When one's life and fortunes, not to mention one's accommodations, become entwined with those of a vampire, certain sacrifices are required. Various concerned parties, particularly those expecting fat grandchildren, had pointed this out in exhaustive detail to Buffy over the course of the last seven years. You couldn't sing in the sunshine or have tiny precious babies with an undead creature of the night. Buffy had pointed out in her turn, in what she felt was a perfectly reasonable and not-at-all-strident tone of voice, that just possibly having tiny precious babies was a little lower on her scale of priorities at the moment than getting a degree or her Registered PSA instructor's rating.

Yet Buffy could not deny that there was truth in the warnings. When the pellucid light of morning broke over Sunnydale, tricking out each roof-tile and parked car in more than Oriental splendor, the heavy folds of the curtains kept a stranglehold on the dawn in the bedroom of Buffy Anne Summers and Wm. T. Bloody.

In short, vampires could run up your utility bills something fierce.

As she generally greeted the sunrise wrongside-to, straggling back home after a far-too-late night of slaying, on most mornings Buffy was perfectly content to snuggle up to Spike's side and let the dawn choke. This, alas, was not most mornings. Duty tore her from the embrace of her nice warm bed and her nice lukewarm vampire at the ungodly hour of nine AM. Much bleariness, therefore, held at bay by the intense concentration necessary to fix herself a fortifying post-reunion-sex breakfast. Possibly she could arrange an intravenous caffeine drip.

Kennedy, in the first unequivocal sign of evil she'd displayed, appeared to be a morning person. She'd already showered, dressed, eaten a frugal yet nutritious breakfast, and probably gotten in a facial and a bikini wax while she was at it. She was currently in the living room, doing vigorous step aerobics on a stack of phonebooks, to the accompaniment of a badly-recorded Monkeywrench bootleg. The realization that enough of Spike's crappy punk music had crowbarred its way into her brain in the last year that Buffy recognized the band was almost more disturbing than the music itself.

"You're eating that?" Kennedy yelled over the screech of Tim Kerr's feedback.

Buffy blinked down at her half-demolished breakfast--grapefruit, bacon, eggs sunny-side-up, and a croissant. "That was, in fact, my diabolical plan."

"It's all carbs and cholesterol!" Up, down, bend, kick, up, down... Kennedy was mesmerizing, in a really annoying way. It would be wrong to actively wish for ankle breakage, but phone books were slippery. "I'm on a modified Atkins. Check it out, twenty percent body fat. My Watcher put together a whole coordinated diet and exercise regimen for me. You work out, right?" There was a subtle challenge in her tone. "I saw the weights behind the couch."

"Actually, those are Spike's. I'm not looking to develop my biceps." Granted the effect on Spike was exceptionally nice, but Buffy had yet to discover the practical purpose of acquiring muscles when you could already bench press a refrigerator without breaking a sweat. "I usually put in an hour or two of combat drills at the Magic Box after I get off work. I could show you some tricks, kick your ass..." Kennedy shot her a lemon-sucking look at the reminder. One-upmanship, breakfast of champions; petty, yet satisfying. "Did Tara talk to you about doing the aura thingy before she left for class?"

The CD sputtered to an end. Kennedy bounced off her stack of Yellow Pages and sat down on the couch to unstrap her ankle weights. "Yeah, she said to meet her over at the Magic Box at five." She regarded Buffy through slitted eyes, a hunter taking careful aim with a dart. "If she's up to it, what with having her head half chewed off and all."

Ow. Not quite dead center, but still a hit. "You heard about that, huh?"

"Heard and marveled." Kennedy's expression was just south of a sneer. "Not often that you get more vampire bites inside the Slayer's house than outside." She tossed her cloudy mane of hair and strolled into the dining room, a confident swagger in her step. "So I was thinking of getting in a good slay tonight. That nest of vamps over in Restfield. They all your good buddies and pals too?"

"They're..." This was not a time for imprecise syntax. "Not a threat. Spike keeps them under control."

There was an edge to Kennedy's voice: challenge, and disappointment, almost, lying just beneath. "Yeah? Like Willow's not a threat?"

"No." Buffy sopped up the last of the golden, LDL-laden yumminess with the tail end of her croissant and downed the rest of her coffee. "Differently than Willow's not a threat. A) Soul, B) fear and trembling."

"So you're... what, protecting a whole nest of vampires? And you still call yourself a Slayer?"

That was actually a good question, and one she didn't have an answer for. "It's complicated. Look, my first class is at eleven--I'm going to go get my skates and take off in half an hour or so. If you have things to do, I can drop you off downtown on my way to the rink."

Kennedy looked for a moment as if she'd press her challenge further, then relaxed and leaned against the counter. "Yeah, sure. I thought I might scope a few places out. Don't wanna take up your couch space forever. And the sooner I'm up to speed, the better. Looks like you need all the help you can get."

"Gosh, thanks. In the meantime, here." Buffy walked over to the desk in the living room and extracted a ratty grey three-ring binder. A home-printed label on the cover read An Inquiry Into The Origins Of Slayer Ability, by Rupert Giles. She tossed it at Kennedy.

"What's this?" Kennedy caught the awkward missile in both hands and turned it over, suspicious.

Buffy stopped, one hand on the bannister, her tone a model of uninformative blandness. "Light reading. The birds and the bees."

She left Kennedy frowning at the binder and headed upstairs. That should keep Kennedy busy for awhile, and maybe give her something to think about. She didn't have to like the girl, Buffy reminded herself, she just had to help her. Once upon a time she'd possessed that blazing certainty herself, the absolute conviction that there was a right and a wrong in the universe, and she, by golly, was the best-qualified person to decide which was which. Sometimes she missed it. That was the real reason Slayers died young. No one over twenty-one could sustain the moral superiority.

She passed Dawn's old room (now Spike's office) and her old room (now Dawn's bedroom) and entered the master bedroom--not Mom's room any longer. Sanctuary. Her Toscana vanity set rubbed companionable elbows with the antique four-poster, and Spike's well-thumbed copies of Kerouac and Kipling battled for shelf space with her LaVyrle Spencers. The subdued, tasteful shades of taupe and sage and antique rose in the carpet that she'd picked out set off the rich dark jewel tones Spike loved, all warmed in the glow of fat white pillar candles. She was almost glad, now, that her father had disposed of most of her things during the months she'd been dead; it meant that when Spike moved in, they'd been starting together, from scratch.

Spike, unsurprisingly, was still asleep. He'd always been an uncommonly early riser for a vampire, and over the last year their sleeping schedules had slipped into closer sync. Still, he rarely got up before noon unless the world was ending--not an unusual occurrence in Sunnydale. He was buried under a heap of bedding, (Dan River Essex, one of the few patterns they'd managed to agree upon as neither 'too fucking girly' or 'too Victorian whorehouse'). One narrow, high-arched foot dangled white and vulnerable off the edge of the bed. Buffy contemplated the possibilities for a moment, then virtuously restrained herself to peeling back a corner of the coverlet and giving him a shake. "Hey, gorgeous. Wakey, wakey."

With a complaining rumble, Spike burrowed deeper into the covers in a futile attempt to run sleep to ground. Buffy shook him again, and he flexed beneath her hand, a pale crescent of spine and shoulder against the rich wine and gold of the sheets. He uncoiled in a long, languorous, toe-curling stretch. Fangs extended at the apex of a jaw-cracking yawn, then receded as his eyes blinked from yellow back to a blue that exactly matched the accents in the sheets. Damn, but she'd picked one decorative vampire. Buffy folded onto the side of the bed. "I'm going to drop Kennedy off downtown on my way to the rink. I don't want to leave her here alone with you and Willow asleep."

"Good," Spike mumbled into her thigh. "Less chance she'll trip and accidentally impale herself on my teeth."

Buffy gave the nearest silver-gilt corkscrew of hair a disciplinary tweak, eliciting a muffled yelp. Demanding moral clarity before noon was asking a lot of even the most diurnal of vampires, but she'd always had high expectations. "Am I going to have a problem with you, too? And off the record, do not tempt me."

"Not so long as she confines herself to pointed looks." Spike propped himself up on one elbow and squinted at the clock on the nightstand. "Did you notice last night, love? She talks like Faith's gone and died on us something permanent."

"Like that ever happens," Buffy muttered. "You're right, that's a weirdness." As far as the world at large knew, Faith had died in the Los Angeles County Hospital last winter, of complications from a stab wound received in a prison fight, but Quentin Travers knew the true story. "Either Travers is keeping the rank and file in the dark, or...what if Faith did call down Ancient Gypsy Curse Mark II to keep her power from being passed on?"

Spike's expression indicated that he thought she was bonkers or barmy or some other quaint English version of nuts. "I wouldn't cover that bet," he said. "Not in cash nor kittens."

"We should get the 411 from her anyway." Buffy retrieved her gym bag from the closet and inspected her reflection in the vanity mirror with a critical eye: white cashmere pullover and bright teal stirrup pants, hair drawn up in a perky-bouncy ponytail. For someone running on half a night's sleep, not bad. She slung the bag over her shoulder, skates clinking, and bent to kiss Spike on the nose. "Angel's got a contact number for her."

"You got anything else you want me to do?" Spike grumbled. "Juggle crosses, gargle holy water?"

She ran a teasing finger along his collarbone. "There's dishes downstairs. Or how about wearing The Blue Shirt of Ultimate Hotness?"

Spike went game-faced and mock-snarled at her, "You mean Ultimate Nanciness? There are limits."

Buffy laughed as he tangled one hand in the fall of her hair and drew her down for a real kiss, deep and languid, his tongue the most cunning of serpents in the garden of her mouth. The gym bag thunked forgotten to the floor. She slid her arms around his neck and hitched a leg over his middle as those big cool hands spanned the arch of her hips. "A tasty armful, you are," he rasped into her neck. "I'm minded to have breakfast in bed." Fangs pricked the hollow at the base of her throat ever so lightly, and in seconds the tight little buds of her nipples were nudging his chest through her sweater. "There's my cinnamon drops," Spike crooned. "Hard and sweet 'n hot as hell."

Buffy didn't go braless as often these days, since she actually had something to put in one again, but oh, God, she was glad today was one of those days. She could feel every separate fiber in the fleece. Spike's fingers did naughty, naughty things beneath the waistband of her tights as she rocked against his morning hard-on. His demon eyes were like liquid butterscotch, all warm and melty. Just the way her insides felt when he growled. He was dangerous, her vampire--a lazy, well-fed tiger was still a tiger. Couldn't ever forget that. Call her Sara Houcke. Just now, with her mouth on Spike's chest, her tongue tracing the fading hieroglyphs of last night's loving till he went blue-eyed and gaspy beneath her, it was difficult to focus on exactly where the wrong was.

If this kept up, she might as well not have taken that shower. Buffy pulled away, her voice husky. "If I talk to Angel, I'm just gonna end up peeling his ears off about Darla again."

Spike lifted his hand to his mouth and his tongue curled catlike about each separate finger, savoring. He sank back into the pillows with a smirk and laced his hands behind his head. "Much though I'm enjoying the visual, I think that's Cordelia's job these days."

Buffy grinned and slid down his torso to the floor, oh-so-slowly--if she was going to go to work squirming, so was he. She grabbed her bag. "So true. And you can't say Cordy's not devoted to her work. For once you're the cool, calm, emotionally uninvolved one in the family. Make the most of it."

He threw a pillow at her as she made her escape, laughing. Kennedy was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, taking in her new dishevelment with disapproving eyes. Vamp-loving freak, yeah, right, take a number, hon.

She'd loved Angel first in ignorance of his nature, then in defiance of it. They'd never overcome it: until Spike had come along, the most powerfully erotic experience of her short life had been the night Angel had fed from her. In retrospect, she was certain that that night, more than any number of remonstrances from Giles or her mother, had sealed Angel's decision to leave her. Years later she'd railed at Riley Finn for allowing those pathetic vamp whores to suckle at his veins, all the more furious at him because she knew that dark circle of need from the inside out.

Spike, the unabashed monster, had never bitten her. Never wanted to. He'd tasted her in other ways, and there was an indescribable satisfaction in knowing that some tiny portion of her flowed in his veins, but with Spike there was no yearning to give of herself until there was no her left. Death was no longer a mysterious dark-cloaked lover, at once feared and pursued. She'd been there, done that, met herself on the other side. Death was blue-eyed and laughing, her good left hand, her old friend and boon companion, cruel and tender and almost human. Her gift. She didn't love Spike because he was a demon, but she suspected he'd ruined her for anything else. And the fangs? Still a major turn-on.

Kennedy could go suck eggs--or not; probably too much cholesterol. Buffy plucked the keys to the Jeep from their hook. "Let's go."

As the population of a small town had died to ensure his survival into the twenty-first century, the least Spike felt he could do in their memory was to thoroughly enjoy the marvels of modern plumbing. Accordingly, he ran through his morning exercises and then took his leisurely time scrubbing, shaving, and attending to certain other shower-related necessaries. An hour and a half after Buffy's departure, he abandoned his towel on the bathroom floor--tradition, that--and strolled back into their bedroom. Very important, that possessive pronoun. He'd had plenty of experience building private Xanadus to suit Drusilla's whims of the moment, less in the art of domestic compromise. Buffy was less capricious than his one-time dark mistress, and less apt to be sweet-talked into or out of decisions. Made interior decorating--and everything else--more of a challenge.

The contentious blue shirt had been pulled to the fore on his side of the closet, and Spike eyed it with disfavor. Buffy's determined and subversive attack on his wardrobe alternately charmed and irritated the hell out of him. Life in the Summers household in a nutshell. Sometimes the crowded, feminine bustle drove him snarling out into the night, frantic for a spot of aggro. Other times...it couldn't be denied that having four girls to spoil, and to be petted and spoiled by in turn, went down a treat. Still, William the Bloody didn't pick out his kit based on whether or not his lady love thought it made his eyes look dreamy.

Though she had asked him very nicely...

Oh, to hell with it. Just this once, as a coming-home present. If he could intimidate demons with a chip in his head, he could manage it in a button-down Oxford.

