"It's quite simple, Quentin.” Giles set his saucer on the coffee table and sank back into the armchair. “Her position is that her first responsibility is to raise and educate her younger sister, and she simply cannot afford to depend on my charity, as she puts it, to accomplish this. Unless the Council sees fit to recompense her for her work on their behalf, she has no choice but to cease patrolling and, er, 'get a real job.'"
There was a long, static-ridden pause, during which Giles reviewed his own words half a dozen times--too indifferent? Too threatening? He sat back in the armchair and took the album from the top of the stack on the coffee table, turning it over and over in his lap, and slipped the record in its inner sleeve free. Eric Clapton and Cream. The black vinyl gleamed fitfully. Bulky, fragile things, records, a bastard to ship. He could have replaced most of them with CDs, but to his mind that would have been as great travesty as replacing his library with an E-book. No tiny, shiny, digitized scrap of plastic could compare with the glory of analog sound and full-sized cover art.
Besides, he'd seen Spike's lustful glances in his record cabinet's direction, and had a good idea where half of them would end up if he did get rid of them. He was reluctantly resigned to Spike’s liason with Buffy, but damned if he was going to leave his record collection to a vampire.
A trans-Atlantic sigh emerged from the hiss of line noise. "I see." Travers's tone implied that he did see; with the bulk of the planet between them, his displeasure still came through the phone lines loud and clear. "And have you pointed out to her that this decision will cost lives, even worlds?"
Giles set the album down again and picked up his teacup, taking a sip. Now for the tricky part. "Well, er, actually... she was rather worried about that. I pointed out that, technically speaking, her first death released her from her duties as Slayer. The Powers evidently intended her to be a short-timer--the Pergamum Codex had only the one prophecy regarding her, after all." He reached over and flipped the work in question open, skimming the relevant passages. How worried they'd all been, all those years ago--and over a vampire. How quaint. "She did say that she might try to get a little slaying in on weekends, time permitting."
There was an indistinct noise on the other end of the line. Best not get too facetious; Travers was neither stupid nor easily manipulated. No one who rose to become Head of the Council was. Giles continued, "Several of her friends and associates did offer to patrol in her stead, but I persuaded them that it was far too dangerous for normal humans to attempt this alone."
"Indeed?" Travers's voice was as dry as the California desert. "You managed adequately all summer, as I recall."
"Mmm. Yes. We managed. With the help of a vampire and a powerful witch. I'm sure you're aware that summer is the period at which vampire activity is at its lowest ebb, the Hellmouth is quiescent, et cetera. Willow is still suffering the effects of over-straining her magical abilities last month. Spike has, of course, no inclination to risk himself on behalf of innocent bystanders if it brings him no personal gain." Travers wouldn't, he hoped, start pondering the question of exactly what sort of personal gain had prompted Spike to help over the summer. "This leaves Tara McClay as our sole supernatural resource, and while she's a competent practitioner, combat spells are not her forte."
"I do sympathize with Ms. Summers's financial woes, but the Council's resources are not inexhaustible. Forty years of a Labor government--"
"Yes, yes, men living on the dole from birth to death--I grew up in the sixties, Quentin, and they've been over for quite some time now." Giles reined in his temper and stirred his tea. "Our resources are not inexhaustible, true, but neither are they anywhere near exhausted. That retreat in--"
Travers cut him off. "This is a matter of principle, Rupert, for me as much as it is for you. The Slayer is the Council's instrument--"
"The Slayer is a twenty-year-old girl who's died twice in the Council's service!"
"No, Rupert, Buffy Summers is a twenty-year-old girl." Travers's voice grew cold. "The Slayer is far more than that. She existed long before Buffy was Called and she will exist long after Buffy is dust."
"Buffy's been dust. Twice. And both times she's returned to her calling despite there being no reason for her to do so. You're right, Quentin--she isn't the Slayer. Faith is. Buffy is a good person who's been aiding our cause because she knows it to be the best use she can make of her talents. We owe her. Quentin, think. How often do we have a truly experienced Slayer at our disposal? How many survive the Cruciamentum--how many live to take the Cruciamentum? There is no comparison between the girl I met five years ago and the Buffy Summers of today. I scarcely dare imagine what she will be capable of in a few more years."
"Yes... what will she be capable of? That’s the question, isn't it?" Travers said. There was a note in his voice that Giles couldn’t interpret and therefore distrusted. "There are reasons for the Council exercising such control over the Slayer, Rupert, reasons that you don't--"
"Why don't you explain them to me?"
Silence again. Travers was no fool. He wouldn't drop obscure hints out of carelessness; he was on a fishing expedition of his own. "I'm not free to tell you anything I please, Rupert. But I will say this. Slayers who survive as long as your Buffy has have a tendency to become ... willful."
"Ah. Very helpful. And I'll be able to distinguish this from her normal behavior precisely how?"
"Perhaps my terminology is imprecise. Extraordinarily focused upon their work, and more vulnerable to... dangerous urges. And therefore in greater need of guidance than ever. Making a Slayer independant of her Watcher at this point is the last thing I would advise. I'll take the money matter under advisement, Rupert, but that's all I can promise you."
Giles sat there for some time after Travers had hung up, frowning into space and turning his cup of cooling tea round and round in his hands. Travers meant to make him suspicious of Buffy's behavior, he was certain, but to what end? To make him stay in America? To quash the idea of Buffy getting a separate stipend? What, from the Council’s point of view, could be considered bad about a Slayer becoming more focused upon her job?
She's already keeping company with one of them; how much more focused can one get? His frown deepened. Surely that couldn't be it... Could it?
Last year Buffy had been worried about the increasing allure that her midnight hunts held for her, and asked him to stay and delve into the origins of her powers. Joyce’s illness and death and Glory’s hunt for Dawn had derailed that plan before it had begun, but now... He sat back and looked about the room, at the stacks of books and half-packed boxes. Life in transition. Bloody hell.


The Krallock demon's cavernous nostrils flared, and its barnacle-encrusted head swung ponderously to face the back of the room, spattering seawater all over the floor. Its damp, weed-draped form filled the entire doorway, making the utility room of Willy's even more claustrophobic, and absorbing the sound of clinking glasses and barroom squabbles that otherwise drifted back from the front of the building. "Vampire," it rumbled. "What the hell is he doing here? Bad enough the owner lets his kind into the bar."
The three demons at the table shuffled their feet (or whatever passed for them) looked uncomfortable, and examined their cards, the floor, the pipes in the ceiling--anything but the Krallock demon or the object of its displeasure. Said object tapped his cigarette into the nearby ashtray and leaned back in his chair, a faint smirk enlivening his angular countenance. Into the silence he drawled, "Playing poker, which is more than I can say for you."
The dealer's rheumy eyes took on a distressed squint, and his wrinkled, pouchy throat bobbed as he swallowed. He laid his ears flat against his skull and tried to still their nervous twitching. "He's ... uh ... Spike."
The nictating membranes slid over the Krallock's slit-pupiled, basketball-sized eyes, followed by the true lids in a contemptuous double blink. Apparently this was insufficient explanation. Spike's snide grin widened. He was enjoying their discomfiture--Clem, the dealer, wasn't so bad, but as a rule, demons despised vampires. Vampires were the lowest of the low, hybrids hopelessly tainted with humanity: fast-breeding, stupid, expendable cannon fodder. Not that this didn't sum up Spike's opinion of most other vampires as well, but he objected very strenuously at being lumped in with the common throng.
Admitting that they were a little bit afraid of a mere vampire wasn't going to win Clem and his pals any points with the big-shot out-of-town demon. Admitting that the mere vampire's propensity towards taking down big-shot, out-of-town demons wasn't an entirely unwelcome trait amongst the smaller fry of Sunnydale's demon population would win them even fewer. "I'm no ordinary vampire, mate. Scourge of Europe, done a couple of Slayers in my day, used to be the Master of Sunnydale..."
The creature in the doorway shook its head and gave a disdainful snort, perfuming the cramped room with smell of dead fish and salt. "Used to be?"
Spike's eyes narrowed a trifle. His nerves were singing with that lovely frisson of adrenaline and anticipation which presaged a fight--and just a touch of fear; Krallock demons were definitely out of his league. As usual, he fed the last emotion into more swagger. "Gave it up for Lent. You gonna ante up or stand there like a mop in need of a wringer?"
The Krallock demon gave the four of them a disdainful once-over. "I don't consort with his kind." It snorted again. "Nor do I consort with those who do." It gave Spike a last look. “Your blood is unworthy to stain my talons.” With that it backed out of the doorway, its claws leaving a trail of ragged scars in the apparently worthier linoleum.
With its departure the atmosphere in the room lightened perceptibly. Spike relaxed, and Clem breathed a sigh which might have been relief. True, the Krallocks were a noble line, among the closest to pure, Ascended demons to be found on this plane. It would have been an honor to have one join them. On the other hand, they had a habit of biting off heads when annoyed, and like most pure demons, they were easily annoyed. The small fuzzy purple Skibbnir demon to Clem's left shuffled through his cards and glared at Spike, and Clem hurriedly joined in with a ferocious, wrinkly scowl. "He probably had a dozen tabbies in his brood pouch."
Maintaining face, as expected. "Just enough to cover what you owe me, eh?" Spike studied his hand--two nines, a queen, a ten and a three. Plus the jack of diamonds he's palmed earlier, if you wanted to get technical about it. He rearranged his cards and tossed the three on the discard pile. "One. Hit me."
Clem burst into guffaws of laughter and dealt him another card. "I thought that's what you hung around the Slayer for."
The Skibbnir made a chittering noise like a forest full of demented squirrels and high-fived Clem's wrinkled, loose-skinned paw with two of its six limbs. "Good 'un, Clem!"
Spike turned his new card over and slid it into his hand. Eight of clubs. And a good thing or you'd be eating those ears. He exchanged one of the nines for the jack tucked away in the sleeve of his duster--vampiric speed was a wonderful thing. "Now, now, boys, no rude remarks about my lady, or I'll have to give you a refresher lesson in manners.”
Purple snickered. “Your lady now, is it?”
