By the time they left Xander and Anya's place, a fire truck and a brace of police cars had arrived on the scene, and the parking lot was alive with strobing red lights and the garble of police radios. At least the car alarms had been turned off. Several towering, husky firemen and a pair of officers were herding the bystanders away with soothing stories about gas mains and methane build-up and explosions which were all under control now and everyone please return to your homes.
So they'd done just that, Willow and Tara on foot, Buffy taking Spike up on his offer of a ride. Dawn had met them at the door, woken by the motorcycle's roar, and despite the lateness of the hour insisted upon exercising her rights as resident vampire medic to House Summers.
"Spike, sit down!" Dawn's voice, peremptory and commanding, echoed down the hall.
"Not until you let go the sewing kit, Hawkeye. Contrary to popular opinion, I do possess working nerve endings."
Buffy paused in the bathroom doorway and bit her lip to stifle a laugh. Spike was backed up against the laundry hamper, glaring at Dawn, a force to be reckoned with in pink flannel pajamas, who was facing him down with equal determination and an extremely large and deadly-looking needle strung with coarse thread. The counter by the sink was littered with bandages and adhesive tape and tubes of burn ointment. Buffy hadn't the heart to tell her sister that the ritual was probably pointless; Spike was immune to infections and healed even faster than she did--and a good thing, considering how prone he was to getting himself beaten to a pulp.
Still, Dawn obviously enjoyed fussing over Spike as much as Spike enjoyed being fussed over. Let them have their fun. Besides, though his face wasn't too bad--the duster had shielded it from the worst of the Harrier's light--the burns across the backs of his hands were all crusty and oozing in the center and dark angry red around the edges. The sight of them made something inside her squirm, despite knowing perfectly well that he'd taken far worse injuries in the past, and weathered them alone and helpless... maybe Spike was due a little pampering.
"Come on, Spike, you do too need stitches!" Dawn was deep into stubborn mode, hands on hips and lips pressed together. "Your guts are practically hanging out. You could get--" She cast about for something sufficiently dire. "Peritonitis! I've been reading up on this. I think I want to go to medical school."
"Consider your dedication to humanity commended, Snack-size," Spike interrupted, "but, in case you hadn't noticed, somewhat inhuman here, and I don't recall volunteering to be your personal experimental cadaver. No stitches without brandy. Lots and lots of brandy."
Dawn's eyes narrowed. "It's for your own good. Buffy, tell him to--"
Buffy bent and gave the long gash across the rippling musculature of Spike's stomach a cursory examination. The crimson furrow intersected the white-on-white traces of half a dozen older scars, oozing a sluggish trickle of red where Dawn's cleaning the clotted blood away had opened it up again. Someday we'll have to compare sexy wounds. The Harrier's blades had parted pale skin and underlying tissue with laser-like precision--deep, but it hadn't quite penetrated the layer of muscle. "Sorry, Dawn. Distinct lack of visible guts. Have to vote with the vampire minority here." She snatched up Spike's shirt, currently wadded up on the counter, and headed out into the hall.
"Love, you don't need to--" Spike made as if to follow her out, only to be blocked by Dawn. He stuck his head out into the hall and yelled after her, "Oi! I need that!"
"Oh, come on, live dangerously! Wear a nice plaid!" Buffy yelled back, waving the shredded t-shirt at him. Honestly, you wouldn't think an immortal would get so attached to clothes, especially a t-shirt that was one of a set of a dozen clone-brothers. Entering the kitchen, she turned on the cold water in the sink and dumped the shirt in--it was a complete loss; the Harrier's blades had left it in tatters all across the front, but if there was one thing she'd learned in her career as Slayer it was that throwing away bloodsoaked rags was an invitation to trouble. People always took it the wrong way.
She watched the blood swirl Psycho-style down the drain and wondered idly what police forensics would make of it. Victim has been dead approximately a hundred and twenty years, and really likes garlic wings . She sluiced the shirt under the faucet and frowned; there was something off about the weight of it. Something in the pocket--whatever it was Spike had been trying to hide last week? Her questing fingers met chill metal amidst the wet folds of cloth. Cigarette case? No...
Half an hour later, Dawn had reluctantly downgraded her plans from major surgery to first aid, and shuffled yawning back to bed. Buffy had traded her own worse-for-wear clothes for a white terrycloth robe and retired to her room to recline on her bed, legs crossed demurely at the ankles and the copy of Fitzgerald Spike'd given her propped open in her lap. She left the door ajar--an open invitation, if someone chose to accept it.
Spike materialized in the doorway, his duster thrown over his shoulders and his alabaster skin gleaming in the lamplight--a slightly shopworn angel with shabby black leather wings. He was sporting a neatly taped bandage around his lean middle, and both hands were swathed in gauze and redolent of burn ointment. He propped an elbow against the doorframe in a stiff parody of his usual grace, wincing a little as the motion pulled at his wound, and looked around the room uneasily. "Er... where'd you put my shirt, pet?"
Buffy assumed a big, perky, helpful-girlfriend smile. "That old thing? I tossed it."
An expression of mild panic crossed Spike's face. "You didn't--" He stopped. Noticed the pair of old-fashioned wire-rimmed spectacles in her hand. Closed his mouth with a snap. Buffy held the glasses up, dangling them from her fingers by one earpiece. "Looking for these, Master William?"
"Oh, bloody hell," Spike growled, stalking over to the bed and snatching the glasses. Buffy giggled and scooted over, patting the mattress, and he dropped down beside her with a disgusted snort, examining the lenses for damage.
"I found them in your shirt pocket when I was rinsing the blood out. You really are out a shirt, by the way, unless the ventilated look is in among the fangy set. What are they for? I mean, the trophy coat is squicky yet understandable, but trophy glasses? We're getting a little fetishy here."
"No." Spike held the glasses up to the light, drew a deep breath, scrunched up his face as if he were expecting a firing squad to open up at any moment, and slipped them on. "They're mine."
"No way!" Buffy sat up and got onto her hands and knees, peering into his eyes. "You need glasses?" She'd run into vampires who wore glasses before--that librarian guy for one--but Spike? Glasses were the antithesis of Spike. Giles-y and bookish and definitely un-hot. Except... except when they were perched on that aquiline nose, emphasizing the arch of those incredible cheekbones and the depth of those luminous blue eyes and providing a scholarly counterpoint to tousled platinum hair and all those lean ropy muscles... "Uh." Oh, God, he's hot. Indiana Jones hot. Buffy realized her mouth was hanging open and closed it before her tongue could loll out. "I mean, you need glasses. You really, really need glasses. What happened to superior vampire eyesight?"
Spike looked testy. "Brilliant for spotting a moving target at five hundred feet in the dead of night. Doesn't do bugger all for your ability to read fine print. And I don't need glasses. Dalton, he needed glasses; blind as a bat he was. I'm just a touch far-sighted. Do fine without 'em." He folded his arms across his chest--definitely sulking now. "Dunno why you're so surprised. Cecily didn't give you the full and pathetic run-down on the life and times of old William?"
Buffy clamped her lips down on a smile and settled down at his side again. When Spike started talking about William in the third person it generally meant his ego wanted soothing. "Cecily lost me somewhere around the point your Aunt Letitia lost her husband."
"Good place for it. Auntie was a miserable old bat. Uncle Charles was well out of it."
She had to ask. She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she had to ask. "Did you kill them?"
Spike cocked his head. Spike-head-tilt with glasses was possibly even more meltworthy than without. "Could you be a bit more specific, love?"
"Your family. After you got turned. Did you--"
His breath escaped in a hiss of leashed annoyance. "Dad died when I was fifteen, and my Mum..." Back to being William in the first person, Buffy noted. "Yeh, I killed her. But not for joy of it, you understand that!" He swallowed hard. "Sickly, she was, when I died. TB. What we called consumption then. I thought--I thought I could make her like me. Save her." She should be horrified. She was horrified. But there was such anguish in his voice-- "It didn't end well. Main reason I've never been keen on siring anyone since." His eyes glinted behind the oval lenses, lost in time and distance for a minute; then the glint went vicious. "Ask about the wankers at that party and it won't be such a touching story. That's one bit my official Council biography's got right."
"Party?" Obviously Cecily had been just about to get to the good stuff. She was still trying to digest the concept of Spike's mother as a sweet little old lady vampire.
"The one I went to on the night I died." Spike was watching her as he always did when he laid the horrors of his past out on the table for her, measured regard in his ice-blue eyes--would this be the confession that sent her packing? "Didn't go well. A week later I earned my nickname right and proper. Railroad spike through the head, nice and slow. One after the other. Among other amusements. Roger last, so he could see what was coming to him. He'd screamed his throat bloody by the time he died. Angelus was proud of me." A wry twitch of his lips. "First and last time, I think."
"Oh." She swallowed the bile in the back of her throat--not at the description of the carnage, but at the dreamy satisfaction in his voice as he described it. "You know, I keep thinking we've done this part. You tell me something awful, I react with shock and horror--and it never gets any easier, hearing this stuff."
His eyes were drinking in her face as if every nuance of her expression was his life's blood. Anger, horror, even revulsion he'd take in stride; it was her contempt that would break him. Buffy's fingers closed pre-emptively over his forearm, feeling the quiver of muscles even through the leather. "Which is good, I think. The day I start treating Spike's Tales From The Crypt like a Sam Raimi movie is the day Ward starts worrying about the Buffy."
Spike looked down at the five small fingers making half-moon indentations in the leather of his sleeve. "Did you know, I've told you the story of my life a hundred times?" Without meeting her eyes he reached over and enveloped her hand in his, turned it over, his thumb caressing the lines of her palm. He took nothing for granted with her. Probably better he should--she was still in the business of killing his kind, after all. How many times would they repeat this ritual in their lives? "Over the summer. Every pathetic detail. Tried telling you all different ways. Always came down to a bourgeois git with delusions of social grandeur and a portmanteau full of bad verse." A bitter smile chased across his face and was gone. "Sometimes it's a bloody sight easier to talk to you when you're not really here to listen. And then I'd get past the story of my life and into the story of my death, and it'd hit me after a while... I haven't done anything. I came, I saw, I killed--story of my unlife. That's what I am--what I'm here for. I'm a killer. Creature of sodding darkness. Ought to be enough, oughtn't it?" There were hairline cracks in his voice. "There shouldn't be this... this wanting more, like I was still that poncy little twit I got shut of a hundred and twenty years ago." His canines sharpened and his eyes went golden for a second. "I got more, didn't I? So why's it not enough anymore?"
"I don't know." Buffy laid her head on his shoulder, the scuffed and battered leather cool beneath her cheek, and felt the tension in his body start to ease, fiber by fiber. "But I'm glad it's not. A pretty smart guy I know told me once that just because I was a killer, that didn't mean that a killer was all I was."
Spike's arm shifted to accommodate her weight, curling round her waist. She felt his intake of breath, his chest rising and falling in perfect unison with hers, the cool, supple, inhuman vitality of his body against her own. This close, his angelic face and Elgin marble body revealed subtle flaws: the ghostly fretwork of old scars that even vampire healing left as evidence of battles lost and won, the netted laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes, the nicotine stains on his fingers (but not his teeth; did going fangy and back again get rid of them? Or did he just use a good toothpaste?) No pure, cold, Anne Rice marble perfection, this undeath of his--a body that, however strong and fast and impervious to damage it might be, still got hungry and hurt and horny, needed exercising and shaving and flossing between the fangs. Somehow the imperfections just made him more achingly beautiful--knowing as she did that she'd put some of the lines on that ageless face.
