him.

He hadn’t given a lot of thought to her mood or what prompted her to be more aggressive. He had taken it at face value. Now he wondered what had been going through her head. What had made her so different yesterday and how much was it bothering her today? It made him want to stop and talk to her, which was such an odd impulse that he found himself frowning, annoyed with himself and her.

He lifted his head to look at her. She wasn’t crying. She was staring at the ceiling with a blank expression, from the look of it, trying to ignore what was happening. That wouldn’t do.

He sat up, looking down at her until a flicker of emotion crossed her face. Impatience? Her gaze shifted to him. Ah. Curiosity. Her arms moved, cautiously. She was testing the idea of covering herself somehow, to see if he would stop her. He finished unbuttoning his jeans, pushing them down his hips, removing them one leg at a time to kick them off the end of the bed while she got her arms under her and carefully pushed back away from him, feeling for the edge of the bedspread behind her with one hand.

Her gaze left him for a moment to look over her shoulder at the arrangement of linens half untucked around the flat pillows from their earlier rolling around on the bed. She bent her left leg at the knee to push against the mattress, nearing her goal.

Ignoring her odd behavior, he grabbed a handful of the bedspread on his side and tugged it down. The sheet was tucked in tightly under a thin blanket and he loosened that too. That got her moving. She slid in between the sheets with a sound that he could only classify as relieved. He got into bed beside her, turning off the light on his side of the bed, leaning across her to turn off the light on her side.

She rolled over on her side, near the edge of the bed, twisting the pillow under her around to pin it between her shoulder and her neck, drawing her knees up towards her chest. He frowned at her, trying to figure out how to interpret her behavior. He knew that he had frightened her. That had been the idea. It was either frighten her or beat her and he thought the later would create more trouble than it was worth, but seeing her huddled up like he had beaten her made him wonder if he hadn’t been wrong about that.

He lifted the sheet and blanket a bit to resettle them over him and the scent of her inside the sheets reached him. Clean from her bath earlier and slightly musky from arousal. He pushed her legs apart under the covers, feeling her take a deep breath, shivering a little as his hand moved over the back of her legs. When she started to clamp her legs together, he slapped the back of her thigh, just hard enough to sting.

She froze, tensing. He ran his hand over her thigh, eyes narrowing in the dark. He could see perfectly well. Her face was in profile to him, slightly behind her shoulder. When he slapped her, her eyes flew open and her lips parted, a soft sound slipping out. A little intrigued by the reaction, he nudged her legs apart, maneuvering his knee in between them. His hand slid between her legs to press up, his fingers spreading her open. He closed his eyes, resting his forehead on her back as he concentrated on how she felt to him.

She was wet. Not just damp, but ripely wet. No wonder she had been so anxious to dive beneath the covers. He found her clitoris and rubbed it, working his fingertips back and forth over it, feeling her arms tighten around the pillow she was hugging, feeling her fight her reaction to him.

He pushed her legs further apart, kneeling between them, one arm curving around her waist at the edge of the bed to keep her from falling off while his fingers found her clit, the other massaging her ass as the head of his cock butted up against her.

Experimenting with a theory that was slowly forming, he slapped her ass and pushed the head of his cock into her at the same time. She pushed back against him and he chuckled. “Aren’t you full of surprises,” he marveled. “Been wanting it a little rough?” he crooned to her rubbing her ass where he had slapped her. “Want me to do it again?”

“I hate you,” she muttered resentfully. “I really, really hate you.”

“Uh-huh,” his hands moved to her hips, holding her still as he deepened his penetration, eyes almost closing as he arched his back, taking a deep, unnecessary breath at the feel of her all warm around him. Her knee started to slip off the edge of the mattress and he caught it. “Shift over a bit,” he instructed.

“No,” she let go of the pillow to grab the mattress. “I’m not participating in this,” she announced, sounding a little breathless.

“Oh, you aren’t?” he snorted. “Just going to lay there, and take it? What’s wrong, Red? Why don’t you close your eyes and pretend that it’s dog boy doing you?” he taunted. “He’s probably all ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when you really want him to tell you to get on your knees, so he can fuck you harder.”

“No!’ she gasped, flinching as he smacked her ass again and then thrust into her deep, hitting bottom in her with enough force that for a second she stopped breathing as her abdominal muscles cramped.

“No?” he mocked, “I thought that was what you did when we fucked. Close your eyes and think about—“

“Stop it!” her voice cracked a little.

He withdrew from her, looming over her, one hand fisting in her hair. “No,” he spat, an inch from her face. “Quit playing the martyr. It doesn’t suit you. It’s none of my fucking business what you are thinking about, or what you care about, or why you do what you do. Tell me to sod off or go to hell. Grow a spine.”