“Me 'n the Slayer're working together now, remember." He blew a smoke ring at Purple with entirely unfeigned smugness. "Though it's not so much work these days. She's got better things to do with the undead than stake 'em."
The third demon, a spidery-thin, pearly-skinned humanoid with glittering encrustations of blue crystal scattered over its body, discarded a pair of cards and received his replacements with an impassive face. "We've heard that song and dance before."
Spike's grin got wider. "Yeh, well, you'll be hearing a lot more of it. The Slayer's finally kicked over her traces. Told the Council to piss off. She's going into a better-paying line of work."
"Uh huh," the crystalline demon said, obviously skeptical. "And we all jumped for joy when her Watcher got fired, but here they still are, making our lives miserable."
"Dealer takes two." Clem examined his new hand, cards held up before his protuberant nose. "I'm in. See your shorthair and raise you a Persian."
"I fold," Purple said with a disgusted hiss. "Your life? As if the Slayer knows you exist."
Spike focused on the crystalline demon's heartbeat (or whatever it was making noise in there) and tried to decide whether the speeding up meant he had good cards or bad ones. Clem's right ear was twitching again, and that meant he had a good hand, or was in the process of manufacturing one. Cheating was part of the game, accepted until someone felt like making something of it--they were demons, after all.
"Live and let live's my motto," Clem said. He glanced at Spike. "Present company excepted. The Slayer's never bothered with the likes of us. Vampires, greater demons... Why, my cousin Ferlie--"
"Like that Krallock demon," Spike interrupted. "Think she'd let that soggy blighter ponce about town, insultin' the locals, if she were still on the job? I'll bet you anything you care to name that come Sunday next, she won't have lifted a finger against it."
Purple and Blue Crystal looked interested. Clem shook his head, setting his jowls to wagging. "Uh uh. Last time I took one of your wagers I ended up stuck on top of a fence with my britches caught on a nail."
Spike's Cheshire Cat expression didn't waver. "You see any nails around here?"
“Done,” Blue Crystal said, and the other two chimed in. “But just a friendly bet--money, no kittens.”


"Not exactly an encouraging conversation," Giles said, "But better than it could have gone."
"Willful?" Buffy said with a little frown. "It makes me sound like the heroine of a Gothic romance. If I get a sudden urge to run across a moor in my nightie, Giles, by all means stop me."
"They're being ridiculous," Anya said, setting the Council's letter down and sliding it across the table to Giles. "Slaying is a public service job like a police officer or firefighter, so Buffy should be making at least as much as they do at similar levels of experience. Did you point out that it's far more cost-effective in terms of lives saved to maintain one experienced Slayer than it is to constantly be training new ones?"
Willow's fingers tightened around her pencil. She forced them to unclasp, lest she snap it in half. Again. What was it about Xander that made him unerringly seek out the most annoying women in Sunnydale to fall for? It wasn't even that Anya was saying anything rude or clueless. She was making sense for once. It was just that it was Anya: all by itself, the sound of that whiny nasal voice had the ability to drill into Willow's skull and start chipping its way out with a pickaxe. She stared down at the pile of notes in front of her, trying to concentrate on anything besides the sound of the soon-to-be Mrs. Harris prattling on.
The notes were just the way she liked them: alphabetized each in their own folders with the color-coded tabs. Blue for the original spells she'd based her research on, green for the spells she'd actually used in the creation of the new one, red for the new spell itself, yellow for notes on the changes and substitutions she'd made in creating it, orange for miscellaneous additional notes which might come in handy. The pile of bright manila folders stood square-cornered on the central glass insert of the table-top, exuding that new-paper-and-glue smell which conjured up her favorite time of year, the beginning of school.
A week's worth of effort, boiled down to 'I can't do it.' Willow shuffled the stack again, unhappily aware that the nervous dampness of her palms would wilt the folders' crisp clean newness. The queasy twist in her stomach, the barely-leashed panic which made her heart pound were familiar. She had nightmares like this. She couldn't remember the combination to her locker. She'd forgotten to drop the calculus class, and now she had to read the entire semester's worth of material in the hour before the final. She was standing at the front of the classroom, stumbling through an oral report to the accompaniment of bored snickers from her classmates.
She Wasn't Prepared.
"You don't want to antagonize them more than necessary," Anya chirped, innocent of the effect she was producing. "If we can make them realize Buffy's a valuable commodity, it'll make for much better labor-management relations in the long run."
The really annoying thing, Willow decided, was that no one else was annoyed. Tara was nibbling on her pencil and sketching out one of the weird organic-looking doodles that she claimed helped her concentrate on new spells--this one looked like a cross between a bagpipe and an okra bush. Spike and Buffy were poring over a street map of L.A. spread out across the pages of Aurelius the Seer: A Comprehensive Index of Prophecies and alternating between listening to Giles and an incredibly pointless argument about the best way to get to Buffy's father's apartment from the freeway. Dawn, sulking a little because she wasn't going to L.A. with them, perched on the bottom rung of the ladder up to the balcony where the restricted books were kept, knees akimbo and her nose in another grimoire. Funny how no one gives her the fish-eye when she starts pawing through Really-Dark-We-Mean-It-This-Time Magicks. My raise the dead spell didn't bring back a shambling zombie, but noooo, let Dawn at the Crowley, she'll be fine...
Giles, who should have been annoyed if anyone should, was adjusting his glasses and nodding sagely at Anya, making little notations in the margins of the letter. He tipped the glasses down and peered over the rims at Spike. "Progress on your end?"
"Dropped a word or two to Clem and the kitten poker crowd the other night that Buffy was going into retirement, and let a few other blokes down at Willy's overhear." Spike shot Buffy a wicked smile. "It'll be all over town by tonight that the Slayer's taking a holiday."
The shop bell rang and Xander swung in with a brace of pizza boxes balanced on one hand. "Dinner is served!" he announced, plopping both boxes down in the center of the table. He planted a kiss on Anya's cheek in passing and dropped into the chair between her and Willow. Yuck. We know you're googly-eyed over Anya, Xander, do you have to rub it in? "Brain food all around. We've got half veggie--and yes, I remembered the bell peppers--and half black olives and pepperoni. The one on the bottom's half ham and pineapple and half sausage and mushroom. I think that caters to everyone's unreasonable topping prejudices. Oh, and extra garlic all around just for you, Spike."
"Didn't know you cared, Harris. Ta ever so." Spike grabbed two slices of pepperoni, trailing cheese strings all over the engraving of his great-great-ever-so-great-grandsire. He handed one to Buffy and took a large bite of his own.
"Don't fill up on food before you've eaten your real dinner," Buffy admonished, accepting the offering and taking a sedate bite. "Wow. I said that with a straight face. New heights have been reached on the surreal-weirdness-of-life index."
Willow stared at the pizza. "I said no bell peppers, not 'extra bell peppers, the vegetable expressly designed to make Willow barf.'" She looked accusingly at Xander. "You know I hate bell peppers."
Xander made an embarrassed gesture halfway between a shrug and an arm-wave. "Oops. Sorry, Will. I got you mixed up with Anya. She likes 'em. But there's three other kinds."
Tara laid claim to a slice of the veggie pizza and inspected it to confirm the presence of bell peppers. "We can pick them off, honey. You know, I think they're a fruit, not a vegetable. Tomatoes are a fruit."
"Harris's Law: Anything green is a vegetable, including Jell-O." Xander watched Spike hopefully for a moment. "You're not running, gagging, or breaking out in hives. How disappointing."
Tara smiled, a teasing light in her eyes. "You know it doesn't have any effect when it's cooked."
"Hope springs eternal."
"Don't bother," Willow said under her breath, as the topic drifted farther from her torment. "The taste permeates the whole cheese-crust-tomato... complex," she waved a hand at the box, "and ruins it. It's all got bell pepper cooties."
Since no one, least of all Xander, whose fault it all was and who should have been far sorrier, seemed inclined to spring up and offer to get her a replacement pizza, Willow folded her arms and prepared to give Dawn a run for her money in the sulking department. Why the frilly heck was everyone in such a good mood when it was obvious they were all doomed? The whole scene had the Currier & Ives clarity of a moment upon which she would someday look back upon with nostalgia, the last hurrah of a vanished era. She watched Tara carefully removing bits of bell pepper from a slice of pizza, and felt both touched and irritated. Strands of her lover's hair were slipping from behind her ears, falling across her face in silky wheat-blonde sheaves, and every now and again she raised a hand to tuck it back in place. Tara smiled and held out the pepperless slice, a peace offering. The gesture stirred an obscure longing in Willow, as if Tara were already an old and treasured memory rather than a real and living presence. Once again, the big happy Scooby family, all except crotchety old Aunt Willow. She took the pizza and managed a return smile. She had to pull herself out of this funk.
Buffy said, "Next item. Spike and I are leaving for L.A. tomorrow night, so we kick off our web of deception with a couple of days of really convincing non-slayage. We should be back Saturday night, unless Dad wants to have some family time." She didn't sound very certain that this would be the case.
Spike grunted. "Just as well. More than twenty-four hours with that wanker and I'll go spare."
Buffy wrinkled her nose at him. "We can't afford a hotel. Would you rather stay with Angel?"
"Let me think... flensing or thumbscrews... ow! Pax, love, I'll behave. Vamp's honor."
"Like that reassures me. Console yourself with the knowledge that you annoy Dad just as much as he annoys you."
"Still not so hot on the vampire thing?" Willow asked, shooting for sympathetic. I will be mature, reasonable Willow, I will, I will...
Buffy waved her pizza in the air and shook her head. "Oh, no, that would mean accepting that there is a vampire thing. Dad's still clinging desperately to the conviction that Spike's a victim of poor circulation and a bad UV allergy." She sighed, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. "Who just happens to be able to grow fangs at will. Dad's temperature approaches absolute zero on the 'no visible means of support and lives in a crypt' thing. I think he still has secret hopes of me marrying a nice orthodontist."
Spike finished off his pizza and licked his fingers before appropriating another slice. "He'll come round, love. It's all part of my bohemian charm."
