Chapter 1: Let Me Count the Ways


Mooching along the overgrown abandoned rail spur, hands in jeans pockets and head down, Spike halted.

Dawn came trotting up behind, the beam of her flashlight painting the gravel between the rotted-out ties. "Something?"

"Yeah, something...." Spike shut his eyes, trying to localize the tingle in the air. "Should be better at this," he muttered, unconsciously tilting his shoulders, leaning, trying to align with what he felt.

"I expect it's like dowsing," Dawn commented practically. "The head knowledge can't help until you've digested it: made it body knowledge."

"Yeah," Spike responded, not really listening, still trying to align. Which actually wasn't possible, he knew that. It was like sun-knowledge, closest thing--a sense of angle and direction, except that neither was cogged to the geometries of rusting parallel tracks lancing off into the weedy dark or the chilly wind gusting from the sea or stark stars overhead only slightly dimmed by Sunnydale's haze of lights down in the valley.

It was just off his left shoulder--a tingling seam in the air. At a cross-angle to everything. Facing it didn't work: made him lose it. He had to stand crosswise to it. No reason why, just how it was.

"We gonna try this one?"

"Me first, Bit. In case there's no air. Like the last one," Spike responded absently. "Won't be but a second, you stay put."

"I've got my taser and my stake," Dawn asserted, annoyed with the care he took of her...dragging her out of her cosy bed about three on a Saturday night in December, all hush and shivers, prospecting with her flashlight for anything interesting along the rail bed while he dowsed for shimmers and the both of them therefore visible for a good mile, roundabout.

"Turn off the torch."

"No. It's creepy. And I found another one!" Juggling flashlight and taser, she dug in a bulging jacket pocket and proudly produced a rusted railroad spike.

Blinking at her, trying not to lose the torque of the dimensional rift, Spike said, "That's fine. Add it to your collection. Stuff it through your nose. Turn off the torch, Bit. You mind, or I'm not bringing you out any more."

"Sure, that's a scary threat. Without me, you can't budge an inch," she retorted smugly.

Two vamps sprang out of the ditch, on Dawn before Spike could lunge between. He slammed one away and risked turning his back long enough to stake the one Dawn was flailing at with the flashlight in one hand and the spike in the other. As the dust exploded and Dawn started screeching, Spike didn't whirl back quite fast enough to keep the other dumb fledge from taking him down, slamming into the cinders. They rolled and struggled, the fledge pounding at Spike with a fist-sized chunk of gravel while Spike tried to double his knees up enough to loft the vamp away with his boots. Dawn should have juggled through her trash and unlimbered the taser long since, but a glance told Spike she'd stayed clear, hopping and wailing like a siren, and another vamp was coming in, drawn by the noise, most like. So best do this one fast.

Twisting, Spike bit the fledge's rock-holding hand mostly off at the wrist. Enough distraction that Spike could finally pull his knees up under the heavier vamp and then violently uncoil, flinging the fledge off straight at the approaching vamp. The fledge burst into dust that Spike went through in a flying dive, to get between the new vamp and Dawn and what the hell was she doing, just standing like a lump? As he hit, he was deflected aside and tumbled into the ditch, up the next second and back, but Dawn had got in his way, waving and jumping like trying to scare off a cow...and he belatedly recognized the vamp as Mike.

Covered with vamp dust and blood, some of it his, angry at Dawn for being useless and at himself for being distracted and letting them get jumped, angry at the fledges for being too dumb to know him for a vamp and for himself, and angry at his claimed childe for being there and seeing it, Spike sagged a moment where he stood. Having waved off the attack, Dawn relaxed, turning away. Lunging past her, he slammed Mike a good one in the gut. Mike had anticipated and mostly faded back ahead of the blow, but Spike hadn't actually hit him all that hard anyway and stalked past, stumbling a little on the ends of ties, rubbing at his face with his sleeve.

Trailing a prudent distance behind, Dawn explained anxiously, "I couldn't. You were tumbling and wrestling around and I couldn't tell who was who. And if I got you by mistake, we were both toast."

"Should'a turned off the torch when I told you," Spike snarled. He suddenly dropped down on the curve of rail bed, fumbled out a cigarette and lit it, hand cupping his temple and waiting for the gash to seal and quit smearing blood into his eyes so that he was nearly as blind as Dawn. She'd finally turned off the flashlight.

The night was again quiet, cold, and still.

Seating herself in a sulky fling about a yard away, perched right on the rail, long overalled legs drawn up almost to her chin, Dawn hurled away a piece of gravel. "Well, excuuuuse me for not being able to see much on bad footing in the middle of the freaking night!"

The blood had finally let up. Spike wearily rubbed at his forehead a final time with his sleeve, then looked favorlessly across at Mike, comfortably crouched on his heels the other side of Dawn, knowing Spike wouldn't come at him again.

Answering the implicit question, Mike commented mildly, "I was in the neighborhood," assembling a different sort of cigarette and lighting it with a kitchen match. Not having to look to know Spike's recoil of annoyed disbelief, Mike went on, more truthfully, "Heard the bike. Then saw it was Dawn with you, not the Slayer. So I drifted along to see what was up, this hour of the night."

His tone was matter-of-fact, calm; but the implication was critical of Spike's taking Dawn on late night patrols. Didn't need saying: they both knew. They attended to their smokes while Spike made himself settle further, letting game-face flow into his human mask.

Maybe Mike had the right of it: that first vamp had got at Dawn, after all. Spike wasn't gonna dispute it with him, anyway--not all that sure, himself, he should be letting Dawn accompany him into situations that could turn risky even though it was as much her idea as his.

Dawn spoke up: "We're hunting natural portals. Mapping them, pretty much. And going through for a quick look around, to see what they're like. One was all crystalline, like sections of a glacier, and there wasn't any air. I felt like I had frost on my eyeballs. And another was underwater."

"Salt or fresh?" Mike inquired, and let out breath and smoke in a slow, controlled hiss.

"I didn't notice." Dawn sounded worried she might lose points for that, like not knowing the mean air speed of a laden African swallow.

"Salt," Spike put in. "Ocean."

"Why haul the girl along--"

Dawn interrupted quickly, "He has to. He couldn't get through by himself. That takes a Key."

Mike didn't think Spike was careful enough with Dawn. Spike didn't see what fucking business it was of Mike's what they did or how or when they did it. Again, didn't need saying. They marinated in their separate irritated silences awhile.

Mike finally said, "Slayer know about this?" which was an implicit threat to tell her.

"No," Dawn blurted, "it's a surprise. Or will be, when we find the right place. It's there, somewhere. Spike dreamed it." Twisting around, she set her hands on Mike's arm. "You won't blab it, right? Ruin the surprise?"

"I don't blab," Mike responded stiffly, when just the opposite was the case and they all knew it. "Got no call to tell the Slayer nothing. She ain't nothing to me."

"You could help us look," Dawn suggested eagerly, since they now had to keep Mike sweet or he'd blow the whole thing. "We could wait while Spike goes through. Or if we find a good one, you could come with!"

"Don't like no other dimensions than here," Mike replied unhelpfully. "Light's funny and the ground don't smell right."

"Don't tell me you're scared!"

"Got other things to tend to. Fighting. Hunting. Trying to get things organized again after the total hooraw's nest somebody's made of things."

The somebody was Spike, unmaking the Hellmouth and social-planning at least half of Sunnydale's vampires into oblivion.

Mike didn't have much regard for Spike as a social planner. Which again was likely fair enough, Spike supposed, and therefore bit back a retort.

A whole lot of things didn't need saying, among the three of them. Most things just were. Most things, they just knew.

They continued to sit: the actual and titular Master Vampires of Sunnydale, bracketing the Dimensional Key.

"Need somebody to stand lookout," Mike allowed presently after taking a heavy hit from the roach, "seems like. When you're...occupied. Like tonight. Could do that sometime, if you give me notice."

"All right. Maybe." Pitching the butt end of his fag, Spike rose, and Mike did, too. "There's one up ahead just a bit. Was about to check on it when those damn fledges crashed in. Not taking Bit through. But she could wait. With you."

"Wouldn't mind," Mike said as Dawn blurted, "Yes!" as though her side (whatever that was at the moment) had scored a goal.

"Since you're here and all," Spike added grudgingly, an accustomed dance of offhand approach and retreat that didn't require actual asking or ordering, or actual agreement or obedience.

All indirect and circuitous, to neither challenge nor lose face, either one.

Things were difficult and touchy with Mike these days, it never having been fully thrashed out between them who was boss now. Safer that way. But touchy.

And the same between Mike and Dawn, Spike supposed. Things were changing, had changed, and none of them knew precisely what that meant or where they stood with it, each in relation to the others.

He was good with the Slayer, though; and past a certain point, that was all that signified. He figured the rest would sort itself however it had to. Wasn't up to him, after all.

Mike gave Dawn a hand to help her up but she then disengaged, getting out the damn flashlight again and switching it on. Mike traded a look with Spike but neither of them said anything. At an official seventeen, there was nothing much Dawn could be forced to do or prevented from doing.

"Well, come on, then!" Fragile and imperious, Dawn started back in long tip-toe strides, from one tie to the next, toward where Spike had felt the rift, and the two vampires trailed along in the understood helplessness of males before their intractable, oblivious womenfolk.

**********

Blinking sleepily, Buffy stretched, yawning. And then smiled when Spike gathered her close again without waking.

He was almost always here now, either through the night or at least before sunrise. He had a fresh, abraded bruise at his temple: challenge fight up at Willy's, probably, or the result of one of the lone, manic sweeps of the downtown streets he persisted in doing though with vamp numbers so reduced, it hardly seemed worthwhile. She didn't patrol on weekends anymore and only a few nights a week--breaking up new forming lairs, mostly. Keeping the fledges confused and thinned out.

Frowning as she rose and reached for her robe, she wondered if, with things relatively placid, Spike was getting bored. Though that's what they'd been trying to achieve, and Buffy was past ecstatic not to be facing one of the seemingly inevitable periodic apocalypses, a bored Spike swinging off on destructive tangents could be a problem. Spike didn't do peace all that well.

