Odalisque

Author: Elen

Parts: 26 - 28

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~Part: 26~

Darla could see the flicker of reflections in the crystal and flatware lying unused on the table, temporarily abandoned in favor of conversation. A blur of color trapped in cut crystal, an elongated perspective on the older Englishman in the flat of a knife slightly smeared with butter. His contributions to the conversation were negligible. Exactly what you would expect of someone who had become a part of the circle at the table almost by accident. If he had other intentions for the evening, they became moot when Lt. Wyndham renewed his slight acquaintance with Willow.

Mr. Giles placed his finger on the edge of a spoon, tilting it to catch the light, and Darla glanced up at him, mildly surprised to have her inattention noted and acknowledged in such a way. He smiled, almost apologetically, glancing across the table at Angelus who had turned his chair slightly away from the table, invited to join a conversation there.

She expected a compliment on her family, an observation about the weather, or some other banality that fit the role she was playing tonight.

"Has a date been set for the wedding?" he asked instead.

It didn't track immediately, but then she remembered that Angelus had covered for William's overly familiar manner with Willow by suggesting that there was an understanding between them. She couldn't decide if that was an even greater mistake.

She shook her head, letting her gaze drift down before she turned more fully toward him as if she were about to share a confidence. "Nothing has been done yet, but I think this winter, possibly around Christmas."

Weddings were not expected to be grand affairs. A small gathering of family and friends in a chapel and an announcement to acquaintances was the norm. No one would think it particularly odd if the newlywed couple did not set up their own household. Extended family living together was more common than not. David's appreciation of how the Fanged Four blended seamlessly, appearing interesting, but not extraordinary, expanded even as he tried not to appear overly curious in the woman sitting beside him.

She was fussing with the gloves that she had unbuttoned and tucked under her wrists while she pretended to eat. He considered asking her if she wanted to take a turn around the garden. He was anxious about Harry, alone with the two younger vampires and the girl, though if anything happened to him, it was a trap of his own making and there was nothing David could do to save him without endangering himself or others.

Instead he made small talk about Prague. It was a neutral topic, one that Darla warmed to after she finished fastening the small buttons on her glove, struggling a bit with the buttons on the other glove. Harry returned to report that his companions in the garden had departed. He looked a bit done in from the walk around the garden. Unnerved by something he had seen or heard? They could not leave without Frau van Borselin, and it was very late before their hostess was ready to leave.

Settled in the bachelor's parlor that they shared, ostensibly to enjoy a cigar and a drink before retiring for the evening, Harry slumped into a wing-backed chair and took a moment to order his account of the evening, and then gave up.

"She knows who we are," he blurted out, and then realized that as a beginning it was too abrupt. "Miss Grant? She knows what we are," he corrected himself. "I didn't say anything. She just . . . knew. Claimed to have known other watchers," he went on in the face of David's silence.

David looked puzzled. "How on earth could she know?"

Harry had thought about that too. "I don't know, but she was specific enough. Watchers. London. She said that I had drawn too much attention to myself and that it would go very badly if Angelus or Darla figured out who we are."

"Begging the conclusion that they don't know?" David was skeptical. "That seems very unlikely."

"The thought crossed my mind," Harry was testy. "But, I think they don't. She was careful to speak to me when we were alone. Out of the hearing of the other two, and she spoke as if she was in as much danger as us, should she be found out."

"This won't do," David said decisively. "Stop dancing around it and tell me exactly what was said."

Harry hesitated, aware that he had gone well beyond anything that he should have said. The temptation to edit his own contributions to the brief conversation was there, and it all happened so fast that what remained was impressions. The walk back to the house from the garden had been unnerving. As soon as he had gained the illusion of safety in the house he had taken refuge in a glass of champagne from a passing waiter's tray and tried to calm his racing heart while he watched David across the room chatting with Darla. It was hard to describe what had gone through his head at that moment.

The Watchers' Council had passed David by. He was too old now to be considered as a Slayer's watcher. Harry had time on his side. Slayers did not live long once they came into their power. Over the next twenty years he could reasonably expect to have a chance to be assigned to one of the girls. It was what he was trained for. But somewhere along the line of that unstated ambition he had come to the conclusion that he had to prove himself to be as good as any Slayer without the mystical gifts they were imbued with. He had not thought that it was enough to simply observe, but to be prepared to destroy the Scourge of Europe, not to save lives, but to secure for himself the distinction of being entrusted with a Slayer.

A girl with extraordinary abilities who would look at him with the understanding that he was extraordinary. A very ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances had shattered that idea. It came to him belatedly that there was a lesson in being placed with David in these circumstances. If David had been his Slayer he would have gotten him killed by now and never understood until he was dead that just because Slayers died at an early age, he wasn't meant to aid in that process.

"I will," he said. He would tell David everything. "Every idea I've ever had about what we are supposed to be has been wrong," he confessed. "I know that now. A watcher with a Slayer is responsible for witnessing the death of a Slayer. I thought it was a prize," he cleared his throat. "I suppose I thought of it because she said something that made me think of it," he paused, and found that it wasn't so hard to recall after all. "She said that she's known watchers without Slayers and-" he frowned, "No, that's not right. She said that she had never met a watcher without a Slayer, except once, and that she was not impressed."

They both knew that in the last decade there were no accounts of Slayers coming into contact with the Scourge of Europe. David leaned against the back of the other armchair. "Start at the beginning," he instructed, refusing to be distracted by working out that peculiar detail. "When you went to walk in the garden, you were with Drusilla," he reminded him. "How did you manage to speak to Miss Grant?"

~~~*~~~

After she changed out of her evening clothes and brushed her hair and teeth, Willow smeared on her homemade mud peppermint facial and started putting things in order. She had never been a neat freak, but she liked a certain amount of order around her, and that characteristic had gradually grown more pronounced as time passed. It was a coping mechanism that had something to do with control.

Once she was satisfied that her own room was clean, and the peppermint mask was starting to itch and flake off her skin, she went to the bathroom and rinsed it off, fussing over the arrangement of folded towels.

Returning to her bedroom, she scooped up her jewelry on her dressing table and left her room, crossing the hall to William's room. She placed the jewelry next to the rosewood box where he kept his smoking things, the first place in the room he was likely to visit.

She had to leave him. It wasn't running away. It wasn't because something terrible had happened. It wasn't because she was starting to wonder if she was crazy and she just didn't know it because what had happened to her was so mind-bending that crazy was the least of her concerns as long as she didn't think too much about Drusilla. This was different. It felt different in her head. There was no panic, no hurried thinking, driving her toward the nearest exit.

In panic there was simplicity. There was no one in the house except a few of the minions, and she had managed to hold her own the night they were attacked. There was money in the house, papers, documents, the jewelry that she had returned and other pieces too valuable to be left in her room that she could gather quickly. To hide through the balance of the night wasn't so hard. Prague was a large city. In the morning she could buy a train ticket and be gone with at least twelve hours head start.

But not gone in such a way that she wouldn't spend the rest of her life waiting to be found, stuck in a century that she didn't belong to. Bound to age and die before she was born in 1981.

She was thinking calmly, coolly, rationally when went to the windows, opening them to give the room an airing-out while she picked up discarded clothing to carry down the hall to be laundered.

Almost as an afterthought, with the laundry balled up under her arm, she opened the box that held his smoking things and grabbed a handful of William's cheroots. He never kept a close track of his things, and he wasn't smoking the cheroots as much now that he had started smoking cigarettes. She suspected that he had smoked them tonight because he was out of cigarettes. She wrapped them up in one of his shirts, frowning at the dirt and grass stains ground into the fabric. The shirt was ruined, and it wouldn't be missed.

If this was any kind of normal household there would be a compost heap, but Darla could not abide the smell. There was, however, the refuse bin from the stable that was emptied daily. After she left the laundry in the small closet between Angelus and William's rooms, she went down the back stairs to the kitchen.

Unaccustomed to leaving the house alone, at night, Willow crossed the garden to enter the stable through the side door, pausing just inside the door to get accustomed to the dark. One of the horses made a soft huffing sound, and another nickered. She had never really gotten used to horses. They looked pretty at a distance, but up close they were too large. William had made attempts to teach her to ride. At first she just sat perched on a sidesaddle that wasn't as uncomfortable as it was precarious. It was like having a chair set on the back of a large, moving animal. When she looked down at the ground going by in sweeping circles, it made her feel dizzy.

Moving carefully, conscious that the stable was full of seemingly benign objects that were also heavy and potentially dangerous, she moved along the line of stalls, with one hand against the wood, jumping when one of the horses in the stall stuck his head out right in front of her. A blast of warm air hit her face; a damp velvety muzzle nudged her shoulder. Thin, flexible horsey lips nibbled at the sleeve of her dressing gown.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. She should have brought a lantern, but being in stealth mode, she hadn't thought of it. Not that a light was going to draw any more attention to her.

"Good horsy," she whispered nervously, carefully stepping back to avoid a swipe of horse tongue or the grab of big horse teeth.

If William had been here, he would have diverted the horse with a chirping sound while moving her away and shaking his head at her for being intimidated. In the center of the aisle, she moved toward the wide double door where the two carriages were kept. The Brougham was still out. The refuse bin would be just outside the outer door, at the edge of the alley. It was metal and the lid was heavier than expected, but she managed to get it open, shuddering at the trapped odor that was released before she dropped the bundle inside.

It didn't seem so hard now. She just had to go back inside, take a bath, write something boring in her journal for William to read, and try to sleep or at least to pretend to sleep. He would run out of cheroots during the day. It wasn't much of a plan, she realized as she returned to the house. She didn't actually know where the tobacco shop was, but it was a start. She would find a way to get out of the house during the day.

On the way back she ran into Matilde and Andreas, the former stuck in the house to wait for Darla to return, the later on guard duty. Heeding William's injunction she stepped around them, hearing the female vampire, her former maid, growl at her.

She remembered him telling her that she should bring things like this to him as she stopped and turned to look at Matilde. She was in no mood to be trifled with. Just thinking it made her smile. Smiling made Matilde's lips draw back in a snarl.

"If you aren't careful, your face might freeze that way," Willow said, feeling something like a rush of charged air around her.

Andreas felt it, too, and stepped away from her. He had heard her leave the house and had been on the verge of following her when Matilde came down. The status of the lone human in the household was unambiguous in his opinion. She was off the menu. That had not been a complicated notion to absorb. Then she became something else, equally uncomplicated, when he saw her defending the house. She was off the menu and not without her own defenses. That was simple enough to follow.

Matilde knew it, too; she just didn't like it and was inclined to let it show. Now, she looked almost as confused as frustrated by Willow's refusal to be bullied or intimidated. She was not afraid of Willow. She was afraid of Darla.

Willow felt the rush of charged air wrap itself around her, burrowing into the spaces where she could still feel hurt, soothing the sting of rejection with a warm bath of anger. It was . . . interesting. She was tempted to see if she really could freeze Matilde's face like that, and was rescued in a way by her own sense of humor.

She shook her head, amazed and a little gratified that she could still feel hurt by the idea that someone didn't like her. Using magic to retaliate was probably wrong. Using magic that she didn't understand that felt like an answer to something she never admitted was possibly dangerous. If the unreal world didn't end soon, she was going to need psychotherapy, which was only now being invented. In the real world an apocalypse rolled around with stunning regularity, so the unreal world was, by her estimate, long overdue.

She looked at Andreas curiously. He seemed to be expecting something. He was generally polite to her, she remembered. "I guess you've never heard that before," she murmured. "I don't think it's true. It's just something that people say to children when they make faces."

He nodded slowly, "Yes," he agreed. "Is there anything that you need?" he asked, willing to fetch and carry for her if she didn't start looking like she might be tempted to start staking someone.

She blinked, startled by the question. It was a reminder of what it had been like in the house before they had been murdered, when they had simply been hand-picked by her to be murdered.

"Tea?" he suggested.

She nodded slowly. "I'm going up to my room," she told him. "I need a bath."

"Matilde will bring it up, then," he told her, casting a warning look at Matilde.

Willow went up the stairs, unnerved. The whole night was one self-contained freak-out after another.

~~~*~~~

"Tea and cakes, moonlight, and dancing," Drusilla turned to him. "You didn't dance with Miss Willow. Neither did I." She said it as if it was an omission that puzzled her.

"The evening is not complete," William told her, wondering what she would do with that idea.

She tucked her hand inside his arm, smoothing his coat sleeve. "I dreamt of dancing, all the time. I saw it. No one had to teach me to dance. I knew all of the steps from my dreams. But it was never right. Not like flying. Feet stepping on the hem of my gown, sweat running down my back," she pressed against him, one hand going to her ribs to finger the whalebone stays under her gown. "Too tight to breathe."

"Too tight to breathe," he echoed, thinking it was an apt way to describe the lives that they had left. "I remember that."

They walked in silence that was richest for Drusilla. Between each step was a waking dream, like a window that was gently closed between footfalls. She saw the entire evening in a kaleidoscope of images that had undiscovered meanings and incomplete beginnings. A shower of rose petals falling around Willow's shoulders. That happened. Her own fingers peeling back the gray silk of her gown, slipping it over the point of Willow's shoulder where her skin would be warm from the gown. That didn't happen, but it might have and it was all the same to her. Hard light dancing on the ceiling from great swags of crystal pendants hanging from a chandelier seen out of the corner of her eye. A new catalog of faces and scents had been imprinted on her memory, and she felt as if she could command them at will, selecting one to hunt. Just one out of the great many.

William's thoughts were not scattered like a field of stars, nor were they open to her as he sometimes assumed. It was because of the way he had come to her. He thought she could read his mind because she had seen in him a life that fit him too tight for breathing. A life for which the only remedy was to no longer need to breathe.

"What are we hunting, my William?" Dru wanted to know.

From his sideways look it was clear that he thought she had read his mind. He wanted to find the van Borselin home. He probably would have considered Harry a meal just on his own annoying merits, but he had upset Willow, and aside from her tendency to cry over trifles, she was a levelheaded girl, not prone to flights of fancy. Ridiculous stuffed shirt, nancy boy, public school prat, he had to know better than to accost young ladies in the park. The fact that those rules didn't bind him didn't move William in the slightest.

He explained it to Drusilla. Her eyebrows drew together as he told her about Willow's experience in the park. She didn't understand it. William thought there was something unseemly about the young man's interest in Willow, that Willow existed as an object of that kind of attention. She wasn't stupid. She knew very well where and how William had found Willow and what he kept her for.

He seemed to have forgotten, or this was the part of the something that had been changing with the weight of inevitability that she was aware of but unable to name. She could have found him without effort, simply by following the threads that were connected to him now that William had pointed them out to her.

And she might have, if William had understood that she had a purpose of her own. He lacked a proper feeling for anything that he couldn't kill or maim. There were men who sought to do God's will, willfully unaware that she was a part of the design. She was created to destroy, not for revenge or justice, but as a reflection of the caprice of the natural world where birds fell dead in mid-flight and disease struck without warning.

Smiling her mysterious smile, she let him work it out on his own. His methods were slower. In the shadows they waited while the guests left the party they had been a part of earlier. Moving between houses, he tracked the progress of a slow-moving coach to a house not far from the one they occupied.

Unaware of Drusilla's lack of participation in his mission, William noted the location of the house. It wasn't the enormous pile they had spent the evening in, but it was a big, stolid-looking house of three and half stories, with a dozen chimneys. Nothing about it suggested that the Van Borselins were taking boarders, so the Englishmen were probably social acquaintances.

Harry Wyndham would wander out for a late-night stroll and he'd be there, at some point, probably sooner than not. When he got a yen to kill someone in particular, he wasn't given to the drawn out gamesmanship Angelus preferred. He'd terrify you to death before he killed you. William was all about the kill.

"What would you like to hunt, poodle?" he asked now that he had satisfied his curiosity.

She licked her lips, eyes dancing. "Oooh! I know," she moaned, rubbing herself against him. "I smell something young," she said enticingly.

"Great," William muttered. He hoped it wasn't babies. It was like draining a small dog. Hardly got a taste and then it was on to the next one, and then there was the squalling, and the weird smell. Babies and old people were not high on his list of things to eat.

It wasn't babies. Just a pair of lads, probably not yet sixteen, larking around and sharing a bottle of apple brandy between the two of them. Dru found them behind a shed, and they gaped at her in a stunned sort of way. William shared their bemusement as Dru danced around a tree, pulling her hairpins out, flinging them around. He perched on a garden wall, unnoticed, as she dazzled and charmed, and wooed them out into the open until one of the boys, emboldened by drink, the realization that the beautiful young woman they were watching was probably not in her right mind, or just by the nearly unbelievable prospect of what she seemed to be offering, chased after her.

