TITLE: Possession

AUTHOR: Shadowlass

EMAIL: shadowlass2000@yahoo.com

SUMMARY: Spike couldn’t stay dead, and he couldn’t stay away. But where Spike goes, trouble always seems to follow….(S/B, post-Chosen)

RATING: R

DISCLAIMER: No, I don’t own BtVS, just AtS. Wait, not that either.

NOTE: Many thanks to my wonderful betas, Chris, Mezz, and sunbrae.

Prologue

So this was hell. Spike was surprised; he’d expected more in the way of sulfurous fumes and Ricky Martin music. The whole thing was really quite unexceptional, and as far as Spike was concerned, if you’d seen one boring cave, you’d seen them all. In fact, he—hang on, cave?

Spike fought off the death-induced grogginess he'd been enjoying and took a good look around; with clear eyes, it wasn’t hard to recognize where he was. “Ah, motherfucking—”

“You are surprised, vampire?”

“Hell yes, I’m surprised. Why wouldn’t I be? Thought I was rid of you a year ago,” grumbled Spike, forcing his sore body to its feet as the massive demon regarded him calmly, eyes glowing green.

The demon’s gash of a mouth stretched hideously, and Spike realized the thing was smiling. A chill ran through him, and he knew with a shudder than anything that amused the cave-dweller couldn’t be good news for him.

“Is this a punishment?” Spike asked warily. The creature only looked at him. “You know, like Sisyphus, or Tantalus, or some other ancient twit? I’m going to be tortured by you for all eternity?”

“For what would you be punished, vampire?”

Bastard. “For a hundred and twenty years of blood and gore,” Spike responded, suddenly weary. He’d worn the pendant and averted the apocalypse … well, that apocalypse, Spike amended … and it wasn’t enough. All those people alive because of him, and it still wasn’t enough.

Why should it be? Wasn’t like you knew what would happen when you put on that shiny bauble … you just thought you’d fill in Angel’s shoes, same as you always do—fill them with Buffy, with Dru, with the whole heroic martyrdom....

“Shut up,” Spike mumbled to himself.

A rumble sounded opposite him. The demon was now inspired to laugh, it seemed.

It stepped closer to him. “I give you no punishment. You met all of your challenges, and now I have given you what you asked of me.”

Spike stared at him. It never paid to deal with demons; they always stung you in the end. But he’d been desperate when he decided to seek out the demon, crazed, and hadn’t thought past the moment. He’d just wanted, needed, to leash himself, to protect Buffy. “Our deal was over a year ago, mate,” he pointed out carefully. “I did your trials, you gave me a soul.”

“You did not ask for a soul. You asked to be made what you were.”

“Yeah, what I had when I was human—”

“What you were. The soul was just another trial. And now I have given you your reward. You are now as you once were. A human. Weak. Pitiful. Without defenses. The prey of any who would do you harm.”

“Then why are you calling me vampire?” Spike shot back, unconvinced.

“I thought you would enjoy one last reminder of what you were,” the demon said maliciously.

Spike forced himself to remain calm. “You know, I don’t feel any different,” he observed neutrally. “You sure you have the right of it?”

The creature grasped him with a leathery hand. “See for yourself,” it said indifferently, and cast him out of the cave into the bright noon of the savannah as Spike screamed and struggled against the sunlight’s burn.

***

Chapter 1

“It was a mistake.”

Buffy didn’t respond to Giles’s statement. It was hard to just ignore the things her Watcher—former Watcher— told her, but she didn’t have much of a choice anymore. It seemed like everything she did was wrong, a mistake, a sure step on the road to calamity, and possibly a felony as well.

Giles hadn’t gone back to England after the First Evil was defeated, which should have made her happy; he was there every day to help her, guide her, advise her … Every. Single. Day. And it quickly became clear that that although she’d been miserable when he left after Willow brought her back, she’d grown up since then. She didn’t know when it happened—god knew, she didn’t feel like an adult most of the time—but his frequent criticism and attempts to influence her in every little way grated. What Buffy studied, her choice of town, what she let Dawn wear? It was all wrong.

As if she could even try to lecture Dawn on clothes, Buffy thought crankily. Dawn knew what she used to wear to school; she’d just laugh at her if Buffy said Dawn’s skirts were too short.

At the moment, the topic of criticism was her insistence that the Potentials—not Potentials anymore, she reminded herself, but Slayers—be allowed to return to home to their families.

Now they were all gone, across the country and across the sea, some of them. They’d been offered a choice, and while some of them had decided to stay together, none had chosen to remain with the little band from Sunnydale; they wanted to make their own way. Except Kennedy, attached as she was to Willow. The Scoobies weren’t going anywhere without Willow, and that meant Kennedy came along as an accessory. A pushy, entitled accessory.

When she wasn’t keeping her thoughts under control, Buffy sometimes wished Willow had fallen for Vi instead.

“It was not a mistake,” Buffy said wearily. “They’re just kids. They should be with their families.”

“They need instruction, training,” asserted Giles.

“They need their parents,” corrected Buffy. “They need lives.”

Giles sighed. It seemed that no matter how much he argued, she automatically defied him. It didn’t matter what the topic was, really—she did it to spite him. There could be no other reason. It was hard for him to believe, but she was even more rebellious than she had been as a teenager. “If we had enough Watchers it would be one thing, but there are so few left. If the new Slayers aren’t trained they have no chance; they have a duty, a responsibility, they are—”

“One in all the world?” asked Buffy with deceptive sweetness.

Giles subsided a little. “No, of course not.”

“I was the last one.”

“What?”

“I was the last one who was one in all the world. These girls will never know what that is, to be the only one—to have the weight of the world on them. And that makes me happy. The only people they’re ‘one in all the world’ for is their families. They’re not going to—nobody’s going to—” Buffy broke off for a minute. “They got the basics while we were in Sunnydale; they know what it is to fight monsters and save the world. They can continue training on their own, or they can join us, but I’m not going to make them do anything,” she finished tightly, and pulled away from the table.

She left the room without another word, moving to stand in the living room as she caught her breath. Nobody was going to resurrect those girls to make them do their job; no one was going to use the blunt force of you’re the only one, it’s your duty to keep them in line the way the Council had attempted to control her.