"I want to hear it, Spike--the story of your life, I mean. From you. And the Tales From the Crypt? I need to hear this stuff. Angel and I--we never talked about... what he did, not really. I thought it wasn't important--he had a soul, you know? Why would I need to know all that icky old stuff that would never come up again?" She managed a laugh of sorts. "And I'm not a very talky person. You may have noticed."
"I've gotten the suspicion off and on." Spike dropped his head with that look which meant he'd have been blushing if he were still capable of it. "Not a lot to tell about my human life, really. And dull enough it can wait until you're not already about to fall asleep." He shifted uncomfortably, stuck one gauze-swathed hand through a Harrier-made slit in the front panel of his duster and wriggled his fingers. "Getting to be more hole than coat. P'raps I can get Will to waste a bit of the old mojo fixing it up. Though I'd've thought she'd be less apt to waste it after running out the once."
Buffy allowed the change of subject without comment. "She seems to have a lot to waste." Willow's mysteriously-restored magic nagged at her; things that seemed too good to be true usually were. She debated telling Spike of Tara's fears that Willow would never recover her magic, but Tara'd given her that information in confidence. "Just let Wills hold it together until tomorrow night, that's all I ask." She began playing with the lapel of his duster, curling the point up and unrolling it again. "I know I wasn't making with the master plans out there tonight, but I wish she hadn't zapped that thing. We could have found out more." Her fingers brushed across his bandaged stomach in a tentative caress. "You gonna be in shape to not hit people tomorrow night?"
"Yeh, I'll be there." Impossibly firm muscles tensed and relaxed again under her touch and Spike looked down at himself. "Didn't even feel it at first. Sodding things were so sharp I could have lost my head and never dusted for not noticing."
"It was willing to kill Xander to get to Anya." Buffy nibbled on her lower lip. "So the extra credit question is, is it coming back, and is it bringing friends? Are we positive this was one of the good guys?"
Spike's cheeks hollowed, and he pulled his lighter out of the duster pocket and played with it for a moment before stuffing it back in. "It'll be back. Thing about demons, pet, good or bad... we're not complicated. We've got a job and we do it, and it doesn't much matter what's in the way." One corner of that expressive mouth quirked. "'S one reason the pure ones can't stand us vamps. Too much humanity left in the worst of us, all those petty desires and conflicting emotions--affection and jealousy..." He laughed, short and sharp, and pressed his free hand to his midriff. "You ever stop to think, pet, that pure good's got as little use for mercy as pure evil? What could a bloke who never does wrong ever understand of we poor sods who do?"
Buffy winced as if it were she whose gut had been sliced open. Faith, staring at her with pain-filled eyes. "You got no idea what it's like on the other side..." Even when he wasn't trying, Spike threw up unpleasant truths like stones from a plowshare. It struck her that she'd already made the choice she'd been pondering earlier in the evening, walked through Door Number Two without a glance at the curtain where Carol Merrill was standing now. This was becoming the heart of her life, these moments alone with Spike, bathed in the glow of candles or the harsher illumination of tungsten filaments. She could be the Slayer alone, but this was what allowed her to be Buffy, gave her strength to battle the league of mundane foes that awaited her outside the boundaries of their charmed circle. "Tonight, with the car? That was...I don't want to say this like I'm giving you Snausages or something, but--you did good, Spike. I was proud of you. Well, except for the axe thing, that could have used some work."
His hand sifted through her hair, honey-dark against the white of the gauze, twining the tawny locks around his pale fingers. He smiled, a self-deprecating light in his eyes. "Ah, the heroism bit. Well, pet, I know you get off on it. Even when you're supposed to be on strike."
"Well, yeah." With some effort she kept the smile from her lips. "Suppose you're telling me you don't? How many of my kind have you saved, Spike?"
He pulled back, deep suspicion in his eyes, shoved his glasses higher on his nose and stared at her. "Would the answer be 'Not enough?'" he asked.
Buffy nodded. Oh, he so deserved this. "Mmhmm. And they just keep coming, don't they? And some part of you wants it. Not only to make me happy--but because you're just a little bit in love with it."
Spike jolted back against the white-iron curlicues of the headboard with the look of a man upon whom a horrid and seductive truth had been sprung. Payback, Spikey! He blinked, momentarily speechless, then sputtered, "You incredible bitch, how long have you been waiting to say that?"
She smirked, slipping her hand beneath the duster and splaying the fingers over his silent heart. "Awhile."
His eyes had the most incredible expression, regret holding wonder at bay. "Not like I cared deeply about her, love. Don't give me credit I'm not due."
How carefully she had to pick her words. "No... but you cared about saving her. It's something."
Spike snorted. "It's perverted."
Turning in the circle of his arm, she raised her hand to his cheek, tracing strong bones and the sandpaper roughness along his jaw--incipient 5:00 AM shadow. "So you're perverted. I like my vampires a little kinky that way, you know?"
Lips met parted lips, warm and cool together, touching, tasting--so soft for such a hard man, that luscious mouth of his. Spike nuzzled along her jawline, nipping at her earlobe. "How about other ways?"
"Out of curiosity, do you ever think of anything but sex?"
"Not while you're around." He cupped the impressive bulge in his jeans with his free hand and leered at her. "Nurse Buffy, I've got a swelling. Wanna kiss it better?"
Buffy poked him in the stomach. Spike yelped, but if anything it appeared to increase his enthusiasm. "Do not tell me this is the fun kind of pain."
He didn't laugh--probably it would have hurt in the non-fun way--but his eyes were dancing. "Nah, but it could lead to the fun kind." His hand cupped her breast, cool confident fingers kneading the soft flesh before giving her already-alert nipple a firm pinch. The hand dropped away and she yearned after it, all tingly-warm, calling his fingers back to tweak and tease. Spike callously ignored her imperious little whimper and reached for the book lying on the coverlet beside them. He flipped it open, cleared his throat, and began to read-- not, for once, squinting and holding it at arm's length.

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell"

She listened, happily mesmerized. He could get her off with that voice alone, rich and rolling, raspy with a century's worth of too much booze and too many cigarettes.

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.

Buffy reminded herself that Dawn was asleep just down the hall, and Willow and Tara might get home and walk upstairs at any minute, and letting her hand wander down to Spike's fly was just asking for trouble. She'd always been a troublemaker. God he looked hot in those stupid glasses. Oops, there went the buttons. No wonder, with the kind of pressure they were under, day in, day out, poor things, set the impossible task of restraining not-so-little Spike, ready to stand up and do his duty for Slayer and country. Wasn't three hours of sex in a day enough for anyone? Obviously not. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Let's find out! One, two, oh, way more than three...
Spike started to take his glasses off and set them on the nightstand, but Buffy reached up and laid a hand on his arm. "Leave them on, William." As her golden head descended upon him once more, Spike leaned back on the pillows with a happy groan and a grateful wonder in his eyes, as if she'd given him an unexpected gift. She looked up one last time, eyes sparkling. "And keep reading."


Dawn Summers sat at the kitchen table, drawing figure eights with her spoon in her cereal and trying to decide exactly how pissed off she was at her sister. Not allowed to sit in on the summoning. Not allowed to go to Anya's shower. Buffy was totally over-reacting to the shoplifting thing. It was bad enough that she was persona non grata in Sunnydale Mall; grounding her from everywhere else was beyond the pale.
Not pissed off enough to tell Mrs. Kroger that Buffy was dating a guy who thought he was a vampire--no, that would be going entirely too far, and get Spike in trouble. On the other hand, that edifying scene she'd caught a glimpse of through the crack of Buffy's bedroom door, before Buffy had slammed it behind her in their morning race for the bathroom--Spike, dead asleep with a sated smile on his face, wrists still lashed securely to the iron headboard with what looked suspiciously like a pair of her sister's underwear--that had possibilities.
Not that she'd actually tell The Kroger that Buffy was engaging in bondage fun with a vampire (or anyone else) a mere twenty or thirty feet from her impressionable younger sister. That way lay a one-way bus ticket to L.A., and Joyce Summers hadn't raised any dumb children. But letting Buffy think she might was another matter.
In the midst of her internal debate, Spike ambled into the kitchen, decked out in mostly-buttoned jeans and little else, all sleepy purry stretches and bed-head. Someone needed to explain to Buffy that cleaning out a drawer for her demon lover wasn't particularly productive if he wasn't given the opportunity to put anything in it. Dawn studied him critically; if the way he was moving was any indication, the gash across his stomach was healing nicely beneath the bandages. Move over, Noah Wyle.
"Hullo, Bit." Spike wandered over to the refrigerator, ran a hand through his unruly hair, and hung on the door, gazing into its depths as if he could read omens in the disposition of leftovers. "You look peaked." An uneasy thought appeared to strike him. "Didn't keep you up, did we?"
"No." Dawn weighed the decorative advantages of a shirtless Spike wandering around the house against the disadvantages of having to fight someone even more hair-obsessed than Buffy for the bathroom of mornings. Tough decision. "Mrs. Kroger's coming over after school and I have to sit through the big Shoplifting Is A Cry For Help speech. It's like, I've got it already, okay? Stealing's bad. I'm not gonna do it again. So what's their damage? My language comprehension's at college level, they have no clue what my life's like, and getting all Grover and Ernie to explain to me how I feel is the height of lamitude."
"So far as authority's concerned, it's not enough you don't repeat your sins--you've got to suffer for 'em. Hence the lecture." Spike pulled out the remains of the experimental macaroni-hotdog casserole and sniffed at it. His eyes lit up. "Curry?"
Dawn nodded. "And ketchup. Gives it kick." She started to scowl at her cereal, reconsidered and turned on the puppy eyes instead. Spike was a sucker for the puppy eyes. "I did suffer. Still suffering. Big time, paper bag on the head suffering."
Spike set the casserole dish on the kitchen island, fetched a spoon from the silverware drawer and dug in. (Spike was, Dawn often felt, the only person she knew who had any sense of culinary adventure.) "Wankers, the lot of them, but--" He gestured with the spoon between bites. "Wages of getting caught, Pidge. Fair cop, innit?"
Dawn rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mr. Undead Citizen Of The Month."
"Next time you'll know better."
She shot him a conspiratorial grin. "Not to get caught?"
Spike winked at her and laughed. "Got it in one. Look, pet, been thinking about it, what aside from nicking stuff might give you that feeling you're looking for..."
He had? "I can't wait to hear this one."
"...and doing a naff job of it since most of what I come up with I'd have to use your guts for guitar strings if you tried it and flense anyone you tried it with--but there's always killing things to cheer a chap up on a rainy day. Could show you a few moves. If I can talk your sis into it, anyway. You're old enough to kick a little arse, and it's not like I could hurt you by accident."
Did that mean what she thought it meant? An entry into the elite Scooby patrolling circle? Self-defense lessons beyond what she could scrounge spying on Buffy's training sessions? Realizing that a delighted squeak wasn't exactly the reaction of a mature woman of the world, Dawn repressed her impulse to bounce up and down in her seat. Cool, calm, collected. A second later she burst out, "Omigod, that would be so cool! Can you teach me that thing where you just go snap--" She demonstrated graphically with both hands-- "and break their necks like a stale Dorito?"
"Absolutely!" Spike paused, visibly reconsidering. "Er, well, p'raps not right off. Not a big supply of necks to practice on, once we've used up Harris. But eye gouges, kicks in the balls, that sort of thing..."