She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to block him out. “Just do what you are going to do and leave me alone.”

He frowned at her, gentling his grip on her hair. “Too wordy and not very convincing,” he critiqued. “Try again.”

He had a tiny bit of warning in the way she tensed and then she let loose with her elbow catching him right below the collarbone. It probably hurt her worse than it hurt him but it didn’t slow her down in the least. “Don’t you ever mention him again,” she hissed at him.

He smiled. She was so much more appealing when she wasn’t cringing. “That’s better,” he allowed, grabbing her around the waist when she almost fell off the edge of the bed. He flopped over on his back, taking her with him. Now that she was mad she was ready to follow up, and was pushing away from him. It bore very little significant resemblance to fighting from his perspective. Fending her off with one hand, he made himself comfortable sitting against the headboard.

He gave her a slight push back and reached for the open beer bottle that he left on the table. It whipped across the table before he could grab it and shattered against the wall. “Bloody hell,” he sighed, frowning at her in annoyance. “Christ. I should have just let you cringe.”

The bedspread was half off the bed and Willow grabbed a piece of it to cover herself, pushing her hair out of her face.

The scowl was slightly softened by a hint of a smile as he watched her trying to catch her breath. He got up and went to the mini-refrigerator to get another beer and a soda for her. He came back to the bed and used a corner of the sheet to open the twist top beer, gesturing with it to the space beside him. “Come here,” he said.

Her eyebrows lifted in an expression of almost comical disbelief. He took a swallow of the beer and held up her soda. “Come here, Willow,” he repeated.

When she didn’t move, he shook his head and set the beer and the soda down. “Don’t even think about it,” he warned her. She was sitting on the bedspread. He grabbed two handfuls of it and tugged it and her across the bed, wrapping his arm around her neck before she could scamper off.

“Settle down,” he scolded. “Feeling a bit more back to normal?” he asked as if nothing had happened.

“No,” she blustered. “This isn’t normal.”

“I beg to differ,” he handed her the soda. “This is more direct. That little performance—beat me, because I’d rather be beaten?” he rolled his eyes. “Please. If you’d rather be beaten, we could have gone that route and I wouldn’t have given up a bloody thing or considered it a loss,” he tapped the bottom of her can of soda with his beer bottle in a toast. “And, I’d have been wrong,” he added.

She fumbled with the tab top of the can, looking confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“No, you probably don’t,” he concluded with a small smile, using the arm around her neck to settle her in under his arm. He kissed her forehead. She was warm and a little sweaty. “Can’t explain it. I don’t understand it myself, but—“ he shook his head, smoothing her hair back. “Hurt you a bit, did I? I felt you flinch,” he tilted his head to look at her face. “I suppose I should be more careful,” he offered.

It was sort of an apology. Willow stared at him for a moment and then reached out and pinched one of his nipples hard, twisting it. “That hurt too,” she told him.

He started laughing around a mouthful of beer. “Do it again,” he invited, wiping his mouth off on the back of his hand. “Harder.”

“Uh—no!” she took refuge in her soda, trying not to feel completely freaked out by his reaction. She had been more or less at the beginning of a catalog of rotten things he had done to her. “But if I had duct tape and the handcuffs—“

“Tease,” he complained. He slanted a look at her and sighed. “I know,” he said in a tone that bespoke dire consequences, “payback is a bitch, sweetness.”

“I could leave you handcuffed to a chair, with your mouth duct taped, and I’d cast a glamour on you to make you look like a circus clown and I’d leave you at a party with small children and, and puppies!”

He shook his head, disappointed in her. “That’s not payback, that’s just ridiculous,” he said, and then frowned. “I don’t dislike small children and puppies just because I’m evil.”

“Circus clown,” she repeated.

His lips twitched. “I’ll give you the clown part. It’s moderately creative and humiliating.”

“Or, it could be a pimple, like on your forehead, or some other place like that, and kind of gross, and see at first, you wouldn’t even know it. You’d just notice that the other vampires would be staring at it, but you can’t see your reflection, so you wouldn’t be able to figure out why.”

He kissed the top of her head. “That’s my girl,” he lifted his knee to drape his wrist over, holding the beer bottle lightly by the neck. The Best Western color scheme was brown and tan. Fake walnut veneers and fake Remington prints. It was a little bit too much a part of the mortal world for him. Things that people abandoned were more interesting to him. He tried to imagine it a bit more faded and moldy. He drew a bit of her hair between his fingers. “Here’s an idea that has probably never occurred to you,” he gestured to the room. “You are the prettiest and most interesting thing in this room.”