No, not just the Council. Giles, too.

The new Slayers didn’t have to stand alone, the way she had so often.

And now, neither did she.

They’d settled down, all the Scoobies, into a calm life in Santa Rita. Still in Southern California—Buffy didn’t think she’d be able to live anywhere else; she’d always be a California girl, even if her work was done by night. What was the other choice? Patrol the beach? Good for the tan, but otherwise not very effective.

For the first time in what felt like forever, money wasn’t an issue. Andrew had sold the prototype of a video game he’d created and had signed a contract for more, and he’d made a long speech, with many references to god knows what, about it being a privilege to be the “benefactor” of a superhero. Giles seemed to find the situation distasteful—talk about a Giles word, Buffy thought to herself—but it made sense to her. Andrew reveled in the reflected glory, and he wanted to stay with them. He enjoyed a family life, he liked to say.

Sometimes she wasn’t sure if that’s what they were anymore. She didn’t remember the last time she trusted Giles completely; she’d loved him like a father for so long, and then he’d left, and … basically acted exactly like a father. Well, she already had one of those type of fathers, and one was more than enough.

She’d thought she was over it, the sense of betrayal she’d felt, thought it had all been water under the bridge. She’d been kidding herself; nothing was ever solved that easily, no matter how hard you hope.

She wanted to love him the way she had. Before she died, before she came back and he left. Before he tried to kill Spike.

Now Spike was gone anyway, but it had been of his own choosing, not because somebody looked at him and decided he wasn’t worthy, the way Giles had.

The way she had, so many times.

For a moment she was angry, bitterly angry, at her father, at Angel, at Riley. At Giles. They left, all of them, until she didn’t know what it meant anymore when a man told her he loved her. No, that wasn’t right; she knew exactly what it meant, and that was why she couldn’t believe Spike when he told her how he felt. When he showed her, with his blood and his body and finally his life.

No, not his life. He’d let Glory torture him to help Buffy, but when he’d died … that hadn’t been for her. That had been for the world. For all the people he’d killed. For him. She didn’t know what it was for, but it wasn’t her. Finally, he thought of something other than her.

This time she couldn’t rage against being abandoned. She almost wished he had left her the way the others had.

It was easier when she had someone to blame. Now, she just had regrets.

***

Those killed in the great battle against ultimate evil remained dead, and Andrew wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing.

He hadn’t seen Warren or Jonathan or any of the Potentials who’d been lost in the brave fight to save the world—Amanda, for instance, or dear—dear—

Ugh. It really was hard to keep their names straight.

He paused a moment under a tree on the broad sidewalk to peer into his bag of newly purchased comic books to assure himself that the clerk at the store hadn’t cheated him and stuck in a Little Lotta instead of one of his specially ordered four-color beauties. No, everything was there, and Andrew patted the bag in contentment and continued walking.

Where was he? Oh yeah, he hadn’t seen any of them. Sometimes he wished they did visit. They could talk, right? Catch up, find out what the other was doing. It was comforting, like they weren’t really gone. He knew the First hadn’t meant for his visits to comfort Andrew, when he’d appeared as Warren or Jonathan, but talking to them always made him feel better, unless they were telling him to kill a pig or something like that. But when they were telling him things weren’t his fault, that was pretty good.

He supposed the important thing was that the world had been saved and they were all together now. Andrew and Xander and Dawn and Buffy and Giles, all living in the big house on Laurel Drive. It was nice, especially the game room with its wall of video games and its combination region one/region two DVD player, so he didn’t have to wait for great shows like The Prisoner to be released in the U.S. Although, actually, The Prisoner had already been available in region one, but it was a little out of his price range before. But it wasn’t now, and that was important too, right?

And also, they didn’t have Potentials sleeping underfoot anymore, and everyone had their own room. And Xander hadn’t had to fix the windows once.

But sometimes Andrew, who was definitely not holding his ear against the wall so he could hear what Xander what doing—he’d promised Buffy he’d stop, and he had—sometimes he heard Xander call out to Anya in his sleep. During the day Xander bravely pretended just to be himself, all cheerful and cracking jokes, but Andrew could tell his mighty heart was breaking.

All summer Andrew had tried to cheer him up with little gifts—a box set of The Man From Atlantis, a mint-condition copy of issue three of Rima, the Jungle Girl—the best comic ever, no matter what Tucker said—and a really amazing pudding cake that took Andrew all afternoon to make. None of it seemed to work, though. Dawn seemed more excited by the cake than Xander had; at least someone besides Andrew appreciated the magic of coffee and water forming itself into pudding while baking inside a cake. But even as he gave Xander the presents, he knew that nothing could alleviate his suffering. Nothing on this earth.

The others weren’t always as sensitive to Xander as Andrew was. Buffy had suggested to Xander that he start dating again, and Xander said maybe her boyfriend could fix him up with his sister. Then there were some kind of unpleasant words, since Buffy didn’t have a boyfriend, and Andrew had run out of the room, and when he came back they were talking about sandwiches. That night was the first time that Andrew heard Xander talking in his sleep. Talking to Anya.

He bet Xander would have done anything for a visit from the ex-vengeance demon. In the old days, Andrew might have summoned a demon who could grant wishes to help Xander out, give him a visitation or something nice like that, but he didn’t do those kind of things anymore. If only he did, for Xander’s sake.

But now, thinking on it, it occurred to Andrew that maybe it would be better for everyone if the dead just stayed that way. Because in front of Andrew, blocking his path, was a ghost.

It was calling his name.

“Get thee behind me, Satan!” screeched Andrew, flinging his arms up in front of his face, his comics flying.

“What?” said Spike in surprise.

“What?” repeated Andrew stupidly.

“For god’s sake,” muttered Spike. You  never can do things the easy way, can you? he berated himself. No, you always have to do things in the most unpleasant manner possible. Lose your girlfriend to your grandsire, get hardware implanted in your head, fall in love with the Slayer—the Slayer, for god’s sake!—get a soul shoved back into you, and now you can’t just find Buffy, no, first you have to deal with the world’s oldest living virgin and his overactive imagination.