"Spike, you are so great!" Dawn leaped out of her chair, sending it screeching across the kitchen floor, and gave him an enthusiastic hug. Trepidation hit her like a cold wave. "Buffy's not gonna go for it. She's going to think it's too much fun or something--she even grounded me from Anya's dumb old wedding shower!"
"Let me handle your sis." Spike smoothed Dawn's hair away from her face affectionately and his expression went serious. "But you've got to give me something to work with, Platelet. That means no larking about or having The Kroger on. Nod 'n smile and pretend like they've nailed your psyche to the wall with darts of incisive analysis, even if they're spouting utter bollocks."
Dawn nodded vigorously. "Got it. I'll be so non-recidivism girl. Buffy will think I've been replaced by Pod Dawn." She would have pressed for further details of the neck-breaking thing and possible demonstrations, but at that juncture Willow and Tara appeared, juggling backpacks and overflowing book bags, and the kitchen erupted into the normal chaos of House Summers on a school morning. Dawn flung herself back into her chair, twining her feet around the legs to defend her claim in the face of potential squatters.
"Are we completely out of orange juice?" Willow asked, ducking under Tara's arm and burrowing into the terra incognita of the vegetable drawer. "And what happened to my Raisinettes? Did Hurricane Buffy blow through on a post-slay binge again, because they most definitely said 'Willow' right on the box, and--"
"Might have been Spike," Dawn pointed out, excessively helpful. "He eats like a horse too." Spike looked affronted, but as his mouth was full, any attempts at a snappy comeback were momentarily thwarted.
"Check behind the milk," Tara advised, stuffing a handful of granola bars into her bag. "Dawnie, do you have a ride, or--"
"There's nothing behind the milk but pig's blood. Oh, wait, here they are. But no OJ, and a day without orange juice--"
Spike perked up. "Hand that out, would you, pet?"
"Yeah. Megan's mom's picking me up." Mrs. Kendall, fortunately, had not gone into overprotective parental meltdown over The Incident, probably because Megan hadn't been involved, for once--or maybe having an elder daughter currently sporting lumpies and fangs made her a kinder, more tolerant person where merely human peccadilloes were concerned. Yeah, right.
"--is the kind of day we get until the next Social Security check arrives." Buffy came trotting down the stairs in full war paint and Office Drag, fixing her conservative gold stud earrings and displaying every sign of pre-interview jitters. "And don't even say it; I didn't have enough money with me when I stopped by the store to get everything on the list. I had to leave the Minute Maid melting in the magazine rack on the way to the checkout. I'm never going to be able to show my face in the frozen goods aisle again." She turned and fixed a gimlet eye on Spike, who was in the process of reaching over Willow's shoulder for the pig's blood. "How much of that stuff do you drink a day, anyway?"
Spike froze with the carton half-way to his lips, looking alarmed, faintly guilty, and puzzled as to what exactly he had to be guilty about. "Two pints, give or take," he said cautiously. "Sometimes three. More if I'm mending."
Buffy said "Hmm," in the disapproving tone she used for any subject connected with The Budget, the one that made Dawn feel like a traitor for shooting up three or four inches in the past year and thus taking up valuable space, food, and new clothing. "If you're going to be over here twenty-four hours a day, I've got to plan for it. You're not going to be living solely on Dawn's radioactive mutant leftovers."
Spike fished around in his back pocket, pulled out a handful of crumpled bills, and laid them on the countertop. "Blood and orange juice all round. Knock yourselves out."
Tara gave him a grateful smile. "Thanks--we can stop by the store on the way back from--"
Buffy grabbed Tara's wrist before she could take the money. "You know we can't take that, Spike."
“We can’t?” Tara asked. “Why? It’s not counterfeit.” She picked up one of the bills and examined it. “Is it?”
Spike's jaw set in concrete. "Not asking you to support me, Slayer."
Buffy's eyes went slitty. "I have no intention of supporting you, but I'm not taking your money, and you know perfectly well why."
A deep throaty growl and a burst of vampire speed put the two of them were nose to nose. "No woman of mine's going to be put out keeping me in blood and beers--that's the bloke's job--"
Behold the male ego in its natural habitat. Dawn hid a grin behind her hand as icicles formed in her sister's eyes. Way to go with the convinciness, Spike. "That would be 'job' as in 'bank job?'" Buffy asked sweetly. "I'd rather be put out than put away."
There was a knock at the kitchen door, and Lisa peered cautiously through the blinds. Dawn stood up, scooped up the last few spoonfuls of cereal and reached for the door, mindful not to open it far enough to let the morning sun in. "Lise! Does your mom know--"
"Hey, maybe I could do a water to blood spell or something," Willow said, eyes lighting up at the prospect of magical usefulness like Spike's at the scent of curry. "Or water to orange juice. We'd never have to shop again." Tara, who'd taken advantage of Buffy's distraction to slip Spike's money into the petty cash cookie jar, shook her head and made a throat-cutting gesture.
"No, I didn't tell her we were getting you," Lisa whispered. She looked nervously around, expecting hidden cameras, perhaps. "She just thinks I'm riding with Megan." She inched one hand through the door and held out a square envelope with a wreath sticker on it. "I just wanted to drop this off for..."
"If you really want to make yourself useful, Will, magic me up a tunnel from the basement to the sewers. It's bloody annoying making a mad dash for the nearest manhole."
"Really? I could--"
"NO!" Buffy and Tara shouted at once, as Willow raised a casual hand and an ominous underground rumble shook the house on its foundations. Spike, looking rather shaken himself, mouthed "Joking!" at Willow.
Megan's pert and over-mascara'd face appeared below Lisa's in the gap of the door. "Dawn? Was that, like, an earthquake? Are you--" She caught sight of Spike. "Oh. My. GOD!"
"I can get you a mop to go with that tongue, if you want," Dawn said acidly. "The floor needs washing." She took the card from Lisa and handed it over to Spike.
"Look, Slayer, if you won't let me look after you, at least let me look after myself!" Spike and Buffy looked to be a hair away from either kissing or punching each other, having taken their argument from zero to sixty in five seconds flat. Spike diverted his attention from the Slayer stare-down for a second to give the card a puzzled look, which he then turned on Lisa.
"It's a Christmas card," Lisa squeaked. "Because of saving my life and all."
Spike looked from Lisa to the card and back again, a little startled, and, Dawn suspected, far more pleased than he was about to let on. After an awkward silence he nodded. "Thanks."
Out at the curb Mrs. Kendall was honking her horn for them to hurry. Lisa gave Spike a watery smile and ducked out. Megan remained in the doorway, gazing at Spike with the adoration she usually reserved for guys with staples in their navels, until Dawn shoved her bodily out into the driveway. Willow and Tara followed them out, arguing earnestly over whether or not an off-the-cuff tunnel spell would have resulted in the sewer backing up into the Summers' basement, and set off down the street towards the bus stop, book bags banging at their sides.
"How do you live in that house and not, like, absolutely die?" Megan asked.
Did Megan absolutely have to undermine her noble resolve at every opportunity? Dawn gave the eye-roll another workout. "It's a constant struggle. Geez, Megan, he's not only my sister's boyfriend, he's your sister's ex. Generational issues much? Plus, smoker. He probably kisses like sucking an ashtray."
Megan tossed her hair and giggled. "Ooh. So maybe I should take up smoking. With one of those, you know, long holder thingies?"
Dawn reflected cheerfully as they trotted down the driveway that soon she'd know how to snap Megan's neck like a stale Dorito. Not that she would; that, she reminded herself with a pious giggle, would be wrong. But it was sure fun to think about. Spike might be right about the rainy day thing after all.


"Did she buy it?" Buffy stood on tiptoe at the kitchen window, pulled the curtains back and pressed her nose to the pane, craning to see the curb where Dawn was sliding into the back seat of the Kendalls' Aerostar. Radiant bars of sunlight striped her face like Harrier's blood and made a corona of her hair, pricking out every errant strand in molten gold. He didn't miss the sun much for himself, but he loved to see her limned in fire like this. His battle maiden. Pick me, Chooser of the Slain.
"Hook, line and sinker." Spike pulled a clean bowl out of the cupboard, rummaged around through the three or four half-full boxes of cereal on top of the fridge for the revoltingly healthy and vitamin-enhanced one Buffy claimed to favor, and filled it to overflowing. "Now I'll convince you, you'll give grudging permission, and Bob's your uncle. Here, stop flitting about and eat." He appropriated a chair and dropped into it, slid down on his tailbone, and took a gulp of his blood. "We'll have to be careful, pet--the Bit's smarter than the two of us put together, and if she suspects we're playing her instead of her playing us--"
"Hellmouth hath no fury. Right." Buffy let the curtain fall back and stepped away from the window, diminishing in two paces from Valkyrie to potential office help. This wasn't his Slayer, this buttoned-down mouse in the sensible shoes and the skirt of old-lady grey--not the warrior, not the woman. It ate at him to see her like this, all her fire damped in the service of fitting in. Buffy Summers should never have to fit in; she should be sashaying through the world in designer clothes and deigning to allow it to conform to her whims.
She strolled over to his chair, spun round and dropped down on his knee. Against him was one place she fit in perfectly. Both hands came to rest on his shoulders and worked down his chest, massaging his pectorals, fingers dancing across the ticklish spots on his ribs till he shivered. Her lips brushed his ear. The warmth of her breath took his away, and all the perfume and deodorant in the world couldn't wholly mask the rich musky female scent of her courses. His Slayer after all, beneath the clever disguise. "Now. Where were we?"
"Five seconds away from ravishing you on the kitchen table. Spikey wants his Slayer snacks." Spike ran a hand up her inner thigh until his fingers encountered a barrier, gratifyingly damp already. Nylons. Interesting texture, that, when circled against very sensitive skin just so. She melted against him, stormy eyes half-lidded and rosy lips half-parted, and he felt the surging pulse of her blood all around him as her hips arched into his. He pulled his hand away. "But eat your brekky first."
Buffy pouted and smacked him on the shoulder. "Jerk. I was going to skip breakfast. Anya said I was gaining weight." She pushed the cereal away.
Spike dragged it back. This was familiar territory, though Dru's refusal to eat had generally stemmed from illness, ennui, and a fear of invisible blood-dwelling giraffes infesting her liver. "Good. You could stand another five pounds." He gave her rump a cheerful slap, which, to his interest, did not set off the chip in the slightest. Possibilities there. "Eat up. Can't live on vampire jizz."
"Gack. Like I can eat anything with that image in my head." Nonetheless she curled all kitteny in his lap and let him pour milk for her and didn't argue until half the cereal was gone. For all her protests of independence, Buffy liked her cosseting once you talked her into it. A droplet of milk threatened to spill and her little pink tongue darted out to catch it, running over the smooth bowl of the spoon until it was clean enough to eat off of. Spike shifted to ease the pressure on certain delicate portions of his anatomy, and Buffy gave him a sly look from beneath her lashes and popped the whole spoon in her mouth. “Mmmmmmm,” she said, withdrawing it with agonizing slowness. “I meant where we in the... discussion."
"Oh. That." He ran a fingernail along the back of her knee, enjoying the sensation of her ass wriggling against his crotch. "You were being completely unreasonable." His hand came up to trace the curve of her jaw with a finger, tipping her head up to meet his eyes, and he injected a coaxing note into his voice. "Love... can't you let me take care of you, just a little? I was good at that once, though you might not think it to look at me now. This chip's made half a man of me, but I could still do my bit if you'd let me."