Buffy actually giggled. "Oh, any day now." Willow tried to suppress a double-take. How long had it been since she'd heard Buffy giggle? "When I called he told me he wanted the name of your coffin supplier for the next time he redecorates."
Spike pulled her closer, nose to nose, and purred, "I'll put him in a coffin the minute you say the word, pet."
"Try it and you'll be occupying an urn right next to him, sweetie," Buffy cooed back.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Xander yelled, making a time-out sign. "I'm remembering exactly why this relationship is so twisted and sick! There will be no cutesy Eskimo kisses between Slayers and the eating-way-too-much-of-my-pizza undead in my presence! I have a delicate stomach!"
Spike smirked at him. "Yeh, I remember. Next time I'll steal an RV with independent suspension."
"Might I remind everyone that this is a business meeting?" Giles broke in. Willow decided that Giles was the only bearable person in the room.
"Business. Right." Buffy sat up and folded her hands all prim and proper on the table. "I want to get started on the Tanner thing as soon as we get back. Are we go for that?"
"Oh, yes," Tara said, nodding vigorously. "I found dozens of spells to cripple a rival's magic."
Well, of course, Willow thought. Magic was the same as anything else; it was always easier to break something than to build something. Naturally Tara would find success, and she'd crash and burn like the failure you are. Tara rushed on, "The main problem's been that most of them did a lot more than that--they're spells for wizards' duels, mostly, and we don't want to hurt him."
Speak for yourself. The memory of her ignominious defeat at Tanner's hands still stung.
"So I've been working on isolating the magic-deadening elements from the more destructive effects, and I think I've got it pared down to what we need." Tara handed Giles and Anya a short list of ingredients. "I'll need a focal object, something we can bring him into physical contact with. We've probably got something in the shop that'll work. Anya and I can look through the inventory this weekend. I'll cast a separate binding spell on it so that once it's on, he won't be able to take it off. It'll work like a lighting rod. He'll be grounded. Any spells he tries will just fizzle harmlessly."
Buffy looked pleased. "Coolness. Will? How's your end going?"
What the clues were, Willow wasn't sure--voice a little too bright and chipper and Happy-Buffy, her expression a little too eager, perhaps--but she was instantly certain that Buffy knew perfectly well that she had bupkis to show for the last week's labor, and was covering for her out of pity. She plastered a smile across her face. "Working on it," she said. "I've got the spell altered to do exactly what we need, but there's still the whole power source problem."
"That's what you've been saying for days. Don't you think it's time to try another approach?" Anya asked. "Honestly, Willow, now that you're powerless you need to be a little more flexible."
"I am not powerless!" Willow's head lashed around to face her ex-demon nemesis, her eyes going liquid black as eldritch forces coiled through her body. For a brief moment she felt like herself again, as she'd felt blasting open the hospital doors. Anya jumped back in her chair, ducking behind Xander's shoulder. Tara's hand closed on her arm, Tara's anxious face brought her back a measure of calm. She relaxed, muscle by muscle, dispersing the energies she'd marshaled. She had to conserve. If she used them, she was done for the next day. "I'm... semi-powered."
"Will..." Xander looked concerned. All of them looked concerned. "You're... jumpy."
"And you need to watch where you jump," Anya grumbled. "You could curse someone's eye out."
"We've got till we get back from L.A., anyway," Buffy said. "No pressure." She hesitated, worrying her lower lip. "But maybe we should have some kind of backup plan, just in case?"
"I said I'd have it ready, and I will!" Willow snapped, then immediately dropped her head, giving the folders before her another unneeded shuffling. "Sorry. I'm just a little tired." Anya frowned at her and Willow gritted her teeth. Just one little spell. One little spell--no black magic, just darkish grey--would shut her up. Give her permanent laryngitis, or hiccups, or something. One teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy spell... But that, as Buffy was fond of saying, would be wrong.
This is the same Buffy getting snuggly with the vampire?
A chill raced over her and the fine hairs on the back of her neck lifted. It took a moment to muster the courage to look up, then duck back down behind her notebook. Across the room, reflected in the glass of the display cases where her own reflection should be--Willow, yet Not-Willow. Alabaster skin, cat-green eyes, hair like a fall of glowing embers, a sweet wicked Mona Lisa smile Willow had practiced in the mirror for hours and never managed to get right: the vampire version of herself whom Anya had once summoned accidentally from an alternate dimension.
Except it couldn't be, really, because they'd sent Vamp-Willow back where she came from, right? And more, the whole mirror thing. Vampires didn't reflect, so a vampire being a reflection? "Pretty sure that's not normal," she muttered, then realized she'd spoken aloud as Tara looked up from her sketching, a question in her eyes. "This, um, thing." Willow grabbed the Index of Prophecies and pointed at random to one of the illustrations. "Rusnak demons have, um, three horns, and this one has, uh, three horns, so obviously I'm looking at the wrong picture, ha ha, don't mind me!"
Tara's forehead wrinkled in perplexity, and multiple transparent copies of Vamp-Willow blew her a kiss from the panes of glass. No one else noticed. Willow scarcely heard Buffy and Giles start discussing the Council situation again. We sent you away!
Oh, I never really left. The vision in black leather and red lace got up and sashayed around the reflected table to run a languid finger along the spine of the nearest reflected book. I've always been... right... here. She tapped a long-nailed finger against her chest and Willow felt an icy twinge over her own heart. Wrong, her alter ego said, with a little moue at the reflected Buffy and Spike, who were exchanging lascivious caresses. Reflected-Buffy tossed a look of scornful amusement at her, and Willow's cheeks grew hot. So very, very wrong. He's still a bad, bad boy, you know. But, oh, so much fun . Reflected-Willow grabbed reflected-Anya's hair and yanked her head back, trailing one blood-red nail across the bared throat. We could have all kinds of fun with the little demon girl. That smile again. Or anyone else. She strolled over to the reflected Dawn, who radiated a flaring nexus of emerald-green energy, and ran her hands down over the girl's translucent shoulders. If it's power you need...
"...we can use that glamor I worked up to infiltrate Bryce's group," Tara was saying. "Then the two of you could patrol, but you'd be under cover."
"That'll be great. And oh--I had that interview with the gym today and they said they'd call back if they wanted to see me again, so be sure--"
Willow looked down, but there was no escape; that too-familiar face smiled slyly up at her from the inset glass of the table. Silly, isn't it? All this fuss over money, when any decent witch could enchant an ever-full purse...
She scrunched her eyes shut and shook her head, hard, not caring who noticed or how strange it looked. When she opened them again, all she saw in the glass was her own pinched and worried face.


The night was luminous around them. Only the brightest stars were visible overhead; Orion and the Great Bear made their circumference of the heavens against the lurid glow of Los Angeles, which suffused half the sky ahead of them. Headlights streamed past in an endless strobing line behind them. The wind was brisk and chill, which bothered Spike not a whit--cold was something like color for him; a thing he could easily distinguish but which made little impact on his physical comfort. Buffy, seated on the edge of the rest stop picnic table in front of him, was another story, still bundled up in her coat. Her hands burrowed under his duster, drawing leisurely revolutions over his shoulderblades, and her head rested in the crook of his shoulder, her breath warm against his neck.
Spike rocked against her, hips cradled between her thighs, each stroke slow, deep, strong, wave after languorous wave rolling in to shore. He was drowning in her, gladly, going down for the third time, caught in the rapture of the deep: Buffy Summers his ocean, and Here There Be Monsters. Buffy locked her ankles together behind him, threw her head back and arched into his thrusts. Her body clasped him in counterpoint to his rhythm, drew him deeper, his soft liquid growls and her little kitten-mew gasps lost in the roar of traffic.
It was a contest, as so many things were between them. An eternal moment in which they strove together, all their opposites reconciled in that striving, dark and light, male and female, the quick and the dead--vampire and Slayer made one greater whole, lasting as long as they could bear it. He broke first this time, shattering against some invisible high-water mark, crying out, and his capitulation triggered hers; her body clenched and trembled around him as he gave himself up to long shuddering spasms of release. She slumped backwards onto the table, gasping for breath, and he followed, unwilling to give up a fingersbreadth of contact. They lay there together for a moment, feeling the tremors of their conjoined bodies die away.
He felt a shiver that wasn't born of passion run through her, and swore softly. "Sorry, love. I'm not much use as a bedwarmer."
She smiled in the feeble imitation of darkness. "You're a pretty good windbreak." As he pulled out she made a disappointed little noise, but when he slid down her torso, nibbling at the bare goose-fleshed skin below her navel, she groaned and twined her fingers in his hair, holding him back. "No--don't start! I told Dad we'd be there before midnight. We can't get into another six-hour lust-a-thon."
The lack of conviction in her voice was absolute balm to the--well, not to the soul, but to the something--of a man taking the current love of his life to meet the former love of hers. "How about a four-hour one? It's only half an hour to L.A. from here, pet. I'm a thirsty man, and it's not your neck that's my chalice. Besides," he licked a milky streak of their mingled juices from her inner thigh and leered up at her, "I've got you all messy. Only right I should clean you up."
Buffy looked torn for a second, but another car rolled into the rest stop parking lot and her expression firmed. "That's what I brought wet-naps for." She tugged her skirt, which was rucked up about her waist, down over her hips and rolled over to grab her purse off the adjacent bench. Spike promptly ducked under the hem and followed his nose. "Here--oh--Spike, damn you, quit th-th--"
Half an hour later, virtue had prevailed, mostly, and they were roaring south along the Coast Highway, windows rolled down and the radio blasting KSPC over the howl of the wind. The DeSoto roared its challenge to lesser vehicles, which got out of the way if they knew what was good for them--fiberglass crumple zones and airbags could do only so much when pitted against a quarter-ton of solid steel. "They're playing our song, pet! 'You know you want what's on my mind, you know you need what's on my mind...'"
"I hear that these days they record songs with, you know, lyrics and melodies and stuff," Buffy said, mock-reflective. "Maybe we should try to find some."
"'Wind Beneath My Wings?'"
"Oh, shut up.” Her lower lip slipped out in that criminally adorable pout. “That was the spell."