Although since Spike had regained his humanity, that probably meant he was the unlucky holder of that title. Ah, even better.

Really though, it could have been worse. The demon could have resurrected him wearing one of Harris’s shirts; then he would have prayed for death. Which of course he wouldn’t have gotten, but it would have been one more thing to be pissed about.

“Aren’t you dead?” exclaimed Andrew.

“What’s it look like?” returned Spike testily.

“Well, you look alive,” Andrew allowed. “But the First can do that, so how do I know you’re real?”

Spike bent over, picked up one of Andrew’s comic books and bounced it off the boy’s chest. “Real enough for you?”

Andrew teared up. It was a miracle! Spike had somehow survived the cataclysm that had claimed the town of Sunnydale and the lives of so many valiant warriors. “How did you survive?” he asked in watery amazement. “The whole town collapsed!”

Spike rolled his eyes. Was it his imagination, or was the boy getting stupider? Was that even possible? “I didn’t survive, you git. Notice anything?” he asked sardonically.

Andrew looked at him warily. “Well, you do seem a bit taller—”

“I am not taller, I’m standing in sunlight,” Spike growled.

“Oh. Then you … okay, wait, I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I’m human.”

Andrew’s eyes grew big and his mouth formed an astonished “O.” Then he crumpled into a polite little pile at Spike’s feet, nicely framed by his comic books.

***

Willow could tell Kennedy didn’t hear her when she said goodbye. Kennedy was on the phone, talking with Giles—well, arguing—when Willow said bye in a perfectly normal, not at all hushed voice, then grabbed her jacket and hurried out the door before Kennedy could register what she was doing.

It felt kind of wrong, but being away from the fighting? Felt really, really good. And she shouldn’t feel guilty about that … right?

Willow started down the sidewalk at a brisk pace. Okay, it wasn’t like she could outrun Kennedy, and she wouldn’t even try. But after Kennedy argued with the others, she always bitched about them, and god, Willow just wanted a little peace. She was supposed to be researching a paper for school, but she’d happily stay up a few hours later if she could have some peace now.

Willow wasn’t sure she should even be surprised by how things were. She still marveled at the way Kennedy had pursued her the year before; everywhere Willow turned Kennedy had been there, looking at her. Smiling into her eyes, touching her hand. Willow had been a little unnerved by the attention—not because it was, you know, attention, but because Kennedy was so … well, she was kind of Cordelia-like. Pretty and confident, a natural leader. She wasn’t like anyone Willow had been involved with before. Which, considering that her “before” consisted of two people, maybe didn’t mean much.

Tara and Oz hadn’t been much alike on the surface, but they were both all … wind beneath my wing-y for Willow. They were strong inside; they didn’t care if anyone deferred to them, or listened to them, or even looked at them. They didn’t need reassurance from anyone else.

Kennedy wasn’t like that. She was always pushing, especially Buffy. She wanted to be heard, respected. She wanted to be a leader. She hadn’t wanted to wait her turn when she was a Potential, and now that she was a Slayer, she thought it was her right to butt into private talks between Buffy and Giles, and that it was okay to flare up if they didn’t agree with her. Once, after a Kennedy blowup, Xander had called her Faith Lite—“all the drama, but now psychosis-free!” And for one horrifying moment, before she caught herself, Willow had started to nod.

Thank god Kennedy had already stormed from the room.

Sometimes Willow felt she could outline her days in the ups and downs of Kennedy’s voice, soft and tender at night when they were in bed together, shrill and demanding with others during the day. She was always tender with Willow, unless they were arguing about the others.

But they couldn’t stay in bed forever.

Something Buffy had said to her out of the blue during the summer popped back into her head out of nowhere: “You don’t have to become involved with somebody just because they want to.” Willow had asked what she meant, but Buffy had backtracked and then started babbling. Like it was just a random thought.

But now Willow was trapped with Kennedy—no, living, not trapped; no one was making her stay there, she reminded herself—while the others were together in their big comfy house, having fun all the time, together all day, all snuggling up in their jammies at bedtime and sipping cocoa. Well, okay, not cocoa, it was still warm at night, but the point was they were together, and she was across town with Kennedy, because the stress was too much to take when they were all together. Kennedy had been after her for weeks to get their own place, and finally Willow agreed. Buffy hadn’t argued nearly as much as Willow wanted her to.

God, Willow wished she was there, not here.

It was ridiculous to feel trapped. Unreasonable.

So why couldn’t she stop? She thought the tension would ease since Kennedy had become a Slayer and Buffy didn’t have as much pressure on her anymore—didn’t feel that the whole world and every one of the Potentials were relying on her.

What a joke! They argued more and more, and even when they were alone, Willow found herself avoiding talking about Buffy or Giles or the others. Because if she didn’t take Kennedy’s side, it was a betrayal. So instead of being with the friends she loved, she was across town, walking on eggshells. She didn’t want to hurt Kennedy.

But mostly? She didn’t want to have to try anymore.

***

The thumping at the door was insistent, and Buffy hurried across the living room to open it.

Then she stopped dead, stunned by the sight of Spike standing before her, dressed in his customary attire of black jeans, black T-shirt, and duster. Spike, who’d been gone for months, whose cool flesh had been engulfed in flames even before she left him to die in the school’s basement.

He’d come back. Like Angel. Like her.

“Spi—ke?” she breathed.

He stared at her, re-memorizing the fall of her hair, the glossy pink of her lips. The lines around her eyes, deeper than any 22-year-old should have. He’d thought, when she’d first told him her plan for the Potentials, that those lines would ease when she was not the only one who was chosen, but instead they were deeper.

“Hello, love,” he said softly.

“Are you—real?” she asked after a moment. Didn’t sound stupid at all when she said it, he thought.

“That I am.” He shifted Andrew, draped across his shoulder in a fireman’s hold. The kid may have been skinny, but carrying him a few blocks and then just standing there holding him was enough to make Spike’s arms ache. Time was he could have hauled a big strapping man or well-fed milkmaid miles if he needed to find a good place to dispose of the body. But that was then, when he didn’t have a heartbeat. Or a soul. Yeah, he was just full of humanity now; it was about ready to pour out his ears.