Her fingers stilled on the button she'd been toying with, and she tore her eyes away from his, seeking refuge in the patterns of spilled cereal on the tabletop. "Spike... stop it. Please." She met his gaze again, the sunlight bringing out tawny flecks in the grey-green depths of those big beseeching eyes. Her warm little palms flattened to his chest, stroking the taut muscle. Beat me, whip me, rip my heart out and stomp on it--only keep touching me while you do so... "You don't know how tempting it is when you say things like that to--to just throw up my hands and fall into your arms and let you take care of it! I hate living like this! I suck at money, and interviews, and--I've got to draw the line somewhere, Spike. Decide when I'm going to look the other way and when I'm going to bust your chops. Especially with this thing with Dawn. And until I can figure out something better, the line's at my threshold. Stolen goods, stolen money, and anything bought with stolen money, not invited."
"Swindled money all right?" Buffy banged her forehead into his chest with a groan. "Teasing, sweetling." He buried his nose in the shining mass of her hair, still warm from its passage through sunlight. It would save them all a great deal of aggravation if she'd give in, but he suspected that some small part of him, the part that connected, however briefly, with small Chinese girls intent on killing him, and took secret perverse pride in pulling complete strangers out of cars, would have been forever disappointed if she had. "But look here--if I come up with honest dosh, you'll have to take it, pet. No excuses. I'm yours. And I take care of the people I belong to."
"Deal." Far too quick and pat an agreement; didn't think that was a possibility, did she? The eldest Miss Summers was in for a surprise. William the Bloody was nothing if not stubborn. She went all serious on him then, as he'd gone on Dawn, bending her head to press kisses to his collarbone. "Spike--don't ever think that chip makes you half a man." Her voice muffled against his skin, the words vibrating from her lips and into his chest as if she would instill them directly into his heart. Buffy circled his waist with both arms, interlacing her fingers across his spine. "It forced you to find out how much more than a killer you are. It's why we're standing here. Sitting here. Whatever. Without it one of us would be dead by now, and not coming back. If Riley ever shows his face in Sunnydale again, I'm going to give him a big smooshy kiss." At his irate rumble Buffy looked up with an impish grin, the point of her chin digging into his chest. "All right. Just for you I'll make it a hearty handshake."
"Wear rubber gloves," Spike grumbled. "You don't know where he's been. About this grounding thing for Dawn, love, I think it's wearing on her. If..."
Buffy's hands immediately stopped the lovely things they were doing to his back muscles. She sat back and folded her arms, one eyebrow climbing for her hairline. "Spike..."
"What?" Comprehension dawned. "She's playing me, isn't she?"
"Like a trout. I just had the most horrible thought."
"Eh?"
"All those times I put one over on Mom--was I really putting one over on Mom?" She gave an exaggerated shudder. "That way lies getting drummed out of the rebellious teenagers union. I've gotta book; my interview's in half an hour. Do you want to hang here today?"
"For a bit, but I won't be here when you get back, most like. Things to do." He bestowed a kiss to her brow as she hopped off his lap. "I'll do the manhole dash and see you tonight."
Buffy grabbed her purse and the car keys, gave her reflection a last spit-check in the side of the toaster, and dashed out the door. Spike sat at the kitchen table, deep in thought, finishing off his pig's blood and macaroni-hotdog surprise while the tame whine of the SUV's engine died away down the street. When the only thing audible outside was desultory birdsong, he went upstairs. Things to do, indeed.
A longer-than-really-necessary shower and a leisurely toss later, he wandered back into the bedroom. It was starting to look like a room again, very slowly--the single book on the bare shelf had been joined by a magazine or two, lipstick and eyeshadow and face cream jostled together on the dresser, and a Gettysburg of clothing lay strewn about the floor near the closet, victims of Buffy's compulsive search for the perfect outfit. She'd left the blinds drawn for him, and the room was dim and cavernous, still redolent of Buffy and blood and sex. Spike took a deep breath, all the way down to the bottom of his lungs, and held it: essence of Buffy to tide him over, at least until the next time he had to do something stupid like talk.
He wandered around the room for a minute, a deep thrumming growl of content rolling around inside as he picked up little bits of Buffy, examining them, setting them down. He imagined them migrating insensibly over to the crypt, a slow invasion of girly scents and textures trooping past a counter-invasion of Racing Forms, bottles of Guinness, scuffed up motorcycle boots and fugitive copies of Swinburne he'd deny owning. It pleased him, this image of their living spaces insinuating themselves into each other, a long-distance house-fuck. He prowled naked through the rest of the house room by room--a predator thing, leaving his mark in the subtle disarrangement of bric-a-brac in his wake. His territory, now, his pack, his pride in more ways than one.
At last he returned to Buffy’s bedroom and pulled on his jeans and boots again. He started to grab his glasses from the nightstand, where they’d eventually ended up, and hesitated. Very good, falling asleep to her soft feminine snores and the lovely heat of her body wrapped around his. Infinitely better waking up to the painful-pleasant stretch of his arms still bound overhead, and the pressure of her warm little fingers closing possessively around his cock, which had woken well before he had. Not as good as waking up to her every morning, but before he could make that particular fantasy a reality, he was going to have to do something about Buffy's stubborn refusal to take anything from him. Until then... he folded the glasses carefully, got up and put them in the empty dresser drawer, a placeholder for things to follow.
He picked up his duster from the bed and shrugged into it. Damned if he'd let her support him. He had his pride back again, and seeing as it was she who'd resurrected it from the ashes, she could bloody well deal with the consequences. Spike galloped downstairs, taking the steps two at a time. Home, and then for a sewer-crawl; if possible, he wanted to retrieve the trank gun. Vague plans which had been bubbling since L.A. were beginning to coalesce into something which might actually be a good idea.
There was a first time for everything.

"It was very romantic." Anya's feather duster skirmished over the shelves of the display case, front-line troops in the endless war against grime. "Also quite annoying. One would think he'd given a little bit of thought--just a little bit, I don't ask for miracles--to the demon aspect before this. I certainly spent numerous sleepless nights obsessing about the fact that as mortals we're both doomed to become extremely wrinkled and unattractive and then dead."
"Well, it is Xander," Giles pointed out. "One might think, but Xander is not one." He closed the diary of Albert Venn (Watcher of Luanne Scoggins, Lafayette, Louisiana, Called 1931, died 1937 of mysterious causes after an illicit affair with a local boccor), sat back, and gazed at the lettering on the slender volume's spine, his thumb denting his lower lip. After a moment thus engaged, he set the journal down. He'd taken to carrying them with him, perhaps in superstitious hope of absorbing some critical scrap of information by osmosis. "Anya... have you any past experience with Slayers? Before meeting Buffy?"
The feather duster stilled, and Anya tucked a silver-blond tress behind one ear, a thoughtful frown creasing her brow. For once Giles agreed with Xander; the platinum hair didn't suit her. She'd looked much better as a brunette, her face framed in golden-brown waves which matched the rich grain of the wood shelving. Giles kept this observation to himself--knowing Anya, her hair would be russet or jet black by the wedding. She made a regretful noise and shook her head. "Not a lot. I granted a wish for one once, back in the fifteenth century, but that wasn't in her professional capacity." She brandished the feather duster at a particularly obstinate corner. "We tend to avoid them. Most Slayers have this 'See demon, kill demon' thing going on, and it's extremely annoying." At Giles's questioning expression, she elaborated, "Most demons won't have anything to do with vampires socially. It's not just dangerous when Slayers and you Watcher types lump us all up together, it's embarrassing."
Her expression said What kind of ignoramus wouldn't know that? Very likely she was right. Every now and then, Anya's fierce devotion to human conformity slipped, and thousand-year-old eyes looked out of that twenty-year-old face and made him feel young and foolish. It was strangely invigorating. No wonder Xander was secretly terrified of this wedding--even stripped of her powers, how long could he really expect Anya to play compliant Samantha to his Darren? "I beg your pardon. Didn't you once date--"
Anya gave vent to an unladylike snort. "Oh, Dracula was a social climber. Besides, we vengeance demons aren't much higher than vampires on the social scale--we start out human, just like they do. But we're more powerful, and, of course, we have a union." She came around behind the counter, secured the feather duster in the cabinet under the register, planted both elbows on the counter and leaned forward to see what he was reading. "Why do you ask?"
The shop bell rang, and for some moments they were both distracted assembling the ingredients for a potency spell ("For a friend!") for the nervous little man who crept into the shop as if he were buying heroin on a street corner. "Many fewer side effects than Viagra," Anya assured him with a brilliant smile. "Most people don't even notice the discoloration. And I'm sure your friend's significant other will appreciate the numerous and prolonged orgasms." She shook her head as the man scurried out. "I'm sure one of those ingredients is an allergen. People get so red the moment they get near it."
"Fancy." Giles slipped his glasses back on, pulled out another journal and began leafing through the entries. "In these Watchers' diaries I've been studying, there are two distinct patterns: Slayers becoming rigidly controlled killing machines, and Slayers becoming wildly erratic." Another thoughtful adjustment of the glasses. "Every now and again, a case arises which appears in the official reports to fall into the latter category, but if one reads between the lines and squints a great deal..." Giles sighed and shook his head. "I had some faint hope that you might have a personal recollection of some of them. It would be extremely useful to have an outside perspective on some of these events."
He no longer entirely trusted his own. He'd grown too lax to be a Watcher, too wrapped up in Buffy's private joys and sorrows, and couldn't help reading them into the accounts of past Slayers. "Let me take a look," Anya said, reaching for the book. "Maybe something will jog my memory."
Giles handed her the journal of the moment and his notes on the other volumes. She scanned them quickly, a small murmur of recognition escaping her. "This one," she said, tapping one of the names on his list. "Maria Lupe. I wasn't involved, but I heard about it. She was having an affair with one of the were-jaguars. Quite a scandal."
"Are you certain? Her Watcher's account indicates that she died fighting jaguar spirits."
Anya closed the book; the pages came together with a crisp snap. "Of course I'm certain. I have an excellent memory for gossip; it's a professional asset. And it's not impossible. After all, Buffy's having sex with a vampire and she'll probably die fighting vampires."
"Must you remind me? Of either eventuality?" Giles ran his pen down the list--of the two dozen names he'd culled, over half fell into the erratic group, and of those, over two-thirds involved... inappropriate attachments of one sort or another. Not always romantic entanglements, either; there were alliances of one sort or another, which (reading between the lines and squinting a great deal) approached friendship. That surprised him far more than the romantic entanglements. Of course in any group of teen-aged girls, no matter how strictly trained and guarded, some would fall prey to their own hormones sooner or later. Of the cases where such entanglements were alluded to, only two of them involved a Slayer and a human male: the one with the boccor, and another with her own Watcher. The rest were a potpourri of the supernatural--jaguar spirits, vampires, selkies, werewolves...
I can't resist your sinister attraction .
"Out of the mouths of babes and robots," Giles muttered. Certain Slayers were drawn to their mortal enemies in spite of rigid indoctrination to the contrary, as well as all common sense. He was beginning to make his own deductions as to why; surely other Watchers must have come to similar conclusions long ago, and struggled just as he was doing now to separate human caprice from possible demonic influence. The feeling nagged at him that he was re-inventing the wheel, but odds were good that Travers was waiting with bated breath for him to file a research request with the main Council library in London. The very fact that Giles had done so would tell Travers more than Giles wanted him to know.