His friend pursued him, hissing at him to leave her alone. Timid or principled, or both. He really wasn't surprised to find Dru favoring the second boy. Cooing to him. "You're a knight, a noble and virtuous knight," she said.

They crashed into a bed of lilies, and William smiled at that, knowing his Princess. She'd leave the boy laid out neat as a pin, minus his heart, blood stained flowers clasped over his chest.

Springing down lightly from his perch, he slipped up silently behind the other boy, who was straining to see what was going on, drunken envy twisting his face. William relieved him of the bottle. "Surprised me, too, mate," he told him. "You always think they'll go for the bigger, stronger, bloke, but sometimes for reasons only they understand, it's the weak ones they crave between their legs."

As observations went, William thought it was one of his better ones. Pity the boy wouldn't live to mull over it or recognize the irony.

They were still feeding when someone came out of the house, swinging a lantern, cursing, and William had to give up his mostly-dead prize. He snapped his neck, and retrieved Dru, who was not happy to be leaving without her laying him out completed, so they stayed close enough to hear the first body discovered, and then the second. The horrified moaning and crying appeased Dru, putting her back into a good mood. She daintily licked her fingers clean and placed the heart in her beaded handbag, squashing it in amongst the pate she had nicked for a late-night snack for Mr. Buttons.

"It's still early," William pointed out. "Hours to go until dawn. What can we do to entertain ourselves?"

She waved her bag at him. "Treats for Mr. Buttons, William. He must be ever so sad and lonely," she declared with a pout that had regained a great deal of its charm.

The purse was dripping blood, which was creating a trail to be followed. That gave William another idea. He led Dru through the streets to the mission and persuaded her to relinquish Mr. Buttons' treat, depositing it at the threshold of the door, thinking that the mayhem that was likely to follow would liven things up after it was discovered.

~~~*~~~

She heard Matilde in the bedroom while she was in the bathtub. She had said something earlier that evening to William about not trusting the minions to bring her anything, and she meant it, but she had not imagined that she would find Matilde doing anything for her without being instructed to and resenting it.

When she left the bathroom, Matilde was still there, examining the dress worn that evening, hanging in the wardrobe. The bed was turned down, and a small fire had been laid in the fireplace with kindling, not so much for warmth as to take some of the damp out of the air. The dress was removed from the hanger and laid over the end of the bed while she went to her dressing table where a pot of tea was waiting for her.

Without comment, Matilde came to her, reaching around her for her brush before unwrapping her wet hair from the towel Willow had wound around the length. She started brushing her hair, working from the ends to remove the tangles and then setting down the brush to retrieve a pair of scissors from her pocket to trim the ends. The whole time not one single word passed between them until Matilde was done.

She asked if she should leave the tea and said that she was taking the dress to clean and press.

Left alone again, Willow considered going to sleep, or at least pretending to sleep. It could not be a coincidence that the watchers' names echoed the names of the two watchers she knew in Sunnydale. She debated about leaving her room again to go down to her cellar under the library to look at her books.

The meager collection of books she had accumulated were ones she knew well by now. They were not going to offer up new insights into her time travel versus alternative universe meditations. It was more the idea of books that drew her. She had done her research once surrounded by books. Now, as then, she found them inadequate. The good stuff, the books that Giles kept in his office, had been at her disposal through long nights of sitting quietly in the library while Oz was locked in the cage.

She had to get more books. Better books. The kind of books watchers had access to.

If it was time travel, could she find a way to write a note to be handed to one of the watchers with a stern injunction that it was to be kept for Giles to read a century from now? If she did that, if she accomplished that, would it erase the last eight years? Would Giles read the note before she started researching ways to keep Angel from losing his soul and explain to her that there was a disaster in the making, that her efforts were doomed to failure?

Would she listen in the future?

Was it a sign that she should try again? The ritual was the one thing that she had made herself memorize. Every detail of it was sorted and organized in her mind. The ingredients, the precise measurements. The symbols, painstakingly copied over and over again in her notebook before she cast the spell, when she was still working out the perfect moment to go back and change one thing, just one thing that would make the most difference. She had drawn on the floor between lines of masking tape, because she wanted it to be perfect.

In a few days she was to go back to Zlata Ulicka to pick up the rest of the spell ingredients she had ordered. There were things that were not on her list that she would need to attempt the spell, and she was at once wary and intrigued about attempting any spell casting inside the barrier wards she had created around the house. It was drawing on power that made her feel more powerful when she needed to feel powerful.

"It's just a teensy temporal fold," she heard Anya's voice in her head, but the memory offered no guidance. It suggested that it was possible even as Willow remembered that it was dangerous.

She paced the bedroom floor. If it wasn't a bizarre coincidence, then she was supposed to meet the watchers. It made sense in a way. She had always been puzzled by how unlikely it was that she would find herself in a place that she had no way to associate with Angelus-no watcher's diary entry that she had found had ever suggested that Angelus had been in Bristol. The first time she had seen it on the page of an atlas, a dot hovering in Gloucester near Somerset, she realized that she had had not understood where the spell had taken her.

It couldn't be coincidence that she met William there. She hadn't even recognized him. It wasn't until she saw Drusilla that she realized that William was Spike.

The idea that there was some purpose served in her being here was infuriating.

She couldn't try the spell now, and she wanted to badly, so much so that she considered for a moment leaving the house and making her way to Zlata Ulicka, before discarding the idea as impractical and dangerous. There were vampires there, too. She had no reason to trust that they would keep her presence a secret unless it served their purposes to do so, and she had no idea what their agenda was, though the fact that they were vampires made altruism unlikely.

There had to be a reason. A connection. Something that explained what had placed her here. The books she was allowed to have were, half of them, full of folklore and nonsense and the rest of them, jammed with benign spells, petitions, and recipes for good crops, health, and protection against malign spirits.

Fingers pressed against her lips, she tried to think clearly, coldly, logically. She had tried to escape before, but running away never addressed the real problem of being stuck in a dimension or time period that she did not belong to. She ran without having anywhere to run to and she didn't want to live out her life here, alone.

She didn't want to leave him.

Her vision blurred for a moment. That hadn't always been there. She was sure of it. There had been times when getting away from William seemed like the only thing she could think of. Until she was sent to Prague, to live alone in a house full of people that she could not allow herself to think of as people, for two months. They were hundreds of miles away, and she could have left at any time in those two months.

"No," and what she heard in her voice made her squeeze her eyes shut, shaking her head, before trying again. "No."

It was firmer the second time. It didn't mean anything. Not really. Life wasn't about how you felt about the people who were part of your life. It was about what you did despite how you felt.

She was more or less confined to the house during the day, thanks to her freak-out about the way the two men approached her in the park. She had to figure out a way to go out more, to move about more freely during the daytime. She had been formally introduced to Mr. Giles and Lt. Wyndham. That made them social acquaintances. By the rules that governed these things, she now had a defined context in their social circle.

There was no reason that she couldn't resume walking in the park. She didn't have to invent excuses. She simply had to pretend that she had read too much into Lt. Wyndham's interest in her, and, in a way, she had. Convincing William would be difficult. He didn't care about maintaining social contacts or appearances.

Darla did.

~~~*~~~

Darla considered the evening a success. If she was keeping score, and she was, Willow and Angelus took the top honors for the evening. Willow was likely to be invited back, having established a rapport with their hostess, and Angelus had covered so beautifully for William's lapse in manners that he made her appear intriguing and sympathetic all at once without saying anything specific. Darla didn't want to be entertaining potential suitors for Willow, and the implication that she was practically engaged was a stroke of genius.

She was not so preoccupied with these thoughts that she failed to notice that they were visiting a graveyard. She allowed herself to be assisted to the ground, feeling moderately curious as she picked her way over the slightly uneven turf to a freshly laid and untidy grave.

"Your work?" she guessed.

Angelus nodded, looking solemn. "I've always wondered if a human could get out of a grave." He gestured to it. "It wasn't a fair test. The coffin was broken and we just pushed the dirt in to cover it up."

She studied the grave. It looked pretty much like any other grave, except not as neat. In a few days, after the ground settled again, it would need more dirt. "If I had known, I would have brought flowers."

He looked back at her. "She reminded me of you," he told her.

She smiled at that, genuinely amused by his tone. "What every woman wants to hear."

He glanced over at her curiously. She never sounded jealous, but he knew it was there. It had to be. Holding her skirt to keep it from trailing across the fresh dirt, Darla's foot nudged a bone white object just peeking from the dirt. Inert and slightly misshapen, it took him a moment to recognize it as a part of a hand. So, she had almost made it out. He watched for a moment, waiting for the fingers to twitch or show some sign of life.

But the hand remained inert, half in and half out of the ground. He was struck by the expressiveness of hands. They were difficult to sketch, so much so that they were avoided entirely by otherwise competent artists.

Darla took a step back as he reached down, grasping the exposed wrist. He could detect no pulse. He considered pulling her out of the grave, not really caring if he took her arm off, or broke her neck. It hadn't been a good test, and she had failed it anyway. She was dead, useless, and no longer interesting, but it was fun to imagine the reaction of anyone visiting the cemetery during the day and finding a body half in and half out of the grave.

Darla was already turning away. The only time he had managed to shock her was when he had turned Drusilla for no other reason than to preserve the master work of her madness.

~~~*~~~

Willow was still awake when Darla and Angelus returned. There was a great deal that went on around her that she had been committed to sleeping through. Despite living with them for so many years, she wasn't nocturnal given a choice in the matter. Having her own room was a relatively new development. It added a layer of privacy that still felt private even if it was violated more or less at will. Hearing the house gain occupants made her want to go to sleep, mostly to avoid being found awake.

She dozed off, sleeping fitfully only to wake again when William and Drusilla came home. A muscle twitched under her eyelid and she tried to grimace it away, dreading the possibility that William would notice that his supply of cheroots was greatly diminished or that he would simply seek her out. If she had gone to sleep right away, she would have had the energy to deal with him.

When she heard her bedroom door open she couldn't contain the nervous start it gave her, but she decided to pretend to be asleep. It wasn't that hard to do. She just kept her eyes closed and used the small involuntary movement to roll to her side as if she was startled but not awake. She didn't really think that it would work. Sometimes, when she pretended to be asleep, he would slip in bed beside her and carefully, cautiously arrange her to lie against him, stroking her hair or her back until he took one, shallow involuntary breathe, like a swimmer going under, to fall asleep himself.

William smiled at the performance. He knew that she wasn't asleep. She was pretending. Faking sleep. Lying on her side, with her face in profile and her nose pressed into a feather pillow, a picture of what she thought she looked like when she was asleep. Her lips were pressed together though and her hands were inside the covers. Too neat. Too orderly. She tended to clutch at blankets and pillows, balling them up against her body. She slept with her lips parted, breathing through her mouth. For a moment he stood, one hand on the door, content to watch the performance. He could practically feel the tension gathering in her body, and then flash across her face when she realized it.

She made a sleepy sound and snuggled into the pillow, kicking away part of the blanket to push one foot out off the edge of the bed before settling again. When she was too warm under the covers, she put a foot outside them. But only when she was awake. When she was asleep and she was too warm, she just moved to a cooler place in the bed until she was pressed up against him.

He finished untying his cravat while he watched her. He had come home intending to spend the night with Drusilla. He hadn't spent enough time with her of late and she seemed to recognize it, too, tonight. The two of them, alone, was rare enough to be special. She felt it, too. Killing, kissing, laughing softly at nothing.

He could hear Drusilla in the bathroom they shared and gave Willow one last look, before stepping back into the hall and shutting the door gently behind him. He walked down the hall to Drusilla's room. The drapes had been left open, letting in the moonlight, giving the room a faintly purple glow. The rooms in the master suite were the most opulent in the house, but Drusilla's room was the most attractive. A bank of windows formed an open space that had been converted into a amphitheater for Drusilla's collection of dolls, arranged across a box seat posed in doll-sized furniture or doll stands.

She emerged from the bathroom, still dressed, and he felt an old ache of pleasure and longing. She had waited for him to help her with her dress. She was the first woman he had ever undressed during the brief and unforgettable time after she had made him when they had been like husband and wife, acting out cozy domestic scenes that they had never enjoyed when they were alive.

He unfastened her dress and helped her step out of it, smoothing his hands over her shoulders, holding them as he kissed the nape of her neck. She smelled like the bed of flowers she had crushed beneath the boy she had killed, and the hand she raised to touch his cheek, fingers trailing to his lips, was still stained with blood. His lips parted for her and he kissed her fingers, smiling when she made a game of it, kissing each one.

She gathered up the dress, frowning over a blood-matted spot in the velvet, and then laying it over a chair, because there were other uses for the rest of the fabric if the dress was ruined by bloodstains. He withdrew a cheroot from his pocket, waiting for her to nod her assent before he lit it. He was going to have to ration himself. The prospect of a long day spent indoors without anything to smoke was annoying, but he only had himself to blame for not paying more attention.

"Did you have a good time tonight?" he asked as she started taking her hair down.

"Wonderful," she said, twisting her head, pretending to admire herself in the etched-glass oval mirror behind her vanity. "Did you?"

He laid his arm across the back of the chair where her discarded dress lay. "Tolerable," he drawled, playing at pompous for her.

He was rewarded with a dazzling smile. When Drusilla was caught up in a pretense she was heartbreakingly lucid. She removed her hairpins and shook out the length of her hair until it fell around her in coils that still held the shapes her hair had been wound into. He watched her finger comb her hair, soothing the sore places on her scalp. Everything he had ever learned about taking down a woman's hair or running a brush through it he learned from watching her, and he never got tired of it.

~~~*~~~

Willow waited a few moments after the door shut. It would not have surprised her to find that he had shut the door from inside her room, waiting to see if she was really sleeping. The longer she waited the more certain she became that this was not the case. It was an impression that seemed to seep into her, wiggling past the sense of accomplishment at her acting ability. She didn't want to open her eyes to confirm what she had started to suspect.

She hadn't really wanted him to stay, she had just expected it.

She rolled over again, pulling one of the unused pillows close, muffling the achy feeling in her chest in eiderdown. She opened her eyes, letting them adjust to the almost total absence of light. The drapes were closed. The furniture in the room was shape in shadows that had grown familiar. Her room. It really didn't look like it was her room. She was too conscious of what her room was supposed to look like when she had been picking out the furniture for this room. She didn't treat it like it was her room. There were no books piled next to her bed, nothing pushed under the bed because she didn't feel like picking it up, nothing piled on a chair or her chaise.

She didn't even have a writing desk, just the vanity. It was a room for a woman that she had pretended to be for so long that the thought of being anyone else, even the girl she had once been, was frightening.

That wasn't all bad. Scary, but there were possibilities, and it wasn't about a trip to London that would probably never really happen when she might slip out for a day to see the Tower of London and figure out where the Watcher's Council was. It was more than possible that it was fate. It was, like finding William, or being found by him, a part of something incomplete that would bring her one step closer to home.

The word made her take in a shaky breath. Home. It was an idea more than an actual place. If she did go home, back to the day or the moment she left, would she be the same age or would she be a younger Willow with first-period Calculus and second-period Advanced Chemistry before she had a class with Buffy or Xander? Would she be sitting-in-the-quad Willow, holding hands with Oz?

There were so many things that she had missed. Prom. Graduation. The first day of college. Mochas. Helping Buffy study while patrolling. Bronzing with Xander and Buffy. Listening to Oz play. Watching the glaze of boredom settle on Oz's face as Giles or Wesley said too much about something that he had already figured out.

She no longer remembered what Oz looked like. She knew what he looked like, but if he had appeared, like the two watchers had tonight, she had a terrible feeling that she would have taken too long to recognize him. She closed her eyes tightly. She could never be that Willow again for Oz. Too much had happened.

But she could still be Buffy and Xander's friend. She could learn to be Shelia and Ira Rosenberg's daughter. And as long as Angel and Spike and Drusilla didn't think otherwise, she could be a Willow Rosenberg that never really knew any of them.

None of this eased the ache in her chest.

"Deal with this now," she whispered to herself, feeling tears sting. It wasn't that she loved William, but she was used to him and she felt a little less lonely when he was around. That's all it was. It was easier to be a little scared of William than a lot scared of everything. It was easier to deal with his demands than to figure out a solution to her own problems.