“Do you mind if I put the kid down?” he asked awkwardly. Buffy was still blinking at him as if she was trying to clear her eyes, and he didn’t want to punctuate his exceedingly graceless re-entrance into her life by dropping the boy.

“Yeah, I’m actually conscious now,” piped up Andrew. Buffy hastily moved back, and Spike swung Andrew down. The reedy blond wavered for a few moments before throwing himself down on the couch with an attitude of exhaustion. “He gave me the scare of my life!” he told Buffy with a shudder. “And not only that, he hit me with my own graphic novel! And then he—oh my god, where are they?” he suddenly screamed, turning to Spike. “Where, where?”

“Where’s what?” protested Spike.

“My graphic novels, my graphic novels—my comic books!” he exclaimed at Spike’s blank look.

Spike shrugged. “They’re on the ground back where you lost it, I’d say.”

“Oh! That’s just—oh, forget it! I’ll get them myself! Don’t forget to hold dinner,” Andrew exclaimed to Buffy, rushing out the front door.

Buffy managed a weak smile. “He has to rescue his babies,” she told Spike.

For a moment they just looked at each other, then she stepped closer and raised a hand to touch his face gently. With wonder, the way she never had before, when he would have given everything for a kind touch from her.

No, not never. She’d touched him like that at the end, in the days leading up to the big fight and his show-stopping immolation. At the end, he wasn’t just a thing to her.

“It’s really you,” she whispered. He shut his eyes, drinking in her touch.

“In the flesh,” he murmured. He didn’t want to startle her, didn’t want to break the fragile mood. He reached up and covered her hand with his, and she let him. For once, her flesh didn’t sear him, didn’t burn. Didn’t cleanse.

And his didn’t chill hers.

“You’re—human,” she realized after a long moment. “How did it happen?”

“The demon I told you about last year—that one that gave me the soul?” She nodded. “After I went up in flames, I woke up there. Thought it was the afterlife. Thought I’d be pushing boulders for all eternity, but it was just a test, the whole thing. Having the soul. Getting tortured by the First, too, I guess. He said this was what I earned.”

“And you came here?” she probed softly.

Spike shrugged. “Sunnydale’s even more of a hole now, I hear,” he said casually. “Thought I might as well branch out. Weather’s nice in California, and this seemed as good a town as any.” God, he was a liar. Didn’t give a shit about sunny California—as far as he was concerned, the only difference between it and yogurt was that yogurt had an actual culture. There was only one reason for him to go to Santa Rita, and it was the same reason he’d gone back to Sunnydale after his first trip to Africa.

God, he was an idiot.

And she knew it, apparently. “How’d you find me?” Buffy asked, still a little dazed. “I mean, you can’t do the smelling thing anymore, right?”

“Yeah, no super-smelling sense anymore. ‘Course, it never worked over distances larger than, say, Rhode Island, so it wouldn’t have worked here anyway,” Spike noted dryly.

“So, how’d you…?”

“I have my ways,” Spike said dismissively.

“Did you ask Angel?” asked Buffy, beginning to regain her equilibrium. A few years ago—a year ago, even—she knew she wouldn’t have said Angel’s name so comfortably, but there was a lot of water under the bridge. Or perhaps she was becoming calloused, as she’d long suspected.

Or maybe she was just growing up.

Spike grimaced in response to her question. She’d always known how to make him jump, sometimes not in a good way. “No, I did not ask Angel,” he returned a little shortly. As if he’d ever ask that lummox anything, except where he bought his clothes. Had to know where not to shop.

“Then where—”

“Your father,” Spike broke in. Now it was her turn to flinch. “Called him up and told him I had something of yours.”

Buffy smiled faintly. “I guess being human isn’t a guarantee of truthfulness,” she observed after a moment.

Spike didn’t look away, and finally she glanced down. She knew what he meant.

She always had.

***

“So, school? How was it?”

Dawn shrugged. “It was school,” she told Xander, but that was kind of a lie. She was in a private school now, thanks to Andrew, and it was so much better than public school it wasn’t funny. She was enjoying her subjects for the first time in years—Buffy had said, when she’d seen the results of Dawn’s first few tests, that she’d forgotten that Dawn used to be a really good student.

Okay, maybe the good student stuff was something the monks programmed into her, but she was still enjoying it. Even if the uniform sucked. Her teachers were so cool, and kids were encouraged to pursue what they were interested in, rather than just going along with the class. And the best thing was, all her school records had been destroyed when Sunnydale went bam, so she had a clean slate and her counselor hadn’t lectured her once.

Xander’s nice car from pre-Sunnydale destruction was gone, but he’d gotten another one, this time an SUV like her mom’s. Big enough for everyone in the house, and perfect for the owner of a construction company, also thanks to Andrew. Xander couldn’t do the precise hands-on work he used to, not with one eye, so Andrew had given him start-up money, and Xander found some of the guys he used to work with in Sunnydale and set up his own firm. Now he was in charge of building a new subdivision, and could take off every day at three so that he could take Dawn home. He usually came in with her, had a snack, and went right back to work, because he said he wanted the guys to see that although he was the boss, he still worked hard.

Xander parked in the driveway and went down to the sidewalk mailbox as Dawn rummaged through her purse for the key. As Dawn opened the door, she could hear the muffled sounds of the television inside, which was weird, because Buffy and Giles hardly ever watched TV. Of course, Andrew loved it, but he usually liked to watch on the big-screen in the game room, not the normal-size set in the living room. Lately he’d been yammering about putting in a home theater with a projection TV, but Dawn’s new friend Sarah had one, and the remote looked like something out of “Star Trek,” which—come to think of it, that would probably make Andrew extra happy.

It was time for “Melrose Place,” apparently. “Oh come on, Kimberly, you can do so much better than Michael,” grumbled the person on the couch. Which was Spike.

Dawn came to a dead stop and dropped her bookbag. Xander, walking slowly behind her while flipping through the mail, bumped into her and gave her a puzzled nudge. “What’s the hold-up?” he prodded.