“Keep telling yourself that, pet.” Spike tightened his arm around Buffy's shoulders, grinning up at the hunter in the sky. He had a cooler full of blood in the trunk, music that wasn't completely revolting on the radio, Buffy's head on his shoulder and her hand resting possessively across his stomach. They were headed off to see the two men in all the world he'd have been happiest to see staked out on an anthill, and he was downright giddy about it because it meant a precious few hours when he had her entirely to himself, free of the demands of friends and family and job interviews. The fact that a legitimate stop to use the loo had segued irresistibly into a nice little session of shagging didn’t hurt his mood either.
It was possible that if he looked down he'd find the distant look in her eyes again--it came upon her less and less often now, which pleased him immensely, but even his ego wasn't quite up to assuming that a week's worth of slap and tickle with him was enough to get her over a little thing like being dead. He hadn't managed it in a hundred and twenty-some years, after all. He chuckled quietly and reached into his duster pocket for a cigarette, steadying the steering wheel with his knee.
"You do that a lot more than you used to," Buffy observed.
He paused in the complicated operation of lighting the fag one-handed. "What, smoke? I'll have you know between the Niblet's dirty looks and your refusal to invest in a bleeding ashtray I'm down to half a pack a day."
"No--laugh." She hitched herself up a little straighter, but stayed close to his side, maintaining contact. Over the last day or two she’d begun, almost shyly, to return his casual touches, and to initiate her own. He liked that--hell, loved it. Dru had never been one for a cuddle; she wanted petting and cosseting often enough, but like a cat of uncertain temper, she could go from purring on the hearth to clawing your arm off in half a second. Harmony had been keen on it, but he hadn't been keen on her. He wondered briefly if Megan had been serious about Harm coming back to Sunnydale for Christmas, and who he'd have to kill to prevent it from happening. "It's... nice. I don't think I saw you smile once last year--well, no... you did with Mom and Dawn."
He covered her small warm hand with his large cool one. "Didn't have a lot to smile about when you were about, sweetling, what with unrequited love on one hand and constantly being smacked in the nose on the other."
She sniffed, tossing her head. "I had issues."
"And a mean right hook." He laughed again, reveling in the steady beat of her heart and the feel of her slim, strong body against his. Her curves were as delicious to trace with hands as with eyes. Tara's not-so-subtle attempts to feed her up were starting to show results; Buffy was still thinner than he liked to see, but there was some muscle between skin and bone now, and she no longer looked as though the slightest breeze would bear her away from the land of the living. She radiated a warmth he could feel even through her coat--sometimes he thought he could feel it all the way across the room, his personal ray of sunlight. He buried his nose in her wind-tousled hair, taking in a breath imbued with the sonata of fragrances that spelled Buffy: body wash and shampoo and mousse, rose and strawberry and citrus and half a dozen others, and beneath it all the musky female scent that was her and her alone.
Her hand was tracing the ridged bands of muscle along his abdomen, wandering lower and lower, and parts south were starting to take notice. Less than an hour of playtime wasn't nearly enough to wear either of them out. "Love, unless you fancy learning the fine art of administering a blow job in a moving vehicle, I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Buffy jerked her hand upwards with a guilty look (or was it slightly intrigued?) but didn't remove it entirely. "Sorry. It's--seeing Faith has me wigged. I can handle Angel, but she makes me insane. And I've got to play nice. I've got to."
Spike glanced down at her, perplexed. "This isn't like you, love. What did she do to you?"
A shudder ran through her. "Nearly killed Angel."
"Ooh. My kind of girl."
Her voice went flat and hard. "Found a spell that switched our bodies. Got me locked up for crimes she'd committed, went out and played 'Hi, I'm Skanky Ho Buffy!' with everyone I knew, slept with Riley--and he didn't even know the difference!--and--"
A sudden memory of a two-years-gone night at the Bronze rose up in his head, a weird little Buffy-encounter he'd written off as the result of one of her rare attempts to drink more than one beer at a sitting. "Bloody hell, that night you told me you'd got muscles I'd never even dreamed of, and you could squeeze me till I popped like warm champagne--that was Faith?" That turned out to be prophetic . He swerved into the carpool lane to pass a semi and suppressed another chuckle; he didn't think Buffy would appreciate this particular irony. "I just thought you were legless. Don't think I care for this bird--you can be a right bitch, love, but you were never a cocktease. Much."
Buffy shot upright, fire in her eyes. "She told you what? Fine, forget diplomacy, I'm just going to strangle her."
"Do that and in twenty-four hours the Council will have a shiny new Slayer of their very own to play with."
"Oh. Right. Fooey." Buffy subsided grumpily, then bounced up in excitement. "Ooh, look! Dairy Queen, next exit!"
"You're sublimating, love."
"Thank you, Count Sigmund. Sometimes a waffle cone is only a waffle cone." She folded her arms across her chest, a frail attempt at defense. "She was... she was me. All the horrible grotty parts of me, blown up twenty times, in living color and 3-D stereophonic sound. She... enjoyed being a Slayer."
He gave her the eyebrow. "And you don't?"
"Not like that."
"Like what? You don’t love it that you’re faster and stronger than everyone else? You don’t love it that you can walk through the dark and fear not a single sodding beastie that makes the night its home? Christ, love, I hope you enjoy it! If you could see yourself--the way your eyes light up the moment you get that little tingle that says the game's afoot! The way you move--like silk, like lightning!" She was looking at him, fascinated, revolted, entranced. "The look in your eyes when you make a kill--it's like the look in your eyes when I'm buried up to my balls in your sweet little quim and making you scream. You're alive, Buffy! So alive that--" Spike wrenched the wheel around and the DeSoto slid across three lanes of traffic to swoosh down the exit ramp. The centrifical force sent Buffy careening into his side; her knee hit the tuning knob on the radio and Mick Jagger howled You make a dead man co-o-ome! Spike grinned and switched back to the alternative station.
She looked up at the exit sign. "I--I didn't think you were really going to get off."
"How the hell could I help it, love? Any lady of mine wants a waffle cone, she gets one." He craned his neck out the window, looking for the illuminated sign. "There we go."
As they sat in the drive-through, waiting for change, she said, small-voiced, "That’s why you love me, isn’t it? You’ve always seen that dark part of me.”
A surge of anger rose in him, at her parents, at Angel, at everyone who'd convinced her that she was ordinary, and that ordinary was a good thing to be. In a way, she was as crippled as he was, her true nature as prisoned by her own fears as he was by the chip. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Bloody hell, Buffy, of course I have. I don’t go in for safe birds, any more than you go in for safe blokes. Always seen the part of you that rushes in nightly to save crews of brain-dead gits who’d better serve the world as vamp snacks, too, haven’t I? All that’s best of dark and bright meets in your aspect and your eyes.”
“Faith’s nothing but a killer.” There was challenge in her eyes now. “What if I don't want to be that way?"
He shrugged. "You are a killer, love. Just like me. Who said you were nothing but?"
She sat back against the ancient leather upholstery, frowning, the red-and white glow of the Dairy Queen sign limning her features against the umber shadows, and allowed him to gather her close again. Not happy, but neither panicking nor lashing out at the implications of what he was saying--that was a good sign, wasn’t it? "Spike... do you remember... being dead?"
He flicked ash out the window. Taking the gold in the non sequitur Olympics... "I've been devoting my Friday afternoons to my remembrance of being dead, pet. Barring tomorrow, when the company'll only make me wish I were deader."
She squirmed slightly in the circle of his arm, taking his hand in hers and playing with his rings, turning them round on his fingers. He noticed with an odd little thrill that the necklace she was wearing was the ring he'd given her back when, under the influence of Willow's mis-cast spell, strung on a chain--it would have to be, it was far too large for her. "I mean really dead. After Drusilla drained you, but before you... woke up as you."
He took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette and let the smoke trickle out slowly through his nose. "Dunno as I can answer that one, pet. Technically, I'm not even sure it was me who died--" Absolute terror, waking in the cramped dark confines of his coffin, gasping for breath he didn't yet realize he no longer needed. Screaming, begging, weeping for rescue that never came, until finally panic melded with an unfamiliar fury and drove him to tear his way through four inches of silk and mahogany and six feet of good English soil, to collapse bloody-handed and half-mad with fear in Drusilla's waiting arms... "Strike that, I'm sure it was me. But I remember the waking more than the sleeping. Maybe it's the bits of William I've lost that remember that part."
"I can't remember either." He could hear the frown in her voice. "And I should, shouldn't I? Five months. I was dead for five months. I didn't just... go out like a light, did I? If you brought me back, there had to be a me to bring back, right? The spell didn't just... make up a copy or something? Or just bring back scraps and pieces?"
That was an uncomfortable question. He and Willow had known that there'd be a chance, as with any resurrection spell, that what they brought back would be something other than a whole, complete Buffy Summers. At the time, he'd told Dawn and Willow that he'd dispose of any failures, but he'd have told Willow bloody near anything at that point, and Dawn... well, he'd never had to cross that bridge, thank whatever passed for God in Heaven these days. "You're Buffy Anne Summers in all her irritating glory, love. I'd know if you weren't. Trust me on that."
The girl at the drive-through window handed him the cones, frozen yogurt swirl for her, chocolate for him. He handed Buffy's over to her and she took it, licking up the drips with sensual delight. There was still trouble in her voice. "But I'm not. I'm five months away from Buffy Anne Summers. I came back before, but that was just minutes. I keep thinking...it has to mean something, that I'm back again. Not in a prophecy way--I have to make it mean something. I always tried to do the right things, before, and I ended up--I was alone with everyone around me, and--I have to make it different this time. I know it. I feel it." She placed her palm on his chest, and for a second it felt almost as if his heart had jolted to life again. "I don't understand this, but you're part of it. You said it, last year--it's wrong, us being together. I tried all the right things, and... they weren't right. You're the wrongest thing I know, and... you fit." She looked up at him, light pooling like quicksilver in her eyes. My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun... "She's taken... everything, at one time or another, and I can’t lose you too. I won’t. I guess the prospect of Faithness is putting me into Cave-Buffy, mark-my-territory mode. I'm sorry. Especially since I'm probably going to be a big scaredy cat about telling Angel about us--I'm going to try, but--"
Spike tossed his cigarette out the window as they pulled back onto the highway; it bounced out of sight in the rear-view mirror in a shower of orange sparks. Heedless of traffic, he bent to kiss her, breathing in rose and violet and strawberry and oranges and sweet girl-musk, made richer yet by their recent play--and fainter, but there, the mingled odors of leather and tobacco and whiskey. A satisfied growl rose in his throat. They were all over each other; they'd crawled into each other's skins, drunk each other down as surely as if blood had been exchanged. As Angel would realize the minute he inhaled. "Nothing to apologize for, love. You can mark my territory any time."