But unlike most field Watchers, Rupert Giles had alternate sources of information available. "Anya... you have several of your former colleagues in town for the wedding, do you not?" She nodded. "Would any of them perhaps be willing to tell me as much as they can recall about past liaisons between Slayers and demons? Especially about any of these particular cases? And--is there any chance that D'Hoffryn has any information on the nature and origins of Slayers in the annals of Arashmahar?"
Anya's expression was both shrewd and admiring. "Possibly. He'll be here next week. He'll want compensation for any information he gives you, of course--I'll negotiate for you, if you like. I'm better at that than you are." Satisfaction sparked in her dark eyes, and she laid her hand lightly across the back of his. "I don't like the Council. They were extremely rude to you last year, and we lost a good two days' worth of business while they were puttering around with their silly tests and things for Buffy. They won't expect you to go to D'Hoffryn, will they?"
"I doubt it. In fact--"
Both of them jumped as the door to the basement slammed open. Spike stalked through the doorway, tranquilizer gun slung over one shoulder and his duster billowing behind him like an anime hero with his own private wind machine. A stormcloud bruise bloomed across one razor-edged cheekbone, and his clothes were splattered with a sticky tracery of violet ichor. He marched straight up to the counter and dumped a squirming mass of mauve tentacles tipped with marble-sized, gooseberry-green orbs onto the blotter by the cash register. "Got any more of these?"
"Scirivin eyes?" Anya eyed the... er... eyes hungrily. "No, none in stock at the moment. You should put those on ice. They're more potent if they're still twitching."
Spike propped himself on one elbow against the counter and crossed a booted foot over the opposing ankle. "Yeh, I know. You want some in stock?"
The avid delight in Anya's face was quickly masked by professional detachment. She picked up one of the quivering eyestalks and examined it. It writhed in her hand like a giant nightcrawler. "Hmmm... torn at the root, not severed cleanly... not the highest quality."
"Bollocks. You find someone who can make a Scirivin stand all prim and proper while they trim its eyestalks and you can buy from him."
Anya looked surprised. "You didn't kill it?"
"Fuck, no. Won't grow a new crop of wrigglies for next month's rent if I'm so gormless as to kill it, now will it?"
"You have a point." She pursed her lips, poking at the remaining eyestalks with a felt-tip pen to assure herself that all of them were still twitching. "Flat fee or on commission?"
"Flat, for now. I need the blunt."
"Twenty dollars apiece?"
"Fine, whatever."
"Spike, you're supposed to haggle ." Anya sounded almost offended as she opened the cash drawer and started counting out twenties--all neatly sorted so that they faced the right way. "It's no fun if you don't haggle."
Spike's grin was lupine. "Lurin' you in, pet. Flat fee now. Commission later. And a retainer."
Anya paused mid-count. "Retainer?"
"Yeh." He slapped the counter, making the eyestalks jump. "You want to sell demon bits; I can provide 'em fresh off the demon. And as I've such low overhead and we're such close friends engaging in cash transactions and all, cheaper than your out of town suppliers. 'N fact, you got a customer what wants something special in the way of scales and spines and dangly bits, I'll undertake to hunt it down." His eyes went hard. "Subject to a few restrictions. And if the Slayer asks, you'll certify--in writing, sodding well notarized if necessary--that anything I sell you's got at least one use that doesn't involve exploding eyeballs or extended painful death throes."
"I think that can be arranged." Anya handed Spike his money and a receipt, produced a plastic bag from beneath the counter, and gingerly swept the spaghetti-tangle of eyestalks into it. She knotted it neatly at the top and handed it back to Spike. "You can put that in the refrigeration unit in the basement on your way out. Your retainer's going to be purely nominal, of course--would fifty dollars a week do? And I'm thinking a five percent commission."
Spike reared back in outrage. "Nominal my lily white arse. Don't think you're going to impose on my good nature, Anyanka, just because you're easy on the eyes and I've a soft spot for birds with a talent for evisceration. The going rate for suppliers runs closer to five hundred a week. I done me some checking up before waltzing in here with your eyeball bouquet. And as for commissions--fifty percent. I'm the one out getting my valuables nipped off to supply you with Nagrak toenails."
Anya leaned forward, blood in her eye. "Ah, but you're inexperienced. I'm not going to pay you what I'd give a seasoned professional. Seventy-five dollars a week and a ten percent commission, and that's final."
Giles pretended absorption in the journal before him, but his curiosity was piqued. The ways and means by which Spike supported himself was a subject usually avoided by unspoken agreement. It went without saying that most of were them were dubious and some of them were downright criminal. Over the last two years the outright criminal had comprised a smaller and smaller percentage of the total--Buffy might make disapproving noises, but all in all, sharking pool and looting the lairs of the demons he killed were preferable to lurking in alleys in game face and trying to scare human passers-by out of their wallets.
This, however, was something else again. Giles slipped out from behind the counter and made his way to the bookshelves in the back of the shop. A glance back at the counter showed him Spike and Anya, platinum heads bent together in low-voiced colloquy--Spike explaining something in great detail, with emphatic gestures, while Anya typed furiously into the computer. "...have a business plan?" "...won't like you cutting in on their territory, but..." and "Clem can get us an in with..." floated over to the bookshelves. Apparently Spike had very specific ideas about the sort of business arrangement he was entering into. Giles scanned the shelves for a moment, plucked a copy of Santiago's Boca Del Infierno: A Bestiary from its place and flipped it open.
The woodcut illustration of the Scirivin demon resembled an ambulatory muffin top covered with mold; it was roughly five feet across and a foot tall, not counting the carpet of waving eyestalks. Non- sentient, subsisted on sewer slime, secretes acid, aggressive if provoked, eyestalks useful in scrying spells... it certainly didn't look like anything illegal, immoral, or even fattening. But it couldn't hurt to make certain. Giles adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. "I hate to interrupt a doubtless lucrative transaction, but Anya--are we certain this is entirely legal?"
Anya and Spike exchanged a look, and Spike's lip curled. "Knew that was coming up sooner or later."
"Legal, yes," Anya said, drumming on the edge of the keyboard with her pen. "And even moral, if that's your real question. Scirivin demons are neither sentient nor endangered." She hit a key and the printer hummed to life behind her. A moment later it spat out several pages covered with columns of figures. She picked up the pages and sorted through them, then handed the one from the top of the stack to Giles. "This is from our inventory. Spell component on the left, quantity in stock, price per unit, etcetera. As you can see, mainly herbs, minerals, and animal products. This--" she handed him two more pages-- "Is a list of legal demon products we don't usually carry due to problems with availability--in other words, because the supply's been sewn up by the same black market operators who deal in vivisecting harmless Hombja'moleev demons for their musk glands."
Spike buffed his nails on the lapel of his duster and smirked. "Until now."

Even on a Monday, Christmas crowds made finding a parking spot an exercise in skill and coordination approaching one of the higher levels of Tomb Raider, unfortunately sans access to Angelina Jolie's stunt crew. Buffy sharked her way back and forth across the eight or nine square blocks of downtown Sunnydale for fifteen minutes before finding a spot blocks away from where she wanted to be. Another five minutes of backing and filling and at least one nerve-wracking crunch later, she gave up and left the SUV at a drunken angle, front wheels scraping the curb and rear wheels a good foot and a half away. Parallel parking was obviously a demon-inspired Slayer trap.
Heads turned as she walked by, and why not? She felt good. She looked good. The brisk wind and bright sun put pink in her cheeks and the memory of last night's diversions put bounce in her step. Her lavender knit cap and matching scarf added a kicky accent to her cream blouse and heather skirt (grey indeed; who knew vampires were color-blind?).
She hadn't been this confident in ages--not since facing down the Council last year--and it felt wonderful. She'd knocked them dead at the interview--poised, cheerful, enthusiastic, but not in a scary call- security way. Swinging along down Main Street, her gym bag slung over one shoulder, she was morally certain she'd gotten the job. Not that she really looked forward to four weeks of dealing with hordes of frenzied Christmas and post-Christmas shoppers, but the clothing department of Oshman's was infinitely to be preferred to some of the other jobs she'd gone in for--if she got this one, at least she'd be in daily contact with cute ski outfits and hundred-and-fifty-dollar pairs of running shoes.
Of course, it was only a temporary position, which she was infinitely grateful for, even as she tried to be responsible and grown-up about it. Focus on the basics. Job good. Money better. Especially considering the bills pilling up on her mother's old desk, and the letter in this morning's mail she refused to think about just now. It would be good for her, Buffy remonstrated with herself, getting out and connecting with people. Even people who really shouldn't be trying to cram themselves into neon yellow spandex bike shorts at this stage of their exercise regimen.
The walk to the Magic Box provided another chance to scope out the ground for tonight's operation, at least. Buffy automatically noted the current positions of dumpsters and made calculations about the best places to corner Tanner in the event that he was alone, and ran through scenarios for getting him alone if he had his posse with him. She paused in front of the salon on the corner, irresistibly drawn by the smell of wet hair and perm solution. She peered through the front window. If the job came through maybe she'd splurge and get her hair done.
The Buffy in the window glass looked right through her, out at the street drenched in bright winter sunshine and the passers-by on the sidewalk behind her. Buffy put her hand to the cold expanse of glass, fingertip to fingertip with her reflection. Like touching a ghost. Two months ago, I was dead. She'd pass her reflection at the door, change places, and she'd become the ghost again, a wan, flat, colorless creature floating untouched through her own existence...
The suffocating numbness spread through her so swiftly that for a moment she was incapable of drawing breath. Her heart struggled to beat. She called images up like talismans: Dawn, snitching her blue cashmere sweater, irritating and infinitely precious. New shoes. Willow's silly Elmo-skin top. Blueberry pancakes. Spike's eyes, wicked and tender; Spike's hands, large and clever and fitting so well to every curve of her body; Spike's mouth, oh, Spike's mouth...
The emptiness within her thinned and faded away like morning fog. Buffy took a deep breath and turned away from the salon window, walking back out into the sunshine. She was meshed with the world again, feeling the slight pinch of her heels, the chill December wind lashing drifts of sycamore leaves through the gutters. That these moments still occurred was terrifying. That they were only moments now, brief interludes in a day full of worry about the meeting with Mrs. Kroger, excitement about the (fingers crossed!) new job, anticipation of tonight's battles--that was the miracle. A seagull was carving blinding white chevrons across the bright pale blue overhead, and it struck her that Spike's eyes were no longer the color of the sky. The sky was the color of Spike's eyes.
Oh, God, I need this job.
Spike wanted to help so badly. Dawn, and even Willow and Tara, didn't get why she couldn't let him. Surely Spike wasn't doing anything that awful for money these days, and didn't all of them overlook his minor transgressions already? Would it really hurt to take the odd twenty for groceries, if only two of those twenty had accidentally leaked out of the hip pocket of some unsuspecting Bronze-goer?
That was the whole problem; way too easy for her to go from overlooking little things--because it was Spike, and he made her feel like slow-motion fireworks--to overlooking medium-sized things. Hopefully she'd never be so far gone that large things and Extra-Super-Big-Gulp-sized things were overlookable, but... wasn't that exactly the eventuality she'd made arrangements with Faith for? There was a constant chick fight going on between the part of her that just wanted to dance and shag and kick vampire ass and look fabulous while doing it, and the part concerned with following rules and doing the right thing for the right reasons and gaining the approval of parents and teachers and Watchers and ex-boyfriends and social workers and... and... that guy over there, the one with the hat.