“H—h—hhh,” stuttered Dawn, gesturing vaguely towards Spike.

Xander took one look and jumped. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, doesn’t anyone stay dead around here?” he barked.

In the kitchen, Buffy hurriedly plated the sandwiches she’d made for Spike, who had to be hungry after returning from the dead. Dammit, dammit, she should have let him come into the kitchen with her like he’d wanted to, but she’d wanted a minute to compose herself. It wasn’t like somebody came back from the dead every day.

More like every third.

“He’s fine, don’t kill him,” she shouted, rushing from the kitchen. Xander hadn’t seemed to have a problem with Spike for the last few months before he died, but sometimes he reacted first and thought later. It was kind of a Scooby trait, really.

“He’s alive,” Buffy blurted out, skidding to a halt in the living room, where the other three stood, staring at each other. She shoved the plate at Spike and he took it automatically. “Alive, as in human. Not a vampire.”

Xander and Dawn turned to Spike and stared at him, until he finally began to squirm under their inspection. Wasn’t like them to look at him for so long; he was kind of used to most of them ignoring him, actually.

“He’s real. Really real,” Buffy assured them. “It was part of getting his soul, he just got the whole thing now. The whole human/soul thing.”

The others were silent for a minute, studying him.

“That’s—wow, that’s just, uh—again with the wow,” Xander finally said. He was probably less surprised than he should have been, but then again, maybe these things shouldn’t surprise him at all anymore. “Another resurrection, huh?”

“You’re real?” asked Dawn carefully, moving over next to Spike. She stood beside him, surprisingly tall, and narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “How can we tell?”

Buffy shook her head. What, Dawn thought she could stand right next to a ghost and not realize it? Or the First? She had super Slayer senses, she could tell these things. “He’s corporeal, Dawn. Touch him if you don’t believe me.”

“Well, I might just—”

Buffy and Dawn were focusing on each other now, and Spike was staring at the two of them like they were all he wanted to see; none of them noticed Xander slipping from the room and heading up the stairs. As he started down the second floor hall he could hear an exclamation from below, followed by Spike complaining, “Bloody hell, Bit, she said touch, not pinch!”

Then he was in his room, and maybe he could get some actual answers.

He usually wasn’t home so early, and her face showed her surprise. “Anya,” he asked without preamble, “did you know Spike was back?”

Giles had always enjoyed walking. In Bath, of course, it was necessary; much of the ancient city was inaccessible by car. He’d found when walking that he noticed things that he’d just speed by otherwise. It also provided him with a certain peace of mind, and that was something to be prized.

And yet, strolling on this fine autumn afternoon, he felt no peace. He thought about Buffy’s decision to allow the new Slayers to disperse, and knew that it was dangerous. They needed training, guidance. Things only a Watcher could provide.

But at the same time, he felt an unmistakable relief that they had gone. Because, walking now beside Kennedy and listening to her constant stream of criticism, he knew that an entire city of Slayers would have driven him mad.

“No, I do not feel that opening an antique shop will take up all the time that I ‘should be spending acting like a Watcher,’” he told Kennedy shortly. The girl really did put things in the most insulting manner possible. Acting like a Watcher?

“I’m just trying to be careful,” Kennedy insisted. Making his teeth grind.

Contrariness, he now felt sure, was inherent to a Slayer’s nature. It had been bad enough, all of them together in Joyce’s house, when the girls were merely Potentials; keeping such close quarters now was unimaginable. Buffy and Kennedy were at each other’s throats constantly, and Giles felt less like a Watcher than a babysitter. Except, of course, for the small fact that his charges could throw him through a wall without exerting themselves.

“Thank you for your concern, but I’ve been balancing an outside career with Watching for a number of years now,” he returned reasonably. “I’ve never run into any trouble with it before.”

“Well, yeah, but you were a lot younger then,” pointed out Kennedy.

Giles winced. Next to Kennedy, Anya had been the model of tact.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. But Anya had centuries of demonhood to insulate her from realizing the impropriety of her remarks. Kennedy had only indifference to others to excuse her, and as excuses went, that was a poor one.

Kennedy gritted her teeth. It was the same thing with all of them. Like she was running into a brick wall, a wall that had been there for years, maybe forever, and everyone knew where it was but her. They stepped around it and jumped over it, but every time Kennedy moved she smacked right into it.

They didn’t like her. She didn’t care, really, but it hurt Willow. She wasn’t sure why Willow cared—she was just the low man on the totem pole to Buffy, a handy little tool to have around when she needed a little magic. If Willow weren’t there, Buffy would have someone else take her place. They were all wrapped up in themselves, and Willow didn’t realize that. Whatever friendship she’d had with them in the past seemed to have stayed in the past.

Of course, she didn’t say that to Willow. She’d never say something like that to her; she loved her too much to upset her. No matter what she thought of Willow’s “friends.”

Kennedy had tried to convince Willow to go back home with her. Her parents would love Willow, and they could live in the artist’s studio out in back; it hadn’t been used in years. It was out by the tennis court, and had a gorgeous view of the ocean. There would be no tension there. No walls.

Willow said no.

So now they lived in the same town as the others, saw them every day, lived in the same house with them until Kennedy persuaded Willow to move, so that they finally had room to breathe. And still Willow disappeared when Kennedy wasn’t looking, and Kennedy always knew where she’d find her.

That was where they were going now. It was where they always ended up—all roads in Santa Rita seemed to lead to the house on Laurel Drive. Like a puzzle where you always end up where you started. And they sat in there, and pretended they were all good friends, yadda yadda yadda, and nobody said anything honest to anybody else, because then things would fall apart.

“—but thank you for your solicitude,” Giles concluded. She hadn’t really been listening to his explanation. Why bother? She knew what he’d say. No, Kennedy. You’re wrong, Kennedy. We already know how to do things, Kennedy.

They’d decided exactly how things were supposed to be done years ago, and it didn’t matter what she said. It didn’t even matter what she did. Things were set in stone, and they weren’t changing. Willow was the only one of them who cared what Kennedy said or did, and even she would rather be with them. She’d never say that, but Kennedy could tell.