When she returned from the shower, rubbing her hair dry, Spike was up, looking out a window he'd opened a crack at the bottom because he'd lit a cigarette. As carelessly nude as he was deliberate and particular in costuming himself, he was gorgeous in the cool winter light through the special glass that protected him, though Buffy figured he could mostly handle that himself now, without a blanket, even. She still wasn't used to seeing him in full daylight; maybe she never would be.

He'd been growing toward the light for a long time, she thought.

Settling at her dresser whose mirror turned him invisible behind her, Buffy commented, "You have pensive face," as she plugged in a dryer and started running a wide-toothed comb through her hair.

Spike's hand took the dryer, and his thumb clicked off its noise. Setting the dryer aside, he removed the comb, too, and commenced drawing a brush through her hair with slow, cherishing strokes. She knew he liked doing that, and she didn't mind a bit of being fussed over. But she hugged herself and shivered: the window was still open.

Making an amused noise, Spike went and shut it, carefully stubbing out the cigarette before he returned.

"Tender little hothouse posy, you are," he teased, resuming the strokes. "California winters aren't worth the name. Not even freezing, out there. Practically balmy. Hate to see you face an actual winter--snow, ice, an' all that."

"Just because some of us aren't year-round room temperature doesn't mean it's not cold!" Still shivering, Buffy frowned into the mirror, trying to work out if that had come out right. "I hate having to put on fifteen layers, so I look like a barrel!"

"But such a stylish barrel. Trim, kicky boots that'd wilt at the least touch of a puddle--"

"Oh, shut up." She batted at him. He was always mocking her footwear. As though scuffed steel-toed boots were the height of fashion. In the heat of summer, he wore the stifling duster; in winter, seldom more than a button-down over a T-shirt, usually with the sleeves rolled up and his forearms bare. Conspicuous contrariness--that was his thing. A one-vamp fashion statement...about twenty years out of date.

He had great forearms, that was true. All round and muscle-y. Severely toned, if not tanned. Very nice biceps, too. Not to mention triceps and lats, all corded and slithery under the skin. Wrists solid as cross-sections of I-beams. He could lift a truck if he felt like it. Or uproot a tree.

He was stroking fingers through her hair now, making her scalp tingle, while she leaned against his chest, rubbing her hands up and down his arms. "Mmmmm," she commented.

Bending close, he licked the mark, his mark, that bracketed her collarbone, which sent the tingles diving as he purred into her ear, "Could maybe warm you up the old-fashioned way. All pink and glowing."

"Mmmmm," she agreed, dropping her arms to let the thin, silky robe slide away.

Warmed up very nicely about half an hour later, sweating a little, even, Buffy flopped her head on Spike's torso in luxurious, conscious ease. No job. No requirement to show herself until noon unless she wanted, even if it hadn't been Sunday. Long, entwined mornings in bed with suitable diversions. Life was good.

At seventeen, Dawn was surely able to concoct her own breakfast and lunch, too, though the thought of a peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwich or similar Dawnish combination was fairly ooksome. "How's the translation coming?" she asked idly.

"Got a bit behind," Spike admitted, rolling to draw up the duvet and tuck it solicitously close around her, gathering her in like a wrapped bundle. Then he changed his mind and slid underneath, too, nuzzling close. He liked warmth well enough, and certain kinds of hot could send him into ecstasies. Just didn't need it, the way she did, and sometimes was a little self-conscious and apologetic about having no warmth of his own to give her except in the one way. Or two ways, if you counted sparring and fighting....

"Nagging, are you?" he inquired, licking up behind her ear. "Got to keep the tame vamp chained up to the desk, wearing the poncy glasses, trying to--"

"No! Of course not. You know that, don't you? If the Watchers' Council fired you tomorrow, no big. We'd manage now, some way. It's not just you, holding everything together. You know that, right?" She took his ears prisoner, forcing him to meet her eyes, searching his face to make sure he was joking, or mostly joking.

Sometimes she worried about that, too. Because he wasn't a tame, gutless nerd. He was a fighter, and an awesome one. Not quite as awesome as the Slayer, though they tested that out, various ways, every now and again. Unfortunately, there were no wages in being a Champion of the People, as Buffy had good reason to know. She was a little afraid, though, he'd doggedly chain himself to the responsibility, as he'd been doing the past months, until he either exploded in all directions...or didn't. Lost the fire that burned in them both. Made them such excellent partners.

"We should go somewhere," she decided suddenly. "Get away. Holiday break is coming up, no school for Dawn, and we could miss a few patrols, no big. Someplace warm--Mexico, maybe. I know you've been there, you've been everywhere--" She waved her arms around to indicate the utterness of the everywhere. To hear him tell it, at least.

"Working on that, pet," Spike said, hitching his head away from her grasp with a very small smile, as though he knew something she didn't.

"What?" she demanded.

"Nothing, yet."

"What?" She got her fingers into his ribs and started tickling, and he tried to stop her by wrapping her tighter in the duvet, and they rolled off the bed (it really was too narrow) and wrestled, and that turned into the usual--lazy and playful this time instead of fierce and urgent. With their open, flexible schedules, they came together four or five times a day now, which Buffy considered entirely satisfactory. She wanted as much of that as she could get, things always on the simmer between them, and Spike seemed to feel the same if frequency was anything to go by. At least he never disappointed her and had made no complaints. Seemed to need it as much as she did, after their long while apart and then his period of highly dubious enthrallment by that bastard, Ethan Rayne....

Which reminded her. Rolling over comfortably, her hip pillowed by the folds of duvet, Buffy remarked, "Giles called last night, after you left."

"What's Rupert want?" Spike responded in a blurred voice, barely blinking, almost asleep. He was a vampire, after all, and most comfortable with nocturnal habits. He'd probably sleep the day away, then be all bouncy and Tigger and ready to go at sunset. When she was winding down. Still enough overlap, though, to make it good.

"You'll laugh. It was you he wanted to talk to, actually. He wants to know where you disposed of Rayne. With all the trouble we had to go to, to get rid of that bastard, now Giles wants him back. Isn't that hilarious?"

Spike cast an arm up across his eyes. "An' what did you say, pet?"

"Basically, that he could get stuffed," Buffy replied, giggling guiltily. "Although I didn't put it quite that way.... Where did you toss him, Spike?"

Buffy had been too busy fighting, and then ducking random portals flaring open and clapping shut, to notice details of Rayne's enforced exit about a month ago, ending his attempt to reopen the Hellmouth. One second the chaos mage had been there, waving and shouting, and Spike up on the factory beam, blazing and exultant in the final seconds before he began to burn. And the next second, Rayne just wasn't there anymore and Spike was falling like some character out of mythology, helplessly blazing.

The memory made her shudder.

When Spike didn't respond, Buffy prompted worriedly, "He didn't get away, did he? Teleport or something? Like before? Spike?"

Arm still shielding his face, Spike exhaled--a soft, buzzing noise. Snoring.

Buffy's stomach replied with a reproachful rumble. Time to get decent and finish off that cup of yogurt. Maybe even some super-nonfat crackers.

Bent on tiptoe, pulling on sweats against the chill she again felt, Buffy reflected that Spike swore up and down he didn't snore. But he did. She should get Willow in as a witness, since Dawn already knew and Spike pooh-poohed her, too. He'd have a harder time refuting Willow, an unbiased witness. But she should cover him up first. And Willow would probably turn beet-red anyway and dive back into the hall with her eyes squinched shut, like she'd never seen Oz naked though not lately, of course, and it would become a big thing and likely not worth the trouble, just to get Spike to admit that he snored.

And the business about Rayne, she could ask him about that later, in case Giles called back, which she had a feeling he would. Not as if it was anything urgent, after all. The important part was that the wily old mage was gone, and good riddance, and so say all of us, Buffy thought rancorously, wrestling into the sweat top with the tasteful green embroidery.

At least, with the sunlight blazing in, the kitchen would probably be warm!

***********

Late that afternoon, Spike was sitting in the den, staring at the computer screen, contemplating adjacent dimensions and making a list of what they'd need, when Dawn leaned in from the hall to report, "Giles on the phone."

Sliding off the glasses, Spike stuck an earpiece thoughtfully in his mouth without looking around. He'd heard the phone ringing, on the weapons chest in the front room. Ignored it. He figured now that he knew what that was about and didn't want any part in it whatever.

"You talk to him, Bit."

"He's asking for you," Dawn corrected.

"Don't care who he's asking for. You talk to him. Say I'm busy. Doing his fucking translation, aren't I? No time for idle chit-chat. You tell him."

Hardly idle chit-chat, transatlantic calls. But Spike didn't care. Might owe the Watcher for bailing him out of that business with Rayne but that was done, Giles toddled off home to muck about rebuilding the goddamned Council of Wankers, and that was nothing to do with Spike, not anymore. No joy to be had there.

"Spike?" Dawn was back, leaning in the doorway. "He still wants to talk to you." When no action was forthcoming, Dawn added bluntly, "He knows you're here."

Not having come up with a way of stonewalling the Watcher without backlash that would involve Buffy, Spike said finally, "Yeah. All right," slapped down the glasses and pushed away from the table.

Bending to the weapons chest, Spike scooped up the receiver. "Yeah."

"Hello, Spike," came the Watcher's voice, dry and plummy...and cautious, a bit. "How are you? Enjoying leisure at last?"

"What d'you want?"

"Well, at least your phone manners are intact. Such as they are. I'm fine, incidentally. If a bit vexed at the impossibility of moving even the tatters of this organization at anything beyond a glacial pace.... It's Ethan, Spike: what did you do with him?"

"Been bothering you, has he?"

A crackling intercontinental silence. Then: "Yes, actually. I suppose one could say that. I find the notion of his being relegated to some abominable hell dimension troubling. And I discover I could actually use him here. His offer to assist with the restructuring of the council was not entirely without merit, I realize, away from the heat of the moment. So? To what exile did you send him?"

"Didn't miss him before, when the Initiative had him. Forgot him altogether, seems like. Why miss him now?"

"Spike, answer the bloody question," Giles responded, just as icily.