She closed her eyes again. It was too much to think about. She needed to sleep.

~~~*~~~

Few know what it is to be exalted. To climb inside of cloudless skies and spin around stars. To be the dark star that explodes in a wordless cry of wonder and completion. Drusilla wasn't selfish. She didn't need to be transported in the moment and took her own pleasure in creating it.

For William it was all hands, lips, bodies touching, but to Drusilla it was art. It was the decorous pattern unwound on the ceiling of the Opera House. It was the tumble of words that fell in layers. It was the drama in the tension of a bow on the strings of a violin. It was not hers alone. It was all connected. The boy who had died who saw the face of a woman in the moon and felt the thrill of the connection to something ancient and pagan was present. The creature she made, who reveled in the taste of blood on her lips, was there as well. Everything he touched, felt, and yearned for until the yearning became a source of shame amongst the shameless, was in the taste of his skin under her tongue.

Beastly rutting creatures careened around her, unable to become what they were.

She resisted the lure of their dance. She had this instead, and tomorrow the other things, and the day after that another kind of dance. They all caused pain. It was there in his eyes as he realized that she had not reached the kind of fulfillment he wanted to give her. It was never what she needed from him, but he was too selfish to grasp this.

He wanted what had been taken from her.

She laid her fingers over his lips when he would have spoken, holding the part of him that fit inside of her within her body until his hips shifted under hers. Again? He looked so stubborn, so determined, so bent on his own greedy desire to reduce her to what he found. He never seemed to grasp that she had exactly what she wanted already.

"You want too much," she told him, eyes shining.

He smiled at that. "I'll have it," he warned her. "One way or the other."

"Yes, you will," she agreed. Found so seldom in her, and ever and always in the next room, even if he didn't understand that it was all the same thing. "Look into my eyes," she entreated.

He shuddered under her, fighting her when he felt her presence in his mind. Even when he was mortal and frightened, he had fought her, and the only thing she got from him was the one word that made him think that she had read his mind. It was all the insight that she ever required. He wanted something shinning in a world full of dingy things. Wanted it so fiercely, so purely, that he was able to find it in the most unlikely places.

She ran her fingertips over his cheek as his gaze became unfocused. "I love you," she whispered.

The expression that flashed on his face might have broken her heart if it functioned properly. His lips moved soundlessly, and she nodded, feeling not a shred of jealously or remorse at the way he confused their names. It was all so clear to her. He would never be what Angelus was to her, but Willow might be what he was to her.

It was what they were made for.

~~~*~~~

Willow wasn't aware of having fallen asleep when she woke. She was just aware that being awake came with a feeling like she was floating that made her feel slightly queasy. She felt something tickle her cheek and then brush over her lips. Opening her eyes she found Drusilla leaning over her with one of the scraps of fur that she had been using to make chew toys for Mr. Buttons in hand.

She was lucky that was all it was. Drusilla had left a dead cat in her bed once. With a frown, Willow took in her surroundings. Walls painted black and scored by a fire, a creepy four poster with a limp, dirty lace canopy overhead. She looked quickly to her right to see if Xander was there too. He wasn't there, but that didn't alter her conclusion. She was dreaming.

"How badly do you have to miss television and movies for this to be your twisted idea of making your own fun?" Willow asked.

She didn't really expect an answer. Drusilla's eyes were half-closed and she was swaying a little. It was the kind of thing that she did that looked a little crazy, but in an attractively crazy and graceful sort of way. Darla could snap her out of it with a hard pinch.

She hadn't ever dreamt of Drusilla in the future. Lately, it was just Spike.

She stilled, eyes opening. "He doesn't want you," Drusilla told her.

"I'll go back to sleep then," she muttered.

"I tried to make him come, for tea and cakes. You didn't dance tonight, but he wants me. I'm the one he will always want."

It was so much in evidence that the real Drusilla would never say this to her. They were not in any way rivals.

Willow cautiously sat up wondering why dream Drusilla was telling her this. She almost wanted to tell her that she was leaving. She would leave, and Drusilla would have Spike all to herself, and that was how it was meant to be.

"You won't leave him?" she asked instead. It was stupid, but the thought of him being alone bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

Drusilla's head tilted to one side. "I hadn't thought of that," she admitted. "It's not a thinkable thing."

Willow started to smile at that. "No, it's not," she agreed. An idea was forming. "But, promise me anyway, that no matter what, you'll never abandon him."

Drusilla stared at her. "You've seen this," she breathed. "How?"

"It doesn't matter," Willow argued.

"If you've seen it then it will happen. No promise will alter it," Drusilla told her.

Willow heaved an inward sigh. Trying to have any kind of conversation with Dru was hard enough, and worse when you were asleep, and worse yet if you dreamt that she was more lucid than normal. She shook her head. "I don't think I have visions like yours," she told her. "Your vision is true. What I've seen might not be true. You said it yourself. It is not a thinkable thing."

Drusilla sat back on her heels, thinking about that. "I promise," she said after a moment that stretched so long that Willow wondered if she had forgotten what they were talking about.

"You promise what?" Spike asked, having caught the last of the exchange. He walked over to the bed and looked down at Willow. There was a hint of calculation in his stare. "You brought Drusilla back to me. I suppose you think I owe you a favor," he said, moving around the bed to Drusilla's side. His hand moved over her hair and she turned to look up at him.

She understood where she was now. The factory, except none of this happened. She had never had a chance to cast the love spell to bring Drusilla back to Spike.

"What did you promise, Princess?"

"I promise that I will never leave you," Drusilla told him. She bounced on the bed, pointing at Willow. "She has visions, too."

He looked skeptical, glancing from Drusilla to Willow. "Does she now?" he drawled.

"Mostly bad dreams," Willow said cautiously. "Well, now that you two are back together again, I'll just be . . . moseying home to do . . . my homework," she started to edge away from them.

She was pretty sure that what would happen next would involve a lot of running and screaming on her part, but when she got off the bed on the other side she was in the Sunnydale High School library, just inside the double doors. She stood there for a moment, trying to figure it out.

"Giles?" she called out.

She jumped when she heard him answer her from his office, and rushed to the door. He was sitting behind his desk with a book open in front of him. "There you are," he said. "I've been looking for something that would explain what has happened to you."

She nodded. "I did a spell-"

"Of course you did. Anyone could see that," he frowned at her. "Please don't interrupt. It's very rude."

Giles didn't say things like that. He just gave you one of those looks that said that he was patiently refraining from saying it. "Be careful who you place your trust in, Willow."

"Thanks for the cryptic warning," Willow muttered as Giles' office became City Hall and she found herself tied to a post with a pile of books around her that were starting to smolder.

There was no angry mob, or Buffy, or even Amy. In secret she had practiced every spell she could find to unbind restraints. All she had to do was find the right one and rescue the books from the fire and start looking for solutions inside them. Simple. A small flame flicked to life near her foot.

The panic she had felt then came back. She hadn't been thinking of spells or clever ways to save herself. It had been Buffy that she relied on to save her. She could feel the heat crawling up her leg. There was a smell that denim had just before it reached combustion. And then Spike was there, kicking the burning pile of books away from her.

But he didn't untie her. "That's your one favor, repaid," he told her.

~Part: 27~

No hint of resentment could be seen in Darla's face. In the absence of light she glowed against the pale gold that upholstered the headboard of her bed, pale pink lips curved into a pleasing smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. There was a trick to that too, of averting her gaze, of finding a way to appear to be looking at Angelus without looking at him. Inwardly she was not precisely seething, though there was a certain degree of anger that she preferred to simply feeling inadequate.

She might have been fooled into believing that she had been granted a reprieve of sorts in the form of a dead girl that bore a passing resemblance to her who, had she survived, would have been a new and different kind of addition to their household. She had seen Angelus at work crafting the crucible that Drusilla was shaped in. For the longest time he simply watched her, refining his tortures on others. The first person he killed who was related to the object of his attention was a little girl who looked like her. Killed, turned, tortured, the shape of a cross burned into her forehead, spoiling the visage of the vampire doll he made and dressed in an exact copy of a costume Drusilla had worn.

She was a distant relative, a cousin of some sort, broken without art in haste to torment the object of his attention.

Claire Hamilton smacked of that kind of experimentation.

She ran her fingers through his hair as he labored over her, cynically appreciating the effort more than the effect of his hands and lips. He couldn't think that he was distracting her, and yet, he did, fooled by the catalog of her responses. A sigh here, a moan there, her finger's tightening his hair and then smoothing it down as her hips lifted. She could feel his lips shape a smile against her skin before his tongue gathered flesh to suck on, answered with a throatier moan of approval.

It felt good, but she wasn't distracted by it any more than he was truly engaged by the conflicts that gathered around them. The business with the vampires from across the river didn't really capture his attention, or something would have been done about them. The presence of an element of the church that might be hunting them didn't preoccupy him. He was bored despite that and in his boredom he would craft some new game to test them.

~~~*~~~

Pre-dawn light was spreading from the bow of windows in Drusilla's room. With a small sigh of annoyance, William made himself get up to draw the drapes. He opened one of the windows to enjoy the draft and picked up his discarded coat to look for a cheroot. Failing to find one in his pocket, he slipped into his trousers and left Drusilla's room to cross the hall to his own empty room.

He found it considerably tidier than he had left it before they had left for the party. It smelt of candles and pine cones. Willow's jewelry from the evening rested on his dresser where she knew that he would find it. He opened the box that held his cheroots and frowned at the meager supply. Bloody hell. Even if he slept most of the day away and rationed himself, he was going to run out of cheroots before sunset. He lit one anyway, frowning at the flavor. What he really wanted was a cigarette, and he had run out of those yesterday, so he was left in short supply of an unsatisfying substitute.

He picked up the bracelet that Willow had worn last night, not recognizing it. He generally left procuring a wardrobe and baubles for Willow to Darla, who actually cared about the details of her appearance, at least when they were all pretending to be one happy family. She kept the blue glass beaded necklace he bought for her in her room in a cloth-covered box on her dressing table. It suited her much more so than the cold, shining jet bracelet he let fall on the dresser.

He met Lucius in the hallway. The younger vampire hesitated and William smiled crookedly at the show of nerves.

Lucius hadn't been looking for William. Not yet, at least. He had a version of this evening's confrontation between Matilde and Willow courtesy of Andreas, who seemed to find it amusing that Matilde had been cowed, at least for the moment. Lucius thought it was far more likely that she was waiting for an opportunity to complain to the mistress of the house.

Keeping his voice low, he related what Andreas had observed, watching William for a reaction. He leaned against the doorframe, smoking, his gaze flicking to the closed door of Willow's room, a small frown appearing, but when Lucius was done, he simply nodded.

"Where are you off to?" William asked.

Out of habit Lucius checked the first floor before retiring to make sure that the house was secure. He found himself dismissed, though there was nothing particularly rude or heavy-handed in William's manner.

William waited until Lucius had gone down the staircase and was out of sight before his attention returned to the door across from his. He nearly stepped on Drusilla's dog, which was scampering after Lucius, probably hoping for a treat or at least company. He crossed the hall to Willow's door and opened it quietly, walking in and shutting it behind him. He knew immediately that she really was asleep this time. She had kicked off the covers and was lying half across the bed with one knee pulled up toward her chest. He might have woken her up to have a pointed discussion about what he meant when he told her that he expected her to bring any problems she had to him, but he smelled tears, faint, but still hanging in the air.

She had feelings and they got a bit bruised. If she felt bad enough to cry over it, then it stood to reason that she would cry again if he woke her up now to demand an explanation. That was a bit of drama that would spoil the balance of the day for him. He made a note to talk to her tomorrow and cocked his head at the sound of water running from the tap in the bathroom. Using the door from Willow's room he entered the bathroom and found Drusilla filling the bathtub.

She looked up at him and then beyond him curiously. Reading the look, he shook his head. "Asleep," he said, pulling the door shut behind him. Dru went to the window, opening it incautiously in his view, and before he could react to that, she snatched his cheroot out of his hand and tossed it out the window before closing it.

"Bloody hell," he grumbled, belatedly remembering the no smoking in the bathroom rule that Drusilla was fanatic about.

"It makes the towels stink," she told him, unrepentant.

"No worse than me," he pointed out, offended.

She glided over, resting her head on his shoulder, pushing her nose into his neck. "You smell better than stinky towels."

Slightly mollified, but annoyed about the loss of his cheroot, he tried to hold out for a bit more making up. "How much better?"

She nipped his earlobe. "Not that much," she admitted, pushing him toward the bathtub.

He forgot about the cheroot and his effort to fish for a compliment, turning to touch her face, feeling something twist in his chest at how sweet she was when she was deep in this oldest of all their games. Wife. Friend. Lover.

"I love you," he reminded her.

She preened. "More than anyone?"

"More than anything."

"More than . . . " her gaze slid to the wall that separated them from Willow's room.

He started to agree and realized that it wasn't precisely true. Differently, but not more. Drusilla had no beginning or end for him, and Willow always would. Willow would always be someone he knew before he loved her.

Before he could try to explain it she turned her face into his hand and kissed his wrist. "I love Daddy more than you," she said, without malice, simply stating a fact. "First you loved her not at all. And then you didn't wish to love her. And now you love her. When you love her best then it will all be even."

That was how she had worked it out? "Who will Willow love best?" he asked.

It was an idea that had not occurred to her. She shook her head. "None. Her heart beats, but it is so loud that she can't hear what it says."

"Can you?" he asked warily.

She nodded hesitantly. "Sometimes."

He bit his lip. He probably didn't want to know. Not that it mattered. She didn't have to—it wouldn't change what he felt. "What do you hear?"

Dru's gaze drifted downward, a delicate grimace contorting her features. "Home, home, home, home, home, home, home," she chanted faster and faster until it was almost a wail, sounding so much like a lost child that William found himself covering her mouth to make her stop.

She looked reproachful, and he eased the pressure of his hand over her lips. "This is what you make her alone in. I told you I could take it away, and you said no. You said 'never again.'" Her expression turned sly. "I can make her have her home with us," she promised.

He kissed her forehead. "I think we've already done that."

His voice was less than steady. Listening to Willow chant 'this isn't real' was unnerving enough, but he really thought if it was the worst of a bad moment, then it wasn't all that bad. He settled in the bathtub with Drusilla. He knew virtually nothing about Willow's life before he had met her.

Drusilla patted his cheek with wet fingers, awkwardly comforting even as she demanded his attention. He turned his head to kiss her fingers.

What place was home that left such a sound for Drusilla to find? Where was it? Willow's chief failure in her adventures in running away had been in having no real place to go. Her journals contained no hint of her origins beyond a certain street in Bristol, beyond her friendship with another prostitute. Who was she before that? Where was she from? With her accent and her peculiar mannerisms, someone, probably Angelus, had concluded that she was American, but that had been years ago, when they still talked about her like she was a houseplant, and not to her. Then she became a dozen stories and aliases made up on the spot to explain her presence. She was a sister, cousin, school friend of Drusilla's, a nurse, a servant. To his family, infrequently met, she was his mistress.

Around him the warm bath water undulated as Drusilla moved to reach for a ball of soap. The ends of her hair trailed in the water, sticking to his skin where it reached him. He admired her face in profile, the way she lifted her arms and let soap bubbles forming in her hands roll down her arms. He leaned forward to fit her against his chest. For a moment he let his chin rest on her shoulder.

They were the same temperature, warmed by bathwater. Under his chin, her shoulder matched the temperature of his skin, under the water, his hands moved over skin that was no more or less heated than his own. There was a time when he fantasized about what they could be if they were on their own. No Angelus and Darla, just like those first few days of his unlife when his whole being was completely engaged with the wonder that was Drusilla. Disliking Angelus was a reflex. It only went so far.

There was a symmetry and logic to their interactions that he recognized. Darla made Angelus and for a century that was enough. Then Drusilla was made and in her madness and devotion, completed what Darla lacked. Drusilla made him to make up for what Angelus was unable to provide her. He found and kept Willow because she provided something that Drusilla could never give him.

He thought that it was sanity. Or distraction. Or the exotic attraction of a warm, fragile mortal lover preserved for his amusement. There was something more to it, though. In a strange sort of way she chose him, without even realizing it. When he brought her to Angelus' room, she was more his of her own choosing than when they were alone.

After their bath, Drusilla rose, dripping water on the floor, ignoring the towels to go rummage through Willow's things in the bathroom. She experimented with the facial mask and the ointments and skin creams that Willow created for herself.

"Shall we wake her up?" she asked, coming back to the bathtub where he remained, soaking in the waning heat of the water. "You can close your eyes while I whisper that I love you and pretend it's her saying it," she smiled knowingly. "I do that. Angelus loves me. I know. William says it, but in here," she pressed her fingers against her temples, "it is Angelus."

She raked her fingernails over her thighs, bringing up oozing furrows of reddened skin and blood. The lucidity that she had briefly achieved was splintering.

"Say it," she demanded as he got out of the tub and started drying himself off. "Say it. Say it. Say it," she chanted. "I'll carve it out of her chest for you," she was reaching for the door that connected to Willow's room when he grabbed her around the waist, picking her up and carrying her into her own room while she rubbed herself against him. "I love you," she said and then laughed.

He wanted to tell her to stop.

"We are a tangle," she told him. "Drawing tighter and when it comes together," she snapped her teeth together. "You can tell us apart. As if it matters."