She was supposed to let Willow go, right? If you love someone, set them free, or something equally lame. The thing was, Kennedy wasn’t built like that. She was a fighter. She always had been.

She’d fight to keep Willow. If she lost her, everything would seem pretty pointless—staying in town, getting bitched at by Buffy and disapproved of by Giles. Being the new Slayer on the block.

But it was more than that. Without Willow there was just no point at all.

***

“And you didn’t go to hell?”

Spike rolled his eyes. “I already told you that, Snacksize.”

“So it was just a cave?”

Spike nodded, exchanging a glance with Buffy. Dawn was like a dog with a bone.

“How do you know it wasn’t a cave in hell?”

“He said he wasn’t in hell, Dawn,” cut off Buffy, tired of Dawn’s cross-examination. Spike had adjusted to being alive before he found them, more or less, but he still had to get used to being back in the fold. “Let him eat in peace.”

Spike grimaced and took a stab at eating the sandwiches Buffy had made, although he didn’t feel a bit hungry. He really shouldn’t be surprised by Niblet’s behavior, but he hadn’t given a thought to his reception. Except from Buffy, of course. Dawn hadn’t welcomed him with open arms, but then she hadn’t been particularly warm since he tried to rape her sister.

He wasn’t really in a position to complain.

The thing was, he had no idea how to get past it. Oddly enough, she hadn’t found Crazy Spike endearing the previous year, and once Spike left the school basement he’d been wrapped up in his newly-acquired guilt. And Buffy, yes. Went without saying, didn’t it?

God, he really was a liar. He didn’t just let the Bit down by attacking Buffy; he’d been letting her down for months before that. It was like he’d forgotten about her, about everything other than Buffy. He’d been so absorbed in Buffy—back from the dead, and no longer hating him—that he’d barely given Dawn a thought. He’d searched for her when she went missing or got herself into a scrape, sure, but their Little Bit/Big Bad sessions were over. They didn’t hang out anymore, didn’t talk. Spike had only gone to the house on Revello to see Buffy, to hear her voice, to try to imagine there was a little spark in her eyes when she looked at him.

Dawn had just been somebody else in the room.

“It’s good,” Spike mumbled around a mouthful of shaved ham and bread, feeling guilty. Dawn cast him a look of distaste and shuddered, as if he didn’t know she took bites out of chocolates and put them back in the box until she found a filling she liked.

He was relieved when the door swung open and Andrew came in, clutching his bag of comics to his chest. “They were all there,” he announced in relief. “I can’t believe nobody took them!”

He paused for a moment and took in the plate of sandwiches on the coffee table. “I thought you were going to hold dinner!” he protested.

“It’s just a snack. A returned-from-the-dead snack,” Buffy assured him. On the other side of Spike, Dawn snorted.

“Oh. Okay. You do know that, um, it’s almost five,” Andrew pointed out. Buffy looked at him blankly. “We are going to eat tonight, aren’t we?”

“Oh. Yeah, we’ll just order Chinese,” said Buffy.

“Can we have orange chicken?” asked Andrew hopefully. Like he didn’t already have it twice a week.

“Sure.”

“And mu shu pork?”

“Yeah.”

“Ooh, and sizzling rice soup?”

“Hey, can we get some Tsing-Tsao?” put in Spike, perking up a bit. “Haven’t had that in an age.”

Dawn looked at them in amazement. Spike had come back from the dead and they were all just acting like it was nothing! Talking about dinner, like that was really important! Instead of questioning Spike or hitting the books, they were arguing about whether to get spring rolls or paper-wrapped chicken!

And they were forgetting how much she loved potstickers! “Potstickers,” she blurted out. They all turned to look at her. “Um, can we get potstickers? Two orders of them?” She never got more than one measly potsticker if they only got one order.

Buffy smiled. “Sure, Dawn.”

Dawn had no idea why she felt more cheerful; it was just food. Was she becoming cynical? Or was she just becoming used to people returning from the dead?

Either way, it felt like progress.

***

She shouldn’t just walk in, right? It wasn’t her home anymore. Buffy hadn’t asked for the key back or anything, but she still didn’t belong there. So she really should ring the doorbell. Or knock! Because doorbells sound so harsh. Knocking was less aggressive. Good. Knocking.

Of course, she wasn’t expecting Spike to open the door.

“Hey, Will,” he said absently, glancing over his shoulder at Andrew, who was still yammering on about the cancellation of Farscape. Or maybe Babylon 5, Spike hadn’t really been listening.

Willow gasped and jumped backwards, clutching the Splexis charm she wore as a pendant and muttering an incantation against evil spirits.

“You coming in?” Spike asked, opening the door wider and ignoring Willow’s little display. Couldn’t really blame her for being surprised, although the incantation she was muttering sounded like pure crap to him; he doubted it would roust a fruit fly.

“It’s okay, Willow,” called Andrew. “It’s just Spike back from the dead!”

Willow peered past Spike at Andrew and relaxed a little; Spike hadn’t killed the others, apparently. She slipped past him, still tense. He looked all right, but she’d learned her lesson about resurrections.

“It’s not like it’s a big deal,” pointed out Andrew, who’d absorbed much Scooby history while living with them. “I mean, do you know anyone who’s stayed dead?”

Spike stopped breathing for a moment when he saw the look on Willow’s face. Yeah, she could think of someone who hadn’t come back.

“Wh-what happened?” asked Willow after a long moment.

“Demon brought me back,” Spike answered succinctly.

Willow frowned. “Why would he do that? Are you doing his bidding?”

“Dunno. Does his bidding include eating ham sandwiches?”

Willow blinked. “Well, that—that would be kind of an odd bidding,” she admitted. “So why’d he bring you back?”

“It was part of him getting his soul,” answered Buffy, coming out of the kitchen with Dawn trailing after her. Buffy had gone ahead and ordered dinner to placate Andrew, who had a morbid fear of not being fed in a timely fashion.

Dawn had changed out of her school gear, and looked more like herself now, Spike thought. If she and Spike were on better terms, he would have teased her about her prissy uniform. Although come to think of it, that prissy outfit would look pretty hot on Buffy. Maybe he could mention it to her sometime.