Spike scratched an eyebrow, thinking. Seemed some of Rayne's bitterness about what he considered Giles' betrayal and abandonment had set hooks, could still tug at him with unwanted sympathy. Not that he had any affection, or anything like affection, for the bugger. Just thinking about Rayne made him uneasy.

"Well, I don't know, do I?" he retorted eventually.

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"Lady chose, not me. Whatever portal she opened around him, I just booted him through, didn't I, and got on with the rest. A bit busy at the time, Rupert--doing my Icarus impression an' all."

"Yes, quite," Giles responded in a gentler tone. "So you truly don't know?"

"Not clue one, here. 'S why I put you onto Dawn, though she's got no more clue than I do. Could maybe ask Lady Gates for you, since it's her mum, more or less. Dunno if she's allowed. Got nothing to do with me, regardless. I got no special entrée there. Just the Lady's fucking 'instrument,' by her lights. Goddam Powers. Tips me a hint the size of Canada whenever she wants something busted up, slaughtered, destroyed. Pays me no mind, otherwise. Queen Victoria. S'pose she had a headsman--had to, didn't she? Comes with the job. Bet she didn't invite him to tea."

"I...see."

"So you talk to Bit some more, if you want. I'm done." Dropping the receiver on the chest, Spike crossed back to the den, commenting to Dawn in passing, "Talk to him, if you want. It's on his dime."

After awhile Dawn returned from the front room and settled on the carpet beside Spike's chair, folding an arm on his thigh and leaning her head on top. Familiar and comfortable. Nobody could get after him as harsh as Dawn could; and nobody he felt easier with.

As she started to speak, Spike said abruptly, "Don't want to know. Nothing about it. Nothing to do with me. You do whatever you please about it, Bit. Between you and the Lady, innit? Something, or nothing. Don't care, don't want to know. Not gonna run messages between 'em, come to their whistle, run their errands, like that Oz. Not gonna get mixed up in their fucking business again."

She waited a minute to be sure he was done. "Then I guess you don't want to know what I said."

"No interest whatever. No good coming from that direction. Not for us." Spike ran spread, vexed fingers through his hair. Then, frowning/squinting at the screen, he collected the glasses with one hand and let the other drop to the crown of her shining dark head, slowly petting there.

"You're scared," Dawn observed after a peaceful while.

"Yeah. So?"

"So what are you scared of?"

"That they'll set some damn thing going and try to tangle us up in it. Me. Your sis, she doesn't need that. Just got it all pretty well settled. Has her class, enough dosh to get by on anyway if I keep the translation up. Her place. Her time. Her choices. You. Her chums. Don't want that interfered with. Don't want that...complicated with trash has nothing to do with us unless we're stupid enough to let ourselves get sucked in. Ain't been stupid, have you, Bit? More than usual, anyways?"

She thumped a fist on his knee. He tugged her hair.

She asked quietly, "And is that enough for you?"

"Well, has to be, doesn't it?" Spike responded curtly. "'Cause that's all there is, or will be. Can slow myself down to everyday. Did, with the chip, didn't I? Know I was lucky to have blood provided, even that terrible pig swill. A safe place to lair up, even if more often than not I was tied or chained down to it. Not being staked another day." He shrugged. "Just living. Unliving. Whatever." He tilted a hand. "Do what you can. The time passes."

That was all inchoate in his mind. But it was all right, with Bit, not to have it all parceled out tight and logical. All right to think out loud, even if it didn't make much sense. She didn't judge him, though she'd bully and nag him quick enough, which was only to be expected. She was outside his choices, not waiting or depending on him for anything. One of the things he loved her for.

Shared context made some things easier with Giles. Could do shorthand--like that about Queen Victoria--and no need for labored explanations. With Bit, though, it was themselves they had in common. After all, she was anchored to this dimension with a piece of his soul: only natural that they mostly understood each other. So a lot of things didn't need to be said at all.

As he continued working on the list, she got up and leaned on back of his chair, arms folded across his shoulders, reading, because she pointed at the screen, commenting, "Bathing suits."

"You think?"

"Trust me: bathing suits. And sunscreen. You would forget sunscreen."

"Well, don't need it, do I?"

"How do you know?" she countered, eyes bright and wide. "It could be just like, well, sun. Or it could be like anything. Don't theorize in advance of your data. And so far, we have no data. Just a set of specifications that we're still adding to."

"Right you are. Thanks, Ms. Holmes." Spike dutifully added the items to his list.

"You're welcome, Watson. Somebody has to be the brains of this operation.... Hey: how about the mall? Climate-controlled and everything. Stores close early, but we could do supper there, wander around. You know. Bet Buffy would like that!"

"Bet she would, at that. You ask her, Princess."

"No, you should--"

"Busy here, aren't I? List gets longer, all this trash, gonna need the van to carry it all. You ask her." Deftly, Spike tucked the list down at the bottom of the screen, disclosing the current translation waiting behind. "Got to get this piece done or we won't get paid for it by the time the mortgage's due." Frowning through the glasses, that he didn't much mind Dawn seeing him in, he was sure he presented the very picture of intent, scholarly absorption. Enough, anyway, that she flounced off down the hall toward the basement, where Buffy was doing laundry or something or other.

Himself, he didn't want to offer Buffy any pressure, anything she might feel obliged to accept, reluctant to refuse. Wanted to leave her free in all her ways and her choices. She'd earned that. Wanted to hang back, wait for her cue and her lead and then follow it.

Importunate begging, that was what little sisters were for, wasn't it?

And as to the surprise he was working on so hard, preparing so carefully, that was different because he already knew she wanted that, and he was gonna give it to her: warm.

He smiled at the screen.

**********

Dawn was the first one out of the SUV after Spike backed it carefully (for Spike) down the length of the alley, leaving just enough space to get the back hatch open. Mike uncovered and started handing things out to her. About twenty bags, foam chests, and miscellaneous stuffed into oddly bulging garbage bags for convenience in handling. Not all that much, considering they'd ferried most of the stuff up last night and she'd managed to guilt Mike into going across to help her and Spike set up. Nervous as a cat with vacuuming in progress, Mike had eventually pronounced the totality "nice." So he couldn't very well back out now, right?

That it was a secret meant there was no obligation to invite Willow, Xander, or (heaven forfend!) Anya. And Dawn had no intention of being lone man out while Spike and Buffy had smoochies and probably more than smoochies. Might get some smoochies of her own in, if Mike would cooperate, which he generally did if it was her asking, Dawn thought smugly, setting one of the blood coolers by the wall and swinging back to receive the other. In front of the SUV, as the light faded, Spike could discard the blanket and continue deflecting Buffy from investigating what was being unloaded from the back, which was a good thing to keep him occupied since he'd been maniacally useless all day except for driving, of course.

Buffy was stomping back and forth across the alley in tight dark green fleece pants, a fuzzy beret like a lime halo, and a jade (celadon?) down jacket, hugging herself against the chill. Dressed for the opposite season, Dawn was shivering herself, what with her bare legs and flip-flops showing her freshly-painted toenails (another occupation to keep Spike from coming totally unglued).

Under her knee-length hoodie Dawn was wearing the most skimpy, thong-y bikini (yellow with deep pink hibiscus there was barely enough material to show, with their elongated and highly symbolic pistils, but the matching sheer, floaty overshirt took care of any display problem) she'd been able to wheedle Spike into agreeing to on their swimsuit-buying detour at the mall. They'd had to go: naturally, Spike didn't own a swimsuit. And he'd gone totally overboard on what he'd bought for Buffy. At least it was 99% spandex, so it should fit despite Spike's wildly fanciful notions of Buffy's proportions.

Strange: you'd think he'd know.

While he'd still been dazed with crimson spandex, Dawn had managed to smuggle in something suitable for Mike, just on hopeful spec, and Spike had signed for everything without seeming to notice, so that stratagem had worked out perfectly.

When everything was piled and handy, it was time: nearly sundown on the first day of vacation. They could have come anytime, really, except for vampires' problems with daylight since although the house had been all fitted up with necro-tempered glass, the SUV still hadn't and Dawn didn't want to contend with any more reasons for Mike to opt out than he already had. And there was also the contrast factor.

"OK, Spike," Dawn called. "We're ready!"

Sliding between the SUV and the side of the alley, Spike started collecting baggage. Dawn firmly disentangled him from loops and handles and herded him to the alley's back wall, reminding him, "We'll collect it later."

"But somebody could--"

"It's a blind alley, Spike. Blocked by a locked, parked vehicle only slightly smaller than a bus. Or it will be: Buffy, you can lock up now."

"Spike has the keys and the thingie," Buffy pointed out as Spike dragged her by both wrists into the remaining clear space between the rear of the vehicle and the wall, as wild-eyed and frantic as though he thought she was gonna attempt an escape.

It seemed Spike had tossed the keys on the front seat when he'd rid himself of the blanket. As Spike edged off to retrieve them, Mike swung out of the hatch and shut it, offering, "I could take the van back to your place. Come back and fetch you, any time you say."

"Oh, no you don't!" Dawn grabbed Mike's wrist and though he could have swatted her like a bug, that was shackle enough to hold him. "Who's gonna lay the bonfire right, so it doesn't catch the cabana?" Leaning close, she imparted the dire whisper, "Who's gonna dig the latrine?"

"Spike, he knows," Mike began feebly, falling silent as Spike backed into view, hitting the squeaker that made the SUV chirp a report of being locked, except he hit it again and then had to test the nearest door to determine if two chirps meant it was unlocked again or only locked twice until Dawn took the squeaker away from him and steered him back in front of the baggage.

"Spike, focus, for heaven's sake! Lock onto the rift: can you feel it?"

Jittering around in place, he shut his eyes, breathing nervously. "It's gone, Bit. Shut itself off and--"

"It's done nothing of the kind: these rifts have been in place for centuries. You know that! Deep breath," she commanded, not sure if he was capable of working himself into hyperventilation, considering he didn't need the air at all, but not wanting to find out. "Hold. Three Mississippi, two Mississippi, one Mississippi. Release. Now try again. Focus, dammit!"