He could hear two voices downstairs as he dressed (at least the shirt was on the darkish side, and didn't look too poncy paired with black jeans) and only one heartbeat. Tara must be back for lunch; she did that days when she had a long enough break between classes. They were talking, then. Good. He'd done his best for Will, but he wasn't cut out to be Qui-Gon, especially not to a vampire with a soul.

There were three orders on the fax machine in the office; Anya's weekly usual, and two new ones Nadia'd sent over from the crypt. Spike squinted at the small print: A witch in Modesto he'd done a job for last summer, wanting a Frewlar demon's second liver, and one from...Edwina Briggs? Consolidated Curses Briggs? He grinned, chuffed as nuts; they were coming up in the world. No wonder Cain and his mysterious backers were pissed off, if his little Ma-and-Pa slaughter was starting to pull in orders from the L.A. mystical elite. Briggs wanted a live Gershon demon--there was a challenge. Gershons were fast, wily bastards, pack-hunters resembling armor-plated wolfhounds. Highly prized, when trained up right, and if he could deliver, it would mean a very pretty penny indeed.

Anya kept telling him he had a chance to make it big here. His intimate knowledge of the demon community gave him an advantage in the post-Hellmouth Southern California market the other suppliers couldn't match. The question was whether or not he wanted to make it big. All he'd figured on when he started was a way to make some extra cash for Buffy and Dawn; power and territory had always been a means for him, not an end. He enjoyed his work, not to mention the shine that his new occupation had put on his reputation, but he didn't expect his current domestic idyll to last forever. In a few years Will and Tara would be in grad school, and Dawn off to university, and then perhaps he and Buffy could shake Sunnydale's dust from their feet and see a bit of the world. Wasn't like Sunnydale needed a full-time Slayer these days any more than Paris or Acapulco did.

Spike set the faxes on his desk, did a quick check of his e-mail and headed downstairs, running over the last places he'd gotten wind of Gershons lairing. Clem knew a bloke who'd mentioned his brother losing a tentacle to one somewhere in the foothills south of Yosemite, and there'd been that supposed mountain lion attack in Topanga Canyon last month...

Willow and Tara were seated side by side at the dining room table, heads together over the mustiest of a stack of occult reference books. Last night's existential gloom seemed to have vanished in a mutual burbling haze of spell-wankery. "...so it would have to be a two-part incantation?" Tara asked. She looked pale, though she couldn't possibly have lost any more blood to Willow than she would have to the average Red Cross donation.

"At least. Restore normal biological function, exorcize the demon. Three parts if--" Willow looked up with a bubbly grin. "Hey, Spike! Just the person we needed to see! Line of sight isn't strictly necessary but it would be a little unnerving without, and besides, we don't want you going all mushy and puddinglike, the traffic cone was bad enough--"

"We wanted to ask you something," Tara said, cutting in before Willow could soar off into some giddy verbal stratosphere. "About vampire history and stuff."

Spike surveyed the small lending library assembled on the table--two books on general vampire history, a third on the Order of Aurelius, and a fourth on several of the less prestigious vampire families of the last few centuries. He sauntered into the kitchen and pulled a jug of blood out of the refrigerator, poured himself a mugful and stuck it in the microwave. "I can tell you straight off that half the stuff in those books is complete bollocks." He drummed an impatient tattoo on the countertop while his breakfast revolved sedately in place for an intolerable eighteen seconds. Sodding things weren't fast enough. What was needed was InstaBlood. Or just the old-fashioned straight-from-the-vein variety.

Not to be outdone in the nervous tic department, Tara twisted a strand of dark blonde hair around her index finger. "Have you ever heard of anyone who ever stopped being a vampire?"

"Other than at the pointy end of a stick? Can't say as I have." The microwave dinged at last, and Spike pulled his mug out and poured in a dollop of tabasco sauce. Christ, if he were going Gershon hunting, it'd mean a fucking safari, far from civilized necessities like hot showers and microwaves. He mentally jacked up his commission another ten percent and slid into a chair across the table from the witches. "Mind, there's all sorts of scam artists claiming they can purge the humanity out of a vamp--everything from prayer vigils to St. Vigeous to those bleeding 'Make Your Demon Larger, Scalier, Harder!' e-mails. Utter shite, the lot of them."

"We were thinking more of the other direction," Tara admitted, her voice dropping to a whisper barely audible even to vampire ears. "T-turning human again."

Willow bobbed her head like a dashboard Chihuahua. "A cure."

Spike sat back and cocked his head to one side, brow wrinkling. "A cure? We're not sick, love, we're dead."

"Well, technically?" Willow bounced a little in her chair, big green eyes shining with the thrill of the hunt--mildly terrifying, all things considered. "Not. We're undead, which is only mostly dead, and mostly dead is partly alive, because otherwise, hello the post-mortem lividity!" Apparently Spike's expression fell short of the rapt and enthusiastic response she'd been hoping for, but she forged on anyway. "Anyway, a spell to turn a vampire into a human is theoretically possible--heck, a lot of the pieces already exist, though they'd need tweakage."

Spike tilted back in his chair, teetering dangerously on two legs. His demonic sense of propriety had been successively beaten, strangled, and, in the last year, bribed into complaisance with all the blood and sex and licit violence it could handle, but now it perked up in the back of his skull with a disapproving growl. One thing to kill them, but undoing vampires? Something dodgy in that, though it would be more worrisome if Willow had the power to light a damp squib. "And all you've got to do is slap the mystical tinkertoys together and hey presto, heartbeat? Somehow, I smell a catch."

"It's not that simple. If it were, someone would have done it by now," Tara said. She fiddled with the flyleaf of the nearest book. "Aside from some of the spells being dark magic and all of them being dangerous--"

Willow grimaced. "--there's technical difficulties from here to somewhere very far from here. A lot of the component spells aren't compatible in their current form. The mandrake's scream shatters your Orb of Thessula or the belladonna fumes curdle your oil of cockatrice, and, well, best you'd end up with is..."

"Nineteen stone of rotting meat? One of you care to fill me in on just why this is so vital?" Both of them looked squirmy, and Spike pinned Tara's unwilling eyes down with his own. Was she really so desperate as to consider something like this? "Will forcing me to sire her was bloody stupid, but risking an exciting new career as a maggot farm to turn her back won't look good on the Mensa application either."

Tara shrank in upon herself as if something crueler than Willow's fangs had drained the life out of her. She huddled there soft and shaking, her eyes as bleak as a Norse saga. But she wasn't soft on the inside. This was the girl--the woman--who'd sat mute while Glory broke every one of her fingers. Something kindled in her, and Tara straightened and met Spike's gaze without flinching. "Haven't I already done something just as wrong? If I hadn't agreed to do the resouling spell, Willow wouldn't be condemned to eternity as a vampire because I couldn't bear to lose her."

"No, she'd be a pile of dust. I'm not seeing the advantage in that." There was a hint of a growl in his voice now. "What's wrong with my Will that you can't love her no more?"

"I'd never do anything Willow doesn't agree to, and I'm not going to use black magic or sneak around behind anyone's back. But if there's a way to make her human again safely, then yes, I'd rather have her human." Tara took a gulping, defiant breath. "I can't--vampires aren't... I'm sorry, I hate that I feel like this, but you're c-creepy!"

Spike tipped a look at Willow, who made a helpless hand-wavy gesture, and teetered further, nonplused. Buffy might bitch about cold feet or blood breath, but she did so with matter-of-fact equanimity. "Ah. Well, we are that. Part of the whole living dead motif."

"I know that sounds petty. And I keep trying to get past it, but it's not working." Tara fumbled in her pocket and Willow handed her a Kleenex. "I know we can't solve anything by throwing more magic at it, but we've tried, we really have, and...I just wish everything could be the way it was." She trailed off with a hopeless sniffle. Willow took her hand and squeezed it.

Spike considered. "Two possibilities. One, try harder. Two, I turn you, too, and you and Will are happy as vampire clams together, the end."

Tara had to be pounded on the back for quite some minutes after that. "All the no there is in the world," she choked out at last. "You're not...?"

"Just as serious as you are about turning Will human," Spike replied testily. "Your loss; I have it on good authority that I'm a top-notch sire."

Tara gazed down at the sad little square of peach-colored tissue in her hands, rapidly decomposing into its constituent fibers under the mauling she was giving it. "You didn't mention option three," she said with a quiet dignity. "The one where I give up. And you win."

Willow gave a little cry of distress. "But I don't want you to--"

Spike exhaled in exasperation. Must she make this more complicated than it already was? "Win what? Bugger it, pet, I'm not even playing!"

"But you are." Tara swallowed, lifting her eyes to meet his. "You love her, Spike. Not the same way I do, but everyone can see it."

"Then everyone's stoned. Will's get of mine, is all, and that not by my choice. I've got more affection for--" Spike surged to his feet and began pacing, the length of the dining room and back. "Anyone, really." Tara's clear, sorrowful eyes backed him into a corner, as surely as he'd pinned her earlier, and Spike dropped into his chair again, slid down on his tailbone and threw her a sulky look. "'Course there's a connection, of sorts. Can't help that." The demon in Willow was the demon in him, binding them all the way back to whatever sorry tosser sired the lot of them. Didn't mean he had to go all soppy over it. Last time he'd tried playing sire to someone who mattered, it had been an unmitigated bloody disaster. The grotesque benediction of his mother's final dissolving smile was still with him, some nights. I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Sorry, mate, already seen it.

He shook off the memory with a twitch of his shoulders--picking a fight with some yob twice his size and ripping his opponent's liver and lights out bare-handed worked better, but that option had been renovated right off the menu some time ago. Pity. Fuck the fava beans, nothing went better with liver than onions, and there were a good number of people in the world who would, in Spike's opinion, be vastly improved by the loss of a few internal organs. Point was, he'd resolved not to get emotionally involved this time round, and....

And Willow was sitting there looking up at him, big sea-green eyes glistening with hurt, just the hint of a quiver to her chin, and Spike was around the table and down on one knee beside her chair before the first tear could roll down her cheek. "Oh, Christ, Will, I'm a rotter! You know I don't mean it when I say such things! You're my clever, vicious girl, best I've ever made, best--"

Tara was looking I told you sos at him. "Look, never mind all that," Spike said, quite cross now. "Didn't mention you walking because it's not an option. Not if you still love her. And if you look mopey and say love's not enough, I'll bite you."

"Obsessive pursuit of your pooky bear is a time-honored Aurelian tradition," Willow chimed in. "You might as well get used to it." She and Spike exchanged decisive nods, and that was that--closed ranks of vampire solidarity.

Tara looked at them both, resignation fighting the unwilling smile which tugged at her lips. "OK. I won't say it. Option one it is." She looked up at the clock. "Shoot, I've got to get back to campus. Do you want to meet me at the Magic Box later, Willow? I'm doing Kennedy's aura."

Willow saw her to the door. Spike restrained the urge to bang his forehead against the table. That had worked about as well as his plans usually did. He wandered into the living room, sprawled out on the couch and flicked the TV on, prepared to work up a colossal sulk. Passions just wasn't the same since Timmy'd died. He could call L.A.; Angel was probably up by now. Though another fifty crunches or so wouldn't hurt. Slayer's blood was powerful stuff, even in the licks and nibbles he got, and a bloke had to watch his waistline. Or he could nip up to the office and start setting up supplies and scheduling for the Gershon hunt. Or possibly there was a sword or two in the weapons chest he'd missed sharpening, or, God help him, dishes to be done.

Bloody fucking hell, he loved Willow. Loved her second only to Buffy and Dawn, with all the selfish, violent passion his demon nature was capable of, and with all William's hopeless, besotted tenderness. He would gladly have laid the severed heads of their enemies in their laps if they'd asked it of him, and loved them all the more because they didn't ask. Tara wasn't his as the other three were, but she was Willow's, which made her family as vampires counted it. Besides, he liked her. Forced to it, he'd side with Willow--of course--but the bints had better work this out; he didn't want to choose.

Willow returned from the front porch, smoldering faintly in an excess of love and sunburn. She plunked herself down on the couch at his side. "Thanks."

"Didn't do anything." He scowled. "You want to be human again, love?"

She leaned forward, rested her pointed little chin on folded arms. "I don't know. I want to be a witch again, and I miss chocolate, and I totally don't fit in with the cool vampire crowd. And I want Tara to be happy. But then I think, 'This would take a hundred years to do,' and realize I've got a hundred years."

Spike snorted. "Shouldn't do it just to make her happy if you don't--"

"Uh huh." She tugged at his sleeve. "And how cold was it going to be in hell before you wore that shirt, Mr. Pot?" Her eyes were sharp and speculative upon him, as if he were one of her magical conundrums to be unraveled. "Come on, if Buffy wanted you human, you'd be out tearing the world apart to find a spell for it. You don't want me to be human again."

Spike shrugged. "Bit more trouble changing species than shirts, pet. Be a love and hand me the remote."

Willow handed it over. "Care to explain why a guy who works out for two or three hours a day lacks the energy to get up and walk three feet over to the coffee table?"

"Some respect for your sire, chit." Spike shook the remote at the screen like an accusation. "Mark my words, Caleb goes pining after Tess instead of sticking with Olivia like a sensible chap, in two years' time the sorry ponce'll be shagged out on her couch, seriously considering doing her washing-up for her."

"A fate worse than death, and we should know." Willow leaned over and rubbed her cheek against his, a purely vampiric gesture that Spike returned with an affectionate rumble. "No matter what," she whispered, too low for human ears to hear, "you'll always be my sire."

She bounced off, and after a moment Spike realized he was sporting a grin hardly less buoyant than Willow's own. Whistling tunelessly to himself, he leaned over and grabbed the phone, and punched in the number for Angel Investigations.

Kennedy stood on the corner of Main and Wilkins, squinting into the low-slung winter sun. A celadon sky backed an eclectic scatter of palms, eucalyptus, and pines amidst a wilderness of red tile roofs: Downtown Sunnydale in all its minuscule glory, a jumble of quirky little stores and offices. So strange to see green at this time of year--it felt like springtime, not the dead of winter. Back home in Boston everything would be buried under six inches of grey, slushy snow. College town, hell--she'd seen whole colleges bigger than this place.