Eh, if he was lucky. Wasn’t precisely throwing her arms around him and proclaiming him her great love returned from the dead, was she? And why should she? They’d been together and he’d tried everything to comfort her, to make her forget heaven, but only ended up making her feel worse. Then later she felt sorry for him, all scurrying around the basement living off rats, mad from his soul, mad from the First.

She only told him she loved him out of pity. Out of kindness.

Bollocks, he thought suddenly. Like Buffy ever said anything she didn’t mean. She  meant it when she told him she loved him, just like she meant it when she told him he was a thing and couldn’t love. She was wrong about that one, but said what she thought. Didn’t give a damn about how what she said made other people feel; that’s why they kicked his girl out of her own house, because she wouldn’t pretend for anyone. Not for the Potentials, not for her Watcher, and not for him. Like hell she didn’t mean it.

Telling her she didn’t mean it had hurt a damn sight worse than the whole burning to death thing. That hurt for a minute. Well, more than a minute, but it was still transient. Refusing something he’d wanted for years? Wanted so much he would have killed for it, wanted so much he changed everything he was? That was world-class hurt.

But he hadn’t wanted her to bury herself mourning him. He wanted her to be free.

“How long’s he been here?” asked Willow, still looking startled. Addressing the question to Buffy, not Spike. Bloody Scoobies, always acting like he was too stupid or too insignificant to talk to unless they wanted him to do them a favor. Hell if they ever thanked him, either.

“Just an hour or so. He came in with—”

The door opened suddenly, and Giles walked in, Kennedy trailing after him. She was talking to Giles, but he wasn’t paying attention to her. He’d come to a dead stop, and was staring at Spike, his face unreadable.

Then he turned to Willow and whispered, “What have you done?”

“Me? No! I—I didn’t do anything,” babbled Willow.

Giles continued to stare at her, unconvinced.

“I swear! I just came in and he was here,” Willow insisted.

Before Giles could respond, Kennedy flared up. “How can you say that to her? You know she’d never do anything like that—Willow is more careful than anyone!”

The silence in the room was painful.

“What?” Kennedy demanded after a moment.

“Honey, no,” whispered Willow faintly, color staining her cheeks.

“No, what? That was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard!”

“You know that’s—you know that’s not true, I’ve told you—”

“That was a long time ago that you abused magic—and besides, bringing back the dead—”

“Is actually been there, done that,” observed Xander with grim humor as he came down the stairs.

Kennedy squinted up at him in disbelief. “What? Come on, you can’t tell me that—”

“Not now,” said Willow, her voice gaining strength.

“What? I just—”

“We’ll talk about it later,” said Willow quickly, although she knew talking would be useless. She’d told Kennedy, again and again, how badly she’d misused magic, but it never seemed to register. Kennedy patronized her and acted like she knew better, and she didn’t know anything. She thought that when Willow was trying to get Buffy back through the portal that the Slayer artifacts had opened, and had slapped a hand against Kennedy and Anya to absorb a little of their energy, that was as bad as it got. And that was nothing. But if Kennedy didn’t see things for herself, she didn’t believe them.

It wasn’t going to work, Willow thought suddenly. It. Them. They weren’t going to work through anything, and it didn’t matter how well she explained things to Kennedy. They weren’t going to be together in a year; they wouldn’t even be together in a month. They hadn’t broken up yet, but it was over.

But Willow could tell, from the frustrated expression on Kennedy’s face, that she hadn’t realized that. It was going to be a complete shock to her.

Willow’d never ended a relationship. They left her, Oz and Tara. They left her twice, both of them, and ripped her heart out each time. Willow wasn’t the kind to get rid of the people she loved; she’d do whatever she had to in order to hold onto them. That was why Tara had left her, the first time. The time she hadn’t left on a gurney. Because Willow could feel her pulling away and wiped Tara’s mind to make her stay. It was wrong, Tara told her later. A violation.

Willow would have done it again if it would have brought Tara back to her.

She’d driven away Tara, and she’d lost Oz. Kennedy she would have to give away.

***

It was not a comfortable dinner, Spike thought, though he really should have been used to that. Although Bit seemed happy enough as she stuffed her face with potstickers. Personally, he thought the slimy things were overrated. The garlic pork, though? Brilliant. He thought he might switch to an all-garlic diet. Had a few years to make up for.

“How long have you been in town, Spike?” Giles asked coolly. All protective papa, Spike thought dryly. Although the man seemed to pick and choose when to hover protectively, and when to be somewhere else entirely. Like, say, another continent.

Spike shrugged. “Few hours.”

“What made you decide to come to Santa Rita?”

“Seemed as good a place as any,” Spike said casually. Pissant knew perfectly well why he’d come; he just wanted to see Spike squirm. As if he’d ever give Rupert the satisfaction.

Giles studied him. Buffy had been involved with this … creature. She’d told him so herself. If she hadn’t told him, Giles would never have believed it; it was beyond reckoning, Buffy with an insolent juvenile delinquent like William the Bloody. They’d never discussed the topic further, because it wasn’t worth mentioning. Spike was behind them.

But then a few months later, Spike was ensconced in her house, and it was only he who shared her confidences. Buffy had become responsible and businesslike, as Giles had always urged her to be, but at her side was her vampire of the moment. The one who eschewed duty and goodness, who lived only for the fight.

He was like the unliving embodiment of all that Giles had turned his back on—youthful rebellion, unrestrained passion, joy in destruction. Nihilism. The things Giles had rejected when he left behind Ripper. He’d tried to bring Spike out of the dark, the way he had left the dark so many years before, and Spike had laughed at the idea. The chip in his head was not an opportunity, he said. It was a curse. He had no desire to do good.

He didn’t change his mind until he imagined himself in love with Buffy.

“Where are you staying?”

Spike shrugged.

“How long are you staying?”

Another shrug.

“When do you—”

“For god’s sake, stop cross-examining him,” Buffy exclaimed, managing with some effort to hold on to her temper.

Giles looked at her in irritation. “I was doing nothing of the sort,” he said in annoyance.

“Sure. Pass the mu shu,” she said to Dawn.