Slowly he rotated, turning side-on to the wall, left shoulder a little hunched and head tilted, frowning with his eyes tight shut. He lifted a hand for her to take, but Dawn snatched Buffy's hand instead and set it in Spike's clasp, taking Buffy's free hand and determinedly linking to Mike, behind. It didn't matter where she was in the linkage. Might not even matter that they all be linked, since they weren't being inserted individually: once the way was open, it was open until released. Spike wouldn't let it close until they had all the baggage and supplies transferred.

Dawn couldn't see or feel anything different. Couldn't sense the rift on her own. But somewhere inside her she felt the slight tug on what she'd learned was the thin skein of soul-stuff that was her connection to Spike: Spike aligned and locked tight to the rift, wanting in. And in some way completely beyond words, she knew how to give him what he wanted. Consent, it was. Permission. Even benediction of a sort. Power, certainly--fine-tuned as a laser beam. Just the right pressure in just the right place. It didn't come from her but through her, somehow. Not hers, but hers to give and grant.

And his to use.

It required both of them.

The wall was still solidly there, but it had ceased to matter. Hand in hand in hand in hand, they went across.

Buffy was gonna be sooo flabbergasted!

**********

Buffy hated surprises. Hated and loathed them with a fierce passion. Surprises made you look dumb, everybody waiting on your reaction. Not knowing what was expected, what to do.

When she was tugged forward when there shouldn't have been any forward, when the cold, constricted twilight suddenly became distance, and dim red sunlight glinting off slowly undulating waves, and her boots were sinking into the warm sand of a pristine beach stretching off as far as she could see to either side, she knew exactly where to look, what to do.

She flung herself at Spike, and tried to explore his tonsils with her tongue, and was as thoroughly all over him as she knew how to be and remain more or less vertical, Spike staggering a bit because Buffy's legs were wrapped around his waist. When she had to leave off a second to breathe, she used the breath to tell him, "It's wonderful, it's--"

"--hoped you might like it, nobody around to trouble you, stays just like this--"

"--perfect, however did you find it? You--"

Then they forgot about talking again until Dawn interrupted with rude gakking noises, saying, "Spike. Yoo hoo, Spike! You can let it shut, now, we have everything inside. Or here. Or however you're supposed to say it. Spike!"

While Spike stepped back to do whatever he did, Buffy flung her fluffy beret in one direction, her jacket in another, and plunked her rear on the sand to haul off her boots.

Warm! Gloriously, stultifyingly warm. Hot, even! A tang of salt in the air but that air unstirring, not so much as a breeze.

As Buffy started to haul up the hem of her sweat top, Spike's hand on her shoulder stopped her. She looked up at him inquiringly, then followed his gesture, endearingly abrupt and almost shy, to a purple-and-white striped cabana like a miniature circus tent. Or maybe the stripes were blue: the red light made everybody, even Spike, look like bruised plums.

Although Mike looked uneasy, the illumination didn't seem to be doing the vamps any harm, Spike would have checked on that, of course, so nothing to worry about on that front and she could forget about it. Anyway, the cabana was perfect and it was plain she got first crack at it. She ran for it, bare feet pounding in the sand.

Inside were an enormous pile of towels on one of several canvas chairs, a jerry-rigged shower (a big plastic container with a hose) suspended where two corner poles met, and on a hanger, a wisp of gorgeous crimson nearly nothing that hardly qualified as clothing. Sweet but unnecessary: she would have obliviously stripped, out there on the sand. Nothing either Spike nor Dawn hadn't seen before, and she was as indifferent to Mike's gaze as to that of a fish, or a squirrel. But because it was there, she put the bikini on, wishing for a mirror as she tugged out wrinkles in awkward places until the spandex clung smooth as a second skin. Maybe a good soaking would help.

Bursting out of the cabana, she charged straight at the water. Having removed only his boots, Spike was sitting in the sand having a cigarette. Dawn and Mike were conversing between two big shoulder-high piles of wood. Buffy stumbled and almost fell when she saw the nearly transparent float Dawn's removal of her hoodie left revealed. Catching her balance with an overhead wave, Buffy turned it into a summoning gesture, calling to Spike, "Come on! Last one in's a rotten egg!"

He bounced to his feet and was running, long floating strides in the red twilight, and hit the water in an arrowing dive just an instant before she did, so she knew she didn't need to worry about rocks or sucking undertow or any hazards like that.

The water was blood warm--more like a hot tub than an ocean. She stroked out, through and over the placid, undulant waves, to proper swimming depth. That was a surprisingly long way out: the beach must shelve very gradually.

Turning in place and buoyant as a volleyball, throwing her hair back, she started looking around for Spike, both above and below the water. The dim light didn't penetrate: she couldn't see anything. And her eyes stung, afterward.

She was sure he was going to grab her leg or porpoise up underneath her. Instead, what must have been a deliberate splash drew her attention farther out. Spike was swimming there. As she watched, he jackknifed, diving. Bare shoulders, bare back, bare.... Oh.

About a minute later, he surfaced near her, balanced upright in the water like a seal. "You're naked," Buffy announced blankly, pushing water away from her.

"Don't have to work so hard, love. Water will pretty much keep you up. More salt in it than you're used to. You'll want to sluice off, after. Brought fresh water for that. It's--"

"I saw it. If I swallow some, is that gonna be a problem?" Buffy looked around her, suddenly registering the alien landscape absent of trees or grass, just dunes rolling down to a sea placid, almost, as a lake. A different motion. A different texture. Stranger than she'd initially noticed.

Like Spike, who was watching her take it in. Not visibly nervous anymore, but still watching. "As to that other, Bit said I should so I did, to shut her up about it. Doesn't mean I got to wear it, though. Got a couple of changes in the cabana. Have you fetch me a towel when it's time. Or just tell Bit to squinch her eyes shut, not look if she don't want to see.... Ain't got everything. Nothing for you to kill, of an evening, 'cause there's nothing alive. At least anyplace I could find, a few miles roundabout.... Nor in the water, neither," he added, in response to her nervous downward glance. "No fish to nibble your toes, nor seaweed to tangle your legs nor jellyfish to wash up on the shore to poke at with a stick. No shells to collect. All powder, long since. Air's a bit thinner than what you're used to, but didn't leave Bit in serious lack while we were moving things in, setting up, a few hours there, so it should be all right.... No evening, come to that. Always just like this. Old sun, can't force out enough light to read by proper, much less fry a vamp. Always just there, hand's breadth from the horizon. Doesn't rise or set--"

Buffy whispered, "Where are we?"

"No clue. Not the slightest. But we can get back, and that's all that should signify. If...if you like it, I mean. Enough to stay awhile."

She knew he was gonna dive, and he did, and she had no trouble staying with him since he wasn't trying to get away. She latched tight to a handful of hair--enough to bring them face to face, mouth to mouth. The bikini proved to have enough slack to accommodate the needed adjustments and holding on hard, clutching close, was a decent substitute for gravity. The water kept floating them to the surface but they were far enough offshore, Buffy figured it didn't matter.

When they finally leaned back in the water, separate again except for an arm outflung by each and clasped at the wrists, not even needing to stroke, and Spike took up his self-deprecating recital of ways the place didn't quite meet his rigorous specifications for Buffy pleasing, wasn't totally a fantasy beach out of some movie, she dunked him, then hauled him close when he bobbed up again.

Nuzzling under his chin, licking up the outside of the shell of his ear, Buffy stated fervently, "It's perfect. 100% deep-dyed, no preservatives, no fat perfect. It's warm!"

Spike allowed himself to be reassured.

Far away, onshore, a bonfire was leaping and small, distant music played. Without asking, Buffy knew the wood wasn't local and batteries were included. Every likely need provided for. There was therefore food!

After a final (for now) rocking kiss, she and Spike turned and stroked for the shore.

Chapter 2: Terminal Beach


Dawn opened and set out the container of potato salad and Buffy dished herself some onto a paper plate while Spike instructed Mike in the fine art of reheating takeout spicy wings in a barbeque basket with a handle not nearly long enough for a vamp, considering the bonfire. As an ex-mercenary, Mike probably knew twenty times what Spike did about camping out but was tactful enough not to let on, accepting the instruction and its fiery result without comment. Probably didn't care all that much either way, Dawn judged, since he'd already had two cups of blood and likely regarded the spicy wings as dessert.

That was when Buffy innocently asked for a napkin and there weren't any.

Spike blew up, acting as if her remark about napkins was a coded admission that she didn't like the place because it was dead and unchanging and not up to her expectations, not fucking good enough for her, and Buffy protested and declared him insane since all it was, was frickin' napkins, for heaven's sake, both of them throwing their arms and yelling.

Since Mike had backed off, opting to be merely a large and disinterested feature of the landscape, it was clear that Dawn intervention was called for.

Springing erect, arms tight to her sides, she screeched, "Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Dawnscreech having achieved the required startled silence, she rounded on Spike, declaring, "There are three convenience stores within a block of the alley. They're open all night. I'll go and get some napkins, all right?"

Not looking at anyone, Mike put in quietly, "Not alone."

That was so self-evidently reasonable that it took discussion to sort out. The upshot, of course, was that Spike would accompany her since it took both of them to open the rift anyway.

Dragging her hoodie on and scuffing into her flip-flops, Dawn said flatly, "Fine. Fine!" and stomped off along the ascending line of their tracks.

Though it was plain, even from this side, where the rift had to be, Spike was forever tuning himself to it and locking on. No focus whatever. They burst through into the dark alley, frigid by contrast. Dawn pulled her shoulders in and hugged herself, walking fast--slap, slap, slap, up the alley--refusing to notice whether Spike followed or not. It was all his fault anyway, with his insane-o hypersensitivity about whether Buffy would like his obviously inadequate and napkinless offering. But she had to notice because napkins cost money and she hadn't thought to ask for any.

Points deducted for that, as well as for overlooking the omission of napkins in the first place: reviewing and finalizing the list had been her responsibility. With Spike scattering in twenty panicked, hysterical directions, obviously somebody had to keep a cool eye and a clear head. Plain who that had to be.

If she didn't retrieve the situation, she could be into debit points for the whole night.