She'd called the number her Watcher had given her, left a terse report of what little she'd learned so far on the anonymous voicemail, and spent the afternoon trolling the low-rent motels along Lincoln, taking a room at the least roach-ridden specimen she could find. No way on God's green footstool was she gonna live in a house where fruitcakes offered themselves up for vampires to feed on. When she'd walked in on Buffy's sister changing the bandage on the ragged wound in Tara's neck this morning, it had taken everything in her to hold back from storming down to the basement and putting a stake through Willow right then and there. This place wasn't just fucked, it was knocked up with twins and starting a college fund.

Much-needed wake-up call, though. No matter how cute and funny Willow was, fairy-tales about souls and star-crossed lovers were bullshit packaged as aromatherapy. The only good vampire was a dusty vampire.

It was getting close to five, when she was supposed to meet Tara at the Magic Box. Presumably, Willow would be there too. Kennedy stopped at a newspaper kiosk and stared at the headlines in the Sunnydale Press. The City Council was holding a bond election, and the Mayor was proudly announcing that Sunnydale's homeless population was down sixty-five percent from last year. She turned away, restless. There was no point to her going over there. The Council had witches and psychics and mystics, oh my, and in the past year it felt like every single one of them had fingerprinted her Kirlian aura and rotated her chakras and pored over her palms, and come up with a big fat nothing. Willow and Tara couldn't possibly find anything that the vast resources of the Council couldn't.

Of course, maybe the vast resources of the Council just weren't telling her what they'd found.

With a little noise of disgust, Kennedy turned and started walking back towards the heart of town, fast. If they were running a scam, she had to find out what it was. The report, or monograph, or whatever it was that Buffy had given her, was digging into her shoulder through the nylon of her backpack. She shrugged the pack off, pulled the binder out, and shrugged the pack on without breaking stride. It wasn't all that long--twenty pages, maybe. She'd read through the whole thing at lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon, off an on, picking at one section or another. It was primo Watcherspeak all the way through, dry as dust, with almost more footnotes than text.

There were parts she practically had memorized. Superhuman abilities derived from... parallel cases of demonic influence on human physiology (see Appendix II, Vengeance Demons)... First Slayer as archetypical representative of... power activated via specific blood ritual, i.e. the death of the previous Slayer... Kennedy recognized a few of the names in the bibliography from her own Watcher's library. If it was a fake, someone had put a hell of a lot of work into it. The final paragraphs of the summation were still scrolling across the backs of her eyeballs, closed-caption heresy.

...all the available evidence supports the conclusion that Slayers as a group derive their power from some form of ancestral demonic compact, passed down through the female line.

Bogus. It had to be. Her Watcher wouldn't lie to her about something like this. Unless she doesn't know about it either. She'd been in training to be a Slayer all her life, and never given a thought to where her power came from, but it had to come from somewhere good, right? Slayers weren't demons, they killed demons. Demons which tore out people's throats and ate babies and tried to end the world.

Why shouldn't the monograph be a good fake? And--radical thought here--did it matter where the power came from, as long as she had it? There was a world here, still, and it was her job to save it. She was still who she was. Kennedy tilted her head back and sunlight flooded across her upturned face, making her eyes sting and water. Blinding, after the vamp-dim environment of Buffy's house. Slayers had been fighting vampires since...since always. Buffy was a rogue, trying to rattle her with this live-and-let-suck-the-lifesblood crap. Fuck that.

On first glance through the shop windows, the Magic Box looked like any other New Age mecca--shiny glass-fronted display cases full of crystals and candles and incense, fliers for local meditation seminars and yoga classes plastered around the cash register. It was only when you took a closer look at the rows of murky bottles and disturbingly-shaped objects crowding the shelves behind the counter that an uneasy prickle began to raise the short hairs at the back of your neck.

A sharp-featured young woman in lavender was standing at the register, and Dawn Summers was hovering beside the nearest display of love charms, wearing a dorky little nametag with Ask About Our Curses on the bottom. Unlike her sister, Dawn was halfway through the adolescent transition from lanky to luscious, dark-haired and model-tall, with a heart-shaped face and big blue eyes. Under other circumstances--like Dawn not being a total raving loon on the vampire subject--Kennedy might have seriously considered going for the toaster oven with this one.

Dawn aimed a big eager smile at Kennedy. "Welcome to the Magic Box, where all your incanting needs are--oh, it's you." Her lower lip protruded as Kennedy shut the door behind her, and her welcoming smile morphed into a suspicious scowl. "Here to stock up on holy water? Just remember, if you mess with Spike, you're not just messing with a hundred-and-fifty-year-old master vampire with two Slayers under his belt." She tapped a thumb against her chest. "You're messing with me."

Kennedy cut her off. "I'm not buying. I'm supposed to meet someone here. So how much of this stuff is a total fake?" She stared up at the jars of newt's eyes and powdered unicorn's horn. She'd heard too many cautionary tales about charlatans and phonies to be impressed by the Witchy-Poo crowd, but a vampire slayer couldn't entirely dismiss the possibility that some of this mumbo-jumbo could be the real deal.

The woman at the counter gave a disapproving sniff and primped her Veronica Lake 'do. "Is the person you're going to meet going to be buying something? Because if not, please go away. We have a bus station for meeting people."

"It's OK, Anya, she's mine." Willow emerged from the rear of the store. "In a metaphorical sense."

Kennedy followed her to the rear of the store, fighting back the four-alarm clamor of her Slayer sense. Tara was already back there, arranging a selection of weird items on a table in the library section. The table was covered with a plastic picnic tablecloth, on which had been drawn a complicated circle of alchemical symbols in marker. "Portable spell circle," Tara explained with a shy smile. Her hand went comfortably on Willow's hip--the good news was that that was a big ping on the gaydar, and the bad news was that Willow was taken and God, what was she thinking?

Willow rested her head on Tara's shoulder. Was there a flash of shame in the vampire's face, looking at the bandages on her lover's throat? Probably just bloodlust. Couldn't wait to get her alone again and do things to her, nasty, vaguely perverted vampire things that Kennedy wasn't gonna think about tonight in bed. Willow flashed a smile over Tara's shoulder, reassuring and sweet, and Kennedy swallowed, imagining fangs. Shit. Maybe the Slayer's demonic heritage the real explanation for Summers and her series of vampire fuck-buddies. Some kind of weird pheromone thing. No, that was stupid. She'd never heard of any other Slayers going native. Probably Summers had made the whole thing up to justify her screwing a vamp, not the other way around. There wasn't any kinship between her and the things she killed. She wouldn't let there be.

Tara set a large piece of quartz crystal in the center of the table. "Sit here, and hold these." She handed Kennedy a pair of stones. One was a shard of unrelieved midnight, the second a glossier black flecked with rosettes of white. "Onyx. It governs aggressive energy, good and bad. It represents your power as a Slayer. The other is snowflake obsidian, and it'll help clarify any blockages in the energy flow of your aura."

Kennedy closed her fingers around the slick cold stone, feeling its edges bite into her palm. She wasn't going to dance around the subject on tippy-toes. "Buffy claims we get our power from some demon thing. So what does that mean? There's only so much demon to go around? My midichlorian count is too low?"

"Hopefully that's what this will tell us." Tara sat down opposite her. "It's a simple spell. I don't even need it to look at your aura, really, but I need Willow to see too, so we're making a kind of recording."

In the front of the store, Anya walked over to the front door and flipped the sign around to CLOSED, Please Come Again! She hovered in the background, watching the proceedings with professional and slightly critical interest. Dawn just looked suspicious. Kennedy sat stock-still as the crevices of her palms grew damp around the stones.

Tara intoned softly, "Earth and sky, here meet. Light and dark, here greet. The circle is closed and consecrated." She reached out and touched the tip of her finger to the quartz crystal in the center of the table. The crystal hummed, a high, pure note that called light from the heart of the stone. Energy coiled serpentine up Kennedy's spine and out along her limbs, and in the crystal, a tiny, perfect image of her appeared, spreadeagled in nothingness like Michelangelo's perfect man. A faint shimmer enveloped the mini-Kennedy, making her the wick in a near-invisible flame. Kennedy watched in fascination, impressed despite herself.

Tara spoke a word and the crystal darkened, bringing the aura into bright relief. Currents and eddies of force swirled and leaped within the brilliant tangerine corona. She looked from Willow to Kennedy and back to the crystal again, a line of perplexity deepening between her brows. "OK," she said. "Now that's just plain weird."

"What is it?" Willow asked, hushed.

"The normal aura's there," Tara said, "and the Slayer power is there." Kennedy squinted and peered closer; shadowing every one of the tiny figure's moves was a...well, a shadow, an inky double almost obscured behind the vivid orange flame. "You can see how the connection to the Slayer power is through Muladhara, Svadhisthana and Manipura." She pointed out a series of Klein-bottle distortions where black and orange met, and bit her lip, still frowning. "That makes sense; it's all tied up in power and aggression and identity and, uh, sex. Earth, fire, and water. It wouldn't be communicating through any of the higher chakras. But look at this."

She pulled a handful of quartz crystals out of her bag and laid them on the table. Each one held a tiny figure of its own, but frozen, obviously portraits rather than a living mirror. Kennedy could see Willow, and Buffy, and... Tara blushed at Willow's questioning look. "They were going to be Christmas presents, but I didn't get them finished on time. But look at the differences."

She held up the crystal with Buffy's image. The older Slayer's aura was a blazing sun-gold, rippling with subtle patterns of jet, like the hide of a great cat. "See? In Buffy's aura, the power's distributed all through the normal human aura. In Kennedy's, it's there, but not integrated. And there's not as much of it."

Willow strained forward in her chair like a hound on the scent, obviously unhappy with the need to rely on second-hand information. "We need to get some idea what the normal variation among Slayers is. Or among people with demons attached." She held up her own image in one hand and Spike's in the other, contrasting the uniform dull vermillion of her own aura with the ebony black of Spike's. "Do we have any totally normal--ooh, here's Xander. He's just plain dark blue."

"That's normal," Tara agreed. "Vampires with souls keep the color, but it's darker. Unsouled vampires are solid black, with little highlights of the original color left--Spike's a bad example, he's got a lot. See those blue sparky things? If you look just right, you can see his aura was that bright blue when he was alive."

"Huh. I noticed those once." Back when I could still do magic on my own was left unspoken. "I thought they came from the chip. Are there any older readings from Buffy? Or Faith?"

Tara shook her head. "Nothing like this. I didn't even learn this spell until last November. I remember a little about Faith from three years ago, but she and Buffy were body-switched, which messed everything up. I think Buffy's aura was a lot closer to Kennedy's back then--more distinction between Buffy aura and Slayer aura. And Faith's aura was more like Buffy's is now, except practically blacked out by her own power."

Willow frowned at the miniatures as if they were at fault for the whole mess. "I wish you'd gotten a chance to look at Faith when she was here last time, since--"

Kennedy sighed. The two of them were off in a world of their own; she might as well have been one of the rocks she held in her hands. "Look, can we skip the history lessons and the vampire psychic anatomy and just find out what's wrong with me?"

"That's the t-trouble," Tara said. "I think...there's nothing wrong with you at all. A-at least," she stammered as Kennedy darkened, "There's nothing blocking your power. There's just not as much of it as there should be. To find out more than that, I think we'd have to..."

Willow's pale face had gone positively ashen. "Contact the source."

"Bernard Crowley," Cordelia Chase repeated. She perched on the edge of Angel's desk Girl-Friday style, sorting through a handful of case files. The long, slim length of one calf jogged rhythmically where it crossed the opposing knee, and her Jimmy Choo sandal dangled from one impeccably pedicured toe. Angel found the sight mesmerizing. Was it going to fall, or not? If he kept an eye on the shoe, it ensured that said eye didn't follow the lines of that leg in the opposite direction. "Wizened, British, and Watcher-y. Definitely Watcher-y. He kept insisting he wasn't a part of the brotherhood of tweed any longer, but he sure seemed to know a lot about what they've been up to lately."

Angel leaned forward, propped his chin on his clasped hands and frowned. "And he didn't say why he wanted to see me?"

"Something about a proposition to your mutual advantage. No details. Very Sidney Greenstreet." She tossed her dark hair--grown out, thank God, from the disastrous bleach-and-bob of her Groosalugg Phase--and handed him the file. Her scent lingered on the manila folder. "This was all we could find on short notice. I dropped an e-mail to Pryce Incorporated or whatever Wesley's calling himself these days--and shouldn't it be Wyndam-Pryce Interrogations? Does Wyndam fail the nouveau noir test? I thought English guys just kept adding last names until the family tree collapsed under the need for pruning--" A stare and a raised eyebrow, and Cordy got the hint. "Anyway, no joy--this guy was before his time." She pursed her lips and slid off the desk. "Actually, this guy might even be before your time."

Angel allowed himself the hint of a smile as he paged through the meager collection of facts on one Bernard Crowley. It told him little more than what Cordelia'd already passed on. Cordelia watched him, one hand on her hip. "So, have you thought about it?"

Probably just another attempt by the Council to discover Faith's whereabouts, but it never hurt to be cautious. "Yeah, I'll see him. Friends close, enemies closer."

She didn't quite stamp her foot. "Not Crowley. It. The big, life-changing, potentially curse-lifting It."

"Still thinking."

"About what? The worst that can happen is that this Kung Pao guy can't help you. Look, this isn't just about whether or not you get to take something other than your right hand out for dinner and a movie without the world coming to an end--"

Angel slammed the folder down on the desktop a little harder than he'd intended. "Kun-Sun-Dai, and no, Cordy, the worst that can happen is that we try it and something goes wrong and Angelus comes out to play. I'm really not willing to take that chance. We've already been through this."

He'd let himself get giddy and careless last winter, when the news filtered down from Sunnydale that Willow was now a vampire with a soul, sans curse. The giddy hadn't lasted more than a week or two, ending with him sitting in Buffy's living room on a poorly-sprung couch that reeked of sex he wasn't having, while Willow scrunched in an armchair, giving off don't-kill-me vibes while Buffy kept her grouchy, overprotective sire on a short leash in the background. "You got your soul back through a curse that includes the Ritual of Restoration. I could put your soul back a dozen times and it'll just fall out again the next time you're perfectly happy. What needs to be done is break the curse, and I...I can't do that level of magic anymore." For a moment, Willow's face had been the embodiment of perfect misery. "I'm sorry."