She looked around. “Wow. I beat the television?”

He tilted his head towards her. “It’s not on, is it?”

She nodded. “Good point,” she toyed with the tab top on her soda with her thumbnail. “We are having another one of those moments? Where the cartoon characters step out of the frame and takes a break, waiting for the cartoonists to draw the next story board?”

He nodded, “Something like that,” he agreed. “What are you planning to study?” He looked over at her and saw that she wasn’t following the topic change. “College, pet?”

“Oh,” she looked mildly startled that he would ask. “I don’t know. Computers? Maybe something in the sciences because I’m good at that. I thought that I might want to teach. After our computer teacher was killed, I taught her class, and I think I was pretty good at it.”

He finished his beer and set the bottle aside, finding her watching him warily. He took the soda can from her and set it on the table next to the bed with his empty bottle. “No flying objects, no fighting?” he proposed.

She gave him a slight nod. He turned to her, lifting her chin with his fingertips. “It’s not all bad, and I expect that bothers you more than anything else. But, I do think that you are amazing and that you’ll tuck all this away because it was never as important as why you did it,” he closed his eyes for a second. “And they’ll never know what you had to do or how hard it was, but I will.”

His eyes opened and she saw something there that made her throat go tight. “I’ll know, and I won’t forget,” he promised.

The idea that he wouldn’t forget should have been awful, and she knew that he was wrong. She would shove this to some dark corner, and like all monsters in dark corners she would feel its eyes on her.

~Part: 30~

It isn’t at all what Angel has already started to suspect and set aside to examine later since he believes that it isn’t important. His priorities are to keep Spike from getting the Gem of Amara, keep him from terrorizing Buffy, her friends, and her mother, and rescuing Willow—exactly in that order. He’s known for days, he’s known since San Francisco, that Spike has added despoiling naïve girls to his repertoire. It has more to do with his frame of reference for Willow. Fondness for Willow had crept in sometime between the appearance of her doppelganger and his departure from Sunnydale. When he thought she was dead, when he saw her at the Bronze, he had felt something that he recognized as sorrow chased by the regret that either he or Buffy would have to destroy what was left of her.

When they traded the Box of Gavroc for her, he had known that it was foolish and inevitable. It was as much about what Buffy was as it was about what Willow meant to them. She was a hero, and heros don’t abandon the innocent for a tactical advantage. He recognized that he was able to be pragmatic about his priorities because it wasn’t his call. It was Buffy’s, and her choice would always be to save the innocent and deal with the consequences as they unfolded.

If it were his choice, his priorities would probably change. He would still see all of the options and the need to eliminate any possibility of Spike getting his hands on the Gem of Amara, but he would probably save Willow if push came to shove and his choices narrowed down to one or the other.

Thinking back on it, he’s sure that they’ve been intimate. The curiously neutral phrase makes him frown at himself, but he tracks it patiently back to Spike’s admiring tone of voice when they talked the night that Willow almost got away from him in San Francisco. He can’t hurt her too badly. There is too much risk involved. He can’t drain her and turn her, at least not yet. That leaves other forms of manipulation to control her, and vampires express domination through violence, death, or sex.