So she fussed and fumed in the garish light of the Quik-Mart, waiting for Spike to charge the box of napkins and a couple packs of cigarettes on the plastic for a clerk who probably thought he'd seen everything but not a barelegged girl in pink flip-flops in the company of a barefoot, grim-looking tough wearing only jeans, whose face, chest, and hands were bloodily sticky with what was, in fact, barbeque sauce. In December.

"Cookout," Dawn explained brightly. "Forgot the napkins."

Didn't help much to make them seem anything like normal, she could see. So she skittered quickly after Spike, who'd stopped outside to light a cigarette, indifferent to the cold.

"Spike, get a grip," she implored, dancing and freezing. "It's not the end of the world, for God's sake. It's napkins!"

Spike turned toward the alley, pacing slow. He seemed to be having trouble keeping the cigarette lit, stopping to relight it three times. If he could, Dawn thought, he would have run and finished the evening with a stinking drunk, savage fight up at Willy's if he could find somebody stupid enough to take him on; but that would mean leaving her alone and Buffy and Mike stuck on the Terminal Beach and he couldn't quite make himself do that.

He was putting himself through agonies. It was totally demented.

Only not from his own perspective. To him, it was real.

"Look," Dawn said, catching his arm at the head of the alley, "there are advantages to dead: no ants. No mosquitoes or sand fleas. You're imagining Buffy sees the place like you do, like any vamp would--barren, sterile, lifeless."

"What would you know about it," Spike retorted in a harsh, dismissive mutter.

"I asked Mike, of course. Because he doesn't like it. He's only there because I didn't give him an out. He was willing to admit to 'nice,' which translates as 'tolerable.' No more life than a mural. Nothing much to touch, nothing at all to fight, no smells, barely light. Everything blood-colored and still. Pretty enough on the surface but only on the surface. Ancient and dead and worn-out underneath. Like the inside of a vamp's head, blown up to be a world."

"Thanks a lot." Spike pitched the cigarette that wouldn't stay lit and stood uselessly tamping a fresh one on the pack.

"But what you're not taking account of," Dawn ran on earnestly, "is that's not what it is to Buffy. It's warm, and a break, and a gift, and new to her. We're there. And that's enough. It doesn't have to be perfect to be enough, Spike."

He set his shoulder against the corner bricks, head bent. "She said. Said it was perfect. Wasn't."

"It was as close as we could come in the time we had. She was happy. Until you started throwing a fucking imbecilic tantrum about napkins!"

'Wasn't about the napkins. And your sis doesn't want you talking like that anymore."

"It's you I'm talking to: who else is gonna hear, Spike? Let her be happy, even if it's not your sort of happiness. If she can enjoy it, let her. It was for her, remember? You did what you thought she'd like, what you hoped she wanted. You don't paint my toenails because my toes are so fascinating, you do it because you love me and we're together and it's a connection, a pretext, and it's fun, Spike! Silly and stupid and fun! It doesn't have to be the answer to the Meaning of Life, it only has to be fun! And you're ruining it! Wanting it to be everything, mean everything, when it's only a Goddamned extradimensional picnic, Spike--!"

Finally moving, Spike gathered her in, elbow crooked around her neck in a sort of loose headlock, thumb and fist under her chin. "Cold. Should get you back to the fire."

Leaning together, against each other, they sidled along the SUV to the back wall. Maybe it was a better omen that Spike located the rift as easily as lifting a hand to a doorknob.

"Break out the wine," Dawn advised as they emerged on Terminal Beach. Grabbing the plastic sack from Spike, Dawn flapped it triumphantly overhead as they put fresh footprints on what was becoming a path. "Napkins! We have actual napkins! We've saved the day! The world is again safe for the sticky-fingered!" Making a bee-line for the beacon fire, she rotated before it as on an upright spit. The heat was glorious. Her teeth might even stop chattering.

Spike had stopped by Buffy, who was making a point of fastidiously licking her fingers, as though that took the whole of her attention.

After a teetering silence, Spike remarked quietly, "Gonna stow the card and some miscellaneous, wouldn't do to lose that. Then swim out a ways. Get clean." Gazing out over the water, he added, "Want to come?"

"In a minute," Buffy responded coolly. "Don't worry: I'll find you." After he'd turned, trudging toward the cabana, Buffy muttered, "Jerk!"

Dawn approved. The only proper approach when Spike was being stubborn or obnoxious was to ignore him. Offer no encouragement at all. Even Buffy knew that.

The day was rescued from minus points. Dawn figured she'd brought things about even.

**********

Mike accepted the gooey cracker and then a quick-following offered paper napkin, even though that was all backward: he should be attending on Dawn, not the other way around.

He had minions to do to his word, as was proper, in the slowly developing lair toward the east side of town. If they didn't do as they were told, or didn't try hard enough to anticipate what he'd want, or tried too hard to be quicker than him and do before they'd been told, like one particularly annoying and ambitious subordinate he hadn't quite decided to dust, Mike wasted no time putting them in their place...which was under his word, under his hand. He'd learned that from Spike and practiced it ruthlessly, as a Master Vampire should.

He knew precisely where he stood in the complex and ever-shifting hierarchies of vampire societies.

But with Dawn, that was all upside down. She'd commanded him here, commanded him to sit and stay, then waited on him. It was her pleasure to do so, even though he knew perfectly well that she'd wanted him here so she wouldn't be relegated to least, in the company of just Buffy and Spike. So she wouldn't have to do all the scut work and the heavy lifting while they went off and fought or fucked or whatever they happened to be doing at the moment. And then she turned around and with happy solemnity concocted s'mores one by one and passed them to him, even though he'd come, and stayed, to her word.

It made no sense.

The s'mores were good, but sticky. He scrubbed his fingers in the sand, then dusted off with the napkin and drank the rest of the jug rosé he'd poured into the plastic cup he'd had some blood in before, for courtesy. He tried never to be in Dawn's company unless he was fed up, needing nothing from her in that way. His demon mostly minded him now, but he'd made some bad mistakes before, misjudgments, and didn't want to make any of the predictable ones. Always found some new one to make, seemed like.

"I don't like that smile," Dawn announced, so Mike bent his head further and put the smile away, inside, like folding away trueface. "What's that smile about?"

"Thinking how I want to do right by you, and don't know how. Knowing I'll mess up some way, wondering what it'll be this time."

"Don't worry about it," she responded, with a small smile of her own. "Don't rush off and do something insane, like get a soul. You do fine, considering you're only six. You're not here on a trial basis, Mike. You're Spike's declared get, and you get a pass from Buffy, and that's pretty rare all by itself."

Mike stopped pouring more wine to point with the cup-holding hand. "See, that's part of it, right there. Slayer, she's like his sire--he told me so, and he hops as best he can when she calls 'frog.' So that's plain. And his claiming me as his get, even though it ain't so, that's still plain, too. We both know where we stand, or mostly."

"And where's that?" Dawn asked, settling down in the sand to nibble at the edges of a s'more she'd finally made just for herself.

"One day, I'm gonna beat him. Then things will change. Don't know exactly how, but I know they will. He knows it, too. Stays wide of me." Mike finished pouring the wine, then capped the jug and set it back in the plastic tub about half filled with melting ice. "But that's strange, too. Couple times, in that business with that Rayne, I thought there was nothing for it, to keep you safe, but to do for Spike. Take him out of the equation and it would fall apart: mage, maiden, and...whatever Spike's made of himself, don't know exactly what that is, standing in the sun, opening portals, rifts.... Seems like he's part mage now but he says no, it's just the reading, the translation...." Dawn's eyes were dark and wide and she was breathing a little fast, upset by what he was saying, and Mike guessed he knew why. "Yeah, know you'd be real put out at me if I done that, and there were always complications, so I didn't. But the thing is, Dawn, I was wrong. He wasn't what I thought him, he brought it all down his ownself, like I was sure he couldn't. Kept you from being hurt bad, which I couldn't see any way to do or I'd have done it. And I don't know how I could be so wrong about a thing like that, that I think I understand. So how am I to know how to do, how to be, with all that I don't understand?"

Thing about Dawn, she took his puzzlement as seriously as he felt it. Didn't wind it around with attitude or try to twist it into something different from what he was feeling or try to convince him he didn't feel what he did. He could say anything to her straight-out and know she'd answer the same. Plain spoken, almost, as a vamp. Except she wasn't. She was a Key. And who the hell knew what that meant?

Something of that inner thump of discouragement must have showed, because she asked, "And what was that about?"

Mike shrugged. "Thinking how it's easy to talk to you. And yet it's not. Because I don't know what you are. Or what you want."

"Most of the time, I don't, either," Dawn responded with a wry smile. "Playing it by ear, here. Just like you are. Making myself up as I go by what I choose, what I do. Like Spike does. By who I...care for. Who matters to me. 'I learn by going where I have to go.'"

Mike knew by the cadence, and her tone, that they were borrowed words: "That's poetry."

Dawn cleaned off the last of the s'more from her fingers the same way Mike had: first the sand, then the napkin. It pleased him, that he'd given her something, taught her something, no fuss about it, just there. "Spike has this big overdue library book in the basement. I'm trying to think my way into it, the pieces that connect for me. Try to take in the pieces that don't, that are out of my reach but I know are there because Spike, he sees them. Explains them to me sometimes, when I ask. When he has time...." She was a little sad, wistful, and Mike was indignant on her behalf.

"He should spend more time with you, now he's dumped those dumb notions about organizing vamps, and people too, a different way." Then he stopped, thought. "But that's wrong. It all came out how he saw it."

"Mostly. Not exactly, but mostly. Fuzzy logic. Dreams. Knowing how people move and moving himself to be in the right place at the right time. An inexact science, divination."

"That's like dowsing. Forked stick." Mike made the picture with his hands, thumbs together, fingers spread.

"Yeah, I guess. I don't understand it either. Neither does Spike. He just does it. I don't know what he is anymore, either. But I know he's no good whatever at standing still. And that's what he's trying to do now."

"Don't want to talk about Spike anymore," Mike mentioned sulkily. "Just used that for an example, how I know now I don't see things clear, or all there is, so I don't know how to do."

"You haven't found the right distance yet. And the pieces keep moving."

He'd said that. Or maybe she had--about how people related to each other. They'd both remembered it, anyway, which was a touch of connection he felt. Turned him moody, though.