"You're not willing to take many chances lately, are you?" Cordelia snapped, yankng him back to the equally uncomfortable present. For a second he thought she was going to grab him, but no--Cordelia had too much restraint when it came to such things. Damn her. The fire in her eyes dimmed and her shoulders slumped. "When did we get so scared, Angel? When did I turn into a blue-haired old lady driving twenty-five in the fast lane? OK, you're older than dirt, fine, but I'm twenty-two. They're doing it." She didn't qualify the they, and didn't need to. "And it's probably not gonna work and they'll probably end up in fiery exploding oh-the-humanity badness, but they're trying. When did we get so scared that we couldn't even get up the cojones to try?"

Angel looked her in the eyes, his mouth tight as a bear-trap. "Cordy..." There really wasn't anything else to be said, but it was a measure of how he felt about her that he'd say it all again. "You know what? You're right to be terrified out of your mind. I'm a demon. Unlike Spike, I don't think that's a good thing."

"I'm not in love with the demon." Cordy spun on her heel and stalked out of the office. Angel watched her go, hands clenching. He wanted to storm after her and argue. He wanted to retreat to his room and stare at the ceiling for a few days. He wanted to throw her down on the desk and...

Damn it.

There were times when he wondered half-seriously if he were still underwater, contemplating the slow northward grind of the Pacific plate and victim to one of his own elaborate hallucinations. Life had certainly retained a surreal edge. For almost a week after the rescue, he'd woken every evening to damp sheets and fragile, needle-thin forests of salt crystals, sealing his eyelids shut and riming his lips as his body gradually expelled the seawater from its tissues, and healed the damage that three months beneath the waves had wrought. He'd been constantly, ravenously thirsty.

He'd been through worse. He licked his lips, remembering Wesley's blood on his tongue, a sacrament of forgiveness and regret. This just wasn't the time to indulge in experimental spells that promised heaven and might deliver hell. He was the center, and he had to hold. Connor was skulking through L.A.'s mean streets, tarnished and afraid; Fred and Gunn studiously avoided one another for reasons he could guess at, but was reluctant to voice. Wesley lurked around the fringes of their lives like a wolf at the edge of a campfire, yearning to be tossed a bone but too proud and wounded to come into the light.

He'd grown to rely on Cordelia in times like these. Cordelia's bluntness, Cordelia's honesty, Cordelia's strength of purpose... but Cordy had her own troubles, and they were half his fault. Her cheer was painted on with her blush and eyeshadow every morning. Angel couldn't blame her. He knew what it was to discover oneself abandoned by Fate; nothing was more terrible save discovering that one had been picked up again. She'd taken a chance. For him, because of him--because, caught up in the giddy certainty that he was going to be free, he'd made her promises he couldn't keep. Cordy'd never gotten a vision warning them of Connor's betrayal. After that night on the L.A. freeway, Cordy'd never gotten another vision again. You didn't defy the Powers without paying a price.

Out in the lobby, a cultured British voice inquired, "Excuse me, miss? Have I found Angel Investigations?"

"Good afternoon!" Cordelia caroled. "You must be Mr. Crowley. Go right on in, and Angel will be with you."

Mr. Crowley proved to be an elderly man in tweed, equipped with, of all things, a bowler hat and umbrella. His wispy, thinning white hair was plastered firmly to his pink scalp, and he had something of the air of an aging John Steed. He looked around the office with restrained curiosity, noting with still-sharp eyes the case files and reference books. Angel rose from behind the desk with his most professionally reassuring smile and extended a hand. Crowley took it, raised a near-invisible eyebrow, and settled himself in the chair across from the desk. "Thank you for agreeing to see me. I realize that your recent dealings with my former employers have been less than pleasant."

That was a serious contender for understatement of the year. Angel sat down and steepled his fingers. "I have to say I was surprised to get your call. So what can we do for you, Mr.--"

The phone shrilled in the lobby, and Cordelia swung into the usual chipper spiel. "Angel Investigations, helping the hopeless since--"

"'Lo, Cordy. You sound ravishing. Is the old man up? Tell him his beamish boy wants a word."

No other voice in the world but Spike's could rouse that particular combination of nostalgia and seething resentment. Vampire hearing was keen enough not only to hear Cordelia through the closed door of his office, but to pick up the person on the other end of the line as well. Normally he tuned her out unless he had a very good reason to eavesdrop; it was the polite thing to do, and there were too many things, these days, that he wasn't sure he wanted to hear her say.

"Spike," Cordelia replied, with all the enthusiasm of a woman holding a dead lizard by the tail. "This is not a good time. In fact, it's never a good time. All times are bad."

"Fine way to greet the chap who helped fish your boss out of the Los Angeles Bay on four hours' notice," Spike retorted. "I need to talk to Angel. He is speaking in complete sentences now, isn't he? All the fish-nibbled bits grown back?"

"He's with a client. Is it important?" Her tone implied that Spike's having anything important to say was on a par with the chances of Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming the next governor.

"Would I call long distance just to annoy him? Don't answer that."

"Excuse me just a moment," Angel said. Crowley nodded, holding his bowler in his lap with the stiff disapprobation one might expect of a man who wore a bowler in Southern California. "Cordy, I'll take that." He picked up his phone and Cordelia transferred the call with the usual quota of mysterious clicks and beeps. "Spike." The pause was almost, but not quite, long enough to be awkward. The events of the summer hadn't precisely smoothed matters over between them--attempting to smooth matters between him and Spike was rather like taking a flatiron to the Himalayas--but they'd reached a species of détente over Connor's treachery. "Is there a reason for this call, or are you just playing with the buttons on the phone?"

"What, a bloke can't just ring up and brighten his grandsire's dreary existence?" Spike drawled. "You sound yourself again. Not so waterlogged. Cheerleader still on the rag about losing her private line to the Powers?"

Spike sounded like... Spike. Which, in the face of all that had suffered a sea-change around Angel of late, was perversely comforting. There were some things, however annoying, that shouldn't change. Angel aimed a covert glance out the window of his office at Cordelia's desk. "Among other things. What do you want?"

"Faith's latest number. Got a bit of a situation here; her replacement showed up last night."

Angel glanced over at Crowley. "Courtesy of our mutual friend?" A year ago it would have been Buffy needs Faith's number, with the implied and wants me to get it for her, Spike losing no opportunity to rub Angel's nose in their connection. Angel doubted Spike refrained from prodding that particular sore spot out of delicacy; more likely they'd both just developed too many calluses to make it fun. Or perhaps his obsession with Buffy was fading, and it honestly wasn't important to Spike any longer.

Yeah, that was likely.

"She claims not." Spike's tone said all that needed to be said about his opinion of the claim.

"Interesting, considering that we got a visit from a dear old auntie of his."

"Listening in as we speak?" When he wasn't thinking with his dick or his fists, Spike was moderately quick on the uptake.

"Right." Angel leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out beneath the desk, flipping through his Rolodex--Cordy kept threatening to convert his address book to something computerized, but so far he'd managed to fob her off. "I'll have more on it later."

"You got my e-mail, yeh? You can send it there if you don't want to be reciting it in front of Auntie May."

Spike had e-mail? "Uh...I think Cordy has Willow's."

"That'll do. If Faith would get a bleeding Hotmail account, I wouldn't be running up my phone bill." Spike paused at Angel's inadvertent chuckle, suspicious. "What's so amusing?"

"The idea of you caring about a phone bill."

"Can't just move across town and kill someone with a clean credit history anymore, can I?"

Angel rubbed his chin. "Can't?"

"Can," Spike said with audibly clenched jaw, "but don't. One year, one month, two weeks and some-odd days, Angel. Since the chip came out. Haven't killed anyone yet, but cheer up, someone's sure to cut me off in traffic sooner or later--"

Angel tilted his head back against the grey leather and spun his chair. God, but he was tired all of a sudden. "And it's funny because it's true."

"Funny? I'll tell you what's funny, Sire." Hurt and pride and anger crackled in every word. "You were right proud when I took down my first meal. Prouder yet first time I tore someone apart by inches for the fun of it. Now I'm not killing anyone, you haven't a good word to say about it. Ironic, you might call it. You sure that soul of yours is working proper?"

"I'm not your sire, Spike."

"Must have been someone else in that coal mine, then, or on that rooftop in Vienna," Spike snarled. "I'm Dru's by blood, but in everything else that matters, you'll always be my sire. And it kills you to know it."

The receiver on the other end clicked--God, how Spike must hate that modern phones couldn't be slammed down in the cradle with a satisfying crash! Angel closed his eyes for a moment, then straightened and turned back to Crowley. "Sorry. I deal with some volatile people in this business."

Crowley nodded. "I understand, having been in much the same business myself. But in a way this is all very fortuitous." He produced a card case and opened it, selecting two of the small rectangles of paper. "This is my card, and this is the card of my associate, Dr. Gregson. We have in mind a project with which we believe you can be an inestimable help."

Angel took the cards and frowned. Gregson...something about the name was familiar. "Dr. Gregson the Slod demon? The...collector?"

"Quite." Crowley sat back, spine like a ramrod. "You know him?"

"I know of him. I had to kill one of his patients a year or so ago."

"Unfortunate. But then you know that he is quite reputable in his sphere."

Frown deepening, Angel set the cards on his desk. His fingers itched, and he wiped his hand against the knee of his trousers. "If you consider collecting and selling demon body parts a sphere. I'm afraid I don't understand what I can do for either of you. It doesn't sound like you need a private detective, even one that specializes in supernatural cases."

"No," Crowley agreed. "What we need is an assassin."

Angel rose, stepping around the desk. "It's been nice talking to you, Mr. Crowley, but I think you've got the wrong man. I don't take that kind of work."

"Really? I have sources in the Council of Watchers still. I know all about your activities of last winter. It is my impression that you tried very sincerely to get William the Bloody killed."

"Killing vampires is part of my job," Angel replied, stone-faced. "If this is some kind of blackmail attempt, all I can say is publish and be damned. If you think that trying to get one unsouled vampire dusted is the worst thing on my conscience, you haven't read my file very closely." He scrubbed his tingling palm against his thigh again.

"Blackmail? Hardly. My point is simply that you are on record as holding a considerable personal grudge against the vampire known as Spike. I could also bring up the incident of the Gem of Amarra, which I believe involved the extensive and creative application of hot pokers to your person, or the Du Lac ritual, wherein Spike sacrificed you to restore Drusilla the Mad to good health. Spike is, as you yourself point out, soulless, and still a creature of evil no matter that he has lately been aiding a Slayer whose allegiance is itself highly questionable."

Crowley's voice remained measured, but the passion in his eyes was eerily familiar; Angel had seen it in all too many other faces over the last few centuries. "I will not beat around the bush. Twenty-five years ago, this creature murdered my Slayer, Nikki Wood."

That had been the last thing Angel expected to hear. "I'm sorry."

Crowley waved a deprecating hand, but his eyes were tiny shards of black ice. "I realize that all Slayers die at the hands of a vampire sooner or later, and to pursue personal vengeance is futile. I am old, Mr. Angel, and I find that I no longer care about the futility of revenge. It is... intolerable that this creature live as the lover of a Slayer when he has sent two of her sisters to their graves. I have made inquiries. It is no easy matter to find someone willing to match themselves against a vampire of this Spike's reputation, especially considering the nature of his allies. But your reputation in many ways exceeds his, and I am willing to pay you quite handsomely to--"

"No," Angel said flatly. "I've been a killer in my day, Mr. Crowley, but I'm not for hire." He strode over to Crowley's chair and gestured at the door. "I'm sorry I can be of so little help to you, but--" A wave of dizziness crashed over him, and he staggered, clutching the back of the chair.

When had the ceiling gotten so high? Crowley's pink and impassive face loomed over him, fuzzing in and out as rippling distortions rolled across his vision. Maybe he was still underwater, after all. "I, too, am sorry that we could not reach an agreement, but I did anticipate that you might feel this way." Crowley stepped back as two burly, white-clad men strode into the office. Angel growled, but his vocal cords refused to cooperate, and all that came out was a strangled hiss. "Don't be concerned about the young lady in the lobby--she'll awake in good health. Nor for yourself, for that matter--Dr. Gregson assures me that the entire operation will be...quite painless."

"...needles as long as your arm, I swear." Evie leaned forward in the variegated light of the massed ranks of candles, dramatic I-have-you-now-Adama shadows blotting out all but the gleam of her eyes. "Worst thing? It was never dark. Ever. Lights glaring down at you like a million suns, 24/7." She paused for effect, and her audience obliged with a shiver of gruesome relish. "There were twenty of us to begin with. Vamps, demons, all kinds. Spike, he was captured near last, but he didn't stay there more than a week. He and this other vampire, Tom, they trashed one of the lab coats and escaped--Spike threw Tom to the guards and got away, Tom ended up dust." Approving murmurs. "And the rest of them? They went crazy. One by one. You couldn't see them, but you could hear--they'd stop feeding, stop talking, just sit in their cells all quiet and shit for a few days...and then they'd start to scream. They'd scream, and scream, and scream, till the soldados came...and then the screaming would stop," she raked a finger across her throat, "just like that."

"Staked?" Denny whispered, pushing a lock of fair hair off his forehead. It was the first word she'd heard him say all evening.

Evie grinned, the same grin she used on victims who thought they were going to get away. "Oh, no. 'Cause that'd be a waste of all that government money, right? They'd take 'em away, to analyze. Take 'em apart piece by piece and see what made them tick." She made a drilling motion against her forehead with an index finger. "See, they had plans. Just putting a chip in our heads to shock us when we tried to hurt anything, that was just the beginning."

"Yeah?" Nadia asked. She should have been a raven-haired femme fatale, with that name, but she was dishwater blonde and freckled like her brother. Vampires with freckles were just wrong. "What was the end?"