When Hank Summers peered through the peephole in the apartment door, Buffy was standing in the hall, just about to ring the bell a second time and caught in the act of shooting Spike a big-eyed, pleading look of the sort common to people b/begging their significant others not to embarrass them. She spun at the sound of the opening door and fixed the close-relative version of the big-eyed look on Hank. Standing there trying to keep her garment bag from slipping down her arm to drag on the floor, she looked far more like a girl primed to run interference between the Unsuitable Young Man and her father than the ultra-confident Slayer of Large Spiny Things he'd been introduced to at their last meeting. A tentative smile ventured across her face. "Dad?"
Buffy's back. An unlooked-for and almost painful happiness leapt up in him, and he reached forward to pull her her into a hug. Awkward; he didn’t know quite what to do with his hands and hers were full of luggage, but definite father-daughter contact. "Come on in, honey. You look--you look like you’ve been sleeping better."
He stepped back to let her maneuver through the doorway with her bags--not the little childhood suitcase set she used to bring for the summer; he recognized them as part of an old set he’d given Joyce the Christmas before the divorce, and it gave him a peculiar twinge to see that his daughter had adopted this small token of maturity. He was about to shut the door when Spike cleared his throat sharply. He was still standing on the threshold, carrying a much smaller bag and a styrofoam cooler. "I can doss down in the hall, mate," Spike said, "but I think the tenants' association would disapprove."
For a second Hank had no idea what he was talking about. "You have to invite him in, Dad," Buffy said, matter-of-fact. "I can't do it, I don't live here."
Ah, yes. The vampire thing. Hank allowed himself to savor the thought of Spike camping out in the hallway for the duration of Buffy's visit. Buffy did him something of an injustice when she claimed that Hank had yet to accept that there was a vampire thing; Hank was aware that strange things went on in Sunnydale and that Buffy was up to her ears in them. When in Sunnydale he was willing to go along. But Los Angeles was the real world, his world, and he resented the intrusion of Sunnydale's dangerous weirdness.
Linda came bustling up full of happy-homemaker cheer, welcoming smile in place. "Hello, Buffy. I’m Linda--Linda Gutierrez.” Buffy took Linda’s hand with tepid politeness. “And you must be Spike. Please come in. I've heard so much about you."
Spike's half-lidded eyes raked her up and down appraisingly, and he gave her a slow smile. "Mutual." He tossed his duster in the general direction of the coat rack, ambled into the living room and set the cooler down in the middle of the floor, standing hipshot beside it, thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his jeans. His sardonic blue gaze roved over the decor: tasteful cream-colored living room set, plexiglass-and-aluminum tables, bare pale walls adorned with scattered Miro prints in Art Deco frames, all resplendent in the discrete glow of track lighting--looking for something worth stealing, Hank had no doubt. "Nice place you've got here, Summers. Monotone. Suits you."
Buffy stood in the sea of white plush carpet, clutching the strap of her overnight bag like a safety line, her wide sea-colored eyes alight with nervous curiosity. Too close to Spike for Hank's comfort. In the muted pastel room the two of them were a slash of dark, vibrant color, irresistible draws to the eye. "It is nice," she said, her voice faltering a little. She hadn't seen the place since he'd redecorated, Hank realized--had it been two years? No, almost three. Perhaps she'd been expecting the comfortable (but old) furniture and bachelor clutter of her first few summer visits.
Hank closed the door. “I thought it was time for a change.”
Buffy nodded and set her bags down gingerly. “It’s just so different.” Spike slid an arm around her waist, his hand resting on the curve of her hip, an utterly natural and absent-minded gesture far more disturbing than any deliberate attempt to get Hank's goat could have been, and she leaned into his side. The air of general and second-in-command was still in evidence, but complicated by another, more visceral connection. The air between them crackled with it.
Linda laced her fingers together, seeming as nervous as Buffy. "I was so sorry to hear about your mother," she said. "I thought about going to the funeral, since Hank wasn't able to make it, but then I thought... not such a good idea." If she wanted to bring up the subject of Buffy’s purported death and mysterious re-appearance, she concealed it well--one of the things Hank admired about Linda. She knew when to avoid asking awkward questions. "I made up the couch as well as the guest bedroom. I wasn't sure if you'd, um, need both of them."
Buffy arched a brow at the couch, fitted up with sheets and several folded blankets at one end. "I told Dad that Spike and I are seeing each other."
"I decided to take that as 'we make eye contact occasionally.'" Hank sat down in the nearest armchair and picked up his half-finished glass of Scotch. He’d decided that he deserved a drink tonight. "Leave an old man his illusions."
"You're not old, Dad." Buffy moved the pile of folded blankets aside and perched uneasily on the edge of the couch, as if afraid of her slight weight leaving an impression on the pristine cushions. "Besides, I--I sleep better when I'm not alone."
"The guest bed is a double, so there's no problem if you'd both like to stay there," Linda assured her. Hank clenched his teeth and held his tongue; Linda was desperate to establish friendly relations with his children. The prospect of being a potential stepmother to someone only four or five years her junior was daunting, and arguing with her in front of Buffy wouldn't endear him to either of them. Buffy gave Linda a startled, grateful look and a tiny, microsecond smile, so perhaps it was worth it for long-term peace in the family. "Would either of you like anything?" Linda asked. She eyed the cooler uncertainly.
“We ate on the way,” Buffy said.
"Special diet." Nonchalant, Spike bent over, pried the top off the cooler and pulled a gallon milk jug full of something red and viscous out of the slightly melted mass of ice cubes within. He straightened and smiled at Linda, charisma turned up to eleven. "Though I wouldn’t say no to some of that Scotch. Fridge?"
"Through here," she said. Spike followed her out to the kitchen, and Linda threw a surreptitious glance at him over her shoulder. Surely she wasn’t falling for Spike’s line of bull? Linda had more sense than to be swayed by a pretty face and a probably-phoney English accent.
Buffy glanced at the archway leading to the kitchen. "So that's Linda. She seems... nothing like Mom. Exactly how old is she again?"
Hank took a fortifying sip of Scotch. "I never ask a woman what she weighs or how old she is. What does Spike do for a living again?"
Buffy grimaced. "Point taken. I'll leave yours alone if you leave mine alone."
They sat there for a minute, neither quite sure what to say next. Linda and Spike emerged from the kitchen, Spike having been supplied with a far-too-generous glass of Hank’s Glenlivet, neat. "...high in protein, iron and B vitamins," Spike was saying, straight-faced. "Swear by it. I practically live on the stuff."
Linda nodded, equally serious. "Oh, I totally understand. It's alfalfa-carrot protein shakes for me. The body is a temple. I can tell you really work on yours, but--" she shook an accusing finger at the half-empty pack of Marlboros poking out of his shirt pocket, "you do need to give up the cigarettes."
Spike dropped onto the couch beside Buffy and slid down into a boneless sprawl, one arm draped over her shoulders. "You'll get my ciggies when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers. Every man needs at least one vice to his name."
Buffy snorted, but snuggled up to him nonetheless. Hank tried not to feel ill. "Uh huh. Give up smoking and all you’ve got left is drinking, gambling--”
“My point exactly. Hardly enough to keep me busy all day.”
Linda shared a conspiratorial look with Buffy and glanced fondly Hank. "I guess men are all the same. I'm always trying to get your father to eat healthier and exercise, but he won't listen."
Spike slapped his stomach and regarded Hank, eyes a-glitter with cheerful malice. There was no way in hell he didn't deliberately pick his t-shirts a size too small; the damned thing looked as if it had been spray-painted on. "Two hundred sit-ups a day, mate. Or three hundred. Do you a world of good."
Hank resisted the urge to suck in his gut. He was in pretty good shape for a guy on the wrong side of forty, and he wasn’t going to be baited by someone on the wrong side of a hundred and forty. “It’s hard to make time for that sort of thing when you’re busy earning a living. I suppose if I had nothing to do besides watch ‘Passions’ all day...”
Two days, he reminded himself. It was only for two days. Fortunately for his temper, Buffy begged off any lengthy conversation, saying they had to get up early for tomorrow’s meeting--‘early’ for either of them apparently encompassing any time before eleven in the morning. Hank finished his Scotch while Linda showed his daughter and Spike down the short hall to the guest bedroom. Spike quietly snagged all of the luggage before Buffy could, which irritated Hank more than anything else he’d done all evening.
“Your daughter’s a very confident girl,” Linda said as they undressed for bed shortly thereafter. She sat at her vanity mirror, brushing her short glossy black hair and gazing thoughtfully at her reflection.
Hank smiled wryly. “As the biological parent, I get to use the term ‘stubborn.’”
Linda set her hairbrush down and began applying face cream, looking pensive. At last she completed her mysterious evening rituals, got up from the vanity and climbed into her side of the bed. “Her boyfriend’s... unusual.”
“As the biological parent, I get to use the term ‘weird.’ Not to mention rude, lazy, violence-prone and penniless.” Hank buttoned his pajama top and climbed in after her. He had good reason to distrust Spike. He had a gift for sizing people up. It had stood him in good stead in many a cutthroat board meeting and tricky client negotiation. It had even gotten him out of a few tight places outside the world of business, times when he'd been alone in a strange city with minimal command of the local language. From their first meeting that intuition had told him Spike was dangerous, not good enough for his girl--though at the time, he'd been mistaken about which girl of his Spike wasn't good enough for--and a poser. So far he'd seen no reason to change the assessment. Unfortunately that same intuition told him that the rude, lazy, violence-prone, penniless poser was also ferociously devoted to both his daughters, and better equipped to aid Buffy in dealing with Sunnydale’s dangerous weirdness than he was--and that, if he were honest with himself, was the main thing fueling his dislike of the vampire.