None of her friends seemed to realize how very precarious was Good Buffy's chokehold on Bad Buffy. Especially when Good Buffy secretly longed to get in on the tastefully slutty outfits and ass-kicking herself. Give Spike an inch and he'd spoil her and Dawn both rotten, cater to their every whim with all the devotion he'd lavished on Drusilla back in the day. Very, very wrong, all that whim-catering, of course. Foot rubs, breakfast in bed, mysteriously-appearing designer clothing in her size... Talk about sinister attraction. It was totally unfair that she had to smack her own conscience around on top of contending with Spike's lack of same. Bet Spike never suffers from internal monologues. Buffy stuck her lower lip out, indulging in a small pity party, complete with cake and ice cream.
She couldn't make it last long. No one had held a gun to her head and forced her to jump Spike's delectable undead bones. The tingle up the back of her spine informed her that said bones were within jumping distance as she rounded the corner. The Magic Box's blue--was everything that shade of blue these days?--storefront loomed up before her. She was simply going to have to be strong. Fair wasn't in the picture; she'd known all along that with Spike, she was always going to have to be the one to make with the restraint. Fortunately for all concerned, Spike enjoys restraints. Darn it, that was a perfectly innocent sentence when it started out. Monday, 12:14 PM -- Sunnydale residents startled by loud crash when Buffy Summers officially fell into debauchery. "I couldn't help it," Ms. Summers told reporters. "The dominatrix outfit came with the cutest thigh boots."
The shop bell jingled merrily as she pushed the door open. Giles was seated at the library table, awash in journals and chewing on the end of his pen, his hair sticking up in rumpled tufts. Spike was lounging against the front counter, cleaning the disassembled trank gun while Anya toted up a column of figures on the adding machine. All three of them looked up and gave her distracted smiles as she bounced in, but all in all there was a distinct lack of hail-the-conquering-Buffy in the air.
Anya leaned over and pointed out a figure. "That would be your estimated quarterly income. Any commissions on items sold would be in addition to that."
Spike nodded with the mystified air of one to whom finances were an unexplored continent, but who does not wish to appear a complete dunce in front of the natives. "It'll do."
Buffy seriously considered breaking out the old pom-poms. "Hi, guys! The interview went really well. I thought I'd get some training time in before Dawn gets home from school--The Kroger's due at our place at four. I really think I nailed this one," she said, adding, when effusive congratulations were not forthcoming, "Oshman's. Over at the mall. It'd only be temporary, sales and inventory until after the Christmas rush, but it starts this week and I'd get two paychecks out of it and one would come before Christmas so we could have a real dinner and presents and..." Jeez, what did it take to sell these people? "Electricity, which I hear is popular this year? Plus it's selling the cute kind of sports clothes you're not actually supposed to sweat in, so employee discounts? Major bonus."
"That's... er... capital news," Giles said.
"Yay, Buffy!" Anya chimed in obligingly.
Buffy aimed a sorrowful only-you-can-save-my-mood-now-Obi-Wan pout at Spike, who immediately abandoned the lure of the trank gun and gave her a great big delighted grin, dimples and all. "Good on you, Slayer. Should last you till the Council sees reason and ponies up, any road." Mollified, Buffy allowed him to take her gym bag and followed him back over to the counter. She slipped an arm around Spike's waist--lack of winciness, check; healed up completely. He bent and purred into her ear, "Famished for sight of you, love."
"Mmm. How can I resist a man who's all over purple gooey stuff?" Buffy tipped her head back, and received far more satisfactory congratulations in the form of one of those eternal breathless kisses. Maybe teeny, tiny amounts of demon lover spoilage were tolerable, if she resolutely kept the badness thereof in mind? That's it, I'll let him spoil me, but I won't enjoy it. She craned her neck curiously at the papers covering the countertop. "What's up?"
Spike took a deep breath and Buffy felt her stomach sinking. Uh oh. That's the Deep Breath of 'I can explain everything, Slayer.' Occasionally big with the entertainment value, but never of the good. Spike had that rehearsing look on his face, as if she'd caught him before he had his spiel completely worked out. "Right. It's like this, Buffy--"
Anya patted Spike's shoulder with a proprietary smile, as if he were a particularly clever puppy who'd just learned a new trick. "Spike is no longer an economic parasite!" she said proudly. "He's a productive member of the free market, selling his skills in healthy competition with his peers!"
Buffy pulled away slightly and cast wary eyes up at Spike, who was glaring the glare of the extremely cross vampire at the oblivious Anya. "And these skills you speak of would be...?" Buffy asked. Sarcasm-o- grams to order? William the Bloody, vampire gigolo?
"He's a free-lance demon hunter," Anya said, beaming. "Note the free-lance. Not an employee of the Magic Box, should anyone from Immigration and Naturalization or the IRS happen to ask."
Buffy wriggled a finger in one ear. "I'm sorry, I must have misheard, because I thought you just said Spike had become some kind of demon hunter. As in killing demons for money."
"Love, it's not exactly--"
Anya overrode him. "Spike already kills demons for money. Or at least, he kills demons for fun and sometimes he takes their belongings or body parts to exchange for money. Hadn't you noticed? It's made him quite unpopular. Really, Buffy, you're having sex with him; you ought to exhibit a little curiosity about what he does, even if you're not really interested. It's only polite."
Buffy unclenched her jaw sufficiently to form words. "I'll keep that in mind. So the big difference between Spike the economic parasite of yesterday and Spike the brilliant entrepreneur of today would be...?"
Anya opened her mouth to explain further, but Spike reached across the counter and (surprisingly gently) closed it. "Difference is I'm not killing 'em for fun and games," he said. "I'm doing it businesslike, going after particular demons I know we can make a good profit on."
I can't let my guard down for a second, can I? She could feel herself freezing, veins and arteries becoming brittle latticeworks of ice from the heart all the way out to the tips of her fingers. Surely anyone touching her in that moment would have found her colder than Spike. The anger was directed as much at herself as at him. Stupid, naive little girl. Buffy pulled away from him, stepping back far enough to look him in the eye. "I thought," she said, "that we'd talked about this, and you weren't going to do it."
The muscle in his jaw was doing the twitchy thing. "We talked, Slayer, and as I recall agreed we weren't going to profit from anything exclusively used by the forces of wickedness. Oh, I forgot--does 'we talked about this' mean 'Spike agrees to ask Buffy's gracious permission before wiping his arse?' Sorry. Lost my Buffy-to-English dictionary."
Buffy blinked furiously. She was not going to start crying. She was too mad to start crying. "Damn it, Spike! Don't you dare make this about me!"
"Why not? Isn't everything about you?"
Nose to nose again, really furious this time. "No, it's about them!" Buffy waved an arm in the general direction of the street. "It's got to be about them, or I really am nothing but--did you really expect that announcing you were selling contraband demon guts to some sleazy black market scumbag would make me happy?"
"Excuse me, but as the sleazy black market scumbag in question..." Buffy whipped around; Anya stood her ground and met her eyes with pinch- mouthed irritation. "I would never endanger this store or my standing in the Sunnydale business community by selling illegal goods. What's your objection to the business arrangement I have with Spike?"
Buffy cocked her head to one side and assumed a vacuous stare. "Aside from it being wrong to chop people up and sell their livers? Gee, I don't know. Let me think about it."
"I'm not killing anything with the brains to complain about it. I'll save that for my own after-hours amusement. Since when are demons people to you, Slayer?" Spike's lip curled in equal parts amusement and disgust--equally infuriating, anyway. "You spent an ounce of worry in the last two years over whether I've confined my fun to killing the nasty varieties? Fuck all, Buffy, would you blink once at taking Clem's head off if you'd not been introduced? "
No, she hadn't, and she probably wouldn't, and Clem was no danger to anything but small furry mammals. The idea that there was an entire new arena where she'd feel obligated to police Spike's behavior (and, God help her, her own) made her feel faint. She was barely wrapping her brain around the concept that there were any non-nasty varieties. The whole thing was getting way too complicated, with good demons and bad demons and demons who used to be people and people who used to be demons and if a train leaves Seattle at 5:00 AM traveling towards Denver at sixty miles an hour can you trust a soulless vampire any further than you can throw him? Buffy slapped her palm down on the counter, sending papers flying. When in doubt, resort to violence. "That's beside the point. I'm not the one demanding cash for taking back the night."
"Only 'cause you haven't talked the Council of Wankers into it yet. Jealous?"
Seethingly; how come you get paid for having fun? Buffy turned on Anya. "Wasn't there some reason why haven't you ever carried any of this stuff before, Anya? Oh, right. Because the people who sell it are slime!" She snatched her hand back and clenched her fists at her sides. "I've had run-ins with them before. One of them thought Oz would make a great throw rug." She threw a beseeching look at Giles for support, but he was watching the exchange with aloof interest and said nothing.
Spike snorted. "So because Spells R Us down the road sells Hands of Glory at half price and has more customers go missing than Mrs. Lovett's Pie Shop, that means all magic stores are owned by ravening ghouls, eh?" He thrust the list of spell ingredients at her. "Not claiming I haven't disposed of a few gizzards with the shadier blokes in my time. Way I see it, if I'm going to kill something anyway, it's a pity and a shame to see the useful bits go to waste, and a vamp's got to eat. But for this deal it's going to be straight up. If you'd ever bothered to learn a thing about the beasties you've been killing for the last six years, you'd know there's not an item on the menu to raise a bishop's eyebrow."
Buffy shoved it back at him. Ghora, Scirivin, Luxos... she didn't know enough about the arcane science of demonology to tell if he was being truthful or not, though she had no reason to believe Anya was lying about it. "So from now on you're only going to help out if it'll bring in a profit?"
"I didn't say that," Spike snarled. He began re-assembling the trank gun, snapping pieces back into place with brutal efficiency. "Look, Anya's the one with the soul and the tax number. That's why I set this up the way I did, making her the middleman, because this time it is all about you, Buffy. Honest cash. And we--" he jabbed a forefinger into her chest, "--have a deal. You're going to take it, and it's going to help pay your sodding bills and buy your sodding groceries and buy the Bit something nice for Christmas. You're not meant for waiting on people, love--you're better than that."
The conviction in his voice rasped right down into her bones, a seductive pain. Her breath caught in her throat. "No. I'm not. What I do, what I am--the Slayer has to be for something. I won't--I can't," Buffy gritted out, "take a single penny from you."
Spike's voice went low and hard. "I'll know what your word's worth, then, won't I? You told me to do what I thought was right, Slayer--even if you hated me for it. And what I think's right is taking care of my girls." He jammed the last piece of the trank gun back into place and nodded to Anya. "Be on my way. Thanks."
"You're welcome." Anya directed a smile at Buffy, a tight, sharp- toothed expression that made one suspect her demon aspect wasn't as long- lost as one might like to believe. "Xander says if I can’t say anything polite, I shouldn't say anything. So I won't say anything to you right now." She began clearing the scattered papers off the counter, then, with icy hauteur, added, "Peter Parker sells photographs of himself. I checked."
Buffy stood frozen, the tense lines of Spike's back as he stalked off down the basement stairs burnt into her retinas. She'd said and done all the wrong things, and was still flailing for the right ones. She smashed her fist into the counter and ran for the training room, slamming the door behind her.