Evie had no idea, but that was no reason to derail a good story. "Whatcha think? If you could control a vamp's every move, what would you do? But the Slayer and her pals attacked the compound before they could go that far. The electrical grid went down, and we were free. Christ, the expressions on the guards' faces! Bodies everywhere, corridors running an inch deep in blood, and the smell? I'll never forget it! We were ripping the soldier boys to shreds and playing jump-rope with their entrails!" She hugged herself, eyes slitting in bliss. "I just wish I coulda killed a few of them myself."

"That bites," Nadia agreed. "No pun intended." She took several blood packets from the mini-fridge and snipped the corners off, pouring two into mugs and handing one to her silent brother. Denny didn't use cups. Evie leaned back and touched the tip of her tongue to her blood--it tasted as good as you could expect days-dead animal blood to taste, which wasn't saying much. Still, she couldn't deny that a good feed and twelve hours of sleep had done wonders. The empty socket of her missing canine still ached, but the swelling in her jaw had disappeared, and the deep itch of mending tissue had set in.

Spike's gang had a pretty choice lair. They'd tapped into cables and conduits from here to hell and gone; electricity, running water--all the comforts of human existence. Evie was all for that. The lower level of the crypt was devoted to storage, piled high with crates, boxes, and freezer units containing inventory, while the winding, irregular tunnel excavated between the crypt proper and the nearest sewer main served as a barracks for the gang, outfitted with TV, mini-fridge, dining table and several dilapidated armchairs. Overlapping carpets in various shades of threadbare covered the floor and unearthed coffins had been pressed into service as benches and table supports. Small alcoves off the main room housed spartan cots and a small dresser each. On investigating hers, Evie'd found a selection of used clothing in various sizes--in any other gang, they'd have been scavenged from victims, but with this lot of fucking teetotalers, they might have come from the Salvation Army. Though the Salvation Army probably wasn't big on 'Eat The Rich (The Poor Are Too Stringy)' t-shirts.

It was a damn sight better than most of the places she'd woken up in recently, which was a pretty sad commentary on her unlife. The only thing missing was a snack or two chained to the walls. She'd never realized how weird and empty a lair could feel when entirely devoid of the whimper of lunch. The selection of blood bags and crimson-tinted milk cartons in the fridge didn't cut it. She watched Nadia fuss over Denny, who was playing with his food, squishing the plastic between his fingers. "So..." Evie waved a hand at the surrounding cavern. "You're... I mean, you can kill, can't you?"

"Of course I can!" Nadia snapped, broken-glass brittle and defensive at this slur on her competence. She patted her brother's head, and Denny grinned up at her, red-fanged. "But Denny's not right. He'll wander off and play in the sun if I don't watch him, and he's no good on a hunt. Gangs won't take me if it means taking him too, and it does. It's worth the shitty food to have someplace safe to stash him." Her narrow horsy face took on a look of half suspicion and half curiosity. "You're one of them, right? An Aurelian? We tried to get in with the old Master's gang once, but they gave me some bullpucky about pure blood. That Luke wouldn't even let us into the caverns."

Evie toyed with her blood, temporizing. "I guess." The Order of Aurelius wasn't much more than a name these days, but it was a name to conjure or curse with. Claiming family connections could put her on Nadia's shit list as easily as win points. "Dalton never told me who his sire was." That was true, though it had to have been someone in the Order, since the Master, and the Anointed One after him, had been a stickler for bloodlines--it wasn't until Spike took over that first time that he'd opened up the gang to any vampire competent enough to make his cut.

"Huh. You ever see him? The old Master?" Fascination laced Nadia's voice, and the tension knotting Evie's shoulders together loosened a notch. There was an art to fitting into a new gang. It wasn't enough to suck up to the master--you had to get in good with a few of the other members, or risk being torn apart from behind. "Was he really so old he'd lost his human face?"

"Do bones count? I saw when they dug him up. From what Dalton told me, I didn't miss a lot."

Nadia's expression grew avid. "They say he killed more of his own minions than the Slayer did."

"Jesus, tell me about it! Spike, though..." Evie dropped to a confidential whisper. "After he took over, he stopped that freakazoid girlfriend of his from putting out my sire's eyes once."

You could never go wrong with gossip about the boss. Nadia looked suitably impressed and scandalized. "Well, paint my toenails and call me Nelly. I thought it was sniffing after the Slayer that made Spike go soft. Or that chip he had."

Had? Evie was about to pounce on that when David slithered down the ladder from the upper level. His smile was a bare millimeter's twist at the corner of his mouth, cool and vicious. "If you're that curious about the precise reason Spike hasn't seen fit to kill you yet, I suggest you ask him. He's upstairs." Nadia shrank a little, and Evie took note; OK, so this wasn't entirely some touchy-feely vampire summer camp. David continued with a nod at Evie, "He wants to see you."

"I'll bet he does," Evie muttered.

David's unnerving olive-green eyes studied her. He had a stare like a fucking snake or something--maybe he could do thrall. "Have you fed sufficiently? His orders are to see you healed and put to work as quickly as possible. We're not a charity."

Evie looked at her blood in distaste. No point in being all principled and shit now. The time to spurn the disgusting reheated slop and declare she'd never be that hungry had been last night. But they'd handed her the cup, the scent of it took a warm red baseball bat to her hindbrain, and fuck, she was that hungry. Two seconds later she'd been sucking the stuff down like it was El Tesoro.

All three of them were watching her to see if she'd repeat the surrender when she wasn't half-starved and high as a kite on master's blood. Evie raised the mug to her lips and tilted her head back, draining the contents in one long pull. David nodded, the lines of his face sketching prissy satisfaction, like she'd passed some test and he was weighing the merits of giving her an A- or a B+. She got it. She was no better than they were. Except she was, damn it. This was temporary. If Spike's chip wasn't working any longer, there had to be a way to disable hers. Once she figured out what it was, she'd be out of Sunnydale so fast her tracks wouldn't leave a scent. She slammed the mug down and followed David upstairs.

The upper level was bustling. A Sharpesi demon she vaguely remembered having seen around the Alibi Room a few times was seated at one of the desks, talking earnestly on the phone. Spike was attacking a keyboard at another desk. He'd done a sartorial 180 since last night, rumpled and bookish with the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled to the elbow and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles sliding down his nose. He looked like a different guy altogether...at least, until you got a look at the eyes behind the winking lenses.

He whipped the glasses off the instant Evie's head poked through the floor, and the woman--human, by her scent, though there was a subtle strangeness about it--kibitzing over his shoulder rolled her eyes. "Oh, for goodness sake, Spike, everyone knows by now." A speculative look honed her sharp features further. "Does Lasik work on vampires, or would your corneas just regenerate in the same poor shape they're in now?"

Spike slid the glasses back on and gave her a look over the rims. "You're just not happy unless you're contemplating slicing a bloke's parts off somehow, are you?" The phone on the desk rang. "Spike. Yeh. No, they're expected. Show them in, but keep an eye out."

The Sharpesi demon gave Evie a cheerful grin and a wave of one wrinkled paw. Evie waved back, confused. What was he, part of the inventory? She could understand vampires wanting in on a demon-hunting operation; most demons despised vampires as half-breed mongrels, and the idea of taking some of your own back out of their hides had a lot of appeal. The humans wouldn't care. But what was in it for this guy?

Spike banged the enter key with the gleeful finality of someone launching a ground-to-air missile, and one of the printers burst into chattering life. He raked a hand through the crisply gelled waves of his hair, tore the printout from the feeder tray, and skimmed it across the desk towards Evie. She made an automatic grab for the paper before it could flutter to the floor. It was a list of camping equipment, along with a few more exotic items.

Spike settled back and dipped a hand into the pocket of the leather jacket draping the back of his chair. He extracted a heavy silver lighter, tapped a cigarette free of the crumpled pack of Marlboros lying on his desk, and took his sweet time puffing it to brilliant orange life. He jabbed the cigarette at each of them in turn. "Clem, Anya, this is Evie. Clem's customer relations and Anya's our retailer. Now." He took a deep drag and blew a smoke ring over her head. "We're not a gang, we're not a clan, we're not the Order of bloody Aurelius reborn. We're a business. We hunt non-intelligent demons--only non-intelligent demons, mind--chop them to messes, and sell their short and curlies to the Magic Box and a selection of private clients. Your job is to do the boring parts so I don't have to. Normally there's a probationary period, but you've worked for me before, and your sire before you, and I know you've more than two brain cells to rub together. I'm putting you in charge of supplies. See David about your budget, and get me this stuff by the end of the week. Buy it, don't nick it, but deal as sharp as you like."

Evie nodded, taking it all in. In the last seven years she'd been in and out of half a dozen gangs. The trick to survival was to do your job without ever calling attention to yourself--to blend in, whether that meant joining in on meaningless rituals and ancient chants, turning tricks, or drinking pig's blood. "And what's all this get me?"

"Not dusted," Spike replied. "Also a safe lair, the protection of numbers, and a salary, enough to keep you in blood and cigs if your taste's not fancy." He sprang to his feet and began that loose-limbed predatory pacing, the length of the crypt and back again, leaving contrails of tobacco smoke in his wake. "More to the point, I keep the Slayer off your back. Long as you follow a few simple rules. Rule number one, no hunting. Only reason you're here to begin with is I've got reason to think you can handle that. Catch you even thinking about it, and the Slayer won't have time to draw a stake 'cause I'll rip your head off myself. Got it?"

Evie nodded.

"Rule number two, you look out for your mates. Goes against the grain for some of us, but it's tit for tat: they'll look after you. What's the biggest killer of vampires in the world?"

A nod seemed insufficient. "The Slayer?"

"Wrong." Spike stubbed his cigarette out on the lid of a sarcophagus. "Other vampires. One Slayer--well, three at the moment--and thousands of vamps. Do the maths. If we didn't off each other with giddy abandon nightly, we'd've eaten ourselves out of house and home by now. Which brings us to rule number three: no siring. Last thing we need is more idiot fledges cluttering up the middle ground. You want to keep turning tricks or blow your earnings on the good stuff at Willy's, go to it; I don't give a piss. Kill a human, I'll kill you, and I won't be quick about it. All clear?"

At a loss for any other response, Evie nodded again. A vampire she didn't recognize appeared in the crypt doorway and tossed Spike a casual salute. "They're here."

Every individual hair on the back of Evie's neck leaped up and raced its neighbors to the ceiling as she realized who 'they' were. The Slayer stood in the doorway, a tiny golden figure framed in indigo night. At her side, a sullen dark-haired girl gripped a stake, flaying each vamp and demon in the crypt with a look of utter all-business hatred. Any minute now someone would be yelling Look well, O wolves!

Spike broke into a wicked, radiant grin, and offered the Slayer an arm. Buffy advanced into the crypt and tucked a hand through the crook of his elbow. Slayer and vampire flowed together, river to the ocean, shadow fused with sunlight. Spike's brow rippled into demon-ridges and his fangs extended, a change as calculated as everything else about this performance, and Buffy's mouth took brief possession of his. Oh, gah, there was spit. Evie's stomach revolted, and she wished she hadn't chugged all that blood. Queen and consort turned on her as one, cheek to cheek and forehead to forehead; Evie's chin went up and she clenched her jaw on the churning in her belly. From the lowered eyes and foot-shuffling going on around her, none of the other vamps in the room were any easier with Spike's pervy yen for Slayers than she was, but none of them said a word. This was a test, as much as the pig's blood had been. Evie took a step forward, thumbs tucked in the waistband of her jeans in half-unconscious imitation of Spike. "Hey."

The Slayer pursed her lips, looking Evie over like she expected the odometer to have been tampered with. "Spike's told you the deal? You don't kill, we--" The dark-haired girl (was this the rumored third Slayer?), still lingering in the doorway, made a contemptuous noise, and Evie felt an unexpected surge of kinship. Not all tonight's tests were for her, it seemed. The two Slayers locked gazes, and after a moment, the dark girl's eyes skidded off sideways--not submission by any means, but an agreement to drop the argument. "We," Buffy repeated, "don't kill you. You fall off the wagon, you'll be dust before you hit the ground."

Evie nodded. She was going to wear out her nodding muscles. Spike hitched one hip up on the nearest desk and began cleaning his close-bitten nails with a penknife. He was human again--he'd never gone game-faced often, even in the old days, but he was almost always human now, even when there was no one around but other vampires. It was more than a little freaky. "Right then. I'm not paying you to imitate the statuary. Get to work."

And that was that; the high melodrama dissipated and the tableau dissolved into the organized chaos she'd walked in on. The two vamps who'd escorted the Slayers in escorted them out, and Spike went back to arguing with Anya about one of her orders. After an indecisive moment, Evie took the list and headed downstairs to find David.

She had no doubt that if she'd failed a single one of those tests, someone would be sweeping her off the crypt floor about now, and there would probably be more to come. No probationary period my ass. Still, Spike had been a reasonable Master in the old days, especially compared to the nutballs preceding and following him. He almost never killed his minions without a reason, and if he made a promise, he kept it: always to the letter, and usually to the spirit. Slayer-love or the chip had fucked him up, for certain--it didn't take an Einstein to see Spike had taken on Nadia and Denny, and probably her as well because he saw his own past in them. That could be an advantage, especially if Spike didn't realize what he was doing. Evie looked over the list he'd given her--a lot of this stuff could be picked up on the cheap at the army surplus outlet over on Levitt, and some of the more outre items looked eBayable. She'd see about getting some computer time once David gave her an idea of how much she had to spend.

"At least this isn't some cheap-ass pity assignment like finding Rack's place," she muttered, as David acquainted her with the ins and outs of petty cash. Nadia whooped with laughter, and even David cracked something resembling a smile.

"Man, don't you know?" Nadia said with a conspiratorial grin. "Spike can't find Rack's place anymore. He won't admit it, but I've seen him hunt half an hour for the damned door when it's right under his nose. He always brings one of us along."

Evie gaped at her. "You're joking." To fall under the sway of the spell that kept Rack's operation safe from the prying eyes of normal humanity, a vampire would have to be...not just crazy, but... "Fuck! He doesn't have a soul too, does he? 'Cause I'm not working for for anyone who's got a fucking soul!"

"Nah, nothing like that, hon," Nadia assured her. "Soul doesn't matter for Rack's, anyway, lots of humans can find it. He's just..." She stalled out on an appropriate word to describe Spike. "Different."