“Buffy asked you to invite him in. I didn’t think about it earlier, but that’s a little strange, isn’t it?”
Hank sighed. “Hon, Spike wrote the book on strange. He’s got...” How was he going to put this? “...a lot of quirks. I haven’t got the first idea why Buffy puts up with him, but she does, and I just don’t want to alienate her any further by arguing about it--I know I haven’t done as well by her and Dawn as I should have, and she’s making it difficult enough for me to make up for it as it is. At least he’s not living with her.”
Linda’s brow furrowed, but she nodded and said no more.


There were times when Anya suspected that the love of her life was not entirely onboard with the whole wedding experience.
Perhaps it was the fact that Xander could make any tuxedo collapse into wrinkles just by trying on the jacket. Perhaps it was the fact that he’d conveniently forgotten to mail the invitations for two weeks running, and after she’d bulldogged him into a trip to the post office, she’d found the ones addressed to his family stuffed behind the laundry hamper, where they’d accidentally (he assured her) fallen out of his pocket. Perhaps it was the way he cringed every time she mentioned the possibility of putting D’Hoffryn up for the night--an entirely reasonable suggestion, to her mind. It was not, after all, as if Sunnydale had any decent hotels which catered to demons. She made a mental note to check into the possibility of starting one--a nice bed and breakfast perhaps, with a view of the Hellmouth. She’d made a tidy sum selling short during the dot-com crash, and, as a patriotic resident, was looking for something close to home to invest it in. Property values in the neighborhood of the burnt hull of Sunnydale High were at rock bottom...
“Anya, can you hand me the volume of Theminius there behind the counter?” Giles asked. He was pacing by on another of his circumnavigations of the store, book in hand and glasses sliding down his nose. As he passed the counter he set the tome he’d been paging through down and picked up the new one without missing a beat. “Thank you.”
The Watcher’s lanky form circled round the store, through Charms and Amulets where Tara was sorting through a box of half-off gewgaws trying to find a suitable focus for her spell, past Incense and Ceremonial Candles, Herbs and Potions (Pre-Mixed) and come to a halt in front of a display of athames, frowning down at Theminius. “There is simply no connection,” he muttered. “None whatsoever. We can’t even be certain that the appearance of the loa is part of the overall pattern of manifestations--if there is a pattern--since it was, after all, summoned, however unconventionally. Blast it all.”
Anya considered her options. Giles sounded severely vexed. Now was probably the time for a remark indicating that she was actively engaged in the research process. Fortunately she was relieved of the necessity when the shop bell rang and Mrs. Dalgliesh’s blue-rinsed head bobbed inside. She was a fairly regular customer, a birdlike little woman invariably dressed in flowered chintz. She tottered up to the counter and smiled at Anya. “I’m here to pick up that pixie repellant, dear.”
Anya reached down and retrieved the dark brown bottle with squirt attachment labeled “Dalgleish, twice daily, shake well before spraying” from beneath the counter and set it down with a beaming return smile. The oily liquid within sloshed against the sides. “Here you are, Mrs. Dalgliesh. Remember to store it in a dark place. You have the payment ready in full, of course?”
“Why, of course. Don’t I always?” Mrs. Dalgliesh opened her ancient carpetbag purse, extracted an equally ancient wallet, and began carefully counting out bills one by one, followed by exact change in pennies. Anya approved of Mrs. Dalgliesh’s protective attitude towards her cash. Be good to your money and your money would be good to you was her motto. Or one of her mottoes, anyway; Anya had never been able to see how some people got by with just one. “My Social Security check came in today, and none too soon. The nasty little things are all over the gardenias.” She picked up the bottle and held it up to the light, clucking her tongue. “I hope this is enough for the big one.”
Giles looked up, peering at the two of them over the rims of his glasses. “Big one?”
Mrs. Dalgliesh nodded as Anya wrapped up the pixie repellant and slid it into a brown paper bag. “I saw him last night. Much bigger than the others, though I suppose the antlers made him look taller. He blew some kind of horn at me. It gave me quite a start. And the dogs made such a mess of the flowerbeds, too.”
“Dogs?”
“A dozen, at least. White with red ears, I don’t know the breed. Looking for bones, I suspect; I doubt he keeps them fed. Well, I must be off. Thank you, Anya.” She tucked her package into the capacious purse and tottered out the door to the renewed jingle of the bell. Giles watched her departing back, stroking his chin with one hand.
“Some sort of avatar of Herne the Hunter, perhaps?” He heaved a discouraged sigh and returned Theminius to his place on the shelves. “Just what’s wanted, more random demonic activity...”
“But it’s not,” Anya said.
Giles adjusted his glasses. “Perhaps not random, but if there is a pattern--”
“No, no,” Anya interrupted. “It’s not demonic. Not a single demon involved.”
For a moment Giles stood there, thunderstruck. “You’re quite correct,” he said slowly. “All the manifestations have been minor divinities of one sort or another--Spike and Xander said that the dragon they saw had five claws, correct?” Anya nodded. “An Imperial dragon, associated with the god-emperors of ancient China. Haitian loas, Chumash sacred bears, the leader of the Wild Hunt--specifically, human deities, from many times and cultures--” He was pacing again, excited. “But still, what does it mean? If these beings are gathering here there must be a reason for it. I’ve checked and double-checked all the usual texts, and while there’s an extremely dicey mystical convergence coming up later this winter all signs point to its occurring further south. Whatever’s causing this, it was nothing foretold in any prophecy the Council has access to, and I find that extremely disturbing.”
Anya sniffed. “I don’t. Exactly what good has a prophecy ever done us? It’s always ‘The green cloud obscures the desert’ and you never know if it refers to a plague of grasshoppers or if someone’s started irrigating. Or how about the classic, ‘A mighty army will be destroyed?’ We know something’s happening, and we know it’s big enough to make gods sit up and take notice. I’d rather not know how it’s going to turn out, thank you; that way I can assume that we figure out what’s happening and beat it.”
Giles’s lips quirked slightly. “That’s a novel way of looking at it. But we’re so short of real information I’d settle for an encouraging fortune cookie.”
Anya checked off Mrs. Dalgliesh’s purchase on her list of special orders to be picked up. “Why don’t we just ask them why they’re here?”
“Because--” Giles stopped. “You know, that just might work.”


Buffy woke confused, sure she was in the wrong place. The mattress was not shaped to her body, the sheets smelled of some heathen brand of fabric softener, and the light was coming from the wrong direction, seeping through curtains of the wrong shade. She lay still, animal wariness taking over while she absorbed the unfamiliar sensations of someone else’s bed. Finally she relaxed. She was in the wrong place, but she was supposed to be. The comfortable weight of the arm around her middle was right, and the cool firm body curving around her own. At times like this it seemed to her that the silence that was Spike’s lack of heartbeat was of a different quality from all other silences, a unique quiet that she could distinguish in an instant from any common cessation of noise. She felt his breath against her ear and the brush of his lips against her throat as he sensed her wakening. Her own breath escaped in a soft yearning moan.
“Mornin’, love.” His voice was just as low, rough with restrained passion. He touched her lips with a finger, forestalling her reply. “No--no noise. Not a peep. They’ll hear, and we can’t give your old Dad an aneurysm.” She bit her lip and nodded, mystified but willing to go along. Spike glanced at the window, gauging the angle of the sun and the likelihood that its beams would strike the bed any time soon. Satisfied, he bent his tousled platinum head to her neck again, nuzzling her ear, nibbling slowly down the length of her neck from ear to collarbone and back again.
His hand drifted to her shoulder, fingers stroking feather-light along her upper arm, but he touched her nowhere else. When she started to reach blindly out for more contact his fingers tightened on her biceps, holding her still while he continued to seek out the tenderest flesh, the most sensitive skin to torment. A languid heat began to build within her, lapping outwards from her center like a wave of warm honey, making her skin tingle all over and rendering Spike’s ministrations all the more exquisite. It was not long before she was writhing against the sheets, digging her heels into the mattress and biting her lips to keep from crying aloud, a willing accomplice in her own sweet torture.
Spike’s breathing grew quick and harsh, deepening to a purring rasp of a growl, quickly silenced as his teeth grazed her collarbone. His lips played upwards along the long swan-curve of her throat to the angle of her jaw, agile tongue flicking against the old bite scars as if by accident. Now and again his fangs emerged for a quick playful nip, the delicate pinpricks sending sharper bolts of pleasure through the voluptuous haze enveloping her senses. She was dimly aware of his growing arousal, hard and eager against her, but the cords of her limbs were undone, all her strings cut, and all she could manage to assuage it was to grind her hips back against his. Desperate little grunts forced their way out of her, and when a hand thrust a pillow in front of her face she grabbed it and bit down on the corner as flares of light blossomed behind her eyelids, and her body dissolved a long-drawn-out upwelling of bliss.
She heard the sigh as Spike exhaled, ridding his lungs of every scrap of air. He shifted position, rolling her onto her back and covering her body with his, and then he was sinking into her with a force that made the bed shudder. They both froze for a guilty second--this was a piece of furniture they had to be careful of.
Buffy reached up and put a finger to his lips, just as he’d done to her earlier--Be still. He was still in game face, butting his head against hers like a cat demanding caresses; his eyes slitted in bliss as her hands moved up to stroke his brow ridges, then shot open as she put another set of Slayer muscles to good use stroking something else. As she drew him deep and closed around him exaltation washed over his face, and human features replaced demonic ones, blue chasing the gold from his eyes. It was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen, and she felt her own body gather for a second assault on the heights. With a breathless, noiseless roar, he exploded within her, and Buffy mashed her face into his shoulder to muffle her answering shout as they clawed for the summit together.