"Don't know what you want from me, Dawn. Don't know what the right distance would be, or how to find it." He looked around the sterile beach, over the sterile ocean, full into the dying sun or whatever it was, moon maybe, he didn't know.

He hated alien dimensions. Made him feel lost, not knowing where he stood in relation to the most fundamental things. Light. Dark. Life. Death.

The meaningless landscape in which Dawn blazed with light for him--brighter than the bonfire, far brighter than the sun, abundant with life and heat and profound significance. With her here because she wanted him here. It meant so much. And yet he didn't understand it. And didn't know how long he could endure it. Until he couldn't, he supposed. Maybe that would be his next dreadful mistake.

She had her head bowed, her face curtained in her long, smooth hair, hands clasped on her knees. "I don't know either. But I know it's important to figure it out. I'm trying, Mike--really I am." Then she looked up at him, still and intent. "You're gonna be older than six. But what if I stay seventeen forever? How do hills find the right distance? Or trees, after centuries?" She looked really worked up about it.

Landslides, he thought. Tectonic plates. Vast uprisings, like in the Pacific.

He said, "They move," and leaned, gathered her in, and she consented to be gathered, so slight a creature to mean so much, and he kissed her carefully, her human face and his, and they were at troubled peace together.

Later, he thought, he'd give Spike a try in the ocean. Never had fought him in water. It might be different there.

**********

Spike was idly taking up the fine sand that had been mountains, birds maybe, towers, brothels, bars...or maybe not. Maybe there never had been any life here.... He let it sift through the hourglass of his fist. Got some more, did it again.

"It's like a different way of seeing," he said, because she'd asked.

"Like what?" Buffy prompted, squirming in a really distracting way, apparently trying to scoop the perfect Buffy-hips-shaped depression to lie back in.

Up the beach, Dawn and Mike were tossing a Frisbee, racing back and forth, the pair of them about nine-tenths naked. Well, Bit had started out that way, but because Buffy had nagged Spike into tucking his naughty bits inside the black rubber band she claimed was a swimsuit, after their shower, of course then Mike had to do it too, emerging from the cabana in a similar suit except blue, strutting like a gladiator: showing off how he'd have made at least a couple of Spike, broad and deep. In some respects, anyway, Spike thought complacently, patting his belly and regions south. Don't recall any complaints.

Hadn't tried to kick sand in Spike's face, like that old body-building ad, ninety-pound weakling. That would likely be later.

The sedate elder generation were relaxing, toe to toe, with iced wine in the mostly hypothetical shade of a beach umbrella Spike had liberated from the Sunnydale dump. Never knew when a thing like that might come in handy.

Being under at least nominal shelter muted his demon's gibbering terror of the sunlight, a constant undercurrent. Likely Mike, he was plagued with it too but doing a fairly good job of holding off blind panic, not letting on. At least Dawn looked happy, racing and shrieking, so that was all right. What Mike was there for, after all. Keep Bit occupied and entertained, freeing Spike for Buffy-shagging that'd been brilliant, so far, and more presently to look forward to. After a nap, maybe.

The unmoving sun played hob with Spike's sense of time, but he guessed it was about midnight. Whether they'd go back before Sunnydale sunrise or make another day of it here was still under lazy consideration.

"Is it like a mirror with a crack in it?" Buffy continued, stretching out, testing the fit between her butt and the ground. "Or like--"

Spike shook his head. "Nothing that straightforward, pet. Doesn't go into words all that well, no more than music does." Since she was still looking at him, all mussed lovely and sleepy-looking, he kept trying to answer. "It's a mismatch--doesn't quite fit. Two edges--two, anyway. And the tension of the mismatch vibrates where the edges touch." Illustrating, he put the side of one hand against the palm of the other, pressing as hard as he could until the muscle tension started a visible shaking. Letting the tension go, leaning to collect the cup of wine, he continued, "And some way, I can feel it. Know it's there. They're everywhere. Some, no bigger than a pinhead. Wouldn't know how to pass through those, haven't tried. Others, five, ten stories tall--"

"--Like where the Sh'narth come through," Buffy commented, naming the huge, plodding demons they'd had practically a migration of, in the summer months.

"Yeah. Have to be, innit? Size those things are...." He drank some wine, let the cup rest on his chest like a cool thumb wet from the condensation. "Places, I guess, where the dimensions snag on each other, hang up a bit, and thin where the snags catch together. Not entirely the one thing nor the other. Never much noticed or thought about 'em before. No reason."

"Magic?"

"Natural. No stink of magic whatever. Portals, now--that's another matter, and you'd have to ask Red about that. Portals, they're all sorcerous, far as I've been able to tell. Since that business with Rayne, I been reading up on 'em online--Watchers' archives. Found a 15^th century source by a daft bugger who made a study of 'em, twenty dozen spells to create and manipulate 'em, there and gone like a sneeze. Chap could get himself clipped neat, halfway through, if he wasn't spry enough in departing. All the charm of strolling into a bear trap. Rifts, though, they're more stable and predictable...'cause they're part of the Natural order, I expect."

"Are there more like this? In Sunnydale, I mean?"

"Galore. Hellmouth, that's like a pry-bar punched clear through a ream of paper. Lots of tears and distortions as reality flexes, like the Lady says it does, around that pin. Layers don't smooth just because you pull the pry-bar out, unmake it."

Buffy had her speculating face on, and Spike paid a bit more attention. He nudged her foot with his.

"Oh, I was just thinking," she responded, collecting her own cup. "Big traveler, me: all the way from Los Angeles to Sunnydale. Globe-trotter. Well, that's not gonna happen, all right. Things are quieter, but I still have responsibilities and this is still home. I mean...not this this," Buffy corrected herself incoherently, jerking a hand at beach, ocean, sky. "The other this--Revello Drive. Well, you know what I meant. But I was thinking...day trips? See new places? Really, really new places! One small step, and boldly go, and still back for breakfast. Sort of like traveling, but without the actual traveling, you know?"

Her face shone with enthusiasm (and half a cup of wine), and Spike felt most of the residual tension from the Napkin Incident melt into righteous smugness.

"Might," he said, casually, just as though he didn't feel as if he'd successfully palmed an ace and could bet the limit, knowing the hand was his. As if he hadn't been a frantic week assembling bait, hoping she'd take it, swallow it down. "Might do. If you like."

He lit a cigarette, leaned back, and blew smoke at the brick-colored sky.

He was contemplating a bright future adventuring with Buffy, successfully liberated from her Puritan workaholism and actually needing him for something, when water descended on him--wet, hard, sudden.

Buffy yelped and jumped, caught by collateral splash. As Dawn stood by, giggling, Mike pitched the bucket and ran straight into the sea.

Spike stood a moment, wiping his stinging eyes clear, then slicking his hair back--resigned as much as irate.

Nothing else for it: pup demanded a lesson. Give him one, then.

Maybe it'd be enough to distract them both from that bloody unnatural sun.

**********

The ice melted. Next, the firewood was exhausted, and the bonfire burned down to coals and at last to ashes. The fresh water for cleaning off the itchy, crusty salt was all gone. So no more swimming. They ordered takeout Chinese for lunch, mystifying the boy delivering it, per directions, to a shadowed, blind alley. Then the blood ran out, and Dawn really thought that would be the end of the party. Instead, Mike requested escort through the rift and pickup in a couple of hours. In the alley, Dawn quietly asked Spike if he wanted to go, too, insisting she didn't mind, it was dark enough now not to bother him, but he only said, "No, I'm fine," although Dawn hadn't seen him feed in two days, and no fresh sign he'd been snacking on Buffy--more an occasional sex thing, she gathered, than a feeding thing, though they never talked about that.

So she shrugged and they went back to their beachside gin rummy game until Spike thought it should be time. A few minutes after they crossed to the alley, Mike blazed up on his bike with Sue at pillion. Stepping down from the bike and setting the kickstand, Mike remarked, "Thought somebody should keep an eye on things here."

"Hi, Dawn," Sue called, with a waggling wave. In game-face, naturally: she was still a fledge, and Dawn wasn't altogether happy at the way Sue lifted on her toes to bid Mike a very warm goodbye.

But she supposed it was OK because Mike looked faintly irritated and pushed Sue away, following them through the narrow place at the side of the SUV. Dawn couldn't help noticing that he smelled of his funny cigarettes.

She and Spike opened the rift as easy as pushing a door ajar. She thought they were getting really good at it. Mike lagged a step, then set his shoulders and barged through into the sudden, enveloping warmth.

Braced against the open sunlight, Dawn thought. She knew it bothered them both, though neither had said a word about it.

Guessing her thought, Mike commented, "I'll be good for awhile, now," and ahead, Spike choked back a laugh without turning. Mike gave her a glance she couldn't interpret. Abruptly turned sullen and impassive, Mike took longer strides she had to hustle to keep up with.

His water games seemed to have ended in a draw: he and Spike had returned separately, banged up and lame, neither gloating. Apparently the buoyant quality of the water threw them off, kept either from getting a good hold, landing a solid hit. At least, that was what Mike had blamed it on. Spike hadn't said anything, unless it was to Buffy.

Since the Napkin Incident they'd gone all couple-y, seldom out of reach or touch with one another. When they were like that Dawn tried to avoid eavesdropping: what wasn't silence was often embarrassing. Like the Sue/Mike smoochies she was trying not to think about.

Trotting down the beach, Dawn chirped, "At least you could get out. This is beginning to remind me of the Endless Birthday, when nobody could leave."

"Came back, didn't I?" Mike responded curtly, as though she'd questioned it, doubted him.

We were not in a good mood this evening.

Arriving first at the umbrella, Spike tossed a small something to Buffy with the comment, "Here you go, pet."

Dawn had seen him opening the SUV to collect something but hadn't noticed what it was.

Buffy's cellphone, Dawn realized as Buffy began pushing buttons to review the missed calls and the accumulated text messages.

Buffy gasped a dismayed, "Oh," then handed the phone up to Spike, who held it at nearly arm's length, squinting to make out the characters on the tiny display.

He went still, head cocked consideringly.

"What is it?" Dawn asked, reaching for the phone, but he passed it back to Buffy.