Buffy had changed into sweats and a tank top, pulled her hair back in tails and ditched the heels for sneakers by the time Giles entered the training room, and was whaling furiously away at the punching bag. Every blow featured a paired imprecation"Stupid..." (kick) "Pig-headed..." (punch) "Brain-fried..." (chop) "Vampire!"
Giles watched her critically for a moment. She was not so much sparring as attempting to pummel it into submission. "You're leading with your left."
She gave the bag another vicious blow. A seam popped. "I hate him!"
"Under normal circumstances I'd call that a healthy turn of events. Buffy..." Giles refrained from pulling off his glasses; he'd polish right through the lenses at this rate. There must be some special category of Oscar reserved especially for Watchers consoling their Slayers over a quarrel with her vampire lover, a lifetime achievement award in irony. By all rights he should be taking this opportunity to nudge her towards breaking it off, but... but. "Much though it pains me to defend Spike in any capacity, out of consideration for our insurance premiums, I feel bound to point out that he hasn't done anything wrong. Yet."
"Yet! Exactly!" Buffy executed a spin-kick which would have taken the head off of a Zagros demon, dropped flat to the training mat to avoid the bag on the backswing, leaped to her feet and unleashed a flurry of punches. "He doesn't--unh!--get it. He'll never get it. He's incapable of--mmf!--getting it." She drove both fists into the bag, sending it careening wildly in circles. "And I'm the dorky tourist in No Soul Land, convinced that if I just talk loudly and slowly and use words of one syllable--I'm deluding myself that this could ever work."
"Very likely so." Giles shoved his hands in his jeans pockets.
Buffy collapsed cross-legged to the mat and yanked off the purple happy-face scrunchy holding her ponytail. Strands of honey-blonde fell to her shoulders and she stared at the scrunchy with horror. "This is Dawn's . My life is in shambles and I'm wearing Dawn's scrunchy." She wrapped the scrunchy around her hand, toying with the elastic. "It's all gotten so complicated." Her voice trailed away, soft and devoid of emotion. "I loved Angel. That was all I had to know. And then it wasn't--it wasn't enough. I loved Riley. And that wasn't enough either. So what makes me think it'll be enough this time?"
Giles sighed and sat down on the bench against the wall, the dark green vinyl hissing under his weight. What had Maria Lupe's Watcher felt, seeing a slim brown hand laid across dappled tawny fur, dark liquid eyes caught up in pools of molten gold? He wished he could call across the centuries-- Was she happy? Did her heart shine in her eyes when he walked in? Did he batter himself bloody against his own limitations for her sake? Were your reports to the Council as full of careful omissions as my own? "It won't be." Buffy's breath took a short wounded hitch. "Love by itself never is. But without it, you would most certainly be doomed. My dear girl... Spike is like the dog who walks on his hind legs. The wonder is not that he does it poorly, but that he does it at all. If that's not enough for you..." He left the real question--should it be enough for you? --hanging in mid-air. "Best end it now before either of you is hurt more." He hesitated. "It's hardly an encomium, but remember that Spike kills because he loves to kill. The money's as secondary to him as it is to you."
"Secondary." Her laugh was hollow. "Our bank account's almost empty. I added it all up two or three times, and I know math wasn't exactly my best subject, but it won't be long before checks start bouncing. The child support covers Dawn's school books and clothes and lunches and stuff, but there's nothing left over. Mom's ADC check will be cut off next month when I turn twenty-one--Dawn'll still be getting hers, but it should go towards college. Willow and Tara can only chip in so much, and I got a letter from the insurance company this morning saying that our shingles were shot and we had to get a new roof or they'd cancel our coverage." She looked up, her eyes damp and bright, lichen on wet stone. "That's, like, ten thousand dollars. Or more. Even if I do get this job with Oshman's, Spike's moneymaking scheme is looking really, really good."
It was far easier to disdain money when one had it in quantity, Giles mused. "The job isn't perhaps the most savory in the world, but it may prove useful--if Spike's known to be out hunting demons, it gives us a good cover to do likewise without alerting the Council that you're still slaying."
"Right. My moneymaking scheme, which is ever so morally superior." Buffy buried her face in her hands, all small and muffled. "You know what's scary? When he tells me I'm too good to sell clothes or wait tables, something in me wants to believe him. How can I possibly trust him to do the right thing when I can't trust myself?"
"You were perfectly willing to endanger our ruse by leaping into the fray last night. I doubt your mercenary instincts have completely overwhelmed you." That elicited a small, hiccupy laugh. Giles slid off the bench and knelt beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Buffy...
I never thought this day would come, but I agree with Spike. Not that you're too good to wait tables--there's no work that's beneath anyone if it's done with good will--but that you're good enough to do better. Perhaps you'll wait tables for now, but for now isn't your entire life."
He felt the rise and fall of her back under his hand, so deceptively frail beneath the cotton tank top, scapulae as light and fragile as a bird's creasing the curve of her spine. When she'd first come back he could count each rib; now there was muscle there, thin and solid. After a moment she straightened and sat up, weary but resolute. "So. You said there was other stuff you wanted to talk to me about?"
"Yes." Giles got to his feet, removing his glasses and rubbing the back of his neck against an incipient tension headache. "When I spoke to Quentin Travers last, he dropped some obscure hints as to why he was reluctant to allow a Slayer independence, financial or otherwise, from her Watcher."
"Ooh, yeah, the willful bit." Buffy got to her feet, glanced at the somewhat worse-for-wear punching bag and walked over to the pommel horse. "Any minute now I'll be wearing my knickers buckled below the knee and smoking cornsilk behind the barn." She pulled herself up onto the horse with a single graceful motion.
"I've done considerable research in the last few days on Slayers who've lasted as long as you have--there aren't many--and I believe I'm getting an idea what Travers has been hinting at." He stopped. How to introduce this? "I believe Travers expected me to draw exactly this conclusion, and I believe he was counting on my being shocked at it. Needless to say, he seriously underestimates my threshold for alarm."
Buffy's breath hissed between her teeth as she flipped over. Giles took automatic note of her form, though it had been some time since he'd found any serious flaws to criticize. "Alarminess factor high but non-critical. Check."
"Actually I find it rather intriguing," Giles said. "Bear in mind that this is largely speculation on my part. Has it ever struck you as odd that an organization such as the Watcher's Council, which keeps exhaustive records of its activities and has lasted in one form or another for at least two millennia, hasn't so much as a fireside tale concerning the event which justifies its existence? We have several accounts of the
origins of vampires--and setting aside the question of how accurate any of them are, why have we no equivalent legends of the origin of the Slayer?"
"Eh. It registers a 2.5 on the weirdness scale." Buffy went into a mid-air split, toes impeccably pointed. "Personally, a little too busy being the Slayer to bemoan my lack of a thrilling origin story. At least before the whole Dracula thing." She made a rueful face. "And not much afterwards. Avoidance and repression work so well for me." She flowed into a handstand. "Besides, the inconvenient part where you have to die before a new Slayer's called? Not a lot of opportunity to pass down secret origins and Aunt Martha's gingerbread recipes."
"Mmm." Giles sat down on the bench again and leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "The odds of the truth surviving from the Neolithic to the present is virtually nil, quite correct--but mankind is a storytelling beast. If the truth was lost, why haven't we made up a few comforting lies to take its place? How did the First Slayer come to exist? How is a new Slayer chosen when the old one dies?"
"Huh." Buffy went through a few more spine-twisting contortions, barely breaking a sweat. "I guess I always assumed that Slayers were the flunkies of the Powers That Be."
"Hardly. Recall that Whistler told you that the Powers never saw you coming. Primarily, I would assume, because according to prophecy you were supposed to have died the previous year; ever since you've been a wild card. But were Slayers the especial province of the Powers, I would expect the Powers to check in on them occasionally. Consider what few facts we have. The first Slayers arose not long after the first vampires, created or summoned specifically to deal with them. They are always female, always Chosen at the age of fifteen. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of potential Slayers alive at any given moment. The Council has some rather unreliable methods of identifying them, and attempts to do so and train them as they did with Kendra--but as you and Faith can attest, many Slayers aren't identified by the Council until after their powers manifest."
Buffy gave him an upside-down frown. "And this relates to my lack of paycheck how?"
"Dracula claimed that your powers were rooted in darkness. In a sense he may have been correct. I believe your powers may be of demonic origin. As the saying goes, set a thief to catch a thief. Whatever or whoever created the Slayers, it was not the Watchers' Council; we are latecomers, trying to harness a force we don't fully understand...and perhaps rightly, fear."
Buffy froze mid-figure, the whites of her eyes showing all the way around the pupils. She dropped to the floor with a thump, still gripping the handles of the pommel horse with white-knuckled intensity. "Dracula was all 'Join me, Buffy, and we can rule the galaxy yadda yadda.' He was running a con. Wasn't he?"
Giles replaced his glasses. "I'd hardly classify him as a trusted source, but our encounter with the First Slayer supports it. It--she--was a primal force, scarcely human, contemptuous of human ties--Buffy, do stop hyperventilating."
"I can't be a demon!" Buffy grabbed his arm in wild-eyed panic. "I kill demons! This is not ew. This is beyond ew. This is Return of the Son of Ew Meets Abbott and Costello Vs. the Wolf Man!"
Giles winced and pried her fingers out of his biceps. "I didn't say that you were. I said that it's possible--possible, mind--that your powers are of demonic origin. Something similar, perhaps, to the origins of the vengeance demons--human women infused with a greater or lesser degree of demonic essence. In the case of Slayers, strength, speed, agility, accelerated healing, prophetic dreams, and an affinity for weapons. Possibly other talents, if our experience in channeling the First Slayer is any indication, that few Slayers live long enough to realize. If I'm correct, this goes a long way towards explaining the Council's desire to keep it a secret, and their reluctance to grant you independence of your Watcher. A Slayer aware of her origins..."
Buffy swallowed hard, looking sick. "That's not all it would explain."


Dawn shot a worried glance at the kitchen clock as Willow packed the necessary ingredients into her trusty blue nylon duffle with her usual care: incense and burner to the left, herbs in the portable spice rack, athame in its sheath to the right. Willow gave her a reassuring smile. "It's only two. We'll have it all out of the way before The Kroger gets here."
"I know." Dawn went back to her microscopic examination of the counters for crumbs, cat hair, or any evidence that human beings had used the kitchen for food preparation in the last fifty years. "I'm not nervous. I just want everything to be perfect." She checked behind the toaster and started re-arranging the flour and sugar canisters. "The living room got vacuumed, right? And ohmigod--" She dashed for the refrigerator, flung open the door and pulled out the jug of pig's blood, yanked off the cap and headed for the sink. "I should dump it, right? Or no. There should be a clever explanation, like it's for paint thinner or something. I'm freaking, aren't I? I shouldn't be freaking. That's Buffy's job." She stuck the blood back into the fridge. "I'm going to clean my room. Again." And she was off, hair a chestnut banner behind her, footsteps thumping up the stairs double-time.
"She may look like Dawn..." Willow intoned.
"She may sound like Dawn..." Tara responded.
"But she's a Pod Person from the planet Mars!" they chorused together, dissolving into giggles.
"OK, serious now." Tara wiped her eyes. "We've got all the components for the glamor spell?"
Willow peered into the duffle. "Pocket mirrors, Scotch tape, photos of average-type people, check."
"Components for the crazy-curing spell?"