Guilt clawed at him. How many nameless women had he seduced and killed? Raped and killed? Drusilla stood in their place, an undead monument to his sins. So did Spike, who was in his vampire adolescence, his novice, his student.

~~~*~~~

It wasn’t like that at all. If anyone particularly informed Spike’s perspective about Willow, it was Drusilla, not Angel. He had spent a century taking care of Drusilla, providing what she needed, when she needed it, despite her inability to articulate her needs in any way that was consistent or coherent. Where Drusilla’s influence ebbed, Spike’s own rejection of Angel and Darla began. For nearly twenty years he had been the object of their disapproval and derision and he had never stopped refining what they had taught him in the miserable and vivid crucible of his formative years.

Between the two of them they had fucked up everything they had ever touched.

He felt no particular need to change Willow. Controlling her, enough to keep her where he needed her, was an issue, but beyond that, he didn’t need to smash her into tiny bits and pieces, and he was able to appreciate the sheer novelty that she represented. He had hurt her, deliberately, more than once, and she was expecting more of the same while he kissed her. They were laying on their sides, facing each other, a position that she had been orchestrated into assuming on the cusp of her non-participation decision.

Sex was still new to her, but kissing and petting were not. Kissing and petting were familiar terrain that had probably gotten short shrift after she and her honey started screwing.

He had turned on the television while they were taking what she described as a break in her own odd terms. There was just enough sound, for her, to drown out her own sounds. It started with the change in her breathing, shading towards rapid and shallow, with little sighs and startled sounds slipping past her lips. Her lips were kiss swollen and sensitive from kisses that grew forceful and then backed off to a slow exploration of the changing taste and texture of her mouth. The mouthwash she had used was reduced to a faintly spicy complement. He felt her shiver as he used the tip of his tongue to trace her lower lip.

Her eyes were closed, but her eyelashes fluttered. He stroked her soft cheek and smoothed his thumb over her eyebrow and her eyes almost opened while he let her catch her breath and then shut again when he nibbled on her upper lip while his hand moved to the nape of her neck, fingers sliding into her hair, silky from the conditioner that she had used. The strands had a heavy texture that he recognized belatedly as coming from hair color. That had surprised him a little, though he realized that the hints had been there for him to take. The nearly uniform dark auburn color suited her, but it wasn’t natural.

Her natural hair color probably ranged to red and she had taken it darker.

He kissed her jaw and nibbled on her earlobe, hearing the little catch that was developing in her throat, just a sensation away from a moan. He wasn’t bored. He wasn’t in a hurry. The smooth space behind her ear beckoned and he licked it to the downy edge of her hairline, feeling her small breasts make light contact with his chest.

She backed away the tiniest bit and he explored her spine, bringing her back with the pressure of his hand. Her neck was sensitive. He had gone there twice, feeling her alarm and confusion as she tensed, and he had backed off. Savoring the notion of taking one of her nipples into his mouth, he licked and sucked on her neck and she froze and then shuddered, lifting her chin and tilting her head back.

He smiled. Tasting her, biting her was in the forefront of his mind, but he pushed it back, knowing that it would frighten her again. He scooted down in the bed, running his hand over her ass and thigh to the back of her knee, pulling it up over his hip and holding it there as she rolled a little more into him, eyes opening as she felt his cock against her abdomen, leaking copious amounts of cool, clear fluid.

She stared at him, absorbing his expression. A small amount of friction and contact with her body made him close his eyes and lick his lower lip. When he opened his eyes a crooked smile twisted his lips. “Your skin feels like pudding,” he said in a voice that was recognizably husky.

If he knew what she sounded like when she was aroused, she knew the same things about him. His voice was soft, heavy, and slightly deeper. She watched his tongue slide over his lips to be caught briefly as it returned, between his teeth. His arm cradled her thigh as he rocked against her.

Her nose wrinkled. Pudding? She felt like pudding? For some reason this struck her as funny.

He saw the gleam of humor in her eyes. “What’s so funny?”

She shrugged. “Pudding.”

It did sound funny. “Soft and creamy and delicious,” he nibbled on her chin. “I could eat you all up,” there was an answering glint of humor in his eyes as his hand reached the open space between her legs, his fingertips lightly stroking her.

She felt a corresponding shiver of anticipation that made her wince inside. It nibbled with sharp teeth at the languor that the hushed sound of his voice fostered. He had eaten her all up before and he was unforgivably good at it. She wanted to get back to the place in her head that she had found after they had left Sacramento, when it was all about what she had to do and not about the dread of what she was going to do.

With that in mind, she touched him, starting above his hip where her knee rested. She didn’t have an objective. Not like the other night. It had been simple. She wanted to drown out the false impressions of kindness and comfort that he had been doling out. She wanted to obliterate the feeling of having failed and having been failed.

He didn’t seem to notice that she was touching him now. She was used to being mocked for her complexion, likened once by Cordelia to the underbelly of a fish. He was whiter, or paler and against his skin she could see the contrast in the undertones. Pink for her, and blue for him. Girl. Boy. Except not. Human. Vampire. Cool fingers touching her, fingertips insinuating themselves between her legs, between the lips of her cunt. Her attention switched from her own hand to his face to gauge his intentions, and his hand moved away from her, stroking the back of her leg as he leaned in to kiss her, and then paused, millimeters from her lips.

His hips moved, bumping against her almost playfully. “Kiss me?”

She eyed him warily. They had a bargain, an arrangement, an agreement, and kissing him was part of it. She started with his upper lip. The hand attached to the arm that was lying near her head lifted to cup the back of her head, but there was no smooshing together of lips. He didn’t hold her there or press her lips harder against him through the back of her head. He just cupped the back of her head, his thumb moving lazily to stroke her hair. She meant to keep her kisses neat. Small neat kisses that wouldn’t induce heavy breathing or thrusting hips.