~~~*~~~

Willow woke up with dried tear tracks on her face and the inescapable feeling that everything had changed. She found herself looking to see if she was still alone in her room, and then to see if anyone had visited in the night while she slept.

There was no evidence of it. She got up and started to go about the business of getting ready for the day. The bathroom was a mess. The floor was wet, and the bathtub was full of cold, dirty water that made her shudder when she pulled the plug on it. Wet towels had been left on the floor. She washed her face and cleaned her teeth before gathering up the wet towels and depositing them in the hamper. Mr. Buttons scratched at the connecting door from Drusilla's room and after a moment of hesitation, she opened the door to let him out, shutting it quickly.

~~~*~~~

He shot through the bathroom and into her room and she followed him, going to her wardrobe to pick out a dress to wear. Her gaze kept shifting from the mirror on the dressing table to the door to her bathroom. This house was less of a maze than others they had occupied. Places where rooms connected to other rooms and the hallways were ignored in favor of passing through the occupied spaces. She almost preferred it the other way, when she thought it was better to know where they were, when she could count on someone to draw her back from the impulse to do something stupid.

When she finished dressing and putting her hair up, she left her room to go downstairs. A bundle of mail had been left in the foyer on a table that held a silver bowl that was starting to tarnish. In the kitchen she found Matilde making up what Willow thought of as a fake breakfast tray for Darla, who liked her dainty cups of hot, strong, bitter chocolate in the morning. She had cut tulips from the garden that were too big for the narrow cut crystal vase on the tray, rendering the arrangement slightly awkward.

Without comment Willow found a taller, more substantial porcelain vase and filled it, wondering if the truce that had been established last night would hold. Matilde accepted the substitution, replacing the vase with the one Willow selected, and hefted the tray before looking at her in a semi-critical way.

"You've made a mess of putting your hair up," she observed in passing.

Willow grimaced at her retreating back. She was carrying the tray down the hall to the salon, which meant that Darla was awake and would be down soon. Intent on avoiding her, Willow decided to forego heating more water for tea and settled for a glass of water and bread smeared with butter for her breakfast. Wrapping it in a napkin, she went to the library with her meal and the mail and found Angelus there, sitting behind his desk.

He took in her bread and water breakfast and the mail tucked under her arm in a comprehensive glance before gesturing to a corner of the desk were a chair was positioned.

Feeling somewhat relieved by his lack of attention, Willow sat, placing her glass and the bread in the napkin on an immaculate corner of the desk, before turning her attention to the bundle of mail yet to be opened, read, and sorted.

Mail for Darla she left unopened since she preferred to keep her correspondence private. Invitations and social correspondence was generally addressed to Angelus, as were the bills from tradespeople. There was a bill from the furniture dealer for the chaise William had purchased for her room, less the consignment on the settee it replaced, and a commission for the re-sale. Bills went into a pile that would be addressed with a note to their bank to pay the bills out of the household account, and she felt a stab of regret at not having thought to ask the shop keeper to hold back the consignment from the bill, leaving a cash balance that she could have retrieved in person.

Working out ways to skim money off the household accounts had kept her busy for years, though in practice, she was careful not to indulge the impulse. Behind an unlocked door in a drawer was a fortune in jewelry that she could make use of when she made her escape.

Thinking back over the last few days, she looked up at Angelus. Darla would write a note to their hostess complimenting her on the party last night, but the night before, Angelus, Drusilla and William had dined at the Hamilton's. A note and a small gift were in order.

"Should I write a note to the Hamiltons?" she asked.

A small smile twitched at the corners of his lips. "Yes, do that," he said, seeming amused for some reason.

~~~*~~~

William came in while she was putting her hair up again, and stood in the bathroom door, leaning against it as he rolled a cheroot between his fingertips, possibly aware that he was facing a long day with a slender supply of tobacco at his disposal. He brought it to his lips and strolled over to the fireplace to find a match to light it. Mr. Buttons ran over to him, sniffing the cuff of his trousers, and he pushed the dog away with his bare foot.

"I thought I'd take him to the park," Willow said.

From the tone of her voice, he understood that she was asking a question. He had barred her from walking during the day before he knew what potential threat her acquaintances from the park posed. Now that they had a social context, and no connection to the assault on the house, he supposed that there was no real reason to keep her confined to the house and the grounds.

"I thought I'd ask Darla if she has any errands."

He flicked ash into the cold grate. "Errands are for servants," he said, watching her pin her hair up. "We should get some."

"I did," Willow reminded him. "You killed them."

Her tone of voice was flattened with something. Resentment? Anger?

She was wearing the gray silk banyan again. "If she sends you into town, buy some cigarettes for me," he said, watching the silk smooth over her back as her arms dropped to her sides.

Or possibly the resentment was directed toward her hair. She was scowling at the mirror, prodding at a lump in the twist of her hair and repositioning a hairpin. He considered it for a moment and decided that she had probably been reminded to feel guilty about the dead servants.

"I'll need money and directions."

It wasn't an unreasonable request. "Go eat something. I'll find you," he said, taking himself off to see Darla. He found her in her room, still in bed, but awake. There was a tray on the bed with a pot of chocolate. It was the kind of thing he might have told Lucius to bring to Willow when he wanted to be indulgent.

"This is novel," Darla greeted him without looking up from a letter she was reading.

The bedroom was part of the master suite, connecting to Angelus' room across the hall by a dressing room and a bathroom. Angelus' room was dominated by white and gold. This room was darker, the walls covered in red silk.

He sat on the corner of the bed, uninvited. "Willow is going out," he announced. "Do you have any errands for her?"

She looked up. Objectively, she admired the picture he made, lounging at the foot of her bed, half dressed. "Drusilla and Willow need new dresses. She can make an appointment for the dressmaker to come here," she said. "I'll want to see fabric samples."

He nodded, looking around the room. "I'll tell her."

Darla smiled. "Bring her back with them when she returns," she ordered.

His eyebrows lifted at the tone of her voice. Instant obedience was never one of his virtues. He thought about it, weighing it like it was a request before nodding his assent.

She went back to reading her letter. It was a missive from her sire. Angelus had been a kind of declaration of her independence from him and he accepted it with remarkable grace when he could have destroyed her and her little family. They corresponded regularly. His handwriting was oddly neat and orderly. He used a writing machine that mirrored his handwriting to make a true copy of his letters, keeping their correspondence private.

She had written to him before they left Lisbon for Vienna and Prague and again after they had been introduced to the vampires who lodged in Zlata Ulicka. This letter came between those two and it was full of gossipy tidbits about the region. As usual, there was no hint of interest in her little brood, unless she read between the lines. He had no purpose in sharing what he knew about the region, potential rivals, and possible snares other than to lay that knowledge at her disposal.

She closed her eyes for a moment, conjuring the memory of the dank underworld of Berlin. Arrested in eras that were crushed under the relentless press of time, were vampires that had been made by the Master and his followers. She came and went as it pleased her, assured of welcome when she returned to stand at his side. No visit with her family had gone well, but it did not preclude the possibility of returning again.

When she opened her eyes, William was gone. He knew what she wanted Willow for. He would refuse her. He would find some way to out of it. His rebellions were consistent and carefully calibrated. She wondered if he would ever choose, as she had, to test the limits of what would be tolerated for the sake of what could be discovered by making up rules as you went.

~~~*~~~

He went down the back stairs, barefooted, looking for Willow and paused at the foot of the stairs. Willow was in the kitchen, but she was not alone. Lucius was there with a book open in front of him, sitting at the workbench. Matilde was watching Lucius with an expression that was less resentful than usual. Willow had her back to him and didn't realize that he was there.

The book was her Baedeker. Lucius was explaining how to get to a shop where she could purchase his cigarettes, reminding him that he had forgotten to retrieve his wallet. He shrugged it off as he came through the door. "Make sure she has enough money, for a hack and anything she needs to buy," he said, passing that responsibility on to Lucius as he approached Willow, slipping one arm around her waist and ducking his head to nuzzle her throat where it was exposed above the collar of her dress.

She hadn't bathed this morning, probably due to the mess left in her bathroom. "Darla wants you to stop at the dressmaker and arrange for her to come here. She wants you to bring fabric swatches back with you."

Lucius reached into a pocket and started counting out coins for her.

"I can take the trolley," she said.

"Not with the dog," Lucius countered before William could point that out.

Her idea of a meal consisted of toasted bread with a bit of jam smeared on it. A tiny bit of the jam clung to her upper lip and William turned her face up to him to kiss it away, seeing a hint of confusion and distress in her eyes.

He had an idea of what was causing it. He kissed her again and picked up the jam smeared butter knife lying on the side of Willow's crumb laden plate. He twirled it with a flourish thinking of George Hamilton's startled face before he brought the dull point down hard, pinning Matilde's hand to the table. Men fight. Women scream. The responses didn't actually change after death.

Matilde's shriek of pain was abruptly cut off when he slapped her hard enough to get her attention.

"I'm busy right now, but you and I are going to have a short conversation. I'll be doing all the talking," he told her. "Don't go anywhere," he said breezily, taking Willow by the elbow and directing her faltering steps to the hallway.

"What did I tell you last night about bringing problems to me?" he asked.

"I didn't do anything," she insisted. "I just thought about it," which was true and very disturbing, in her view. She had just thought about it and felt the power to make her will manifest gather. That wasn't natural.

She tried to pull her elbow free and stepped on her skirt, stumbling a little. He gave her a little shake. "Willow?"

"What?" she looked shaken. "How . . ." she looked behind him, and answered her own question. "Lucius," she said.

Without bothering to check to see if he had followed them, William gestured to the foyer. "Make yourself useful and get her hat and gloves," he said, moving toward Willow. Lucius passed behind him as William backed her up against the wainscoting under the staircase. "When I tell you to do something, I expect it to be done," he reminded her.

Resentment flared to life in her eyes. "It's done and sorted out. You are going to ruin it," she predicted.

"Ruin it?" He braced one hand above her head, the other lifting her chin. His thumb traced her jaw.

Willow tried to gauge his mood as his thumb reached the corner of her mouth. She turned her head enough to kiss it, resenting him for the gesture that was calculated to mollify. His fingers nudged her chin higher, tipping her head back. For a moment they stood there, locked into a silent battle. She was probably right about having sorted something out with Matilde that his interference would undo. That wasn't the point. If he couldn't trust her to obey such a simple injunction, she wasn't going out.

"I want to know if anyone speaks to you, in the park. Do you understand me?”

Her chin dipped slightly. "Yes, William," she said, sounding like she had already figured out that she was going to acquiesce.

He placed a soft kiss on her lips. “I like it when you call me Will,” he reminded her.

She stared back at him. "I'll keep that in mind. Maybe I'll do that when I manage to teach Mr. Buttons to heel."

He pinched her chin. "Clever," he complimented, backing off to secure her hand, escorting her to the door.

Lucius had her hat and William took it from him, setting it on her head. It was an Italian straw bonnet dyed gray to match the dress with a bit of black satin trim. It framed her heart-shaped face. She accepted her gloves and a small purse from Lucius.

Lucius had gotten out the leash and was snapping it on Mr. Buttons' collar. The dog barked, springing up as he realized that he was going for a walk with his second favorite person in the world as Lucius passed the leash to her.

She was disconcerted. Two spots of color stained her cheeks. William smiled at her fondly. “Don’t be too long, sweet,” he admonished.

But she surprised him when she looked up at him and seemed to realize that he was enjoying her reaction. Lucius opened the door for her, carefully stepping out of the way of the sunlight that the open door allowed in. William could feel it crawling over his skin until she shifted to block the light with her body. Her lips moved soundlessly.

Idiot, she called him, and then she smiled, pulled to the open door the dog was bolting through by the tug of the leash.

~~~*~~~

He was grinning at the sight of her, one hand clutching her skirt as she maneuvered down the stairs, the other fighting the leash as the dog leapt ahead of her when Lucius started to shut the door. Angelus was coming down the stairs. She always hiked her skirt up just a tiny bit too high.

"Willow is going out?" He stood at the landing, resting his arms on the carved wood rail to watch from a less sunlit spot as she wound the leash around her hand and tried to pull the dog back while she opened the gate at the foot of the walk. The dog whined piteously at the restraint and she shook the leash loose again and got pulled through the gate for thanks.

William let Lucius shut the door. Pale wisps of smoke rose off his skin. Angelus smiled at him beatifically. "Remember that time in Bath when I had you chained up and Drusilla played with the drapes?"

William turned his head to look up at him. He pretended to consider. "No. Was it good for you?"

Angelus laughed. Drusilla had left him in the sun long enough to cause his skin to smolder and then she would let them down and Angelus tasted the heat coming off William's skin, licking his nipples until he was lost in the sensation for a few moments before Drusilla threw back the curtains again.

"Where is your precious girl off to?" Angelus asked.

"Errands," William told him, completing the turn to walk back to the kitchen. Angelus waited until he was passing the landing and vaulted over it to crash into him, slapping one hand across his chest.

While Lucius watched, they grappled with each other. Angelus was bigger and stronger but William was more agile and quicker. They backed off, not entirely relaxing, swaying a little as they moved to leave no opening.

Angelus feinted and lunged at William. Anticipating the move, he ducked, threw his shoulder into Angelus' midsection and nearly managed to sweep his feet under him before Angelus grabbed the hall table to check his fall.

The violent movement sent a hand-painted vase spinning to the lip of the table, tipping over, and William dove for it, catching it before it hit the ground.

Angelus looked up the stairs to see if their scuffle had drawn any attention. "Good catch," he complimented, straightening. William returned the vase to its proper resting place and rolled his eyes when Angelus smacked the back of his head as he strolled past him to the kitchen.

He found Matilde where William had left her. She could have unpinned her hand, but she had decided that the safest thing to do was to wait and try to figure out if she was really in trouble.

Angelus tilted his head to one side. "Maybe I was hasty about that whole railroad spike phase you went through," he mused as William joined him. "Are you going to start making your way through flatware? Can I expect you to fork your victims next?"

William cast him a withering sideways look at the taunt and forbore to comment.

"What has she done?" Angelus asked. He sounded mildly interested, but not enough to interfere, which neither Lucius nor Matilde understood.

William shook his head. "I don't know. I forgot to ask, and you know how Willow is. 'Little Miss Go Along and Get Along'" he shook his head. "Doesn't work that way. Eventually someone decides to make themselves an object lesson," they had switched back to English, so Matilde was unable to follow any of this.

With a slight thrill that tingled in his spine, Lucius was. It wasn't just the words that were starting to make more sense, it was the whole package. Intonation, the body language. He found himself absorbing impressions of William, from the arrogant lift of his chin to the indolent indifference that was expressed as he traced the outline of Angelus' handprint on his chest.

His lessons in English had been terminated as soon as the household was reorganized, but he still had his books and exposure to the language that was used to exclude them. 'Object lesson' rolled in his head, interestingly terse and yet full of meaning and menace.

~~~*~~~

The park was empty Willow discovered. In fact, the street had been quieter than usual. She would have expected to see trades people, like any other day, but there had been none. She was a little late. Getting out of the house had taken longer than expected and she thought that William had changed his mind at the last minute when he had been staring at her with what she recognized as a need to impose his will on her tempered by his version of affection.

He had been teasing her. For a moment she thought that he had figured out that she had something to do with his vastly depleted store of tobacco.

Was it a holiday? There were holidays, not exactly like she remembered with school let out and the mall, the movie theatre, and Bronzing to pass the time. Of course, she was twenty-four now. She should be graduated from college by now, with a job or grad school, or maybe both, and her holidays would have changed.

Where was everyone? Where were Harry Wyndham and David Giles? Had she, in a fit of madness, imagined the whole conversation last night? She could have sworn Wyndham understood what she was saying. She couldn’t exactly say, I want to help the Watcher’s Council and I’ll tell you everything I know, but we have to get as far away as fast as we can. Vampire. Enhanced hearing. What little she did say could have been construed in a lot of ways if they were overheard.

On the other hand, Watchers Council operatives had not struck her as being geniuses in the other time that she had encountered them.

She was walking downhill toward the ornamental pond, when she finally saw them. Relief washed through her, so much so that she felt a little dizzy and had to step off the path for a second to catch her breath. Her hand rested on the rough bark of a tree, and on the edge of her awareness, she could have sworn she felt something, like adrenaline, but without the pounding heart.

She was sure that they saw her too. Harry started to raise his hand to wave, but David caught it before the motion was complete and they turned away, walking in the direction of the north gate.

"Okay," Willow muttered to herself, wondering if she was supposed to turn into 19th century stalker woman and follow them. She looked down at the dog and stooped down to unhook his leash.

Granted freedom, he didn't catch on immediately. He jumped up to try to lick her face, muddy paws scrambling for purchase on her silk dress.

It was a stupid idea, she realized, looking up to watch the two retreating figures before fumbling with the dog's collar to reattach the leash. She tried to ignore the way her heart was beating sickly in her chest, hollow with disappointment and a certain amount of dread.

"If this were Sunnydale and one of Spike's skanky, not-yet-dead girlfriends showed up at the Bronze to give us the poop on Spike what would we have thought?" she asked Mr. Buttons.

He danced around in a circle and barked a couple of times.

"Yep," she nodded. "We would have thought, not so fast, sister," she said sadly.

It wasn't true. Not even remotely, and she knew it. Spike didn't have girlfriends. He just had Drusilla, until he didn't and he didn't seem to have the least idea of what to do except get her back. And they would never have given up on anyone that easily.

"We've got errands," she reminded the dog.