Sliding his cigarettes out of his jeans pocket, he lit one, saying to Buffy, "Suppose we should. Or stay a little longer, maybe--let him cool his heels." He didn't sound too hopeful, proposing that, and didn't seem surprised when Buffy replied indignantly, "Of course not!" over her shoulder, bouncing off to change in the cabana.

Spike bent to catch up his T-shirt and slowly pulled it on. Dawn could almost hear the wheels going around.

"What?" she demanded. "Willow gone berserk? Xander has a new demon girlfriend? New apocalypse? What?"

"No, nothing like that," Spike responded absently, pushing his arms into the sleeves of his button-down shirt, sliding it on, looking around for his boots. Mike, she noticed, was already efficiently gathering the CD/tape/radio and other oddments into one of the empty foam chests, preparing for departure. No way Mike could know; but he apparently didn't care that he didn't know, which left Dawn the only one out of the loop and annoyed about it.

Bending to slap sand out of his hair, Spike added, plainly thinking aloud, "Can leave most of the gear, I suppose." Then he looked up at her. "Bit, collect whatever should go home. Should be bags you can use. Five minutes. Slayer should take at least that long...."

He rambled off down the beach, still in search of his boots.

Since it was plain nobody was going to tell her, Dawn flounced off to help Mike make the judgment calls on what to take, what to leave. Not that Mike needed the advice. Dawn needed to give it--have authority over something!

Pressing the lid onto one chest and setting it aside, Mike remarked, "No need for you to get all bent out of shape about Sue. She's nothing."

"I'm not," Dawn said loftily, vigorously shaking sand out of her hoodie before putting it on. "Why should I care if she's climbing all over you, kissing and everything? It's nothing to me. You're not my personal property. You--"

Mike had straightened: large and calm in the angry light. "Would be, if you're agreeable. Set my mark on you once, knew where we were then, but that's all right, that's over.... Though I'd do it again in a flash, if you once gave the word. Want to. Regardless of what Spike says, or the Slayer, neither. Only yours to call. But you didn't want that, after Spike marked you and you started to know what it meant, to bear a vamp's mark, so I saw it got taken off again. Back to the beginning, like I'd never marked you at all. Left you free of that. Because that was what you wanted. So anytime you take a notion to claim me, whatever you figure would be claiming, I wouldn't say no."

Dawn was unprepared for the challenge. "I don't have the right," she said hastily. "It would be like forbidding you to feed. Or hunt. Or anything else you have to do, that has nothing to do with me."

"If you asked," Mike replied steadily, "I'd try. Any of those things."

And he meant it. Dawn knew he did. Make a promise they both knew he couldn't keep, and hate himself for failing, and her playing policeman, and it would be awful. "We're not ready for that," she said quickly. "I can't lay down conditions--"

"You already do. And you can't tell me I don't abide by them, neither. Don't come to you except fed up, and not take all of it, so nobody's died to be the price of your company. Don't do nothing with you except what you say and want. And it can go on like this, if that's what you want. Not all I want, though. Not by a long shot."

Blurting, "I have to find my flip-flops," Dawn skittered away. She so wasn't ready for this!

**********

After the SUV was loaded, Buffy shut the hatch and turned to find Spike holding out the keys. Looking at her steadily, he said, "Mike's gonna take me to collect my bike. I'll be along in a bit."

He wanted her to face it all alone. Maybe he wouldn't show at all--duck out, go unfindable--

"In a bit," he repeated, knowing perfectly well that she was panicking, and why, the cowardly bastard. "Hour at the most. Couple things I need to do I don't expect there'll be time for, later. Time enough to make a proper tea."

"By now, Willow's already made tea," Buffy pointed out, as if that mattered.

Spike didn't say anything, only waited for her acknowledgment. Not her consent--not the way he'd announced it.

Abruptly exclaiming, "It's freezing out here!" Buffy pushed past, toggling all the locks, and climbed in on the driver's side as Dawn slid into the passenger seat. After Mike backed the motorcycle into the street, then blasted off, loud and fast, Buffy keyed the ignition. She immediately turned the heat to max although it would take a few minutes to start warming and blow frigid air until then.

As Buffy eased out of the alley, Dawn asked suddenly, "It's Angel again, isn't it?"

"God, no! Don't even think it! That's all we'd need!"

"Then what?" Dawn slapped her hands on her knees in frustration. "What's everybody being all super-secret and mum about? Has my goldfish died and nobody wants to tell me? What?"

"You don't have a goldfish."

"But I could, and if it died, you'd be behaving just like this. What's everybody freaking out about and why won't you tell me so I can freak out, too?"

Stopped at a light, Buffy held the top of the steering wheel in a death grip and for a moment laid her forehead on her wrists. The heater was finally cranking: a small mercy. Already, she was lonesome for the beach. "It's nothing. It's just Giles, come for a visit without telling anybody, so I don't have anything ready, no food in the house, probably, and maybe I should take a pass by the store first--" (Which appealed not least because it might mean Spike would get there before her. Then he'd have to handle it alone!)

When the light changed, she yanked the SUV into the turn toward the supermarket.

"Oh," said Dawn, disappointed. "Is that all. It's that Rayne thing, then. Why show up unannounced about that? Spike already told him he doesn't know."

"I totally don' t know, Dawn. After he called, I didn't think anything of it. And Spike wasn't-- Wait a minute: Spike talked to him? When was that?"

Dawn squinched up her face, thinking. "About a week ago. Sunday afternoon, I think it was. Spike was working on the translation. Mostly. And I talked to him, too, a little. Said I don't know, either. The Lady chose, just like Spike said."

Pulling into the supermarket parking lot, Buffy looked aside at Dawn for a moment. "Then maybe it's you Giles wants to grill. Not Spike."

"Oh! Because...of the connection." Dawn began bouncing anxiously. "I can't do that, Buffy! I can't, she'd skin me alive, or come back and force me out of my own personal body again--"

"See? Now you're freaking. Happy now?"

Buffy took a parking space with no other vehicles around and turned off the key. It was gonna take a long, thoughtful time to choose exactly the right groceries to entertain their guest.

**********

When Spike pulled up to the curb, there was no sign of the SUV.

Well, no matter. At least he'd got himself fed, which was the main thing. Figured it might be a bit of a siege: Watcher hadn't come all this way to take No for an answer.

Might take awhile before Rupert accepted that that was all the answer he was gonna get.

As Spike stepped down from the Honda Shadow, the front door of Casa Summers opened, spilling light: Watcher, coming out to stand on the porch, arms folded. Heard the bike's muted rumble of approach, most likely. Well, no use to foot-dragging. Pitching a cigarette, Spike went up the walk.

"Spike," Giles greeted him gravely as he started up the steps.

"Rupert. Come back inside, then, it's a bit nippy out. For California."

"I gather you've been away. And incommunicado," Giles remarked, following him inside, both turning left into the front room and taking their accustomed places: Spike in the big chair next to the weapons chest, Giles on the couch next to where his gear was piled--overcoat, scarf, an overnight bag and a briefcase. On the low table in front of the couch was an empty teacup, saucer, and spoon.

Willow came in then, bearing the usual tea doings on a tray, flashing a glance between Giles and Spike as she set it down on the table. "Oh, good! I heard the door and I hoped that meant-- Where's Buffy?"

"Oh, she'll be along, I expect. In a bit. Enough there for two?"

"There will be. I'll bring you a cup." She started to hustle off, then turned in the doorway. "What are we doing about supper, do you know?"

Spike shook his head. "Have to ask Buffy. Can always get takeaway, something or other. What time's it got to be?"

"About six-thirty. Should I call Xander and Anya?"

Was this a crisis Scooby meeting, she meant. Spike thought about it a moment. "No. Or let Buffy call it," he decided. "Don't think so, though. Just a nice chat with the Watcher, dropping by, is all. That right, Rupert?"

"You know why I've come. And no, Willow--nothing official, not in the sense you mean. Merely a private matter." As Willow left, and Giles finished messing about with pouring and preparing a fresh cup of tea, then replacing the cozy on the pot, he went on, "Willow didn't know where you'd gone. Somewhere out of phone range, evidently. And nowhere is out of phone range...on this planet. In any case, she didn't know. There seems to have been a sudden influx of ignorance here whilst I've been gone."

"Dunno about that." Scratching the back of a hand, Spike added, "I'm all over salt, sand. Will you be all right on your own for a little? Catch a quick shower, back by the time Red has the tea brewed, all right? Buffy, she should be along any minute now."

"All right," Giles responded without looking up. "I've waited this long. A few more minutes shouldn't matter."

True to his word, Spike made a quick business of showering and toweling off. As he was changing into fresh clothes in Buffy's bedroom he heard the front door and was down the stairs soon enough to help Buffy and Dawn carry in about fifteen bags of groceries. When everything was piled on the kitchen island, Buffy shot him a look. "You better not have used all the hot water. Dawn, help Spike put everything away. I'll be down in a few minutes."

"I have no bathroom rights," Dawn complained, reaching for a milk jug as Buffy made her escape to the second floor, leaving Spike in charge again.

He smiled at the hand-off dance they appeared to be doing. He hadn't intended it and didn't mind, really. He wasn't afraid of the big, bad Watcher and was utterly determined Rupert would eventually have to leave as empty and unsatisfied as when he'd arrived.

Because once that door was opened, there'd be no end of what came through.

Wound tight as a spring with it, though, the Watcher. And something stubborn and baleful about the eyes, and his willingness to wait. Spike had seen Rupert do that cold resolve before, and it promised to be a pretty fierce dance before it was done. Have to keep Bit clear of it, though, as much as he could....

Crouched to stack cans in the proper cupboard, he said over his shoulder, "When Buffy's done, you take your turn at the shower--"

"There'll be no water left!"

"Regardless. Wait a bit first, then, for the boiler to heat a new batch. Anyway, keep to your room. Unless I call you. And I don't figure to."