She wasn’t sure when he started kissing her back, mimicking her. She caught his lower lip between hers and ran her tongue over it. He made an appreciative sound and did the same to her upper lip. After a while she lost track of who did what first and how it was copied. There were advantages to making out with a vampire. He didn’t accidentally or inadvertently breathe into her mouth. When her breathing became too erratic and she started to feel too closed in, he backed off, stroking her back, and scattering kisses over her face.

The uneven way her skin heated up fascinated him. Against his lips and the tip of his tongue, the crest of her cheek, her lips, and her forehead were warmest. Her small straight nose was cooler. His chin inadvertently grazed the hollow of her cheek and she flinched a little at the slight raspiness of his skin. He started to apologize for it and caught the flash of curiosity in her eyes. He smiled, threading his fingers through the hair under his hand.

“Let me guess. You’re about to blurt out some question about how often I shave. Or how vampires shave without mirrors, or why does hair grow if I’m dead?”
She looked startled and a little guilty.

“Hmm. Everyday. Very carefully, and I haven’t a clue. It’s bloody inconvenient.” He ran his hand along her leg. “How often do you shave your legs?”

She frowned at him. It was an odd question. She didn’t sound like that, did she? “Once a week,” she supplied the answer.

“Sunday?”

She shook her head. “Friday.”

Of course, Friday. That would be a date night for her. He untangled his hand from her hair and used it to prop up his head. Her hair was finger combed and tousled and her face was flushed. His gaze dropped to her breasts, one half obscured where it was between the mattress and his chest, the other pulled by gravity toward the center of her chest, smooth and full across the top, her half erect nipple lushly inviting.

She scooted back a bare inch. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Yeah?” his eyebrows lifted.

“I’m all sticky,” she elaborated.

“Is that all?” he rolled them over, easing her down on her back.

“Uh, yeah, but it’s kind of gross,” she complained, looking at him to see if he was offended.

He trailed his fingers through the fluid that was wetting her skin, carrying them down to the curls that modestly veiled her cunt. His fingers cupped her firmly, the heel of his hand rotating over her clitoris.

“What a little beauty you are,” he murmured. “So clean and pretty.” Two fingertips pressed against the opening of her body. “Spread your legs wider,” he coaxed, kissing the corner of her mouth, his tongue flicking lazily over the crease there while his fingers moved with his hand. “You can have a nice bath later.”

She opened her legs the tiniest bit for him and he kissed her again. “More,” he insisted. The tips of his fingers pressed into her. He hung over her, balanced on one arm, looking like he could stay there indefinitely.

When she opened her legs wider his fingers slid into her. His lips brushed hers, just enough to divide her attention and remind her that the wisest course was to concentrate on something else, and baring that to do something that would make him move this along to its inevitable conclusion because what he was doing felt too much like intimacy and they were not intimate. They were just having sex.

He hadn’t taken a human for a lover in decades and those relationships had been fleeting. There had been a girl in New York with shiny brown hair and sticky strawberry lip gloss that he had been taken with for the length of a summer. It had gone badly, even from his point of view, and she was buried under the foundation of a building in Manhattan. That wasn’t going to happen to Willow. Even in the unlikely event that that the Slayer ultimately refused to follow through on the trade, leaving Willow dead was no longer an option that was worth giving even fleeting consideration to.

He kissed the corner of her eye when she squeezed her eyes shut. “You feel so good,” he crooned to her, wanting to smile at her effort to block him out. She was so stubborn. He liked that about her. It reminded him of Dru. Insane as she was, Drusilla didn’t lack for her own set of stubbornly-held ideas about herself. It was the quality that was similar, not the underlying set of principles that they clung to. If Drusilla was a brave, cunning, resourceful Princess, Willow was Cinderella informed by skepticism. In a ball gown and glass slippers she would be aware of the grit under her fingernails and the pinch of unyielding shoes.

His fingers moved in and out of her, luxuriating in the warmth. It still felt a bit off to him, but that was the charm of the mismatch of her. She was clashing colors and strange ways of thinking, goodness uncomfortably wedded to pragmatism, warmth and living flesh, sensuality and a guilty conscience. A part of her would pick at this for the rest of her life, looking for a meaning in it as well as wondering how she could have improved on what she had done.

His thumb moved lazily over her clitoris while she bit her lower lip and struggled to be still and quiet.

It wasn’t like anything that Angel imagined.

On any other day, Spike would have been tempted to make her open her eyes and acknowledge what was happening, but he was satisfied for the moment with kissing her neck when it extended as her head fell back, pressed into the pillow, moving from side to side in an unspoken denial and listening to her breathe faster as he nuzzled the flat, smooth space above and between her breasts.

There were things he wanted to tell her, but they could wait on the possibility that there would be a time in the future that she would understand them, and her breasts were there, under his lips, waiting to be appreciated given the way she was unknowingly rolling her shoulders into the mattress as the tension in her body grew. What she didn’t grasp was that by denying him the sounds that he had come to enjoy, she was internalizing what she was feeling, shutting herself up inside of it where there was no escape.

Behind her tightly closed eyelids, Willow saw flashes of colored light. There was a corner of the bedspread caught under her shoulder, a little oasis of bunched up batting and polyester. The sheet under her was coarse and stiff with the detergent that was used to clean it. Her head still hurt, or if it didn’t, she was sure that punching herself in the head might help. The voice in her head that woke her up from nightmares, sniped at her now to open her eyes.