~~~*~~~

"I knew she would come," Harry said. He wanted to stay and find out what she had to say.

David didn't. The fact that she had returned to the park confirmed that she had a freedom of movement that bore some consideration. A note had arrived that morning from Emile requesting a meeting at lunch. Harry insisted that they visit the park on the chance that she would come there again. David agreed to that, but insisted that they would not approach her. They left early for lunch and made a circuit of the park. David had been ready to leave when she appeared.

"There she is," David agreed, scanning the trees behind her. The chances that a vampire in broad daylight shadowed her were nil, but he had no intention of speaking to her. Harry started to lift his hand to wave at her and David caught his arm.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "We are leaving."

"She knows that we've seen her," Harry protested. "It's rude."

David snorted at that. "Unpardonable," he retorted. "What the hell is she up to?"

Harry muttered something about staying and asking her that very question, and then subsided. "We've learned so much from just watching."

"Was that sarcasm?" David glanced over his shoulder. She had made no move to follow them and was bent over petting her dog. "She has freedom of movement during the day," he pointed out. "Which means that she is trusted by notoriously untrusting creatures."

"You think it is a trap?" Harry concluded.

David gave him a sideways look as they left the park. "Trolley or cab?" he asked, forbearing to ask how Harry was holding up on his bad leg.

"Cab," Harry said.

"I'm not drawing conclusions. The interesting thing will be if she comes back," he said. "We won't discuss it with Emile."

"He could help us," Harry argued.

"And he might even appear to," David said dryly.

~~~*~~~

The remainder of Willow's day was more eventful than she anticipated. She went to the shop Lucius provided her directions to and purchased cigarettes for William. After that task was discharged she went to the dressmaker's shop to schedule an appointment and collect fabric swatches for Darla. Mr. Buttons' presence was tolerated for the sake of the anticipated size of an order, promptly paid for. It made Willow feel slightly guilty, like she was committing a form of extortion. Little dressmaker shops like this one were facing extinction. It was already happening. Ready-made clothing was cheaper and the quality was improving, creeping into the realm of haute couture.

The underpinnings of day and eveningwear were mostly mass-produced now, cutting into what was once a part of a dressmaker's trade. Accessories like scarves, cloaks, gloves and hats were also being made on a larger scale. In twenty years a shop like this would no longer exist. This wasn't a great mystery unraveled due to her understanding of the future. People whose only answer to it was to try to work harder to retain the customers they had understood that the world was changing.

She was offered a glass of wine, which she accepted. Mr. Buttons got a small bowl of water while they waited for Madame.

She was taking her first sip of the wine when the Princess Stazari arrived, waving off a shop girl who offered to fetch Madame for her. She walked into the small parlor Willow occupied with a friendly smile on her face. "I saw you in the window, and made my driver stop," she said, as if they were old friends.

Astonishment made Willow pause with the wine glass half way to her mouth before she remembered that she should stand up and attempt a curtsey. She was getting up while the princess was moving to the settee to sit beside her.

"Don't," she gave a spare shake of her head. "Not that I don't secretly enjoy it sometimes," she admitted with a small smile, "but I can see I caught you by surprise. You left early last night, and I hoped that we would talk more."

"Uh . . . hello," Willow put in lamely. Mr. Buttons abandoned his water dish and tried to slip past her to investigate the newcomer. She snagged his collar and made him sit.

The princess waved to her driver. "Please take Miss Grant's dog for a walk while we visit," she entreated.

The driver collected the leash from her and pulled Mr. Buttons across the slick floor a few feet before he got the idea and obediently scampered after him.

"Adorable," the princess said.

"Not really," Willow gestured to her grass and mud-stained skirt.

She was answered with a conspiratorial grin that reminded her of having Buffy to make grumbling comments to.

"I am glad that I saw you," the princess went on. "Staz suggested that I invite you to tea, but this is so much better."

Not so much like Buffy, she decided. Maybe more like Cordelia. Who was more likely to marry a Prince and give him a cute pet name? Focus, Willow, she scolded herself.

Before she was required to say something semi-intelligent, Madame arrived to greet her and ask if she had been made comfortable while she waited. Recognizing her cue, Willow said that she had been made very comfortable and introduced her companion before taking refuge in her wine glass.

The open bottle and a tray with two more glasses and assorted pastries was carried in as the dressmaker perched on the edge of her chair to pour and then to ask Willow what brought her to the shop.

She relayed Darla's request.

An assistant was dispatched to the cutting room to obtain fabric samples. While they waited Madame offered to show Willow, and by extension, her companion, some sketches that she had made after their last fitting.

She was finishing her second glass of wine before they were finished. It wasn't until they were outside the shop and the princess was insisting that they would drive her home that Willow realized what was so unsettling about all of this. It wasn't just the odd behavior of the Watchers in the park, it was the way this woman was trying too hard to be nice to her. It made her want to ask Buffy the one question that she had never asked her.

Why?

The driver brought Mr. Buttons back to her and opened the carriage door for the Princess. An afternoon of pretending to be someone she wasn't loomed before her. It was, in a way, preferable to being exactly who she was.

Once she settled in with Mr. Buttons at her feet, quiet for the time being, the princess asked where they were taking her.

"Have you ever been to Zlata Ulicka?" Willow asked instead.

A tentative smile appeared. "It's nothing special," the princess said. "Do you want to go there?"

"Do you mind?" Willow asked.

"Not at all," she answered.

~~~*~~~

In another life, William had been surrounded by servants. The servants in the home he had occupied as a human vastly outnumbered the family. They functioned independently and in concert with the family, performing their duties around their own mysterious order. Chambermaids and footmen came and went, but the core group, the butler, housekeeper, his mother's maid, his father's valet, remained the same. They were the enforcers of order.

There had been a saucy chambermaid when he had come home at the end of term when he was fifteen or sixteen. She found reasons to dust or tidy things in his room or the library when he was there. The attention was obvious, flattering, and a little intimidating. It was also a kind of test. It wasn't so much that his parents took a dim view of abusing servants so much as the cadre of servants that maintained the order of the house took a dim view of it.

His virtue remained intact through the break.

One of the things he recognized almost at once when they arrived was that a similar order had coalesced amongst the servants Willow had assembled. Lucius was the most obvious keeper of that order. He was the dominant personality. Matilde and Cook were partners. Willow would have been horrified to know it, but she had chosen well when she picked them. Out of the group that they had initially turned, only one proved unmanageable; the rest were competent, maintaining the patterns established in the household before they were turned. The house in Prague was the smoothest functioning household that they had enjoyed. Normally such a large number of newly-turned vampires would have been halved by now. Someone would have displeased Angelus or neglected some task that Darla demanded of them, or made the mistake of thinking that Drusilla wasn't to be taken seriously. Willow's presence was its own invitation to a loss of control.

When they left Prague, William thought it was likely that they would keep the lot of them. In a roundabout way he owned two homes in England. There was the Charlotte Street house and a manor house that his father had spent a decade refurbishing in Suffolk. In autumn he would take Willow to London for the trip that she had been promised. They would go to Suffolk for Christmas.

He intended to ensure that he had a stable, secure environment for Willow's last days as a mortal and her early days as a vampire. She wasn't Christian, but she got wistful around Christmas. He made a mental note to find out more about the Jewish observation of Hanukkah. This little household that she helped to create was going to be a part of that and it was high time that they got that through their thick skulls, he decided.

Still pinned to the table by the knife that was buried in the table, Matilde waited. It was a little ridiculous and she was aware of that, but she remained where she was. Her gaze flicked to Lucius who was leaning against a counter, watching this with a slightly puzzled expression.

"You might have thought that this was an inquisition," William said, sounding patient, "but I'm not interested in who did or said what to whom."

She sensed another more compelling presence entering the kitchen from the backstairs. Darla. Her head started to move to the right.

William snapped his fingers. "Look at me when I'm speaking to you."

She went absolutely still while she waited for Darla to intervene.

William shook his head. "If I think that you aren't capable of paying attention, I stake you," he warned her.

There was dead silence. Angelus was sitting on a stool, watching all of this with a small smile as he paged through the book Lucius had left open on the counter.

She didn't want to look at William. There was a voice in her head that howled that he was the least of them and not to be considered.

If Darla had stood behind him she could have pretended, but she stayed just out of Matilde's limited range of vision, and she was forced to look at him. He had his thumbs tucked into the waistband of his trousers. His uncombed, unruly hair stuck up in places. He might have been mistaken for a mostly undressed boy, but his expression was deadly serious.

"I would have freed myself by now," William told her. "The difference between you and me is that I would have gotten away with it. You won't. It is unfair, but that is one thing you will discover that life and unlife have in common. Fair doesn't enter into it. Right now the only thing keeping you from a dustbin is the fact that you are doing what I told you to do."

Lucius frowned at that, his gaze shifting from Matilde, who looked furious and confused, to William, who was infuriatingly relaxed.

"There are two ways this ends. You decide that complying with unreasonable demands is beyond you, free yourself, and try to carve my heart out before I stake you," he held his arms apart, presenting his chest with the livid handprint over his heart as a target. "No one would stop you."

For a moment Lucius closed his eyes, knowing that it wasn't true. Angelus and Darla might not, but as the muscles tensed in the back of his neck, he knew that he would, without understanding why he was certain of it.

"The other way this ends is a bit more complex," William told her. "It is a matter of accepting an underlying principle, and that is always more difficult."

Drusilla had woken and wandered down the backstairs to join Darla. Without invitation, she wrapped her arms loosely around Darla's waist and let her chin rest on her shoulder, dark eyes drinking in the tense little game being played in the kitchen.

"It's like a play," she murmured to Darla, a smile in her voice.

The presence at her back, the loose embrace, made Darla tense with a distaste for being touched that lingered. It didn't go unnoticed. Drusilla kissed her cheek, making a shushing sound and Darla let herself relax fractionally, turning her head to look at Drusilla. She had pinned her hair up away from her face, leaving the length of it to fall in uncombed waves. She was wearing William's discarded, wrinkled shirt, unbuttoned over a skirt that was banded at the bottom in three rows of red velvet over brown wool. It was part of a traveling dress with a smart little fitted bodice and a fur trimmed hat.

Darla had come down to the kitchen to find her maid. She wanted a bath and her hair dressed and while she was capable of doing these things for herself, she preferred to have them done for her and was annoyed to be required to go looking for her maid. She didn't know if William was simply bored and toying with Matilde or if something had happened that had prompted the confrontation, but she had not been inclined to interfere.

"I don't make unreasonable demands that can't be met," William said. "You could stand there all day. It isn't that hard. Pain? It's insignificant. Making yourself stand there, when you don't want to, when you think that you shouldn't have to is the hard part."

~~~*~~~

Harry watched the smoke from Emile's cigarette hang in the air and then dissolve only to be replaced by another thin cloud of smoke when he exhaled. They were meeting at the same tavern, outside in full sunlight that made him feel uncomfortably aware of how tired and warm he was.

He was starting to consider the possibility that he would never regain the full use of his injured leg. Sipping warm beer, his stomach churned as the memory of looking down at the injury he had suffered came back to him. Shredded cloth, skin, muscle, and the gleam of something that he understood to be a part of his kneecap, the only thing he recognized in the disorder of his mangled leg, made him feel the sweat dampening his skin congeal.

David and Emile were engaged in a polite exchange of carefully-edited information. It was nothing that either party would not have discovered on their own. David's account was a summary of the evening spent in the company of the Scourge of Europe. Emile's news consisted of the discovery of a human heart on the doorstep of the mission. Harry picked at the bread that was on the table, rolling the soft inside of the bread into balls that were buttered with sweat.

He was convinced that David's gamesmanship in the park was a tactical error that would have consequences for all of them. This was what happened when the hunters became the hunted.

“It could be bait for a trap,” Emile was saying.

“Or a warning,” David agreed. They were meeting in their usual place, outside, under the chestnut trees over warm, bitter ale.

"Traps are interesting things," Emile mused.

For the three men at the table there was one obvious conclusion. The quarry was aware of the mission's other activities. David wondered if there was a connection between the girl's conversation with Harry and her subsequent appearance in the park and the grisly discovery at the mission. He couldn't discount the possibility that this was all an elaborate game for the vampires and that the girl was simply more bait. If she was bait and she was as valuable to them for reasons that were not yet clear as he suspected, then it was a trap that probably placed her at low risk.

It was possible that she had her own agenda and he and Harry had to sort out how they might answer that before they were confronted with it. Harry's original idea of simply abducting her, reckless and potentially dangerous as it was, now struck David as workable. If they made any type of contact with her again, allowing her to return to the vampires' lair was out of the question. They had to have an exit strategy in place before that could happen. He briefly considered engaging Emile's assistance and discarded the notion. If they did take her alive she had the potential to be an asset of nearly incalculable value to the Watchers' Council, a position the Order of St. Ubaldus was likely to adopt as well.

A little fieldwork was in order tonight. David was curious about what Emile would do now that the mission appeared to be compromised.

~~~*~~~

Zlata Ulicka during the day gained charm and lacked mystery. A small smile played on the princess' lips as they strolled over the cobblestones with Mr. Buttons obediently walking at Willow's side, apparently having been walked by the driver into a state of compliant exhaustion.

Willow knew that she wasn't good at making the dog mind her. She tended to try to reason with him. She wasn't firm enough. When she had told William that she would remember to call him Will when she taught the dog to heel had been a roundabout way of asserting that she was no more trained than the dog. It wasn't true. She was starting to feel nervous already about how long she had been away from the house and what the consequences might be.

The carriage ride across the river had taken longer than she thought it would and it was late in the afternoon when they arrived. Late enough, with the sun slanting down over the rooftops, that there was sufficient shade for a vampire to stand in an open doorway watching them with a certain amount of curiosity. Coming here was a mistake.

"You've been here before?" the princess asked.

"Once," Willow answered.

"I don't believe in coincidences," her companion remarked. "My husband's family estate is in Walachia. It has been a sanctuary for gypsies since his grandfather's time. There is a woman who lives here who is a Rom—"

"Terese," Willow blurted out the name, startled.

A delighted smile was her answer. "There are no coincidences. We must have something in common that led to these connections," she concluded. "We are Americans in Prague, and of a similar age," she pointed out.

"I see what you mean," Willow nodded. "Not married to a prince with property in Walachia," she pointed out dryly. "Just interested in witchcraft."

"Hmm. Really? That's an interesting hobby," her new friend commented, sounding like she did not share that as an interest.

Willow made herself concentrate. "My cousin does not approve," she admitted. "He's very close-minded about anything connected to the occult."

"What about your young man? Mr. Crawford? What does he think of it?"

Having overheard some of Darla's conversation with Mr. Giles about a wedding, she was curious about the relationship.

"William?" Willow was trying to figure out if the impression that William had an opinion about her that was significant was one that had been fostered or one that her new friend had simply formed. "I don't know that he cares what I do," she said.

The princess looked puzzled by that, so Willow hastily added, "He's not the sort of person who makes you feel that you have to organize what you are interested in to please him."

Her expression cleared. "That's a nice quality. He seemed very pleasant."

A headache was forming behind her eyes and she mumbled something in agreement as the princess suggested that they visit Terese. It was precisely why Willow had suggested Zlata Ulicka as a destination, but she didn't believe in coincidence either.

Where was the rat-faced boy? Had she imagined him the other night? "I should go home," she said. "I have a bit of a headache."