"But I have to have supper! What, am I gonna have a fucking tray sent up, like I was a--"

"Bit, don't be tiresome." Spike rose to collect cellophane packets of pasta, boxes of cereal. "I don't want to bring the Lady into it any more than you do. Watcher's not in a position to force anything. Not that there's anything to force. Best if you keep clear, though. As much as you can. Don't want to get into a fine old punch-out with Rupert...not in front of Buffy. Don't want it to come to that."

"Right. You know I can't, how mad she'd be!"

"The Lady, you mean," Spike said, clarifying that Dawn was referring to the Power that, for convenience, identified itself as Dawn's mum. Lady Gates: the Lady of Doorways. When Dawn anxiously bobbed her head in confirmation, Spike said, "Then best you stay scarce. Anyway, you scoot off. I can finish this."

As Dawn left, Willow came in and started grabbing groceries. Seeing what was needed and doing it, no fuss: a thing he liked about her. She asked worriedly, "Spike, what's this about?"

"Haven't exactly talked about it yet, except a little on the phone awhile ago. Best I can make out, Watcher's bound and determined to find out what's become of Rayne. And no matter what anybody says, you keep completely out of my head or I'll make you very sorry. I like you an' all, but that's out of bounds. Make whatever excuse you want, but don't you do it."

Turning from the open refrigerator, Willow gave him a long, assessing look. He looked right back, not shy of her gaze. He could pretty much figure what she was thinking, deducing. Almost as quick as Dawn in that way, sussing things out on the least clue or seemingly none at all. But that didn't signify, so long as she did what he'd said.

"All right," she said quietly, returning to her task of stacking yogurt cartons. "It's not as if I ever do it unless you say, you know. Not for a long time."

"Know that. Just you keep it in mind, what I said."

"Your head is inviolate. Right. Yessir."

Buffy came down, drying her hair and looking perkily nervous, and a poll was taken on what kind of takeaway to order. Then they all made small talk, mostly Giles rabbiting on about who was doing what to who, at the Watchers' Council, and his chances of being named Head Boy himself, which he now rated as slim to none, since he was here and not there, lining up supporters and advancing his own interests.

"Then why leave?" Buffy asked, honestly confused, and no wonder: she knew the least of any of them present.

"A matter arose," said Giles distantly, gazing at Spike. "Nothing I'd anticipated. The least, occasional niggling, to begin with. An annoyance that's gradually become intolerable."

But Giles left the matter there in the interests of civility until supper had been delivered. As the various cartons were opened and set out, Spike would have taken some up to Dawn but against his advice, she'd come down and helped clear off the table in the den so nobody would have to balance paper plates on their knees.

She whispered to Spike, "Well, it's not as if he can apply the thumbscrews with everybody here! Besides, I'm hungry!"

It was a stiff, quiet meal until Willow started asking them about where they'd gone, what they'd been doing, and Buffy and Dawn launched into excited accounts of the excursion...suitably sanitized for kiddies and prissy Watchers. Spike had no interest in that and wandered out on the porch to have a cigarette.

In under a minute, Giles came in pursuit, stopping short and trying to look casual when he found Spike had gone no farther than the porch rail.

"Thought I'd do a flit?" Spike asked, idly amused. "Take more than you to drive me from my home, Watcher. After you come all this way, might as well have it out. Tell you again: got no answer for you. Neither has Dawn."

"Come back inside. I've something to show you."

"When I'm done. Finish your supper."

"Very well."

**********

Willow decided what she was hearing was the sound of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The aether crackled with it.

Looking with other sight, she found Giles' aura flexing, roiling, and changing colors with the intensity of his determination, whipping across the space between to lance at Spike--all below the level of consciousness, she was certain, semi-mage that he was. Giles generally contained himself better. Contained himself completely, in point of fact. The energies were only the intensity of his want, made manifest on the aetherial plane--not outright spells or magickal attack. Nothing she needed to intervene or stop.

Because without effort, Spike was fending it off, letting it pass by or through or around. His aura, capable of flaring the width and height of the room, was ice-white and barely extended beyond body contours. Shimmering like crystal, untroubled and unchanging. Channeling the energies away, as he could channel sunlight; deflecting and defending him from the determined influence Giles was trying to exert.

Mundane senses showed her only civilized impasse: Giles on the couch, leaned intently forward with arms braced on knees, slightly frowning, insisting Spike must have noticed something in the instants of Rayne's transference elsewhere. Anything, some hint to identify the destination.

Spike, leaned back in the big chair, at apparent ease except for the occasional abortive gesture toward the cigarettes in his pocket, his hands otherwise spread and calm on the chair arms, answering with a question: "Why would I take any notice? Just wanted the git gone, and he was, and be damned to him. Felt myself flying to flinders, Watcher--too much, more than I could manage. Losing...containment. Coherence. Can't much focus on anything when that's happening."

Huddled on the floor beside the chair, Dawn looked anxiously back and forth between them as though she were watching the strokes, approaches, and retreats of a tennis game. Perched at the other end of the couch, Buffy merely looked unhappy to have two people she cared about so obviously at odds.

Willow figured they were into the second set. Spike had won the first, insisting he didn't know where Rayne had been shoved to, and Giles unwillingly forced to concede that point and come at the issue from more oblique angles instead of head-on confrontation.

Changing focus, Giles began in a patient voice, "Dawn--"

"You leave her out of this," Spike cut in at once, his left hand dropping protectively onto Dawn's shoulder. "She's only the key, the conduit. Told you: she don't know any more than I do."

"Dawn, I think we must have that talk we've deferred now several times in the urgencies of some crisis," Giles continued smoothly, as Dawn's eyes grew enormous in her pale face. "I have now no reason to doubt your contention that you are an...avatar, a resident emissary, of one of the Powers of the universe. Only through the action of such a Power could a mage of Ethan's skill and strength have been summarily translocated against his will. Is Spike correct, that the action was all the Lady's, that you had no choice or knowledge of what was done through your agency?"

Dawn sat up straighter, her shoulder against the chair. "What's that in English?" she challenged, and Spike twitched a small, covert smile.

"Oh, I think we understand each other well enough," Giles responded. All the same, he simpled it down: "Do you know what was done with Ethan? More than that he was merely sent away?"

"Don't know and don't care," Dawn shot back fiercely. "As long as it was bloody painful and permanent, the worse, the better, as far as I'm concerned. He hurt Spike! Nobody does that and gets away with it, not if I have anything to do with it!"

"Bit," said Spike, leaning toward her, "all good chums here, yeah? Watcher's not about to bully a child, try to wring knowledge from her she doesn't have."

"But could have," Giles muttered. "Could get." Louder, he added acerbically, "And she is not a child, not in any meaningful sense of the word."

"She's my sister," Buffy stated, finally weighing in, although addressing the air. "And I'd be really, really upset if anybody tried to force her to do anything she didn't want to do." Spreading her hands imploringly, she turned toward Giles. "I know it's important to you. But Spike's said he doesn't know, and we all know what a really wretched liar he is--"

"Thanks, pet," Spike growled.

"--so why can't you just accept it, let it drop?"

"Because," Giles began, then turned suddenly aside to pick up his briefcase and snatch out a sheaf of papers. Brandishing them at Spike, he declared, "Technically, you may not know. But you've guessed, haven't you?"

"What's that, then?" Smooth and controlled as a cougar, Spike rose and took the sheaf from Giles. He held the packet out, squinting the way he did without his glasses, that he was too vain to wear in front of Giles. All Willow could make out was that it was computer print-out of some sort: multiple columns stretching across the long dimension of the page. Printed landscape, and Spike was trying to read it portrait. Spike shook his head. "Can't make nothing of this. What is it--footie scores?"

Willow held out her hand. "Can I see?"

Shrugging, Spike passed the sheaf to her. She scanned it quickly, identifying the columns, then more slowly, taking in the data. "It's a tracking record," she reported, running her finger down the last column. "Of what user Specialgrant_2 accessed on what days, for how long."

Specialgrant_2 was Spike's assigned login name on the database of the Council of Watchers. Willow was Specialgrant_1.

Spike was bent forward, staring at Giles. "You been spying on me?"

"Following your recent interests, yes," Giles replied calmly. "Extracurricular browsing through the source materials. Before the crisis, you downloaded quite a lot of material on the occult properties of silver. Since then...." He held out his hand. "Willow, may I?"

Rising from her straight-back chair, Willow surrendered the print-out back to Giles, shooting a glance at Spike, who now looked angry and sullen at the realization his movements online could be tracked and had been. Willow figured she now knew why he'd been so fierce about her taking unauthorized liberties with the contents of his head.

As Giles said, there was knowing, and then there was knowing. Spike knew something, and Giles had caught him at it.

Running his finger down the final column, Giles was reporting, "23^rd November, portals, three separate items. 24^th November, portal spells, sixteen items, two downloaded, presumably for further study. 27^th November, a few things on the registry actually pertaining to the current translation, amazingly. But after midnight, local time, a raft of descriptions of dimensional realms identified and to some extent classified--particularly those categorized loosely as 'hell dimensions'--and means of reaching them--natural and sorcerous. 2nd December, when you'd presumably studied and absorbed at least some of this material, we have: Quor'toth--three items. 3rd December, Quor'toth--seventeen items, most highly specious and conjectural because so little is known of that realm. 4^th December, Quor'toth--four items. 5^th December--"

Dawn burst out, "But that's where--" As Spike spun and glared at her, she suddenly shut up, clapping a hand over her mouth.

Too late: set and match.

In a most unconvincingly mild tone, Giles inquired, "That's where what?"

Irritably pulling on the back of his neck, Spike moved a step aside--by no coincidence blocking the line of sight between Giles and Dawn. "So, suppose he's there. What of it? You any the happier for thinking you can put a name to it now? Changes nothing."

Buffy raised her hand as though it were a class. When she caught Giles' attention, she asked, "What's a Quor'toth?"

"A reasonably infamous Chaos Dimension about which remarkably little is known," Giles replied.

Spike directed grimly, "Tell her why nobody knows bugger-all about it."

"Yes, well." Giles pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. "Its notoriety is, in part, based on its being used for the disposal of criminals, highly disliked rivals, inconvenient spouses and the like from the Renaissance onward. Links to this dimension appear to be widespread and easy of access. However--"

"One catch," Spike told Buffy. "Nobody's ever come back."

 

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