Spike twined his fingers in her hair, pulled back and gazed into her eyes, caressing her cheeks with his thumbs. Buffy made a happy little ‘mm’ noise and gazed back. Bed intact. Wonderful news for furniture budget. Spike not nearly as heavy as previous boyfriends. Also very good. Could get used to waking up like this. Lost personal pronouns again. Who needs them? “What’s the occasion?”
“Happy anniversary, love. One week today.”
“Love you,” she whispered, because there were no other words.
He broke out in that sweet, glorious smile, the one she’d never seen him give anyone else--as if she were the only one worthy of it, despite being the remarkably self-centered and occasionally dense Buffy Anne Summers who was desperately trying to armor herself for the upcoming meeting with her former vampire lover by having as much fantastic sex with her current vampire lover as possible. Were there expressions of hers he treasured as much? She hoped so; it would be beyond unfair otherwise. He caught his lower lip in his teeth, full of small-boy anticipation. “Got you something.”
Buffy sat up, clutching the sheet to her breasts. “Spike, you didn’t need to--it isn’t, um--” Slayers intent on instilling virtue in morally deficient vampires should not be bouncing up and down in anticipation of probably stolen prezzies from said vampires. “You got something? For me?”
Spike rolled over and reached over the side of the bed, rummaging around underneath for a moment. He sat back up with a small flat package wrapped up in butcher’s paper and tied with string--not exactly festive, but Buffy felt her hand shaking as she undid the neat double bow. She peeled back the layers of paper while Spike sat cross-legged on the bed and watched her.
It was a book--a slim volume bound in brown leather. For a second she had a weird flash of deja vu, and half expected it to be Browning’s Sonnets From The Portugese. But it wasn’t; it was the book Spike had been reading that night on the sofa in the crypt, the one she hadn’t been able to make out the title of. Now, tracing the faded gilt letters on the spine, she could just decipher The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It was old, old enough to be printed on rag paper that had been made to last. There were two inscriptions on the flyleaf. The first was in unfamiliar spidery script, the ink faded and brown with age, and read To William, from Mother, with love: May you know the joy you deserve. May 21st, 1877. The second one was in Spike’s handwriting, his old-fashioned copperplate script at odds with the ordinary ballpoint it was written in--To Buffy: Seize the day. Love, William. Dec. 7th, 2001. It looked as if he’d been undecided as to which way to sign it; ‘Spike’ and ‘William’ had both been written in and crossed out at least once. A queer lump rose up in her throat and for a second she couldn’t breathe at all.
“Was gonna let you borrow it anyway, like I said, but then I thought you might like one of your own,” Spike said, studiously examining his toes. “Sorry it’s not a new copy, but I thought you’d rather have one that wasn’t nicked.”
Oh, God, she was crying. Or laughing. Not sure which. Tears were pouring down her cheeks as if her personal sprinkler system had broken. “It’s--it’s--” She laid the book reverently down on the pillow and flung her arms around him. “Thank you. It’s perfect.”
Spike, a little startled at the intensity of her reaction, pulled her close and stroked her hair. “Shh, Buffy, love, it’s all right.” His thumb smudged the tear-tracks across her cheek. “Your Dad’ll be convinced I’m beating you now.”
She sniffled. “Right. I can whip your pansy English ass.”
He gave her his wickedest smile. “Promise?”
“Pig.” She snuggled into his shoulder and looked up at him, an innocent little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “If you ask very nicely, I’ll think about it.”
He laughed, and Buffy glanced towards the window, doing her own check on the progress of the sun. It must be close to eight o’clock, an ungodly hour to be awake in her line of work, but she felt surprisingly good. In the corner of her eye she saw herself in the mirror over the dresser, leaning cozily into thin air, long blonde hair apparently moving of its own volition as Spike’s hand played with the sleep-tangled locks. With puffy eyes and a snuffly nose, which were absolutely not what she wanted to be displaying when Angel showed up. Which was bound to be soon--it was at least an hour’s drive from Los Angeles to Corona, where the California Institute for Women was located, and there was no telling how long the wait to get in to see Faith would be once they got there. How exactly they were going to manage the matter of getting Angel from the car to the prison without combusting she wasn’t sure; she couldn’t imagine Angel galloping around under a ratty blanket, but he must have managed it somehow on previous visits. The California Department of Corrections wasn’t about to change its visiting hours to accommodate vampires. Maybe they’d have covered parking.
Spike was still lazing around on the bed with the book he’d brought with him when she got out of the shower; he’d gotten as far as pulling on his jeans but had only buttoned them up halfway. Of course, he could afford to put off getting dressed; Spike’s idea of packing light (razor, toothbrush, Penguin edition of Typee , change of socks) limited his sartorial options. Manfully abjuring temptation, Buffy marched over to the closet and stood with hands on hips, surveying the clothes she’d brought along with the air of a general looking for volunteers for a suicide mission. There was the claret-red skirt and top ensemble which had been part of the Dawn-induced Dad-guilt haul last month. Worn last night to make Dad feel better, check. The little black dress--just in case they happened to end up at a gala L.A. cocktail party, she supposed; she really wasn’t sure why she’d felt the need to bring it along. Several pairs of sensible slacks and blouses from the Office Drag Collection, for the prison visit and the ride home. She pulled the cowl-necked camel pullover out (the coffee stain had come out nicely) and held the hanger up to her chest. “Does this say ‘I’ve moved on and am mature enough to see you as a beloved friend but if seeing me makes you rue the day you walked out on me, so much the better?’ Or should I go with the blue?”
Spike leaned back against the headboard and laced his hands behind his head. “That might be a bit much for any one article of clothing to convey, pet, but I’d go for the one that doesn’t conceal the massive hickey.”
Buffy’s eyes went wide and she dropped the pullover on a chair and darted over to the mirror, hand to her neck. Sure enough, there was a straggling line of livid rosettes winding all down the left side of her throat. They were already beginning to fade, thanks to Slayer healing, but it was going to be very visible for at least the rest of the morning. She groaned. “Why does everything that feels that good leave marks?” she grumbled.
Something brushed sensually along her shoulder, sending a wave of gooseflesh up and down her arms--Spike had slipped up behind her, invisible in the mirror, and was going in for the kill on the other side. “Suits you, pet. Sends the message that someone doesn’t need to puncture your jugular to get you off.”
Buffy smacked him away. “Down! I have to look virginal for Dad and irresistible but unavailable for Angel and unlike a potential hacksaw-smuggler for the warden. Instead I look like Miss December in the Skank of the Month calen--oooh... STOP THAT!”
Spike beat a strategic retreat down the hall towards the bathroom, grinning like a loon, and Buffy turned back to the mirror with a silly little smile of her own and opened her makeup case. Foundation was her friend. Not like she didn’t have plenty of experience concealing suspicious bruises, scrapes, and compound fractures; Slayer healing was good, but not instantaneous. She took the blue blouse out and held both of them up critically, then hung the blue one back in the closet. The camel one would cover up the marks without recourse to cosmetics. She pulled it on and tugged the collar up around her neck. On the other hand, maybe she wanted someone to see them. Collar down. Or not. Collar up. Angel-feelings currently way more confusing than Spike-feelings. A first in the Summers’ cavalcade of romantic neuroses! She stepped into the rust slacks and pulled her hair back. French braid? Chignon?
Last night hadn’t gone too badly. Sure, Spike and her father had sniped at each other for awhile, but no one had taken any mortal conversational wounds. Linda wasn’t the rapacious bimbo she’d been expecting. Buffy wasn’t certain how she felt about that yet, but as Linda had circumvented the not-in-my-house-you-don’t argument about her sharing a bed with Spike, Buffy was tentatively inclined to move her from the ‘Homewrecking Fiend From Hell’ category to the ‘Probably Human’ category. Maybe she could even handle the one-two punch of seeing Angel and Faith in one day...
There was a hesitant knock on the door. French braid, definitely. “Yes?”
“It’s me.” It was Linda, sounding worried. “Are you all right?”
“As the proverbial rain,” Buffy replied. “I might go so far as to say perky, which is downright unnatural at this time of day. Is something wrong?”
“Can I talk to you for a moment?”
“Just a minute--let me get decent.” After a nervous glance at the bed and a few quick corrective measures--fluff one slightly toothmarked pillow, yank the blanket over the wet spot, arrange collar of pullover to cover massive hickey--Buffy opened the door. “What’s up? Dad have a change in plans for tonight?” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice; they’d planned to go out to L’Orangerie after they got back from Corona, but it wouldn’t be the first time her father had decided working late was more important than spending time with her.
“No, nothing like that.” Linda was fingering her necklace, turning the little gold cross over and over till the chain tangled. She was already dressed for work, purse clutched in one hand and professional veneer lacquered securely into place. “Nothing to do with your father.” The sound of running water kicked in down the hall. Buffy hoped her father had gotten his shower in earlier, as she’d recently discovered that Spike would happily loiter in a hot shower until he grew gills. Linda relaxed slightly, but her voice remained low. “Spike left the bathroom door open while he was brushing his teeth, and I happened to look in going past, and I--I saw something that worried me.”
That was unexpected. Unexpected was usually bad. Buffy’s smile became a trifle fixed. “Saw something?” All Spike parts property Buffy Anne Summers, individually and in toto. Flutter one wheat-grass-nourished eyelash in his direction and I’ll remove your appendix through your nose, you homewrecking fiend from hell.
Linda, luckily, didn’t appear to be telepathic. “It was more like I didn’t see something. Something that should have been there.” She bent closer and whispered, “How long have you known Spike?”
“About four years. Why?”
“Has he seemed... different to you lately? Had any personality changes?”
Buffy looked at her, brows knit. She didn’t like the way this was going; she could practically hear the ominous music rising in the background. “He’s gone through a lot of... I guess you’d call it self-evaluation in the last couple of years, but he’s always been this annoying, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Linda took a deep breath, her dark liquid eyes darting back towards the hall once more. “This is going to sound really stupid, but... have you seen him go outside in the daytime lately?”
Uh oh. “Sure. Yesterday.” Hiding under a blanket to get to the car counts. “Though he’s, um, kind of a night person. Which is OK, because I’m a night owl myself, always burning that midnight oil--”
The other woman looked exceedingly unhappy. “You’re going to think I’m insane,” she whispered, “but there’s a chance we could all be in terrible danger.” She wrung her hands. “I think your Spike might be... part of a gang.”