"Then a cup of tea before we leave is just in order," the princess said, patting her arm.

~~~*~~~

Matilde was still standing in the kitchen with her hand pinned to the table as Cook started preparing supper for Willow.

Cook had warned her about this. They weren't one of them. They weren't part of what they were together, and in a very definable way, Willow was.

Lucius made a new list for the grocer to deliver after sunset. She had been beaten and sent to her room without being allowed to feed. It was easier than standing here, pinned to the table in a way that she could effortlessly end. Paulus was sitting on the stool Angelus had abandoned, looking at her like she had done something very stupid.

When Lucius spoke, Paulus' attention shifted to him and he appeared to be giving what he was saying greater consideration than he used to.

"When they go out together, they pretend to be a family. The way they did the night they came. It's a lie. We know that. We know what they really are. Darla made Angelus who made Drusilla who made William. Vampires. No different from us? Except in this: they are a family. They hold to that. I thought that it was something about the making of them, but I don't feel it. Not really. Neither does Cook. You think you do," he said. "But if it exists, it exists only for you."

"I think she's a part of the fiction that is the family because they can't support it without her. It is too much a part of the way they are with each other."

"And they hold together," Paulus concluded.

Lucius gave a brief nod. "I think so. How could she have survived so long if they did not support it?"

Paulus shook his head. "It's too complicated," he complained. "I don't understand it."

"Understand this: Darla values obedience. Angelus values usefulness. William values loyalty. Drusilla values nothing. Be what you have to be, and leave the girl alone. It is one of the things they agree on."

~~~*~~~

Terese and the princess, who was now insisting that she be called Maggie, were having tea while Willow talked to Arik in his workroom. Her headache had grown worse as the day grew later and when the chamomile tea did nothing for it, Terese had suggested that she consult with him.

She found herself telling him about the headache as well as the peculiar way that her magic was behaving inside the barrier wards.

He made her describe them again. It was an advanced bit of spell-casting, but he couldn't see any flaw in how it had been executed. She did not mention the other spells binding the house, like the reversal of the invite that she had executed. He made up a headache powder for her without opiates and suggested that she burn sage and larkspur for a general cleansing.

"You might want to try a magical colonic," he added, reaching for a book and jotting down the ingredients and incantations, giving her a semi-apologetic and embarrassed look. "You'll need to be near a body of water for this," he warned her. "A simple bath won't do. Spring fed water is best."

She read over the instructions. All the ingredients that were required were ingredients that she had on hand.

Dosed with the headache powder, Willow was able to relax into the cushioned seat of the carriage as they crossed the Charles Bridge at sunset. The view out the window was spectacular. Living so long among vampires she rarely had the opportunity to appreciate such sights.

"It's a long way from Quincy," the princess commented on the view.

Willow couldn't bring herself to think of her as Maggie. Princess Maggie. It sounded absurd. They had nothing in common. The few people that she felt any connection to since she had entered this century were all dead. The one thing she had in common with them, with Jane, Lucius, and Matilde, was that they lived in an unforgiving world and hadn't managed spectacularly to get by.

Seeing the grimace that contorted Willow's face, the former Margaret O'Connor patted her new friend's hand, thinking that it was her headache and feeling guilty for keeping her from home when she was feeling unwell. "You should close your eyes and try to relax," she advised.

Willow managed to nod, relieved of the pressure of making conversation that made sense.

It was twilight when they reached the house and the driver handed her out, carrying her parcels behind her as he followed her up the walk. She was a little surprised when Andreas opened the door for her. In a picture of cozy domesticity, Darla and Angelus were in the salon with Drusilla sitting at the piano and William was strolling into the foyer from the kitchen. She thanked the driver after Andreas relieved him of her packages and waved from the door at the princess in the carriage as they drove off.

~Part: 28~

"Who was that?" Darla wanted to know.

William was less curious about that point. "That was the longest walk in the park on record," he grumbled as Willow took off her hat and gloves. "Where in the name of hell have you been?"

He had been busy for most of the afternoon, but after he got cleaned up and dressed, it had occurred to him that Willow had been gone longer than could be reasonably expected.

She bent down to detach the leash as Drusilla swept in to collect her dog, scooping him up. "Did you have an adventure?" she cooed to him.

Willow found the package with William's cigarettes. "Here," she said. "I didn't mean to be out so long." What she really wanted to say was something along the lines of 'I'm tired and I'd like to go lie down,' but she didn't really expect to be let off so easily.

He manufactured an interest in the bag that he didn't feel. "Here," she said, sounding too anxious, too eager to please, which didn't pacify him in any way. It should have. It only reminded him that she had compared herself to the dog to make a joke at her own expense, or a point that he felt more than a little annoyed about.

"Who was that?" Darla called out again, a bit more insistently.

"Princess Stavarski," Willow answered her. "I met her at the dressmaker," she hefted the package of fabric samples and preliminary sketches the dressmaker had provided her with and took them into the salon to give to Darla.

"You look a bit peaked," Angelus observed.

William followed her, leaving the bag on a table in the after he removed one wrapped packet of cigarettes to open. He paused to look at her. She looked tired.

"Headache," she said. "I'd like to-"

"Go lie down," William finished for her, only it was an instruction. "Your supper is waiting, but you can have it in your room. I'll bring it up," he offered.

Darla looked at him. This wasn't what she had in mind at all, and it didn't bother her that Willow was tired. "We will look at these later," she agreed, tempted to make her stay, but didn't say anything to stop her.

Willow retreated to the temporary sanctuary of her room as William lit a cigarette and Darla complained about him smoking in the salon. She felt something. It was like the pressure of silence, pressing against her mind as a teacher waited for an answer, except it was more intrusive and she was determined not to blurt out an answer to an unknown question. It was the house, or the magic binding the house, which was hers, trying to find her. She found herself walking to the window, pushing the heavy drapes aside to look down on the ruined garden.

Without recourse to memory she knew exactly where she buried the crystal that defined the boundaries of her ward. She felt it against the pit of her stomach. She had subverted the laws that bound the natural world. There was something out there that was evil and twisted and it was something she had created that knew her intimately.

And it was power, waiting and wanting to be called on. Power that reminded her that she wasn't helpless. It was power that rubbed up against the numbness that she had enveloped herself in when the watchers turned away from her in the park; power that could be used to punish them for ignoring her.

She flinched at the sound of the door opening from the hallway, half expecting to find William there, but it was Drusilla, with Mr. Buttons tucked under her arm as if he was as weightless as a stuffed animal.

"There were no cakes today," Drusilla told her.

The mention of food made Willow feel a little light-headed from hunger. She had hardly eaten anything today. She wanted to replace the hollow feeling at the pit of her stomach with something warm and sustaining. Was this what it felt like when they were hungry? Was it hunger for more than food, but for the comfort of filling themselves with something warm and sustaining?

She let the curtain fall and turned to face her . . . what? What was Drusilla to her?

She put the dog down and nudged him away from her with her foot. "It's the hairpins," she said. "Pressing too hard, holding things up that are meant to fall down."

Willow decided not to look for any deeper meaning, rejecting symbols and the featherweight of her own twisted work pressing against her. "My feet hurt, too," she said.

Drusilla cocked her head to one side, smiling sweetly, "And you smell," she put in, without a shred of malice, her nose wrinkling.

~~~*~~~

Willow was in the bathtub when William let himself in to her room. Drusilla was in there with her. There was another parcel on the bed with her purse; from the scent of the parcel he knew that she had made a visit to Zlata Ulicka. She was becoming too independent, despite the appearance of submission laced with resentment. Darla noticed it, too. He didn't mind it so much when it was directed elsewhere. He willed himself to be pleased that she had done no more than stay out later than expected.

The dog was on the floor, mouthing the leather of the half boot she wore for walking, watching him with the expectation of being ejected from the room. William sat on the end of the chaise and snapped his fingers at the dog. He wasn't the first pet that Drusilla had been given, but so far he was holding the record for longevity, balanced between Drusilla's continued interest in him and Willow's willingness to keep him fed and watered.

The dog had turned his head to watch him, interest sparking in his eyes, tail thumping on the floor with growing enthusiasm. He probably thought that resisting the appeal in William snapping his fingers was a kind of game, only he was playing with someone that wouldn't hesitate to snap his annoying neck. In that respect, Willow had nothing in common with the dog.

She emerged from the bathroom in a dressing gown that belonged to Drusilla. When the bathroom door opened, the dog abandoned her boots and scampered around her in the doorway to scratch at the connecting door to Drusilla's room. Drusilla opened the door enough to let him in while Willow pulled the door on her side closed, cutting off the draft of damp, fragrant steam that had been leached from the bathroom.

"Cook will bring a tray up," he told her as she went to her dressing table to sit on the bench, picking up her brush to work out the tangles in her towel-dried hair.

Everyone was on company manners tonight, Willow thought. It was a whole day of extra normal behavior if you didn't count the watchers who had seen her and decided that they didn't want to speak to her.

While she waited for the tray to be delivered, William moved from the chaise to her bed, lounging on it, rummaging through the contents of her package from the magic shop. He shot her a somewhat expectant look. "Visit to the stinky herbalist?" He picked up one of the small glass vials filled with the headache powder. "What's this for?"

"Headache," she said. "I had a headache. I thought I'd try something different."

"Where did you get this?"

"I went back to Zlata Ulicka," she said, relatively sure that he had already figured that out.

Her eyes went to the mirror. With her hair wet, she looked older to herself in a way that never failed to shock her. It wasn't a good mirror. There was a certain amount of cloudiness in it that she realized that she had sought.

"I went to Zlata Ulicka," she repeated, making herself concentrate on anything but the mirror. "The way the shadows fall there, no direct sunlight for a good part of the day, and no lurking vampires. Vampires, yes, but not lurk-y ones. I wasn't alone and no one bothered me," she summarized, cautiously shifting on the bench to turn toward him.

He looked annoyed. "That's good to know, I guess," he allowed. "Are you out of your mind?"

She gave it serious consideration. "I ask myself that on a regular basis," she said with a hint of sarcasm creeping through.

He picked up the spell that Arik had copied out for her. The moment she walked into the house she had felt her magics crawling over her skin in a distinctly unpleasant way. She wondered what he made of it, but there was a knock on the door announcing the arrival of her supper tray.

He called out to Cook to enter. Concluding that he was probably carrying the tray, Willow got up to open the door. Hesitating only momentarily at the threshold, Cook brought the tray in and William told him to set it on the bed. Moving the tray to the other side of the bed, William tugged the linens down.

"Get in bed and have your supper, love," he invited.

She put the hairbrush down on the dressing table and moved to the bed and arranging the folds of the robe to accommodate sitting with her legs crossed. Her dinner was soup and bread, which was about all she wanted at the moment. Simple, uncomplicated, unambiguous comfort food.

The note was still in his hand and William gestured with it. "What's this?" he asked.

She opened her napkin and spread it over her lap before picking up the soup bowl. Spoon be damned. She blew over the surface of the soup and cautiously lifted the lip to her mouth to drink from the bowl.

Something about that struck him as humorous and he smiled. "Hungry?"

The lip was too broad to accommodate the way she was using it and she had to put the bowl down and blot her soup mustache. "It seemed more direct," she muttered, picking up the spoon. The soup was delicious.

"Pet?" he waved the note to remind her that he was waiting for an answer.

"Cleansing spell," she said, casting a wary look at him. "My magic is all . . . weird. I can feel it grabbing at me at odd times. It's worth trying."

He read the note, eyebrows lifting. "There's the pond in the park," he said, reading the underscored, 'body of water' notation.

She looked at him briefly before dragging her attention back to eating. "I want to try it tonight."

That might put a crimp in Darla's entertainment for the evening. He had an idea of what she wanted. She had largely ignored Willow for the first few months that he kept her, and then one lazy afternoon he had woken up to find Darla sponging blood and sweat off her body. He had come to bed drunk and used Willow to take the edge off of his drunkenness.

When Darla was satisfied that she was clean, she had rubbed oil into her skin. Malnourishment and abuse had left her skin white and papery, and while he watched, dozing, seeping in the heat of her body warming the bed, he watching her skin become supple, pinkening under Darla's ministrations with growing interest and appreciation.

Darla was almost always direct. Angelus was the master of the teachable moment.

She didn't kiss her, or bite her. Fully dressed, hands covered in crocheted gloves saturated with oil, she touched her everywhere while he imagined those hands on him. His introduction to Darla had come at the lowest point of his unlife.

"Nothing belongs to you," Angelus had sneered, and William had thought that they were talking about Drusilla, watching from the bed where she had been doing things with Angelus that William thought were reserved for him.

He hadn't believed it. He believed he could change it. Beaten, he knew what was coming. It was the lesson. Nothing belonged to him. Not Drusilla, who had watched them fight and had done nothing to help him. Beaten, he would watch his sire, the miracle that was his first lover, his impious and unholy bride, go to the winner, and he couldn't blame her for it anymore than he had ever blamed Cecily for turning away from him.

But that wasn't what happened at all.

His body hardened at the memory of Darla's oily gloved finger irritating and soothing his abused sphincter. Nothing belonged to him. Not even his capacity to resist. How many moments like that had he recreated for Willow, wanting her to understand that nothing belonged to her? He had only to look around at what surrounded her. Her room, her clothes, her books, and he savored the notion of them being hers. But only because he allowed it.

He watched her eat, imagining her hunger magnified until there was no difference for her between the food she was putting in her mouth and him, shivering as he remembered how she felt, her skin hot and slippery as she lowered herself on his cock, weeping for the shame of wanting him. Of preferring his attentions to the cold fire of being cleverly manipulated while Darla told her that she barely kept herself fed and clothed when she was a whore, but when she was beyond her prime, she made her fortune this way, preparing a girl or boy who pretended to be innocent for a customer who pretended to believe it.

She did belong to him. She had started to fall asleep on his chest after he had come and as much as he enjoyed her warm body covering him, he had been unpleasantly aware that her hair, under his chin was dirty. Darla had caught his eye, watching them, expecting him to push her away now that he was done with her as well as the pretence that had been played out for his entertainment.

He started taking better care of her after that. Or demanding that she took better care of herself and providing the means to do that. There was a tiny frown pinching her brows together, and she looked tired and hungry, but in the gaslight her skin glowed and the waves of her drying hair shone. She was so beautiful, in her own way.

"We can do that," he agreed when she looked at him clearly waiting for him to comment. "Angelus has been harping on finding out what you can do outside the wards you set up to see if your theory about them interfering is correct."

She bit her lower lip. "I-" she took a deep breath. It was a cleansing spell, a spell that would be centered on her, and it felt personal. "Could we go alone? Just you and me?"

He studied her face for a moment, wondering if she was pandering to him, before nodding. "We can do that. Finish your supper."

Lying on his side with his head propped up on his hand, he watched her eat. Not unaware of his attention, the scrutiny was making her nervous. Wary. His eyes narrowed, watching the way the gaslight behind her brought out the darker auburn parts of her hair as it dried.

"How did you happen to meet the princess?" he asked, changing the subject.

She tore off a piece of bread, dunking it in the soup. "I was at the dressmaker's shop, waiting to be seen, and she came in and," a tiny frown appeared before she shrugged, "She's probably rich?"

William wasn't sure why she asked. "Probably," he agreed.

She nodded. "So . . . the dressmaker wanted to show me the sketches she had, and normally I would have-" she made a face. The odd thought that she had about facilitating the patronage of a small business owned by a woman wasn't something that he would understand. "Darla doesn't care what I think about clothes. We looked at the sketches, and had wine and pastries. Oh! And she had her driver walk Mr. Buttons and I think he did something to him because he sort of heels now."

She ate her soup-saturated bread. "Was that fun?" He tapped the glass of wine on the tray to draw her attention to it.

She shook her head. "Headache-y. No more wine for me," she declined. "I don't know. It was weird. I don't always know who to be," she tried to explain. "Um . . . I'm interested in magic? Angelus doesn't approve."

William grinned. "I suppose not," he drawled. "He was very pious with that missionary rot last night."

She tilted her head to one side. "Then that was probably right," she concluded. "She asked what you thought about it, and I said that I didn't think you cared." She shook her head. "She looked like she didn't think that made sense."

"Hmm? Ah," he nodded. "Angelus alluded to an 'understanding' existing between us." At her blank look, he elaborated. "An understanding that we are going to be married, love."

As soon as he said it, he wished that he hadn't. She got a very strange look on her face. "No," she shook her head. When William first brought her to London to rejoin the older vampires, before she had any idea that he was a younger version of Spike, she had woken up, starving to find herself face to face with Drusilla in a bloodstained veil. William had been lounging in bed, peppering Angelus with questions about a wedding Angelus had interrupted. "No . . ."

Stung by the horrified look on her face, his lip curled in a sneer. "It's not like I went on bended knee and asked, now is it?"

She sucked in a breath. "It's not going to happen?"

"No," he was curt.

"I used to have nightmares about it," she admitted. "Blood everywhere," her eyes squeezed shut. "Screaming."

He was getting a mental picture. No hearts and flowers for his girl. Blood spattered flowers and real hearts. For a moment he didn't know what to say.

He straightened and picked up the tray, setting it down on the floor with a rattle of flatware and dishes before coming back to her, smoothing his hands over her cheeks, slipping one hand under her hair to rub the back of her neck where the muscles were taunt and unyielding under his fingers.

"I'd never let that happen," he said, and he meant it. More or less. If she ever managed to get away from him and thought that she could give herself to someone else . . . he'd make her nightmares a bedtime story before he was through. He had crashed a few weddings in his time with Angelus, and he would never leave her stranded at an altar while people died around her. His fingers worked at the tension in her neck and he kissed the top of her head. "Sssh. No wonder you have a headache. You are so tense."

"You promise?"

"I promise," he assured her, shaking his head as he nudged her over in bed to get in beside her. "I was angry with you for being out so long," he told her. "It's hard to think of rotten things to do to you when you come up with something worse to scare yourself with," he complained.

"I knew that you would be mad," she admitted.

"Did you?" he kneaded her neck.

"I had your cigarettes," she pointed out.

He let his chin rest on top of her head as she started to relax against him. How much of the day had she spent balanced on the fine edge of awareness that he would be annoyed with her for extending her absence? "And then there was that."

"Go to sleep. I'll wake you up later."