The lamps at each side of the bed were still on, and the sudden flood of light made her flinch, blinking as her eyes adjusted. In her field of vision there was the beige blandness of the room and Spike. He had left the television on. He had told her that she was the prettiest and most interesting thing in the room before he had turned the television on. She understood what he meant now. The room was meant to be functional, and if the walls had been painted black the contrast would have been more noticeable, but no less stark once it was seen. She watched his shoulders shift slightly.

His eyes were closed. He seemed different to her with his eyes closed, the sheer force of his personality veiled behind eyelids. His tongue curled around her nipple. The sensation was a complement to the slow circular motion of his thumb on her clitoris. Stupid brain telling her to open her eyes. If she looked down—as soon as the thought came, she found herself peeking—in the open space between their bodies she could see his arm, bent at the elbow angling down to his hand between her legs and his cock, bobbing gently as his lips plucked at her nipple, tugging on it.

He gave it a sharp nip with his teeth and kissed away the slight sting before lifting his head, looking at her with heavy lidded eyes. With a lingering stroke of his fingers that curled as he withdrew from her, he found her hand and brought it to his lips, nibbling on her fingertips and his own indiscriminately.

He wasn’t talking. She frowned. He was always talking. His eyelids drifted down again as his tongue rubbed along the inside of her index finger, his fingers spreading hers. The tip of his tongue traced the webbing between her index and middle fingers.

“What are you doing?”

The bewilderment in her voice made him smile. She was full of guile. She had a half dozen carefully constructed aspects that she relied on and when you pried her away from them, there was this, the slight tremor in her voice, the uncertainty, and the curiosity that made her ask a question with an answer that should have been obvious to anyone with the most meager intelligence.

“Licking your fingers,” he murmured.

Her lips pursed at that. “Why?

He grinned. “Because they are attached to your hand,” he teased, turning her hand over to run his tongue over her palm down to her wrist. He pressed a kiss there.

Her expression turned wary but there was a hint of humor that was bubbling up to the surface. Her nose wrinkled. “You aren’t going to go Gomez Addams on me with fake endearments in foreign languages that are really bad names and slobbery kissing, are you?”

One eyebrow lifted quizzically. “Why would I do that?”

To be mean, she thought, but she kept that to herself, wishing that he would be mean without the prompting. Instead he straightened her arm, nuzzling the inside of her elbow before guiding her arm over his shoulder, holding her hand briefly at the nape of his neck. When he was satisfied that she would keep it there he let go of it and started playing with her hair, smoothing his thumb over her cheekbone.

Their eyes met, hers worried and apprehensive. “This is confusing,” she pointed out, her hand moving on his neck, as if she was going to let it fall.

He felt her fingers pinching little bits of the hair at the nape of his neck, tugging on them as she rubbed the short hair between her fingers.

“Massively,” he agreed, shifting on one knee until he was between her legs and then resting, his abdomen pressing against the cradle of her open legs. His elbows balanced his weight off of her, freeing his hands to stroke her face and neck. His attention shifted to her neglected breast.

He kissed the underside of it. Her heartbeat was slow and steady, matching the way she was breathing. Her fingers slid deeper into his hair, and he sighed against her skin, enjoying the scratch of her fingernails against his scalp. His fingers traced the outside edge of her ear and she turned her face, seeking his hand, kissing the base of his thumb. It was confusing. There were moments when she irritated the hell out of him, and other moments when he knew that he should be irritated with her and wasn’t. He applied his lips and tongue to her nipple, sucking it into a hard, rosy peak until her fingers tightened in his hair while she sucked on the base of his thumb, like she was trying to gag herself with his hand.

He moved against her, rocking his abdomen against her, feeling her squirm and shift under him, trying to get more contact with him, not less. She tried to wrap one leg around him and her foot landed on his ass, her toes curling into the shape under her foot.

Testing his theory about what she was doing with his hand, he crawled back up her body, freeing his hand with a twist of his wrist and covering her mouth with it as the head of his cock butted up against her. Her eyes opened and with a minor adjustment of the angle of his hips he was in her, feeling her awkwardly lurch into his body, surging against him, a strangled sound trapped under his hand.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he urged, feeling her shifting under him in a frustrated kind of way when he was inside her and unmoving.

She grabbed his arm to pull his hand away from her mouth and took a deep breath, and then another as she bent her knees, tucking them in against his sides as her ankles crossed at the base of his spine. She rocked her hips under him, her face a mask of intense concentration. He kissed the corner of her mouth, letting her catch her breath.

“I’m a bad person,” she whispered.

“No.” His fingers stroked her hair back from her forehead.

She shifted under him again, trying to get him to move. “I’m terrible.”

“I’m terrible,” he corrected. “You’re just human.”

“They would hate me, if they knew that I was like this.”

“Sssh,” he soothed. “They aren’t going to know,” he promised. “I know what you are like, and I don’t hate you.” His shoulders flexed as he withdrew from her, slowly, his eyes holding hers.

Her teeth were worrying her lower lip and he gently dislodged it, kissing it as he sank back into her, shivering a little at the sensation, willing to get lost inside how she felt to him.

He held her face in his hands and kissed her eyelids shut, catching a tear that slid out of the corner of her eye, slowly working them both to a climax, feeling her slim arms around him after she came to a shuddering, quaking orgasm, holding him, petting his shoulders and hair, while he sought his own fulfillment.

He could have kept going, or started over, but she looked exhausted, so after he got up to get a beer and a cigarette, after she came back from purging herself of their mingled bodily fluids in the bathroom, he watched her curl up on her side, facing away from him and he pulled the bedspread up over her bare shoulder. He thought she had fallen asleep when she spoke.

“I don’t think I hate you anymore either,” her voice cracked a little.

There were ways he could have answered that that would have reminded her that she did hate him. He ran his tongue over his lower lip, tasting nicotine and beer and her, looking down at his body ruefully.