She's upstairs, cleaning her room. Willow squirmed for a moment, then realized that her lack of response was leaving absent-minded territory and rapidly approaching distinctly odd country. "Um, it doesn't need any. Just like the one I used on you, y'know? Totally words and finger-wavy stuff." She held up both hands and wriggled her fingers illustratively. Tara sat back, playing with an amethyst crystal, her brow wrinkled.
"Wow--for all those people, I thought you'd need the focus a ritual would provide. That's..." She trailed off, obviously wanting to ask questions and just as obviously afraid the questions would be ill-received. "Impressive," she finished, offering up the word for inspection with hopeful eyes.
"It's not that big a deal." Willow's airy shrug as she took the amethyst and stuffed it into the duffle felt false and nervous in her own muscles. "I already had the basic spell worked out, remember? All I had to do was modify it."
Tara kept looking at her for a long moment, then said, "Components for the draining spell?"
"Amulet, uncharged, check. Funnel, amethyst, incense--oh, fudge, darts!" Willow dropped the duffle to the floor and dashed over to the stove and the two-quart saucepan which had been huddled forlornly on the back burner for the last two days. A proper witch, she sometimes thought, would have had a cauldron like Amy Madison's mother had owned, but here she was stuck with a piece of battered Revereware. Willow lifted the lid and peeked inside; the darts were still steeping in Infusion of Icky Stuff--hellebore, nightshade, the usual suspects.
Willow took a wooden spoon (the special Potion Spoon, under no circumstances to be used for whipping up cookie dough) from its hook on the wall and fished out a dart. In the overhead light of the stove they were starting to reveal a greenish, phosphorescent luster. "I think these are ready--I'll just quick run them over to Spike's crypt." She pulled a Ziplock bag from the cupboard beneath the sink and began spooning darts into it, careful not to dribble any of the liquid on bare skin. They glowed malevolently, and Willow turned the bag this way and that, admiring her work. Was this or was this not cool?
"Don't take too long," Tara said.
For a second Willow was caught in those deep clear eyes like a fly in amber; time slowed to a snail's pace and Tara's words seemed to resonate through the room, carrying meaning far beyond the obvious. Then the moment was gone and Willow gave her beloved a quick confident grin.
"'Course not, I'll be back before four."
She gave Tara a hurried peck on the cheek and waved as she went out the kitchen door. She looked back, once, as she walked down the driveway; Tara's form was silhouetted in the nearer of the kitchen windows, watching over her--a guardian angel, or a guard dog? Willow felt an unreasonable stab of anger; did Tara still not trust her, after all they'd been through?
It was a beautiful day, bright and breezy and a little bit chilly, with the bare white branches of ash and mulberry trees, the last of their golden leaves still clinging in defiance of the wind, intersecting against the invariant green of palms and pines. The sort of day other towns in colder climes had in October. Sometimes she forgot how picturesque Sunnydale was in daylight. Willow strolled down the streets, taking her time, feeling the comforting warmth of the magic curling within her. The bag of darts, safely tucked away in her book bag, bumped against her side, and she ran over what she was going to say in her head, changing a word here and a sentence there. She was only going to get to say it once, and it had to be perfect.
She crunched down the gravel path which wound between the tombstones until Spike's crypt came into sight. The strains of "Sheena Was a Punk Rocker" drifted through the quiet cemetery, telling her Spike was home and up and about--she'd been a little worried that he might be asleep, considering how little he'd probably gotten last night. Willow shifted the bag from one hand to the other and knocked on the crypt door. No answer. She sidled round to the nearest window and pressed her nose to the grimy sill. In addition to the music welling up from downstairs--how many speakers did Spike have attached to that dinky little turntable, anyway?--the TV was on full blast, but there was no one in sight--had he stepped out, or was he downstairs? She hated just barging in the way Buffy did; it always seemed so... familiar. She grabbed the dusty iron bars of the window grill and half-hopped, half-pulled herself up for a better view. There was Spike's favorite beat-up old armchair, the new(er) settee and the scatter of books and magazines across the low table, the looming stone angels and the sarcophagus--no Spike.
Willow dropped down and gnawed on a fingernail. She could leave the darts, but then she'd have to think of another excuse to drop by and catch him alone--no easy task these days when he and Buffy were joined at the hip. Ew. Next on the Not-Going-There Channel... Working herself up for this had been hard enough. Reluctantly, Willow returned to the crypt door and gave it a little shove. Unlocked as usual, it swung in and Willow took a few tippy-toe steps inside, keeping to the lee of the nearest hunk of decorative funerary marble. Underneath the pounding beat of the music, a low rhythmic chanting became audible.
"...hundredn'fifty-seven, hundredn'fifty-eight, Timmy, you git, she's lying through her teeth! hundredn'fifty-nine..."
Willow peered around the body-sized urn at the same time Spike jackknifed up from behind the settee, hands laced behind his head. "AAAHHHH!!" Twin yells of surprise drowned out both the Ramones and Samantha's latest machinations: Willow dropped her book bag, Spike lurched backwards across the crypt floor, and both froze, identical expressions of embarrassment on their faces.
Willow recovered first. "I didn't see that if you didn't."
Spike slumped back on his elbows, blew out his cheeks, rolled over and got to his feet. "Could scare a bloke out of ten years' death, you could," he grumbled. "Made me lose count.” Vampires doing sit-ups barely even registered on the Sunnydale Odd-O-Meter, but Willow sometimes wondered, considering supernatural vampire strength and speed and all, just what purpose Spike's compulsive working out served--male vanity? Or another method of distancing himself from his own past, the shadowy Ur-William glimpsed now and then behind the leather and bleach and sinewy grace? Spike hitched dangerously low-riding black sweat pants up on narrow hips and bent over to turn the volume on the TV down. “What's the occasion? Slayer decide I'm on the bench for tonight? Happens a law-abiding vamp can take a stroll downtown any time he feels the urge, so--"
"No, no--I haven't seen Buffy since this morning. Special delivery." She unslung the bookbag from her shoulder and dug around inside for the darts, pulling them free and holding the glowing packet up for inspection. "Here you go. One of these puppies should knock anything with feet off them."
Spike took the bag and grinned, an extremely nasty expression indeed. "Thanks, pet. I'll see they all get good homes."
"Why would Buffy--did you guys have a fight?"
He shrugged, affecting nonchalance though his eyes were hard and his mouth had an angry twist to it. "Difference of opinion." When Willow didn't make a move to leave, he paused, obviously uncertain. "Did you want to sit for a bit? Nothing worth watching on telly, but I've got cocoa." One shoulder twitched in a half-shrug. "If you're cold. Being pathetic and human and all. You lot ate me out of house and tomb last time you were here, might as well finish it off."
Dang it, did he have to be thoughtful, offer of hospitality, be as close to nice as Spike got? Willow felt sweat breaking out on her forehead. Darn. Vampires could smell fear; did she smell scared? Did nervous and semi-guilt-stricken count? "Actually I have something else to
give you." Though why should she feel guilty? It wasn't like she was going to hurt him--why, he wanted this. He'd said so hundreds of times. She was doing him a favor. "It's kind of... well, I was pretty pissy to you after Buffy came back. I'm sorry, and I want to make it up to you."
He was startled, she could tell; startled and, she thought, touched. Spike cocked his head to one side with that look of startlingly gentle inquiry which--well, if she'd still been of a mind to admit to urges of the het variety, she could see why this was a look which made Buffy melt. "Ah, Will...no need for that. I'm a bad, rude man and proud of it, and if I can't take as good as I give I deserve the thumping." He grinned again, a much more appealing version this time. "Though if you're taking orders, I wouldn't say no to a plate of chocolate walnut chip. Make up for the biscuit crumbs you left in my bed."
"It wasn't exactly that kind of chip I was thinking about," Willow said.
"Eh?" More head-tilt, winter-sky eyes full of confusion--what was the matter with him? Spike was a smart guy; surely he had to realize what she was hinting at--ask, heck, beg, make it easy on her! "Will, what are you getting at?"
"I can take the chip out."
The expression on his face was something to see. Hope. Exaltation. Horror. Doubt. Fear. Joy. (And do not, do not think about the hunger.) Before nerves could overwhelm her she rushed the words out. "OK, so you know how the Initiative doctors said that the chip was embedded in your cerebral cortex? And how removing it could leave you a vegetable?"
Spike propped himself against the urn, arms folded across his chest. "It rings a bell." He looked rueful. "I didn't believe the wanker at the time--shouldn't matter if he took an eggbeater to the noggin, should it? Vampire; if I'm not dust, it'll heal. But I did some reading up later and the bleeder was right in his way--the physical damage would heal right enough, but no guarantee the post stitch-up personality would match up to old Spike in wit, charm, and general refinement."
"Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat." Willow hid one hand behind her back and began making a series of movements with her fingers. "I wouldn't know where to begin with the surgical route, but sense a piece of silicon and plastic in the middle of a nice squishy brain? Cake, piece of. And teleporting a goddess five miles up, kind of a strain on the faculties, but teleporting a quarter-sized doohickey one foot to the left? Not so much."
Magic required focus, required words and gestures and components. You couldn't cast a spell by will alone; you had to take the magic and funnel it through the proper channels, word balanced against word, sigil against sigil, catch the power in a delicate, adamantine net of conditions and requirements... "Tonight we're going up against human-type people, right? And the last time you almost got your head peeled open, 'cause you couldn't fight them. Not helpful. But if you could fight them--"
"Hold hard, Will!" Spike straightened and began pacing, hampered slightly by the sunlight pouring through the open doorway. A frown creased his brow. "You can really do this?"
She smiled--innocent, helpful Willow. "No reason why not."
He was hovering on the edge, right there, one foot over the precipice, every instinct in him screaming Do it, do it! She'd seen that look. She'd worn that look. She and Spike were alike on so many levels, and she knew, knew, knew that in a second he'd fall to the temptation, because there were offers no one could resist, and if he asked, it wasn't really her fault, was it...?
"Let me talk to Buffy first," he said, and Willow's nerves transmuted to rage in an instant. How dare he? How dare he, when she'd-- Her fingers closed convulsively on the last word: Remove, in Ameslan.
There was no law at all that said the language of a spell had to be a spoken one.
Spike swayed, caught himself, and stared at her in wild conjecture. His voice was a harsh, barely comprehensible growl. "Will--"
She held out her hand; in the center of her palm was the tiny glittering circle, still damp from cerebral fluids. Spike's hand went to the back of his head, raking through the thick blond hair, finding nothing but unbroken, undamaged skull, and for a second there was nothing but Oh, God, no! in his eyes, but in another second it was vanished, replaced by a terrible elation. She felt a nasty, weaselly kind of satisfaction--No better than I am after all, are you, Spike? "Souvenir," she heard herself say. "Because, you know, you're a Scooby now, and we trust you."
His mouth worked; no sound came out.
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention my part in this," she said, gently, but with a force behind the words that made the air sizzle. "To anyone."
And she left him there, dumbstruck in the doorway to the crypt, and started the long walk home. She walked swiftly now, pulling her sweater close about her, and as she stumbled through the bright sunshiny streets she found herself gasping, sobbing, tears running down her cheeks--fear, relief, betrayal--but whom had she betrayed? There was a sick awful feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was going to throw up, barge right into the living room and barf in Mrs. Kroger's lap, she was sure of it. "I did it," she said, choking on the words. "I did it. Are you happy?
Is this enough?"
For now, said the voice of liquid ebony. For now.

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