~~~*~~~

It was hardly the first time that they had snuck off on their own in the middle of the night. For a while, it had been a bit of a habit. He would come in a few hours before dawn and take Willow out for a few hours. There had been a hotel rooftop in Paris. Stargazing with actual stars until the first streaks of light broke over the horizon. They had been out alone in the early morning hours in Lisbon when they had been ambushed. Vampires brought stakes and crossbows to a fight with vampires. The shot fired at Willow had been from a gun. Someone had noticed their late-night wanderings and come prepared for her.

First-rate thinking, really. Once she was down and bleeding, she would slow him down, or distract him, except that he had understood exactly what had to be done and nothing would have stopped him from seeing it through.

She was snoring lightly in her sleep. His cigarettes had been left across the hall in his room, but even after she was asleep he stayed, running his fingers through her hair. He was a little surprised that they had been left undisturbed for such a long time. Drusilla came in on her way out with Angelus and Darla. When he asked her to get his cigarettes for him, she answered with an indulgent smile before wandering across the hall as requested.

She came back with cigarettes, matches and a candy dish he had been using for an ashtray and he kissed her fingertips while she smiled at this new game of hushed voices and silent, meaningful gestures and turned down the light before she left them.

He dozed off at some point and he was back in Lisbon. Walking in the street, alone. She was out there somewhere. Hiding. He had told her to hide, but he had forgotten to tell her not to hide from him. He had to find her first. He had to find her before it was too late.

It didn't happen that way at all. He had known exactly where she was. The smell of blood, the harsh sound of her pain-constricted breathing had been with him, like a metronome to measure out fight and flight.

She woke him up when she started to shift away from where she was lying against his chest, and he loosened his hold on her to let her find a more comfortable position. She ended up on her side with her chin digging into the inside of his elbow until he moved to slide his arm out from under her.

It was approaching midnight when he woke her up, spooning behind her, his lips finding the soft warm spot under her ear. He thought for a moment about simply stripping her of the robe and making love to her while she was still half-asleep and the house was quiet around them, but she avoided his lips when he tried to kiss her mouth and mumbled something about needing to go to the bathroom.

She looked less than alert when she shuffled into the bathroom, but when she emerged and got dressed, tying her hair back, she was awake. There were things that she needed from her cellar and while she got them he made a visit to the weapons locker to get a crossbow and a knife.

The spell called for blood. Hers. He was taking no chances in the event that she drew unwanted attention. Cook and Lucius were in the kitchen, which was cleaned and restored to order. He largely ignored them as he got a plate of thinly-sliced turkey from the icebox and made a sandwich and wrapped it in a napkin and found an opened bottle of wine cooling. Weeks ago he had some idea of a picnic in the park, and he kept putting it off, or finding it in conflict with something else.

He gave Willow the sandwich when they met in the foyer. She had a cloth bag slung over her shoulder to carry her supplies.

"Do you really think that this has to be done tonight?" he asked when they were on the walk.

"Uh huh," she nodded. "I can't go around losing control when I get angry."

"Is that what happened last night?"

She paused, looking up at him. "You know about that?" She shook her head. "Of course you know about that. Lucius," she reminded herself. "Nothing actually happened, but I could feel it building up, trying to get out," she shuddered.

"And?"

"And what?" She took the hand he extended to her.

"Got yourself a little power, love. Don't tell me you don't like the way it tastes."

She thought about that for a moment. "Power," she tested the word. "Power that pokes at you in places where you think you could kill people."

Vampires were not people, Matilde was not people, except that they started to seem like people if you were around them long enough, Willow realized. Nor was it just vampires. When she had been standing at the window, she had been thinking about people. It reminded her of Amy, who had seen magic as an advantage that she had over people, even if she chose not to use it indiscriminately.

"I'd chose control over power," she said instead. "Does that make sense?"

For her, it did. For a somewhat graceless woman, she managed to walk an unimaginably treacherous tightrope. "Let's get this done."

~~~*~~~

From the window in the dining room, Darla watched them head off in the direction of the park. She had stayed in tonight. She fingered the fringe on the drape. She had spent a part of the evening looking at the fabric samples and patterns that Willow had brought from the dressmaker. It was a task she would have preferred to have company for. Angelus could be counted on for an opinion, but she was still annoyed by his aborted attempt to turn Claire Hamilton.

Drusilla's interest in the patterns had immediately turned to her vast collection of dolls.

That left Willow or William, or both of them, but they had slipped out of the house. She considered summoning Matilde, but she wasn't entirely out of charity with William's notion that her hostility toward Willow required containment even as she was aware that her own behavior had fostered the sentiment. She wasn't required to be fair and consistent.

Drusilla's dog appeared in the foyer, whining softly, possibly at the realization that he had somehow been left behind. Darla walked to the pocket doors, watching him for a moment. He was lying on the floor on his back, rolling back and forth, and shedding silky white and brown hairs on the rug. When he sat up, she saw what inspired the violence. Drusilla had pulled tuffs of his hair into small topknots tied with bows that ran from the back of his neck to his tail. The loathsome little dog looked up at her, panting slightly.

He lifted a paw and waved it at her. When that got no response, he flopped over on his side and started rolling back and forth again. Cook, leaving the kitchen, spotted the dog and walked down the hallway.

"Where is his leash?" Darla found herself asking.

If the idea of Darla walking the dog to any place other than a shallow grave or a dustbin seemed unlikely, Cook gave no sign of it as he found the dog's leash and attached it to his collar, half-expecting that he would be the one walking the dog. With an odd little smile, Darla took the leash from him and left the house with the dog.

~~~*~~~

Cleansing spells were less about incantations and appeals than clarity and focus, Willow decided as she held her bleeding hand over the water. She concentrated on breathing, in through her nose and out through her mouth. Her hand throbbed, but she found that the pain was more tolerable if she didn't think about it. The fresh air was clearing her head. The cold sweat that she had broken out in when her body reacted to the bite of the knife drawn over her palm was leaching out the poison of alcohol in her blood stream.

She had not drunk to excess, so the effect was fairly subtle but the focus that she was gaining seemed to expand her senses. It was a cleansing spell. It made perfect sense that any alcohol that remained in her system would be forced out. Her nose wrinkled at the slightly metallic scent of her own sweat with an undertone of onions, probably from the soup she had consumed.

When her hand stopped bleeding, she felt a twinge of disappointment but checked the impulse to make a fist to squeeze out a few more drops. If the spell was meant to do more than purge her system of impurities it would happen before she stopped bleeding. She reached out beyond her candle, feeling no resistance, no sense of breaking the circle that she had made and put her hand into the water to rinse the last of the blood off.

Her vision swum. She saw herself touching a clouded mirror, brushing away dirt and grime to see herself as she really was, wavering in candlelight, growing young and old before her face changed, rippling into a vampire's game face. She saw herself, not quite human nor vampire, her face leached of color, eyes black, hair turning black as she sucked power from the earth and was filled with the bile of things that rotted and spoiled.

There was a part of her that recognized that power. It was the power to unmake the mistake that had brought her here.

She saw herself in a room that she didn't recognize, sitting on a floor inside a circle reciting a spell that she instantly recognized without understanding where it came from. "Control the outside, control within," she heard herself say and her heart leapt in her chest. That was exactly what she needed.

Clarity and control. A spell that made her will manifest.

~~~*~~~

When her hand touched the water, her body convulsed. William saw it out of the corner of his eye. He had turned away from her ritual, distracted by the sensation of being watched. They were not alone in the park.

This wasn't part of the spell he had taken time to read. Whatever was lurking about would have to wait. She was crawling into the water, disappearing into it headfirst, the silk of her gown floating on the water for a moment before he reached the edge of the water and then sinking in the weight of the water, just beyond his grasp.

He went in after her, feeling for her, and then shifting to his nature state, eyes opening in the murky darkness of the water, full of silt churned up from the bottom. For a moment, he couldn't see at all, and then he realized that he was looking for the wrong thing. The gray of her dress was too hard to pick out. He looked for bubbles, for the air escaping her lungs. The water was ridiculously shallow, hardly four feet deep where she was curled up on the bottom. He had the stray thought that only Willow could manage to drown herself in a shallow pond before he reached her, feeling her fingernails rake his cheek as she fought him.

~~~*~~~

"Something has gone dreadfully wrong," Giles told her.

Willow sat up, staring at the thing in front of her. A black box that showed her reflection, framed in pebbled white plastic. She stared at it stupidly for a moment trying to remember the word for it. Her hands were lying on the keyboard and the processor squawked at the confusing input from her hands when they pressed down on the keys. She flinched at the sound.

Computer.

She looked up and saw that she was in the library. "What?" she looked around in stunned disbelief. Was it that simple? It wasn't exactly click her heels three times and she was whisked home, but it was close.

"Where am I?" she asked.

He crossed his arms over his chest. "We haven't been able to determine that as yet," he said in a tone that was full of annoyance and regret.

If this was another dream, it was the cruelest one yet. "But you are trying?"

"Insofar as we can, Willow," he frowned at her. "You keep changing things. You wished that there were no vampires and caused Buffy to cease to exist. I didn't believe you when you told me about her, but then you unwished it. My bloody diary reads like Kafka-were you planning on meeting him? If you stick around long enough-"

"No," she shook her head. "It's another stupid dream. You aren't making sense. Spike will show up next, and-"

"Already here, pet," he interrupted, behind her on the stairs.

"Like the proverbial bad penny," Giles grumbled. "You are remarkably consistent in including him in your adventures," he scolded.

Spike squatted down next to her, handing her a folded handkerchief that felt real enough. "Your nose is bleeding again," he told her. "Actually, it's you that doesn't make any sense, love. You keep wishing yourself into having things that have repercussions, and then unwishing them. Just tell us what you did and we'll figure out a way to undo it and bring you home."

"You aren't supposed to be here," she said.

He titled his head to one side. "At least that wasn't a wish," he said dryly, "Or I wouldn't be here." He took the handkerchief from her and held it to her nose, tipping her head back. "But, I'm always here. I guess that's better than 'I love you, too' but, I'd settle if you had a mind to say it."

His tone was dry and sarcastic, but his eyes were searching her face and she felt the subtle pressure of his expectations. He could have tortured her and made her say anything, but he had not-William had not.

"I'll give you a wish for anything but that," she said rashly.

He smiled crookedly at that.

"Where are you Willow?" Giles pressed.

She looked at him, pushing Spike's hand away from her face. "Prague. 1898. It was a spell-"

"We know that. A spell to have your will done," Giles told her. "And we know about Prague. Where are you right now? What did you do?"

"Bloody hell, she's fading again," Spike said.

"No, that's good. She doesn't belong to this reality. She has to return to where she cast this spell and undo it. You have to stop," Giles told her. "It isn't the answer."
 
 

Darla stayed on the groomed path, letting the dog lead her. She wasn't sure what she expected to find in the park. She was curious about what they were like when there was no audience to influence their behavior. Years of compelling Willow to indulge his tastes had only served to narrow what William was willing to demand of her.

She realized that she admired that.

She caught a glimpse of them through the trees, near the edge of a pond, lighting candles and stilled to watch as the dog tugged on the leash and then sniffed around the base of a dogwood. It was not a tryst. It was magic. A spell cast with William's apparent complicity or possibly at his insistence. She had never approved of Angelus' encouraging Willow's interest in magic and felt that William was even more skeptical of it than she was.

What were they up to?

~~~*~~~

Pond water bubbled up and poured out of her mouth. William rolled her over on her side, feeling her heart beating sluggishly. "Breathe, damn you," he swore at her. "I'll beat you half to death for this you stubborn, stupid bitch. No more magic, do you hear me?"

He shook her and she convulsed again, her legs folding in on her chest as her body fought to void the contents of her stomach and God only knew what else. He had never seen vomit that glittered black in the moonlight and instinctively, he pulled her heaving body away from the mess, not wanting any of it to touch her.

He was wiping her face off with a handkerchief when she blinked and realized where she was. The handkerchief was real enough. Drusilla embroidered enough of them. Real, she thought dreamily. All real. She could wish herself back, even knowing that for some inexplicable reason she would wish a version of William back with her.

"Even when I try I can't imagine a world without you in it," she whispered, closing her eyes.

A strange sound escaped him, something halfway between a frustrated grunt and a laugh. "It's not 'I love you, too' but I'll-"

Her eyes flew open, "settle," she finished for him, and then shivered. "Mega, maxi weird," she muttered, grimacing at the foul taste in her mouth as she struggled to sit up.

He stared at her, startled by the way she had finished the thought, unnerved by the odd tone of her voice when she said that she couldn't imagine a world without him in it.

Fractured moments trickled through her consciousness. Time stood still. She wished for no vampires and eliminated Buffy but not William, who was mortal in her memory. She wished to return home and found Spike there. It didn't happen, but it could happen.

She felt him lifting her to her feet and then she felt him go still, listening to something, muscles tensing. In Lisbon, he had been there every time she opened her eyes, just like this, alert, aware that there was something out there he could destroy, choosing to stay with her instead.

Did she do these things or did she dream them? Was Giles aware of what she had done and trying to bring her back?

It wasn't the answer? What did that mean? The answer to what exactly?

She rested her hand on William's shoulder and a clammy trickle of cold water ran down the back of her hand. "You are soaked," she said, confused. "When did that happen?"

His hands tightened under her arms, shaking her a little. "Less than a minute after you went into the pond," his voice was hard. "What was that about?" he wanted to know. "What the hell were you thinking?"

She closed her eyes. "It's complicated," she muttered, pushing against his shoulder to stand up. "Let go. I can walk."

He rose with her, his hands on her arms in case she was overstating. She swayed a little when he let go of her, but she didn't fall. "Very weird," she said, puzzled by the outcome of the spell. "I don't feel any different."

He wasn't listening. "We need to get out of here," he said, eyes scanning the park. "There is something out there."

"Animal, vegetable or vampire?" she asked, going back to her circle. For a second dizziness swamped her senses. The candles had extinguished themselves and the acrid smell of the smoldering candlewicks made her feel slightly nauseous. Wind whipped through the trees.

"Oh, crap," she muttered, wondering if the spell was through with her. She felt so weird. Her body was sending conflicting signals to her brain. She felt like she needed to drink something, throw up, and pee, pretty much all at once.

She made herself concentrate on picking up the candles. She started picking them up, stuffing them into the bag she had carried with her aware of a growing ache in her lower back that felt familiar and foreign.

When he didn't answer her at once, Willow looked for him and found that he was gone, probably off to find an answer to her question.

~~~*~~~

The confessional was the only confined space that had never felt claustrophobic to Drusilla. Her fingernails scrapped the latticework of the grille that separated her from the priest. There was a lovely hum of voices in the background, like music. She no longer had anything to confess, but the quiet of the confessional made her feel pure.

Angelus liked the ritual. He wanted to hear the words.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," she whispered for his benefit.

The world was a terrible place. She had known it before she had taken her terrible place in it. The petitioner's side of the confessional sang with terrible things made equal in the perfume of guilt and fear that was soaked into the polished wood and worn leather of the stall.