“You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”

For a second she had lost him, and then he remembered warning her about how long he could feed on her and keep her alive. He wouldn’t do that to anyone. It was an enormous amount of work with a slim return, but really, the idea of doing that to her was almost obscene no matter how effective it was as a threat.

He picked at the label on the beer bottle with his thumbnail, aware that she was wondering if he would answer her.

“What do you really want to know, Willow?”

She turned back toward him, looking at him over her shoulder. “If they can’t find it, are you going to kill me?”

He took at deep breath. Fuck. “Probably,” his eyes narrowed. “Eventually, I would.”

She stared at him. “Eventually?” Her tone picked at the word.

He tangled his hand in her hair, pulling her toward him, a slow smile curving his lips. “Eventually,” he repeated as she swatted at the hand tugging on her hair while she obeyed his unspoken demand to move closer to him. He let go of her hair and wrapped his arm around her waist to pull her against his side. Her hand landed on his chest to keep from sprawling across him.

As soon as his arm left her waist she started to pull away from him, reaching for the bedspread to cover up. He shook his head and brought her back, settling her against his chest and tugging the bedspread up over her. He kissed her forehead. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not planning on killing you anytime soon,” he admitted. “You’ll probably have time to work your way through your reading list.”

“Are you serious?”

She sounded so dumbfounded that he was moved to chuckle. “You don’t think that I’m going to give you back without getting the Gem of Amara, do you? If they don’t find it this week or next month or even next year, I’ll still have you. Time is something I have in abundance.”

His arm curled around her as he brought the beer bottle to his lips. She watched his throat work as he swallowed. “But I don’t,” she said, feeling oddly detached.

“You don’t,” his tone was warm, even tender. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you put on a few more years,” he watched her eyes widen as the idea of years impacted. He had a very contradictory appreciation of time. No matter how long he lived, a year sounded like a long time, but he had lost track of more years than he could count. A few days ago the decade Georgia demanded sounded reasonable, but right now he was sure he wouldn’t have lasted ten months before he came for her.

‘Years,’ her lips formed the word, but no sound escaped.

He leaned back against the headboard, slanting a look at her. “Do you think someday we’ll laugh about this?”

He looked amused, but there was something in the way he was looking at her that made Willow realize that he was serious.

“Why?” she croaked.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. He caught her hand that was creeping up to her throat and brought it to his lips. “The rational part of my mind is telling me to send back a couple of fingers to get their attention fixed on finding the Gem of Amara.” He sucked on the tip of one of her fingers. “But, your fingers are attached to your hand, and I like your hands, and your toes, and all the bits in between.”

“So, it’s the irrational part of your mind,” from her tone he thought she was suggesting that irrationality was a big factor in his mental processes, “that’s telling you to keep me?”

“In one piece,” he corrected. “That’s the part of my thinking that is keeping you in one piece until the Slayer finds the Gem of Amara and I trade you for it.”

“And you leave? And I never see you again?”

He tilted his head back, looking at the ceiling. “The leaving part was more or less implied,” he conceded. “What else was there? No taunting your mates? No telling anyone—which is a two-way street, pet,” he warned her. “And I’m to leave your friends and family alone?” he frowned. “Hmm. Never seeing you again was not part of the deal. Possibly an oversight on your part,” he mused, seeing the way her eyes were narrowing in outrage at the implied insult to her negotiating skills.

“Leave ‘us’ alone,” she insisted. “I said us. I’m part of us,” she insisted.

Actually, he no longer remembered exactly what he agreed to, which was convenient for him. She was probably right. She wasn’t stupid or selfless enough not to have meant to include herself in his potential victims list.

He let her stew for a few more seconds, belatedly recalling her threat to curse him with a soul. Which argued against teasing her too much as well as ever letting her go.

“I’m yanking your chain, Red,” he told her, rolling his eyes. “Spike?” he adopted a breathy falsetto. “Are you going to kill me?” He snorted. “Yes, Willow. I’m going to kill you. How does five o’clock on Thursday work for you?”

He mumbled something that sounded like, ‘daft cow’ under his breath.

She still looked deeply suspicious. “Why Thursday?”

Caught swallowing the dregs from his beer, Spike had to cough to keep from choking. “Weekend, pet. If I’m going to have a coming-out party for my own baby vampire, it has to be the weekend.”

Her mouth formed an ‘O’ of surprise. That kind of ‘kill her’, not like it was an idea that he was tormenting her with, but like it was a foregone conclusion.

“But, I don’t want to be a vampire,” he mocked. “Your morbid fascination with the subject really makes me wonder about you. Let’s recap. Eventually. Not Thursday. Not next week. Not next month. Years, okay? Your toe could go septic and you’d drop first. You could trip over something and break your bloody neck, which is so likely that if there’s any thought that you should be gnawing on it is to pay closer attention to your surroundings.”

She scowled, possibly annoyed by having her finer feelings mocked. Interestingly, she didn’t run out her threat to curse him again. She was catching on to how the game was played. He set the empty beer bottle on the bedside table and switched the lamp on his side of the bed off. Holding the bedspread to cover her, she got up on her knees to move across the bed to turn the other light off.

Picking up the remote control, he started looking for something to watch while she was sleeping. He settled on a re-run of Law & Order while she rearranged her pillow to give herself something to hug while she slept, presumably to avoid a repeat of waking up hugging him. It didn’t bother him precisely. He didn’t really like being touched while he was sleeping. Still, he felt a mild twinge of regret that he had ever teased her cuddling up to him.

There wasn’t a lot of comfort in knowing that you were valuable only as a trading piece and living only as long as it suited someone else. He waited until her breathing evened out, when he was sure that she was asleep before he made himself comfortable, moving her and the pillow she had her arm wrapped around to the center of the bed and spooning in behind her.