“Uh?” Buffy sat down on the edge of the bed. Was there any point at all in having a secret identity these days? “A gang. Of the PCP-taking, disappearing into thin air when the police arrive variety?”
“Would you take this?” Linda reached into her pocket and pulled out another small cross on a chain. “I know your father isn’t religious and I don’t know if you are, but it would make me feel better if I knew you had... protection.”
Buffy took the cross and closed her hand around it. This was going to be awkward. “Wow. I had no idea you were familiar with the, uh, initiation signs.” Not that Spike bothered to hide it much; Angel had always gone to great pains to appear human in the company of humans, but Spike, as far as she could tell, just didn’t care all that much if he were outed. Which was pretty stupid in light of the fact that he was currently helpless against any human vampire hunters who took exception to his existence. They were going to have to have a little discussion about that.
Linda’s café au lait complexion paled. “Then you know--but you don’t realize what he could do! He looks like the man you used to know, but he’s not. You’ve got to get away. All of us do. He’s a different person now, and he could--”
“Spike can’t hurt you,” Buffy interrupted hurriedly. “He can’t hurt anyone. Not won’t, can’t. If he tries he gets an electric shock strong enough to knock him flat. And anyway, he’s reformed. I swear, none of you are in any danger from him.”
Down the hall the sound of the shower running cut off abruptly, but neither of them noticed. There was pity alongside the fear in Linda’s eyes. “You love him,” she said, her words coming quick and urgent. “You think you’ve found some way of keeping him under control. You’re fooling yourself, chica. He’ll last forever. It won’t. You won’t. How many people did he kill before you found your fix? How many do you think he’ll kill after it breaks?”
Out in the living room, someone knocked on the door, and Buffy heard the faint scrape of chair legs and footsteps crossing from the kitchen as her father left his morning coffee to answer it. Down the hall, behind Linda, Spike emerged from the bathroom with a damp towel slung over his bare shoulders, giving his hair a few last touches with one hand. He paused to listen for a second, his dark brows angled together. Then he ghosted down the hall towards them and popped up behind Linda, crooking his fingers into claws and making exaggerated biting motions. Buffy aimed a steely glare at him over Linda’s shoulder. Something was putting her nerves on edge, but with Linda talking and Spike acting more than usually like an idiot...
“Look, my grandmother is a bruja down in East L.A., and she knows all about...gangs. She knows a guy who does... deprogramming.” Linda produced a small, dog-eared rectangle of cardstock from her purse and held it out to Buffy. “You should look him up, fast. It’s not your Spike in there anymore.”
“Now there’s where you’re wrong, pet,” Spike said conversationally. “It’s always been her Spike in here.” He reached over her shoulder with striking-snake speed and nabbed the business card from Linda’s hand. Linda shrieked and jumped about a foot and a half in the air. Spike’s lazy grin was pure predator, reminiscent of a well-fed cat unable to resist a chance to step on a mouse’s tail. He held the card out and squinted at it, lounging in the doorway in such a manner as to block Linda's escape. “What the bloody hell is that, a lobster? Bet he drew the sodding logo himself rather than shell out for a graphics designer.”
“Knock off the attitude, Spike,” Buffy said, in the tone of offhand authority which brought him to heel far more effectively than irritation would have. “You’re scaring her.” He looked down at Linda with an absurdly pleased expression. “Am I really?”
“You heard her,” a familiar voice said. “Knock it off. Or I will.”
Angel loomed in the doorway behind Spike, filling most of it, flexing the fingers of his right hand as if he’d like nothing better than to make a fist of it. Spike’s every muscle went piano-wire tense. Topaz sparking and dying in his eyes, he turned, very deliberately, to face the maker of his maker. Buffy took the business card from his inattentive fingers. “As a matter of fact,” she said with a weak smile as she handed the card for Angel Investigations back to Linda, “We’ve already got an appointment.”
Spike and Angel faced one another, winter-blue eyes locked upon chocolate brown, and the silence in the room was so deep and pure that Buffy was surprised that the sound of her heart pounding against her ribs didn’t shatter it like glass, into shards sharp enough to cut with. Her Slayer senses were keening dissonant warning; she was strongly attuned to Spike’s presence these days, even moreso now than she had been a week ago, but Angel’s tug on her persisted still, tiny hooks set into all her bones. The conflict was like tinfoil on a filling, and without thought she rose from the bed and laid a hand on Spike’s shoulder. The physical contact soothed the jangle along her nerves almost at once, and the boiling fury in Spike’s eyes cooled to a simmer. He relaxed imperceptibly. “Hullo, Peaches.”
“Spike.” Angel’s voice was neutral. “Buffy. Your father let me in. Are we ready to--”
He stopped, nostrils flaring, and unbelief washed over his face, transforming slowly into something approaching horror as the pieces came together. His eyes flicked around the room, taking in the two sets of clothing, the rumpled sheets on both sides of the bed, Buffy’s hand resting on Spike’s shoulder--and what must have been, to his enhanced senses, the unmistakable and overwhelming musk of their recent lovemaking. There was a blur of motion too fast for human eyes to follow and Spike was torn from her side, slammed into the doorjamb with wall-rattling force, and pinned there with Angel’s hands about his throat. A raw snarl barely recognizable as words tore out of the older vampire: “What have you done to her?”
“Put him down!” Buffy shouted. Angel ignored her.
Spike’s eyes blazed with triumph, and his smile was as vicious a thing as Buffy’d ever seen on a human face. “Nothing she didn’t beg me to, mate,” he gasped--Angel’s cutting off his air couldn’t hurt him, but it made it difficult for him to talk. “Not that she had to beg long. My pleasure. Each and every night, all night long--agh!” His face convulsed in agony and Buffy realized with a cold shock of terror that in another second Angel was simply going to rip Spike’s head off his shoulders. She lunged towards them, but Spike had already brought one knee up like a pile-driver into Angel’s groin. Angel howled and staggered backwards, his grip breaking, and Spike twisted free and dove after him with fangs bared, screaming, “How does it feel, Angelus? How does it bloody feel when it happens to you?” The two of them disintegrated into a snarling, roaring tangle of fists and fangs in the middle of the carpet.
Linda screamed and ran for the living room. Change of plans. Buffy diverted her lunge towards the window, and in one swift motion her hand was on the curtain-pull. “If you two don’t stop it RIGHT NOW you’ll be vampire flambe in two seconds and I’ll shovel your ashes into the same urn for eternity!”
Even that threat didn’t penetrate. Buffy yanked the cord down and the curtains flew open. Sunlight flooded into the room, striking the combatants in mid-grapple. Both Spike and Angel froze, blinking into the sunlight with identical expressions of shock before pain galvanized them into motion. “Fuck!” Spike screamed, and leaped for the closet as wisps of smoke started to rise from his exposed flesh. Angel, with less flesh exposed and less familiarity with the layout of the room, scrambled to his feet and dove behind the bed after a second’s panicked reconnaissance.
Buffy stood there for a moment, backlit dramatically by the morning sun, her lips pressed into a hard angry line. “Can you both move beyond being the poster boys for Neanderthal Nation for five minutes, or is that too much to ask?” she hissed.
Angel poked a wary head up over the side of the bed. “Buffy,” he said in the tone that meant he was trying very, very hard to sound reasonable, “I think you have some explaining to do.”
Spike inched out from behind the closet door, all glowery, sexy pout, and jerked his chin in Angel’s direction. “He started it.” He looked uneasily at the window and made a little curtain-closing wave with one hand. “Uh...pet, could you...?”
How was it possible that one man could make her so sublimely happy and so completely furious in the space of an hour? She stalked over to the closet and gave him a look which would have stopped a glacier in its tracks, her chest heaving. “Is that what this is? Get back at Angel week?”
His eyes fell away and his head dropped. “Don’t you think we bloody well deserve it? Both of us?”
She looked across the room at Angel’s dark handsome face, agonized. “It wasn’t his fault. Any of it.” She believed that. She had to. Angel, whose eyes never quite lost the haunted knowledge of what he had done, was not Angelus, any more than Spike was William...
“Then whose fault was it? Tell me who stole Dru’s mind from her, and her heart from me? Who took your heart and froze it so cold even my hands can warm it?” The ridged brow and broadened nose of his demon-face melted back into the aquiline purity of his human one, and staring into those lucent blue eyes, Buffy realized that she no longer had any idea which of his faces was the mask. “Tell me who I can hate, Buffy! There’s got to be someone.”
And she couldn’t do the right thing, tell him he didn’t have to hate anyone, because she knew too well that there were times when you did. “It’s--it’s over, all that. Past. This is now.” She reached up and took his face in her hands, reading the planes of his cheek and jaw like a Braille of the heart. “ We’re now.”
Right there in her father’s guest room closet Spike fell to his knees, supplicant at her feet for a heartbreaking moment before wrapping his arms around her hips and burying his face in her crotch. “Buffy,” he moaned.
Whoa. Stella Kowalski moment . For the second time that morning she found herself unable to breathe, unable to move, but for all the physical intimacy of their pose it was not lust that raced through her now--OK, not much lust--and for the first time she realized, like a mule-kick to the gut, that he feared losing her as deeply and terribly as she feared losing him. Doesn’t he know? Haven’t I told him? Her hands moved blindly over his head, fingers twining through his still-damp curls. “Get up,” she whispered. “Get up.” Spike obeyed, rising to his feet in one lithe surge, his hands and his eyes never letting go of her. They were the only people in the room, the building, the universe.
“Buffy.” Angel’s dark warm voice, which had once been the one to which she compared all others, full of concern now. “Buffy, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on here.”
The tug was still there. Once those hooks were set into bone they could never truly be removed. But it had never once occurred to her to go to him first.
“Buffy!” Linda’s fearful voice cried. “Are you all right?”
Buffy took a shaky breath. “I’m fine. Could you close the curtains, please? We’re coming out.” As the room darkened once more, she took Spike’s hand, and led him out of the closet.

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