She had lost her virginity in the confessional. Not to man or worldly beast, but to the violence of her own hands violating her own body. She swayed as she considered whispering that sin to the priest, feeling her triumph over the creature that tormented her as if she were still human and sane.

She cocked her head to one side, her attention caught by the sound of clothing rustling and the strangled, pleasured sound of a man's voice biding her to continue.

A slightly sullen expression settled on her face. William was more polite. He always asked her if she wanted to eat first. She rubbed her tummy. She wasn't particularly hungry, but that wasn't the point.

"Drusilla?" Angelus prompted.

Her hands shaped the wood separating them, her mind wandered. She smiled at the idea of confessing that her confessions were made up.

There was another strangled gasp from the other side of the confessional.

She ignored the priest. He wasn't paying attention to her. Closing her eyes, back arching as her head fell back, she savored the images that played against her eyelids, backlit by the glow of a single candle left in the petitioner's stall. The banality of stale sins whispered to her. 'I lied . . . I cheated . . . I stole," and she savored the unspoken yearning to explain it, to give it reason that mocked contrition, to be forgiven despite being unable to forgive. It was all so delicious.

She saw them. Darla was standing in the woods under a tree, watching William and Willow. Drusilla had a fleeting sense of restlessness that flickered with the light behind her eyelids. She growled softly in the back of her throat. William cancelled out Darla, so strong were her impressions of him, hard and bright and primed to kill. He was gleaming like the blade of a knife, unable to see the blood on his hands as he congratulated himself for not killing Willow all at once.

Willow was a kaleidoscope. Humanity gave her a capacity for change that they lacked. She tumbled and whirled, always changing. Drusilla saw a sweet-faced woman child version of her with darker hair, looking solemn and slightly chastened that made her lips draw back into a silent snarl until she was replaced by an older version with sweetly-soulful eyes, alien in a vampire's visage.

More beautiful and terrible than they had any right to expect. There would be hell to pay when she understood that.

Her fingers grasped at the air as she cast her net further. Prayers. Priests. Silly plotters, plodding along in the mud of their imagination. She knew what needed to be done.

When she emerged from the confessional, Angelus was waiting for her. She paused to open her purse and drop two coins in the offering plate before she slid her hand inside the crook of his elbow and stepped daintily over the two dead bodies left in the aisle.

"Did you light a candle?" Angelus asked.

"I lit them all," she confided. "Such a lot of concerns I have," she pouted prettily, reaching out to dip her fingers in the holy water at the door.

Angelus caught them before she could complete the gesture, giving her a sideways look to remind her that she wasn't to touch things in church.

"Will we bring flowers for the girl?" Drusilla asked, wondering if they would go to visit her grave.

"Maybe another night, princess," Angelus said.

Or not at all, she decided. Maybe another night usually meant not at all. Which meant that the girl wasn't coming out of the grave to live with them. "I didn't like her," she confessed, her nose wrinkling.

If he sought the satisfaction of inspiring jealousy, Drusilla was more likely to provide it than Darla. For that matter, so was William. He wished that he hadn't grown impatient with Claire. He could have kept her around longer.

"Where are we going?" Drusilla asked.

"Anywhere you like," he answered.

She tilted her head to one side, eyes closed as she sampled the air, searching for something. "I know where there is a party," she said, turning to walk backward, eyes shining as she tugged Angelus along. "Someone is going to wake up and they will be ever so hungry, but there will be no cakes and tea for them."

"Why not?"

"You'll see," she caroled. "Such a surprise for everyone."

~~~*~~~

Emile held a stake in his nicotine-stained fingers, waiting patiently, staring at the boy laid out in the front parlor. The other boy, the one whose heart had been removed from his chest would not wake, but this one might. He had gotten his neck broken, so even if he did wake, he would be unable to do anything but lie there, helpless, unable to move. If he was fed, he might heal, but that wasn't going to happen.

The mother was sitting beside the coffin, dressed in a hastily-dyed black dress that smelled of the dye that had been used. She had a bible clutched in her hand; once white, it was stained by perspiration from her hands. He suspected that she probably carried it on her wedding day and possibly intended for it to be placed in the coffin with her son's body when it was buried. The expression on her face was stoic, but her eyes were angry and confused.

Her husband was standing nervously at Emile's side. "We'll never get over this," he said, thinking about his wife.

"You will," Emile said, masking the irritation that he felt. They had other children. Older children with children of their own who had crowded into the house earlier in the day to mourn.

He thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. The involuntary ripple of facial muscle. He took a step closer to the coffin and turned to the few relatives and friends left in the room, looking to the priest who had come with him.

Interpreting the signal, he cleared his throat and invited the mourners to leave the parents with the deceased for a moment just as the doorknocker sounded. The woman who went to the door was the husband's younger sister, a widow who boarded with them. She invited the couple on the doorstep in, not recognizing them, explaining in a hushed voice that they had been invited to wait outside the parlor for a few moments.

She missed the look that was exchanged between them as they crossed the threshold. She noticed that they slipped inside the parlor before the doors were closed, and shook her head, trusting Brother Emile to usher them back out after they paid their respects.

~~~*~~~

David had chosen the park for the exercise in field observation because it was close and they were known to frequent the park. He really had not expected to find anything, which would confirm something he suspected about Prague in general and the Fanged Four in particular. Lesser demons would give the areas where vampires lived a wide berth. In many respects it was the exact opposite of Prague, where the German influence had trumped the Czech, and the two rubbed along together to create something splendid, albeit with a slight inferiority complex.

From what he had learned from Emile, the vampires indigenous to Prague were more parochial and territorial than the inhabitants of the city.

The exercise was more an exercise for its own sake. Harry's last real field experience had ended badly for him. He had pushed hard for them to take action, but faced with a real threat, he had been unnerved. It wasn't surprising and David was not inclined to take it as a fault, but he was convinced that he needed to get Harry out into the field as soon as possible so he could work out his own ambivalenceand, if not, so that he would have a better idea of his partner's limitations.

The last person or vampire he expected to encounter on the paths was Darla. They had no choice but to brazen it out.

~~~*~~~

William was back a moment later, "That prat from the party is limping around the park," he told Willow, not bothering to mention that he was with his friend, having a neighborly chat with Darla who was walking the dog.

What Darla was doing out with the dog on a leash was a question that was all too likely to be answered in his view. The nosy bitch had followed them.

Willow paused to look at him. "Is he still limping around the park?" she asked pointedly.

William's eyebrows lifted. "For the moment," he drawled. "Which reminds me-"

She shook her head. "No, I didn't speak to anyone in the park," she answered before he could form the question.

He took her bag from her. "But?' he prompted.

"I saw them," she said. "Leave him alone," she seemed to realize that it was a demand that might have been better phrased as a request. "Will . . ."

He caught her hand. "I'm not completely insensitive," he said, rolling his eyes, "you'll blame yourself. You'll think it was your fault."

He reeled her in, picking a wet strand of her hair off her cheek. "I didn't kill him, did I?"

She didn't answer. "I need a bath," she said instead.

"Do you think it helped?"

For a moment, she closed her eyes. As unusual, she had more questions than answers and nothing seemed to help her make sense out of anything. "Maybe," she allowed.

He didn't press and they made their way back to the house, which was probably the real test. Once she was inside, Willow waited to feel the subtle pressure of the wards. They were still there, but muted. She tried to decide what it meant as they climbed the stairs, absently rubbing the small of her back. The ache there was becoming more intense. William went across the hall to his room while she started her bath, the second of the day. She struggled out of her wet clothing. The dress was ruined. She fingered one of the flower-shaped buttons.

She had always liked pretty things, and there was no end of pretty things that she could have. She could even enjoy them if she didn't dwell on where they might have come from. This dress had been made for her, and some of the money that made it possible was from sources that were . . . she shook her head and put the dress and her undergarments in the hamper, refusing to rationalize.

She brushed her teeth twice to dispel the foul taste in her mouth and washed her hair over the side of the tub while it filled, feeling her belly cramp painfully.

She was lowering herself into the tub when William came in, offering her a glass of pale brown liquid.

She looked at it as she took it. "Whiskey," he identified the liquor. "Very much watered-down."

She sipped it cautiously as he undressed, clearly planning to join her in the bathtub. Before he turned down the gaslight jet, she noticed a fading scratch mark on his cheek.

He came to the tub and started to take the glass from her hand before he saw that it wasn't empty. "Finish it," he ordered.

She looked up at him. His hair was still wet and clinging to his head and the back of his neck where it wasn't sticking up in places. The tone of voice was more bossy than stern. She was eye level with genitalia. It was just there. A collection of parts that she was more than familiar with even in their relaxed state.

His hands moved to his hips and she found herself smiling at the picture he made. Bossy, and ridiculously boyish. His protest that he wasn't entirely insensitive came back to her now.

"Don't be dainty. Just toss it back," he insisted, wondering at the smile that flitted across her face, too charmed by it to question it.

She swallowed it down without making a face and he took the glass from her and set it on the closed lid of the hamper. There was a moment of confusion when he started to get in the tub and Willow tried to anticipate where he wanted to be. He usually preferred to have the higher end of the tub at his back, but he pushed her back against it and arranged himself between her legs with his back to her, moving down to the drain end enough to lay back and submerge his head. For a moment he relaxed against her, his head pressing against her stomach, momentarily taking the cramping feeling away.

Then he sat up, sending the water in the tub sloshing near the rim. He looked at her over his shoulder, a small smirk appearing. "Such a lazy thing you've become," he mock scolded. "Wash my hair. Scrub my back," he waved to her. "Get on with it."

Her stomach still felt crampy, but she wasn't tired, and she wasn't willing to spoil his mood even if it did make her feel guilty. She washed his hair and his back, and it felt so odd to do these things for him and to realize that her resolve to find a way to leave was in no way diminished. She was equally aware that she would probably remember this. Remember everything about how he felt under her hands as she washed his hair and ran the palms of her hands over his shoulders and back, leaning into it to knead his shoulders when he made a guttural sound of approval.

Her hands slipped on his ribs. That's all it was. Her hands slipped, but suddenly she was hugging him, gritting her teeth as the cramping in her stomach intensified. He untangled himself from her after a moment, ducking under the water to rinse the soap out of his hair, twisting around to face her. Wet hands unnaturally warm from the bathwater held her face as he sought her mouth, water splashing on the floor as it lapped over the edge of the tub.

William was in his own world of heat and lust. 'I can't imagine a world without you in it,' she said in the park and he didn't know what it meant exactly, but coupled with the way she had been touching him he was sure that it meant something. Drusilla seemed to hint that he would get some approximation of what he wanted eventually, but he wanted it now. He wanted it from her lips, from the warm, wet cavern of her mouth. His knee slipped on the smooth surface of the tub sending another ripple of water over the edge as his chest met hers.

Too hard, too hard. He knew it instantly from the way her breath gusted into his mouth, from the stifled cry of pain trapped in her throat. He braced one hand on the lip of the tub and opened his eyes, gentling the kiss until he was just grazing her lips, feeling them tremble under his.

"Something is wrong," she whispered, her hands moving down to her stomach.

His knee slipped on the tub, away from her, he recalled. "I didn't hurt you," he said, as much for her benefit as his.

Her arms were wrapped around her middle, a grimace contorting her features. She tried to draw her knees up, gasping. "Hurts," she gritted out.

Confused and slightly alarmed, he sat up on his knees and saw something like a dark wavering ribbon and flakes of something that looked like tissue or dried blood in the water. Her head fell back against the back of the tub with a thud, a low pain-filled moan clawing at his gut.

~~~*~~~

A student of behavior human and otherwise, Darla was not, but she was still willing to bet that there was something suspect about meeting David Giles and Harry Wyndom by chance in the park after midnight. They both smelled of fear, but Harry positively reeked of it. There was at least one simple explanation that had occurred to her. They were lovers and the park offered privacy that could not be gained in the house they were staying in. That was more likely than the idea that they knew what she was and that she could kill them both.

She was more curious about what she witnessed in the park between William and Willow. Mr. Giles insisted on escorting her back to the house, a courtesy that she could not very well refuse since she looked monumentally foolish for wandering around in the dark alone. He suggested to his friend that he should return to their lodgings or wait for him there in the park.

She did not invite Mr. Giles in, nor did he seem to expect it, waiting at the gate until she was safely inside the house. Lucius appeared and she flung the leash at him. "William?"

"Upstairs," Lucius nodded to the stairs.

They weren't in his room, so she crossed the hall to Willow's room. The lights were on and the bathroom door was ajar. She heard a long, pained moan from the bathroom and walked to the door.

William was climbing out of the tub when she came in, expecting him to snarl something rude at being interrupted. Whatever she might have said died on her lips. They had well-established patterns of behavior. She didn't like William and he returned the favor. On their best days they tolerated each other. On their worst days, when they were facing something that threatened them-their eyes locked.

A low cry, vibrating with pain and fear had him turning back to Willow. He started to lift her from the tub. "I don't know what's wrong with her," he said to Darla.

She did, though it seemed impossible. "Don't," she said sharply. "It's warm in there. Get a blanket," she told him, moving between the sink and the back of the tub and sinking down to wrap her arm around Willow's upper body to keep her from slipping. "Get a blanket," she told him.

He hesitated for a second, and then went to do as she told him for once.

Darla made Willow look at her. What appeared to be happening wasn't impossible, and before today Darla would have said that it was highly improbable. "You are having a miscarriage," she told her.

"It feels like it," Willow managed to say. "Spell," she gritted out. "Cleansing . . ." a harsh bitter laugh escaped her. "I had a miscarriage once," she admitted. "On a staircase in an awful place," her voice shook. "I was so . . . I hated it. I hated it," tears spilled down her cheeks. "I wasn't supposed to be pregnant. I wasn't supposed to be there! And I hated it," her hands were pressing into her abdomen so hard that Darla wouldn't have been surprised to see bruises.

The 'it' that she was talking about was a distant memory for Darla. It was the cruel cosmic joke of being used in an act of lust that unfortunately also begat life. She hated the baby she carried. She hated herself for carrying it.

"Oh God, I hated it so much," she whispered. "You can't imagine what I did to get rid of it."

Darla could imagine, but the words kept coming. "I almost had enough money. We went out every night. Every night. It was one awful thing that I had to do and the rest, to get the money, it didn't seem so bad compared to it. Jane would say, don't look at them. They aren't even people. They aren't anything but pennies to gather."

Darla nodded, stroking her hair. "She was right," she said, ignoring the tremble in her own voice.

"So, it was a lucky thing. Because I didn't have to pay to have it done. I just hated it and hated it and hated it until it . . . died."

The scent of blood was slowly reaching her. The bathwater was tinted pink with it.

"We went back out the next night," she said, so low that Darla almost missed it. "I-I don't understand that. There was a bottle on the floor and I could have broken it and used the edges. I thought about it. I think about it still. I thought it would be better if it was gone, and it wasn't."

"I hated what was left."

Darla stared at the wall beyond the end of the tub, feeling the stillness of her heart. Relishing it. Hate for the girl she had once been, the one who was dying from the curse of the trade before she was twenty-five years old thrummed in her veins.

She felt William behind her and wasn't sure how long he had been there. He had a blanket and towels. Darla shifted to sit sideways on the lip of the tub, effortlessly lifting Willow, holding her against her body. That got William moving. He put the blanket down on the hamper and started drying her skin. He hesitated only when he noticed the blood trickling down her legs and only then to look at Darla.

What she saw in his face wasn't unlike the night he came home with her bleeding from a gunshot wound in Lisbon.

He wiped the blood away and got the blanket to take her from Darla, carefully maneuvering around the door with her.

Feeling inexpressibly old, Darla got up and went to the end of the tub to yank the chain connected to the plug on the drain, watching the pink tinged water slowly swirl away. She used the discarded towel to mop up some of the water on the floor before she turned the water on to wash the nearly empty bathtub. The only reason she could have thought to give for doing any of these things is that they needed to be done and she had no intention of letting anyone she didn't trust do them.

Which was an extremely short list, she reflected grimly.

William returned to the bathroom to rummage in the cabinet before coming up with a brown apothecary bottle. "What are you doing?" Darla asked.

"Laudanum. It will calm her down. Make her sleep," he said tersely. He looked puzzled by something.

Darla felt irritation rise. He never failed to find a way to annoy. "You are welcome," she said tartly, picking his discarded pants out of the hamper and throwing them at him.

He put down the bottle to put them on. Before he could retrieve the bottle of Laudanum, Darla picked it up and returned it to the cabinet.

"She's crying," he protested.

"She's human. They do that," Darla shot back.

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