"You'd best get started," David said. Evie bit her lip and went over to the big map of the Sunnydale sewer system on the wall, plotting out the best way to get over to Main and Levitt. Obviously the two of them didn't want to think about the implications of Spike's little handicap, and she couldn't blame them. If it could happen to the Slayer of Slayers, it could happen to any of them.

The waning moon tore a hole of light in the hazy web of stars overhead as Kennedy stalked the straggling lines of tombstones. The tightly-held stake in her hand provided none of its usual comfort. The night was conspiring to piss her off. Shadows raced across the uneven ground to trip her up, and tiny itch-demons of foxtails clung to her socks and nipped at her ankles. She wanted to kill something, but Restfield was as dead as its inhabitants, and everything in killing distance, apparently, was off-limits.

The creeping ick of the crypt was still with her. The clear, cold night air couldn't slice through the odors of dust and blood and burning wax which still clogged her nose, and the distant twinkle of street lights recalled constellations of candle flames guttering in the darkness, and a million tiny bug feet skittering up and down her spine as the flames resolved into unblinking golden eyes. And Buffy, yellow flames reflecting in her eyes, cheek to cheek with the demon.

I'm not like that. The witches said so. Her new mantra. She wished the witches had stuck around longer to talk about the results of the aura spell, but Willow had rushed off to some evening class, leaving her with vague assurances that she was going to talk to this Giles person about it, and Tara had returned home to cook dinner. The promised sparring session with Buffy hadn't improved Kennedy's mood any--she knew she was good; even before she'd been Called she'd been fast and strong and resourceful. Someday she'd be able to take Buffy down. That didn't make getting the crap beaten out of her by the Summers School of Anything-Goes Martial Arts any easier in the meantime. Evening brought them back to Buffy's place for dinner: meatloaf and Smallville. ("Poof." "He is not! Shut up!" "Spike's right, Dawn. All those lustful subtext-y glances..." "He's totally in love with Lana!" "Yeh? Has he shagged her?" "Of course not!" "Poof.") All too lullingly mundane for words, as long as you counted the sight of a vampire pouring blood over meatloaf as mundane.

Buffy sashayed through the graves ahead of her, having traded in the skate bunny ambiance for a wine-red leather bolero jacket, skin-tight black denim jeans and kicky black leather ankle boots. Apparently the full set of Slayer powers included the ability to unerringly navigate untended hummocks of grass and the occasional fallen tombstone while wearing four-inch heels. Buffy was chattering on about the habits and habitats of Sunnydale's much-reduced vampire population. "...used to concentrate patrols on the cemeteries, but there's twelve besides Restfield, and hitting each one once every week and a half? Not efficient. I haven't cut out regular patrols altogether, but now I'm targeting the older vamps who're siring all these guys. It's like the trickle-down theory of slaying..."

Summers might be the undisputed ruler of Sunnydale's night, but she'd bought that sovereignty with counterfeit coin. Anger boiled up through fissures in Kennedy's self-control, met cool reason and subsided with a hiss. She still needed Buffy's help. She wasn't supposed to blow her cover. She couldn't take Buffy even if she wanted to--but that was a stupid argument, because since when could Slayers pick and choose their battles? Kennedy realized that the pain in her head stemmed from the iron-bound rigidity of her jaw muscles, and forced herself to relax.

"...two main gangs when I got here, the Order of Aurelius and the Mayor's hirelings. Or is it henchmen?" Buffy hopped the myrtle hedge surrounding a husband-and-wife monument dripping with bas-relief grapevines, weighing the relative merits of each term. "I'm never sure which is which. Anyway, ancient history. The biggest stable family nest right now is in a warehouse over on West Palchet, but the ones I'm really after are three or four upscale types over on the east side who're passing for human. They hire on a lot of the lone wolves as minions, and they've still got all kinds of connections with the police force, so they're tricky to go after--"

"Go after? What, there's vampires we actually get to kill?" The brittle crust of reason shattered, and rage flooded out, magma-hot and seething. Kennedy grabbed Buffy's shoulder and whirled her around. "What the hell was that back there?"

Buffy's muscles--she definitely had muscles beneath that girly exterior--tensed, just to the point that it was clear that the whirling was something she allowed rather than submitted to. "That was Spike's night job, when he's not helping me with the slaying."

Kennedy set both palms to Buffy's shoulders and shoved, hard. "It's not enough you're fucking them and feeding them?" Buffy took a startled step back. "You gotta play Queen of the Damned too? Slayers don't make deals with vam--!"

Fingers cinched her wrist, cutting off both words and circulation before she could get to the 'pires.' "Your Watcher ever fill you in on a cutie-pie called Acathla?" Buffy demanded. "If I didn't make deals with vampires, you wouldn't be here today to bitch about it. Look, demons? Mostly I just kill them. One day Spike gave me a reason not to kill him. And then he gave me another one, and another one, and pretty soon not killing him got to be a habit, and then...well, that part's not actually any of your business." She released Kennedy's hand and stepped back, her eyes as grey and hard as the granite slabs surrounding them. "Every night I patrol the campus is a night I don't patrol downtown. Every night I dust a vampire in Sunnydale is a night I'm not dusting a vampire in Spokane. People die with every decision I make."

The words were razors, and all the blades turned inwards. Kennedy glared into those eyes without sympathy. "Boo fucking hoo. Every Slayer in history's got the same problem. Doesn't mean we give up and start playing pattycake with the monsters. What's the wrinkly guy's out? Does he do your dry cleaning?"

"Clem's harmless! Mostly!" Buffy stabbed the air with her stake. "Have you been listening to anything I've said? The vampires in Restfield aren't fluffy bunnies, but right now they're not killing anyone. Every night I'm not taking out the vampires in Restfield is a night that I am taking out the vampires somewhere else. The ones that are killing people."

Kennedy's lip curled. "They all kill people! If not right now, then later! What makes you think you can trust them to keep their side of your little deal?"

"Spike."

"Uh huh. What the hell do you think slaying's about, anyway?"

"Protecting people," Buffy shot back. "Some of whom turn out to be not entirely human."

Tara's torn throat flashed before Kennedy's eyes, and for a second, she had no trouble at all believing that Buffy Summers was part demon. The back of her neck crawled, Slayer sense going nuts, and all those years of training came together in one moment of perfect synergy. Her fist was in motion before her brain could engage, arrowing straight for Buffy's chin. Taken by surprise, Buffy went down, and the two of them crashed backwards into the prickly embrace of the myrtle, toppling right over the bowed back of the scruffy-looking young man--no, vampire--in shabby Birkenstocks and Hawaiian shirt hiding behind the bushes. Well, that explained the Slayer sense going nuts.

The vampire crab-scuttled behind a nearby mausoleum, whooping "Whoa! Chick fight! Awesome!" as the two of them cartwheeled into the open. Buffy's kicky black boot made close personal acquaintance with Kennedy's solar plexus, and before the course of her graceful arc intercepted the myrtle once more, Kennedy caught a brief mid-flight glimpse of a pretty blonde girl in an Ed Wood cashmere sweater and heels even more impractical than Buffy's, cringing with wide-eyed dismay behind Hawaiian Shirt.

Buffy flipped herself to her feet, swung Tarzan-style around the pillar at the corner of the mausoleum, and slammed heels-first into the vampire's ill-trimmed goatee. His head snapped back, and Buffy locked both legs around his neck, riding him down to the ground. Her stake descended, and she fell the last foot to the to the dewy grass through a gritty cloud of Hawaiian Shirt's dust. She rubbed her backside gingerly, and brushed powdered vampire off her palms. "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, going after them is tricky. Not the dusting of, but the avoiding prosecution afterwards. Plus any time they're up to something, they sire a few Rhodes Scholars like this to keep me busy." She wiped a trickle of blood from a scrape on her temple and glared at Kennedy. "And while we're asking, what the hell was that?"

Kennedy slumped back against a faux-Egyptian obelisk and pressed a hand to her ribs. This was a pain that would linger. She couldn't feel the warning tingle of vampire presence any longer. "You get the girl, too?"

"Girl?" Buffy frowned, suspicious. "There was girl? All I saw was Randy of the Redwoods."

"There was girl. Believe me, I notice girls."

One perfectly-arched eyebrow lifted. "I notice changes of subject."

"I'm not a goddamned demon, got it?" Kennedy folded her arms across her bruises and scowled. "Demons aren't people, I don't make deals with them, and I don't care what excuses you have for sleeping with the enemy, or what my stupid aura looks like. I'm not like you."

"Probably not," Buffy replied composedly. "And not demons. Invested with demonic attributes, including but not limited to mostly useless prophetic visions, vampire-specific spidey-sense, and the strength of ten because our hearts are pure. Or something like that." She inspected her knuckles, made an irritated moue at the condition of her nails, and sat down on a tombstone to ransack her purse for an emery board. "I've never actually read the whole report, 'cause Giles in full research mode? Sure cure for insomnia. I generally conk out by page six."

Kennedy's lips tightened. "So what's the point of making me read the damned thing?"

"Because the more we know about who and what we are, the better we can stay ourselves." Satisfied with her repairs, Buffy extended a hand overhead to admire it, but her gaze passed through her spread fingers to Orion and the Big Dipper, wheeling opposite one another about the hub of the winter sky. "You gave pounding me into hamburger the ol' college try just now. Did you do that kind of thing before you were called?"

Heat rose in Kennedy's cheeks. "I can take care of myself."

"That's not the question." There was no accusation in Buffy's voice; for whatever reason, she was trying hard to sell this. "A year ago, would you have wanted to go after me like that?"

A cold little worm of doubt squirmed to life in Kennedy's belly. She'd always known what she wanted and stopped at nothing to get it, but... she'd kind of lost it just now, and no mistake. Looking back over the last fifteen minutes she couldn't quite figure out just how everything had slipped out of her control. Just knowing you could punch through a wall changed the way you looked at things--what you were willing to say, and what you were willing to do. "So according to you, every time I lose my temper it's the fault of this demon crap?"

"It's not that simple." All earnest now, Buffy wrapped her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth on the cold stone. "It's not like you've got a shoulder devil whispering 'Punch Buffy in the nose!' in your ear. It's all you in there. But whatever gives us power is old, and dark, and strong. If you live long enough, it'll get stronger. You'll get stronger. Giving in to your own strength is... glorious. But it can eat you from the inside out if you let it, till there's nothing left of you but the power. If that doesn't scare you a little, you're stupid."

"Well, lucky me, I'm not gonna have to worry about that for a good long time, am I?" Kennedy peeled off the obelisk and shook herself, shedding dead grass. "I got myself a room at the Sun Dancer Lodge over on Lincoln. Maybe I'll hunt down the one that got away, if she's not on the endangered demons list too?"

Buffy accepted this change of subject without complaint. "We should hear back from Giles by tomorrow if he's got anything useful for us." She hesitated. "If you need anything, stop by. And you're welcome to come to dinner any time if you..." She hovered delicately around run short on cash, and Kennedy felt a shamed twinge at the con she was pulling--she could have put a down payment on Buffy's house with the money she had at her disposal. Buffy settled on, "...get tired of McMeals."

"Thanks." But no thanks. Cash aside, she wasn't sure if she could take another dinner at the Summers house; it was a little too enticing watching Willow's pretty pink lips wrap themselves around a Crazy Straw and suck. "That report thing you gave me," Kennedy said. "You mind if I send a copy to my Watcher? 'Cause it occurs to me that someone who's an expert on Council history and demons and stuff might possibly have a different take on it than li'l ol' me."

Buffy didn't faze. "You want hard copy, Word, or PDF?"

Spike changed clothes before he left the crypt, ditching the poncewear for his usual basic black. If Buffy pouted he could point out very reasonably that it made no sense wearing his Sunday best on the hunt, for all she did it on a regular basis. He was halfway out the crypt door, axe in hand and assorted stakes concealed about his person, when David appeared at his shoulder with a dry little cough. Spike suppressed a groan; the last time that cough had gotten an airing, they'd failed to meet payroll and he'd had to kill someone to make up the shortfall. "Yeh?"

There was obviously a bug making its way up David's arse, destination brain, at record speed. "That slaughter at DeCosta's last week. There's talk down at Willy's that the Slayer's behind it."

"Now is that any business of yours?" Spike stroked the haft of the axe with a reminiscent grin. He trusted David as far as he ever trusted another vampire, but that was about as far as Dawn could punt a Ghora demon. "Don't tell me you care who she kills so long as it's not you."

David rubbed a hand over his balding pate--nervous, but he'd never been afraid to speak up when he thought it necessary. "She's going after Wilkins's old guard, isn't she?"

Spike settled his weight on one hip and regarded his second with increasing impatience to be off. "What if she is? No skin off your nose."

David made a frustrated noise. "It could be skin off a great deal more than my nose. Everyone knows that where she goes, you go. We're your minions--"

Trouble was always around the corner when someone started flinging that word about. "Employees."

"Semantics. You and the Slayer come as a set. What the Slayer does comes back on you--and us." David drew a hand down his cheek. "It hasn't mattered till now, since she's always taken out vampires at random. But lately--she's got a plan, and you've helped put it together. Amherst, Corvini, Nguyen...they know the Slayer's on their tails now. We can't match their numbers or their firepower if they decide to organize and come after us first."

Spike tested the blade of his axe with one thumb, and David inched back; apparently him fidgeting with weapons was more nerve-wracking than the ordinary kind. That David would fear the firepower available to a handful of moderately wealthy vampires was a genuine surprise, but just possibly, Spike thought, two or three apocalypses in a row had jaded him. "Not intending you to do so," he replied. "This wouldn't be the gang I'd build to go head to head with anyone, not by a long chalk."

David grimaced, acknowledging the truth of it. "And that's the problem. Whoever sent Cain won't stop with him, and that doesn't worry me--but we're not prepared for a war on two fronts. We're not prepared for a war at all." He added with a smile so dry it was shaken, not stirred, "Your death would interfere with the signing of my paycheck, but my death would interfere with my cashing it."