~~~*~~~

Giles had come to his own conclusion, independent of Angel, that it was highly likely that Willow would have seen or done things over the last two weeks that would have long term consequences for her. Possibly for Oz as well, who he felt a degree of sympathy for. It was an intangible that he had not permitted himself to dwell on while other tasks occupied his attention. If she survived, his obligations as a Watcher were nonexistent. Thankfully. He was in a position to make Buffy his penultimate concern, without any obligation to his former colleagues who would gleefully descend on Sunnydale with a team of Watchers to pick apart every detail Willow could provide about Spike and his associates as nothing more than an anthropological exercise.

Giles was no longer under any obligation to provide such an opportunity, and he was surprisingly incurious about what Willow might have learned. He didn't want to know. If Oz’s imagination ran to maltreatment and abuse, Giles imagination was more richly informed by the day he spent being tortured by Angelus with Spike offering his helpful, and ultimately far more successful advice. Angelus injured him. Spike pointed the weapon that was Drusilla at him and violated his mind. Angelus might have prided himself on his ability to break his victims, but Spike wasn’t interested in breaking anything and that made him in some ways more perceptive.

His obligations to her as a significant adult involved in her life made him wonder how he allowed it to happen that she was ever involved in anything that would have made Willow the likely victim of a soulless demon. Spilt milk, but it gnawed at him at odd moments when he wondered if Willow would become part of the roll call of dead children that he would never entirely forgive himself for.

He still thought of her as a child, more so than Xander who was in all reality, far more childish, more so than Buffy who deserved to be thought of as a child for more of her adolescence than she was permitted. Xander was correct in the point that he made. She was far more mature and well adjusted than she was given credit for being.

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