He hadn't considered this angle, but David was right; however stringently he separated his business killing from his recreational killing, other vampires wouldn't be so nice in their distinctions. It was tempting to blame his lapse on living too long among humans, but he'd never had much of a head for politics to begin with. This was what one had subordinates for, after all, to notice such things and report them. "Bugger. I take your point. We'll have to do something about that." Spike did a quick calculation; Amherst and Nguyen had seven and six minions respectively, Corvini four. "EVIE!" he bellowed.

The new girl's head appeared at the top of the ladder a second later, equal parts apprehension and belligerence in her dark eyes. "Yeah?"

"Forget the supply run for now. Got a job for you." Spike dug into a pocket and pulled out his wallet, repository of one green card (fake), one driver's licence (legit), and several credit cards (legit, but seldom used because Spike preferred to avoid leaving data trails when possible) in the name of one William 'Spike' Williams--not exactly his first choice of a nom de guerre, but as that was what Buffy had blurted out to Dawn's social worker in a moment of panic, he was more or less stuck with it. He peeled off a couple of bills. "Here. Go out and have yourself a time. Anyone you run into tonight, let drop casual-like that a bloke name of Kite offered you a job and you want to know if he's on the up and up. They get curious, tell 'em that the job was to be cozying up to another bloke name of Corvini. Make 'em feel like they're digging for it. Got that?"

Evie took the money with a grin and stuffed it into her decolletage. "Loud and clear. I'm not gonna be mentioning I work for you, am I?"

"Smart girl. Off with you." Spike grinned in the happy consciousness of a dirty deed done dirt cheap. Kite was Amherst's most trusted and senior minion; rumors that he was trying to infiltrate another gang ought to divert attention from them very nicely, and with luck would set Corvini and Amherst at one another's throats, weakening them both while Buffy attended to Nguyen.

David watched the exchange, python-eyed. "You could take Corvini down yourself. Co-opt his minions. Bring them under your protection. Take the others one by one."

"Could," Spike agreed. He shouldered the axe and turned to go.

"And you're not going to."

"Knew I didn't keep you around just for your looks."

"You're the eldest scion of the Order left sane and unsouled. You could--"

Spike stopped a pace or two outside the door and sighed. If David weren't so good with the books... "Look. What I do comes back on you, you said--that goes both ways, yeh? Master's responsible for his minions. Any one of mine kills on my watch, it's on my head, so pardon me if I'm choosy about who I take on. If I'm going queer my deal with the Slayer, it's bloody well going to be for the pleasure of killing someone myself, not having it done by proxy." This was a piece of moral algebra beyond most vampires, and Spike was quite proud of himself for working it out.

"Spike, that's bullshit." David wasn't so much accusing as puzzled. "You're Master of Sunnydale in everything but name--why not make it official? It can't be the fight that scares you. The chip's gone. You don't need the Slayer's good will any longer. I know they say down at Willy's that she leads you around by a little pink bow on your--"

WHOK! The axe swung in a blinding-swift reverse arc. Spike completed his turn and appraised his handiwork: axe-bit lodged two inches deep in the wood, and David spreadeagled against the door, nails digging splintered furrows in the rough boards. The blade neatly bisected the angle where neck met shoulder, and tiny droplets of ruby seeped from the hairline incision in David's pale scrawny throat. Sloppy work, that; he'd have to get a little more practice in. "It's a very big bow, mate," Spike said mildly. He levered the axe free of the new gash in the door, and examined the blade for nicks. "And what do you say?"

David's lips compressed to a line sharper than the blade. "Nothing I'm not paid to say, apparently." Which wasn't true, and one of the reasons Spike paid him. "I hope she's worth it. You're wasting yourself."

Spike clapped him on the shoulder, hard enough to jar teeth. "I'll be the judge of that. You've done well enough to tell me about the problem. I'll think on it. Tell Elise and Fernando to keep watch extra sharp, and make sure Evie's shown the back way out."

He did think on it, lounging astride the gleaming ebony bulk of the Triumph outside the front gates of the cemetery, but not for long. Spike had no doubt that he could take Sunnydale if he wanted it, but there'd be a price: his crew of misfits aside, Sunnydale's vampires wouldn't accept the Slayer's lover as their leader, nor willingly subsist on pig's blood and hospital leavings. Buffy, on the other hand, wouldn't stand for him looking the other way while his minions killed, even if he kept his own fangs clean. Being an effective Master meant withdrawing the foot he kept in the door of humanity, and going back to celebrating life only in the taking of it.

No choice at all, really. That was a skin long since shed, and there was no squeezing back into it now. Besides, when you'd gone up against hellgods, lording it over a few dozen vampires lost some of its allure.

With a glance up at the westering moon, Spike took a last draw on his cigarette and added another butt to the growing pile on the sidewalk. The bloodshot eye winked and closed forever as he ground it out beneath one heel. Buffy was late. He was beginning to wonder if he should have a recce when the delight of his unlife materialized in the shadows between the tombstones, leaf-flecked and tousled. She was wearing the squinchy expression that presaged either bark in her eye or a budding moral crisis. Buffy trudged out to the curb and butted her forehead against his shoulder like a disconsolate sheep. Spike ringed her in one arm, nuzzling into her disheveled hair and taking a deep proprietary whuff. "Ivy League get your back up?"

Dropped eyes and a gnawed-on lip were all he needed to confirm his suspicions. "I'm a sell-out," Buffy said with a shrug that failed to convey the intended indifference. "I'm--oh, never mind. You're all melancholy Dane yourself."

"Ah, me? I'm pussywhipped. Here, kitty kitty..."

There was that smile; that was better. "We're slackers." Buffy intercepted his hand and wrapped it in hers. "Letting the home team down."

Spike chucked her under the chin. "Yeh, but if my home team gets stroppy, I just kill them. Superior arrangement, to my mind."

"The not tempting of me? Still in effect." Buffy shook off her funk, dug into her purse and produced a left stiletto-heel pump in an exceedingly tacky silver. "Behold, I come bearing clue."

Spike cocked his head, less than impressed. "I was going to brag about finding those step-ins you hid, but I see you've got me beat."

Buffy flipped the shoe under his nose. "My heart-to-heart with Kennedy suffered vampus interruptus." She grimaced. "Actually it was more of a fist-to-fist. Anyway, I staked the party of the first part--party of the only part I saw, but Kennedy insisted there was a party of the second, so I did a little scouting, and voila. Party of the second is solid enough to shop at Payless. Look familiar?"

"Not hardly, but even odds she worked for one of the toffs we're after. Vamp in the street knows better than to plant their get in my back yard." Spike sniffed, but the shoe was brand new and didn't hold enough of a scent to identify. "Wish you hadn't staked the first bloke; we might have found out whether he was working for Amherst or Nguyen. If they decide to take out their frustrations on the lot at the crypt, we need to--"

"We do, do we?" Buffy pulled away and snatched her helmet off its hook. "These are vampires, right? Super strength, super speed, half-way invulnerable?"

"Yeh, but they're our vampires."

"Your vampires," Buffy corrected. "Newsflash! I've got priorities here, and killing the bad vampires before they eat the humans is still number one. Babysitting the not-quite-so-bad vampires is somewhere around number six."

That settled the moral crisis/bark in the eye question, then. Spike suppressed a growl; he'd love her till he was dust, but if Buffy ever went through an ethical menopause, he just might throw a party. He considered the options: knock-down drag-out fight followed by spectacular makeup sex, or keeping his yap shut and taking care of patrol first. A year ago it would have been the former, no contest, but it occurred to him now that if he put off the fight till after patrol, they could have the spectacular makeup sex at home in bed. He was either getting smarter in his old age, or just getting older.

Oblivious to his scheming, Buffy strapped her helmet on with an adamant glare and swung onto the seat behind him, snuggling up close and wrapping both arms around his waist--but only, her posture implied, because she had to. Spike opened the throttle and bike's growl echoed his own as they tore away from the tangle of quiet streets surrounding Restfield and pulled out into the heavier traffic on Wilkins Boulevard.

One thing about the Triumph, it wasn't a vehicle for encouraging chit-chat, which was probably a plus at this juncture. Their bodies were always on speaking terms, even then they weren't. After a few blocks Buffy leaned into him, laying her head against his shoulders and cradling his spine in the curve of breasts and belly, offering a truce in warm soft womanflesh. They'd have a reckoning later, but for now the vibration of the engine knit them together into one creature. Spike grinned, threw his head back and yowled, well you tried it just for once, found it all right for kicks... The wind tore the words away and flung them over his shoulder. No great loss there--his singing voice wasn't exactly American Idol material, and the words didn't matter as long as the two of them were on the hunt again.

The lance of the headlight cleaved the night ahead, and the blended howl of wind and engine sealed it up behind. Spike swerved from lane to lane for the sheer hell of it, grazing the orbits of semis as they rumbled their ponderous way towards their early-morning deliveries. They roared up the stately curves of Crawford Street as it rose out of the modest residential neighborhoods where the Harrises and Summerses and Rosenbergs of the world lived, up into the swanky suburbs flanking Kingman's Bluff. Here were the semi-palatial homes of Sunnydale's old money: Wilkinses and Chases and Kendalls. Two stories, three baths, four-car garages, and five bedrooms, sequestered behind acres of exquisitely manicured jewel-green lawn and shaded by huge overhanging Aleppo pines and magnolias.

Some of Sunnydale's money was older than the rest. The Master had come to Sunnydale in the late thirties, intending to open the Hellmouth, but the then-Mayor Wilkins-of-indeterminate-generation was already in residence with his own vampire minions and his own long-simmering plans, none of which included the Old Ones being unleashed untimely. The earthquake which banished the Master to dimensional limbo in '37 might not have been entirely coincidental; Darla had written Spike several strident letters on the subject, demanding his assistance. Spike had found them useful for rolling fags. Pissing around a tiny California town on the arse-end of nowhere, trying to pull old Bat-nose out of the rabbit hole when there was a bloody brilliant European war brewing wasn't Spike's idea of fun; he had places to go and people to eat. Dru always did love a man in uniform.

In retrospect, however moronic Wilkins's goals had been (what the fuck would a giant snake do of a Saturday night, anyhow?) he'd left his followers in better shape than the Master had left his. No ancient chants and dingy sewers for them; the vamps who'd survived the Graduation Day slaughter, the smart ones, anyway, had six-figure incomes and posh lairs with sound-proofed basements. Hunting the docks or trolling for dinner at the Bronze wasn't their style; they had their meals delivered. The Slayer was no threat to them.

Until now.

The Triumph's headlight bounced off metal, and Spike slowed to a crawl as they cruised past Angel's old mansion. Stopping at the neighborhood eyesore wasn't in the plan; tonight was recon, scouting the perimeter of Sammy Nguyen's lair, marking the entrances and exits and changes of the watch, and taking out stray minions as the opportunity presented itself. Which meant following Crawford all the way up to the foot of the bluff, ditching the bike in Granville Park, and slipping past Nguyen's sentries on foot. He rolled to a stop at the foot of the leaf-strewn driveway. A shiny new rent-a-fence surrounded the property, cutting off further access.

Buffy hopped off the bike, twined her fingers into the chain-link and peered up the drive. "Looks like someone got a stern letter from the zoning commission."

Spike cut the engine, booted the kickstand into place and got off the bike, staring up at the mansion with feet planted shoulder-wide and both thumbs hooking his belt. The windows, which had been gaping, glass-toothed maws a week ago, were now tidily boarded up, the chest-high weeds had been cropped to a golden-brown stubble, and a Dumpster full of trash and scrap lumber squatted in the barren front garden. The front door sported a sturdy new lock. "Timing's a bit suspicious, innit?"

Buffy craned her neck up at the blank-eyed facade of the mansion. "Someone planning a fallback? Does this place connect to the sewers?"

"Didn't when Angelus had us parked here, but it wouldn't be hard to tunnel into the basement. Feel anything, pet?"

Buffy shook her head. "Maybe... go stand over there, all I can feel is you. I wish I didn't suck so much at the vamp-sense-y thing. Kennedy--" She broke off with a frown, concentrating. Spike returned to the Triumph, rummaged through the various useful items in the saddlebag, and produced a pair of wire-cutters. Two or three expert snips and the fence parted like a chain-mail theater curtain. Spike wheeled the bike through, looking warily around the yard, and Buffy followed.

There were no white stars of jasmine at this time of year, but a wiry scrollwork of winter-killed vines etched the low stone walls of the garden, dark in the failing moonlight. Buffy touched his arm and jerked her chin in silent indication of her intention to check out the front of the house. She sheered off up the front walk, and Spike rolled the Triumph further up the drive. The place had an air of utter abandonment despite the recent improvements. Loath though he was to admit it, the mansion flat-out gave Spike the creeps, not least because it gave Buffy the creeps--not that she'd admit it, either. Too many bad memories here, for both of them, too much pain and betrayal and love ill-lost. It wasn't the dead that haunted this place, but memories of the living.

Something caught his eye as he unhitched his axe from the motorcycle. Spike knelt and touched the faint marks on the concrete--mud and leaf mould, still damp, still compacted into interlocking chevrons by a boot-sole. He measured the mark with an outstretched hand, then tried to match strides and came up considerably short. Who or whatever had made it was a largish beastie. He'd stopped breathing for reasons of stealth; now he inhaled, and immediately went into a coughing fit as the overpowering scents of garlic flowers and anise assaulted his nose. Someone knew their business--most unread idiots thought it was garlic bulbs that repelled vampires.

"Spike!"

Buffy didn't sound urgent, but he swiped the garlic-induced tears from his eyes and hastened to her side anyway. He found her crouched on the front steps, peering in through an intact and unboarded French window. Spike dropped down beside her, wrists on knees and hands loose between. "There's been someone other than us here, and recent-like," he said, low-voiced. "There's fresh tracks on the drive. They've masked their scent, but p'raps inside..."

Buffy beckoned him over to the window. "There's at least one more vampire around here somewhere," she whispered back. "I've definitely got the tinglies, and looky."

Spike pressed his nose to the windowpane and cupped his hands to his eyes for a better view. Sheet-shrouded furniture rose like spectres from rubbishy graves: drifts of newspapers, old Doublemeat Place wrappers, the pathetic crumples of used condoms, and...there, in the thin stripe of moonlight--a silver stiletto-heel pump. Right in the spot where he'd sat six years ago, wheelchair-bound and fuming, while Dru urged that sodding puppy on him--could have brought him a nice toddler, but no, it had suited Angelus's idea of a joke to feed the invalid on the next step up from rats.

And nowadays live dog's a treat, so suck up the irony, mate. What coals of scorn his former self would heap upon his head would make David's veiled criticism look like a Stuart Smalley special. Spike ran a hand around underside of the nearest windowsill. Would the current owners have the place wired? Or hooked up with something more advanced--one of those motion-sensitive things? Likely not; all that would do would ensure that some fool minion would set the alarm off by mistake every other day. Still, all the earmarks of a trap. He caught Buffy's eye and arched a brow. "Do we spring it?"

Buffy bit a knuckle. "Come on."

She rose lithely to her feet, vaulted up onto the porch railing, chinned herself on the edge of the verandah, and was up and over like a seal sliding onto the ice. Spike took a few backwards steps off the porch, got a good grip on his axe, and cleared the roof with one soaring leap. Buffy punched his arm and mouthed Showoff, and the two of them cat-footed across the rippled expanse of red clay to the nearest second-story window. Thirty years of dead pine needles crunched beneath their feet, packed so densely into the ruts of the tiles that in places the roof looked as if it had been thatched. Spike could see the drive from here, and part of the back garden, stretching away in a tangle of dead rose bushes and bare, whippy branches to the six-foot cinder-block fence which obscured the service road at the rear of the property. The moon was almost down, hanging low above the western horizon, and nothing moved beneath its half-closed eye but vagrant leaves.

Mindful of loose tiles and rotting beams, the two of them nestled close to the sill squatted down beside the window. Through the cracked and dusty panes the upstairs hall was empty. "Footprints," Spike breathed, millimeters from Buffy's ear, pointing to scuffmarks her human eyes couldn't distinguish in the uncertain light. Buffy nodded and made a going-in gesture. She dug a hand into the interstices of the ancient casing, and Spike followed suit. Paint chips flaked away under his fingers. The warped wood groaned; the window inched open under the pressure--jammed, and lurched upwards again with a screech. After a long, frozen moment in which she was almost as unbreathing as he was, Buffy slid one leg and then the other over the sill, limboed through the gap and eased herself down into the hall. Spike found it a slightly tighter fit, but he encountered no resistance; whoever was in there either wasn't human, or didn't consider it a permanent residence.

The first bedroom they investigated was adrift with cobwebby beer bottles, half of them shattered. A set of manacles lay tumbled in the corner, fastened to the headboard of the grim old hospital-style metal bedstead. Old blood crusted the dark metal. Spike scraped a flake or two of desiccated hemoglobin up with a fingernail and gave it an experimental taste. Nothing left of it, no scent, no savor--no telling how old it was. He licked it off his finger anyway. Buffy wrinkled her nose, and he gave her a shrug and a smirk in return.

The voices came clear as they moved back into the hall--male and female, low and strained and obviously unhappy with one another. Spike touched Buffy's shoulder and pointed--master bedroom, the one Angelus had commandeered during his residence here. She nodded, pulled out a stake, and together they slunk down the corridor towards the open door at the end of the corridor.

"...lay off, you're dust. I'm sick and tired of--" The male voice was hoarse, low, unrecognizable with strain. The woman's, shrill and angry and strangely familiar, broke in with, "You can't do that! Mr. Amherst will--"

Buffy shot him a look; they were close enough now for her to catch most of it. So Miss Twinkletoes was one of Amherst's minions--must be a new fledge. Who was the man? Another of Amherst's? Or one of Nguyen's? They didn't sound any too chummy, but vampires would fight over card tricks just to relieve boredom. Spike tried again to pick up a scent, but the hallway stank of garlic, even worse in the confined space than it had been outside. He held his breath and prowled after Buffy, keeping close to the wall to avoid creaky boards, beset by sniffles and deja vu. How often had he lain abed up here and listened for another pair of voices, imagining creeping down the hall and wreaking violent revenge on sire and grandsire both? Six years and an entire ocean under the bridge hadn't served to blunt that old humiliation entirely, or dull the infuriating memory of the wanton screams and wild laughter that echoed down the hall from bloody fucking Angelus's room. His knuckles whitened on the axe-haft. The blade jerked minutely with the movement, scraping against the wall, and a long ragged strip of wallpaper ripped free in its wake.

The voices in the master bedroom cut off as if he'd sliced them short. Bloody fucking hell! "Who's there?" The woman's voice was squeaky with apprehension.

Buffy was in motion before she finished the 'there,' and Spike, cursing himself, was right behind her. A huge dark shape hurtled towards the bedroom window as they rounded the corner, and a small dark shape hurtled straight towards them. Spike heard the aerosol hiss, almost lost in the crash of breaking glass, and put two and two together just a second too late. "Gas, pet! Don't breathe!"

The cannister hit the doorframe and bounced off, expelling a choking fog as it rolled to the floor. In the artificial murk, a small light-haired figure broke from the rear of the room, collided with Buffy, fell on its ass with a terrified wail and dove between Spike's legs for the door. Buffy inhaled reflexively at the blow and immediately doubled over coughing, tears streaming down her cheeks. Spike risked a sniff; vampires were susceptible to injected and ingested toxins, but generally immune to inhaled ones...as long as they didn't inhale too deeply. Ordinary tear gas, seemed like, but the garlic was doing a number on him almost as bad. He swooped down, grabbed the cannister and sent it spinning it out the window, scorching fast and hard. A gratifying thunk gave notice that he'd hit his mark, and the figure fleeing across the lawn staggered, rolled, and took off again, limping badly.

Spike grabbed the helplessly retching Slayer, tossed her over one shoulder, and dove out the window after their first assailant, wreathed in a cloak of acrid white smoke. He somersaulted in mid-air and landed hard in the weed-choked back garden, folding in on himself to take the impact in his knees. Buffy was pounding not-so-weakly on his shoulder, trying to make him put her down; he hadn't been in a good riot since Watts (Prague had definitely been a bad riot) but if he remembered right, the effects of tear gas on humans didn't last for more than a few minutes once they stopped breathing the stuff. He swung Buffy to her feet and gave himself over to his own gagging fit. She was dripping tears and snot, and both of them were hatchmarked with tiny scratches and glittering shards of broken glass, but she was already reviving. Spike got his stomach under control and snorted, trying to get the lingering tang of o-chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile out of his nose; he still couldn't identify the scent of their prey, but he could bloody well smell the garlic.

An engine roared to life on the service road. Spike whipped round with a snarl. The look in Buffy's eyes was a perfect match for his: No way in hell, buster. They could jump the fence, but if their quarry made it to the open street, neither of them could keep up with a moving car indefinitely. As one they broke for the motorcycle, racing across the scraggly lawn. Spike flung himself across the saddle and was tearing out almost before Buffy could grab pillion. Helmetless, they rocketed towards the tear in the fence. Buffy held tight, shielding herself behind his back, and Spike gunned the engine, ducked his head, hunched his shoulders, and shot through the opening with a rattle and a clang of mistreated aluminum. One of the cut ends of wire snagged the sleeve of his jacket, and the bike slewed crazily to one side before the leather gave. For an instant they wavered on the edge of wiping out--Spike wrestled the handlebars with every ounce of supernatural muscle he possessed, and Buffy thrust one foot out to push off the concrete with all of her considerable strength. Sparks flew, one pair of kicky ankle boots was toast, and they were upright, more or less, cornering so tightly that leather scraped asphalt on the turn.

Buffy was half-standing as they skidded around the block towards the mouth of the alley, her lips pressed close to his ear so that he heard her via bone conduction more than anything else: Come on, faster, faster! The car in the alley had a head start on them, and it was running blind, headlights doused to discourage pursuit. Spike expected it to burst out of the service road ahead of them, but it didn't; once the driver had decoyed them in towards the east end of the block, he'd thrown it into reverse and was bumping down the unpaved road at fifty miles an hour in the opposite direction. Spike turned into the mouth of the road, spitting gravel in his wake, barrel-racing past the cheery blue bulks of recycling bins and the solemn black of trash cans. The car jolted to a halt at the end of the alley, and the headlights flashed on, foglights blazing their full glory. Spike threw an arm up to shield his night-sensitive eyes--no use; his vision blanked out in lurid violet-edged splotches.

Utterly blind, he struggled to keep the bike on course. "Left!" Buffy yelled. Without question Spike swerved. "Straighten up!" He felt a jolt and a bang, and the ground rose beneath them. The timbre of the car's engine changed and intensified, and Spike realized that it was headed straight towards them. Buffy's fingers were digging through the heavy leather of his coat, straight down to bone, but there was no panic in her. "Wheelie! NOW!"

Spike hauled back on the handlebars and the bike reared, bellowing its challenge to the onrushing behemoth. They soared into the air, free-falling towards infinity, and then the rear wheel slammed into metal, the bike's nose came down with a crash, and momentum carried them screaming down to earth again. The streaks in front of his eyes were fading, and the engine-noise was receding behind them. Bloody fucking brilliant, they'd jumped the sodding thing!

"We need to turn!" Buffy shrieked in his ear. Spike shook his head.

"Garlic!" he yelled back, pointing. Behind them, there was an earthshaking crash and half the lights on the block went out as the car rammed into an electric pole. Every car alarm within a quarter of a mile went off at once, a banshee cacophony that bid fair to drive him mad. The Triumph bounced out onto the pavement and Spike's nostrils flared, hunting the loathsome scent of garlic flowers.

"There!" Buffy pointed, and Spike hauled the bike around and took off. Their quarry was running now, limping noticeably. It lunged for the top of the nearest fence, grabbed the top, and scrambled over. Spike braked and slewed to a stop in a flurry of dead leaves, going from bike to wall in one quicksilver leap. Buffy was right behind him, handicapped by the state of her boots, but keeping up gamely. They were over the fence, racing across the close-mown winter rye towards a line of upscale condos. A whistling howl arose from the parking lot, and as they crested the top of an artificial rise, Spike saw them: two figures locked in a wrestling match in the Visitors Only slot. One was noticeably larger than the other, and in the sickly yellow of the parking lot lights, the row of spines along its back that marked it as other than human were plainly visible. For a second it looked as if it had the upper hand, and then the smaller figure jammed something into its ribs. The demon convulsed with an inhuman shriek and collapsed to the ground. The smaller figure, obviously human now, fell with it, and the two writhed together on the ground.

Buffy put on a burst of speed and flew at the demon, launching a spinning kick at its long-muzzled jaw. "My name is Buffy Summers. You killed my footwear. Prepare to die!"

The demon surged to its feet with a snarl and sliced at her face with one taloned paw as she came down, while attempting to choke the man on the ground with the other--three? Four arms, grey, elephantine hide, crocodilian head ringed in a shaggy ruff of coarse iron-grey fur--what the hell was this thing? Spike caught the flailing wrist in both hands, wrenching it round behind its spiny back. Bending that mass of muscle and bone was like trying to macrame a treetrunk--some sort of Sunnydale curse in effect, that even when he brought a weapon along, he'd end up fighting bare-handed. Better that way. Spike vamped out and sank his fangs into the nearest piece of grey flesh. Buffy aimed another punishing kick at the thing's left kneecap and followed up with a series of savage blows to its midsection. The demon staggered, but ignored her to tear at the prostrate man with mindless ferocity,. "You'll not take me alive, puny human!" it roared.

"Sorry, neither!" Spike caroled. The man on the ground was wearing a Kevlar vest, and so far the thing's claws had failed to penetrate. Buffy continued to deal out scientific whup-ass, kick-punch-kick, to the sweet tune of crunching ribs. The lower left arm swept back for a swing, and Spike hooked his legs around the creature's middle, pinning the arm with his thighs. The demon slammed backwards into a light-pole, and Spike narrowly escaped the loss of extremely important body parts as its dorsal spines tore into his side. He kept twisting the upper right arm, his own muscles screaming in protest, until ligament by ligament, things started to tear. The shoulder dislocated with a pop! as Buffy wrapped both arms around the demon's toothy muzzle, locking its jaws together like an alligator wrestler, and heaved it into the air, cracking the enormous body like a bullwhip. Spike leaped free in mid-crack, landing on all fours beside the human chew-toy, which stirred with a groan. There was an audible crunch of disintegrating vertebrae, and the demon crashed to the ground, limp and motionless, its long purple tongue lolling out of blood-flecked jaws.

Buffy lifted one foot to examine the shredded wreck of her boot. "You have been avenged."

Spike got to his feet, panting, and stared at the thing--no species he'd ever seen, and that was saying something. It was wearing a tattered assortment of old fatigues, and Army boots with the toes cut off to accommodate its formidable claws. He knelt beside the body and parted the coarse mane. Around its neck was a set of dog tags, and amongst the jingling metal was a lumpy, cloth-wrapped bundle from which emanated the worst of the garlic-stink. So... was this who they'd been chasing? It wasn't impossible--he'd assumed human or vampire, but this was largish and bipedal, more or less, and the pattern on the soles of the boots matched the tracks in the driveway. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. The garlic was giving him a headache.

Buffy came up behind him, resting her hand on the small of his back, and Spike let the amulet fall. He straightened and draped an arm around her shoulders. The subject of the demon's fury rose unsteadily and backed away, running a shaky hand through his blood-matted hair. "Are you OK?" Buffy asked. "That was a--"

The man turned. Tall, broad-shouldered bloke, kitted out in vaguely military-looking gear, all black doubleknit and Kevlar and an assortment of mysterious belts and pouches. Brown hair, brown eyes, open, honest-looking features. Good-looking in a deadly dull way, save for the large scar tracking across the left side of his face. His eyes went to Buffy, then to Spike, and back to Buffy again, taking in the easy placement of hands on bodies. He half-smiled, wry and pained and unsurprised. "What was that again about not needing a boyfriend with superpowers?"

The rest of Buffy's sentence vanished in a startled puff of air, and her arm tightened around Spike's waist.

"Well, well, well, as I don't live and breathe," Spike drawled. "Riley Finn."

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