Dawn passed the cardboard container without a word. Beside her Andrew stirred. “We have a spare room—actually, we have a bunch of spare rooms,” he offered. “You can stay here.”

Across the table Giles choked. “Are you okay, Mr. Giles?” asked Andrew, worried. “You didn’t eat one of those dried chiles, did you?”

“No, Andrew, thank you,” said Giles shortly, glancing at Buffy to gauge her reaction to the invitation. He couldn’t help noticing that Spike was doing the same.

They were both disappointed. Buffy didn’t look up as she spread hoisin sauce on her Mandarin pancake and shoveled a healthy amount of pork and vegetables on top.

Finally she glanced up. “That’s a good idea,” she said calmly. “No reason to go to a hotel.”

Andrew perked up. “Oh, good! It’s like old times,” he said happily. “Except for about three dozen Potentials and—” Andrew broke off abruptly. He always tried not to mention Anya, to spare Xander the pain of hearing his lost love’s name.

Spike forked up the last of his slightly greasy chow mein and started on his ginger-garlic chicken—ugh. Foul combination, he thought. Heh, fowl.

“So do you all live here?” he asked, indicating the big house with a wave of his hand. It was strange to think of Buffy living in such a manse, after the cozy home Joyce had made for her girls and the way Buffy’d had to fight to keep the place. Working herself half-dead at that grease pit, then coming to him for comfort, sticky and stinking, knowing he wouldn’t turn her away. Knowing the only thing that mattered to him was that she was there, even if part of her, the part he loved best, wished she wasn’t.

“Yeah, all of us,” replied Buffy automatically before thinking. No, not quite true, was it? “Everybody but Will,” she corrected herself. “And Kennedy.”

“You birds got your own place?” Spike asked, turning to Willow. He was a little surprised when she nodded. Seemed a little peculiar to him, Andrew living with Buffy while Willow lived elsewhere. Like something out of Bizarro World.

“I’m kind of like the new Willow,” Andrew piped up helpfully, as if he’d read Spike’s mind.

The other turned to stare at him. Andrew regarded them blankly for a minute before deflating a little and holding up his pork bun. “Hey, round,” he observed weakly.

“It’s okay, Andrew, we know what you meant,” said Xander kindly. Andrew smiled at him gratefully. Xander was the best; Andrew didn’t know what he’d do without him.

Xander turned to Spike. “So, how you enjoying the whole—breathing thing?”

“It’s, uh, not bad,” admitted Spike cautiously. He wasn’t really sure where he stood with Xander, who’d gone from trying to kill him to treating him pretty decently before his whole fiery death thing.

Admittedly, Spike had tried to kill him one or twelve times, so it wasn’t like Xander didn’t have provocation. Still, a man liked to know where he stood, right? Preferably not under the blade of an axe.

“What was that?” said Giles sharply.

“‘Not bad?’” repeated Spike.

“About breathing,” Giles rapped out.

“Oh, that. He’s alive,” said Buffy, as if the explanation made perfect sense.

“Alive? As in alive alive?” said Willow in surprise.

“Yeah, that kind of alive,” agreed Spike dryly. Scary to think she was the brains of the group, really.

“And how did this happen?” demanded Giles, studying Spike.

“Demon that gave me my soul brought me back,” answered Spike succinctly.

“Why?”

“Dunno.”

“Anya would say it was a gift with purchase,” observed Xander with distant amusement. Willow looked at him for a moment and returned his smile encouragingly. Xander seldom mentioned Anya; it was good that he was beginning to refer to her now … right?

Giles ignored him. “And you have no idea why this demon brought you back and made you human?”

“He said it was what he’d agreed to when I got my soul, and he was fulfilling his end of the deal,” Spike said shortly.

Giles simmered. That was the most singularly half-assed explanation he’d ever heard in his life. “That doesn’t really sound like the entire story,” he pointed out.

Spike shrugged. “It’s all I know.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Giles muttered under his breath. Then he added, louder, “I didn’t hear much about this demon last year.”

“Didn’t seem very interested, mate,” Spike returned bluntly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Buffy stir, and knew she was uncomfortable with the conversation.

“Why are you so surprised that he’s human?” asked Kennedy. “I mean, he was toast, so why would he be brought back as a vampire? That would pretty much defeat the purpose of being brought to life.”

Nobody answered for a minute. Finally Willow stepped in. “Well, when Angel came back, he was still a vampire,” she pointed out a little gingerly. She could hear Spike snort at the mention of Angel’s name.

“Who’s Angel?” asked Kennedy, frowning.

“Great git who needs a twelve-step program for his hair gel problem,” muttered Spike.

Across the table, Xander smothered a laugh. Okay, he’d never liked Spike, but there was nothing like mutual loathing of an acquaintance to bring the snark; he could listen to jokes about Sir Broods-a-Lot’s hair all day. And possibly his big heavy brow—that was a whole area of big happy fun waiting to happen.

“He’s the vampire Buffy dated before Spike,” Dawn answered serenely, earning a glare from her sister.

“You dated two vampires?” blurted out Kennedy. “Were you a Slayer then, too?”

“Well … yeah. I mean, how often do you meet vampires if you aren’t a Slayer? Or at least Slayer-adjacent. Or about to be killed, of course,” Buffy amended.

Kennedy turned to Giles. “And what were you doing?”

“I was there,” he defended.

“Doing what?” she demanded. “It sure doesn’t sound like you were following the Watcher’s Handbook!”

“Hey, Giles was a good Watcher,” protested Buffy. “In fact, he—wait, Watchers have a handbook?”

“I beg your pardon,” Giles snapped. “Was?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Buffy said after a minute. Giles didn’t respond, and an uncomfortable silence followed.

Ah, more enjoyable silence, thought Spike. Nothing like silence to make you wish you were still dead, or at least heavily sedated.

He decided to help Buffy out. “Nice place you’ve got here,” he told her.

To his surprise, Dawn snickered. Spike cocked one brow. “I heard you say that before,” she told him.

“What?” said Buffy and Spike together. They looked at each other, and Buffy smiled a little.

“The first time you came by our house with Buffy, when the police were looking for her—you were in the living room with Mom, and you said, ‘Nice place’.”

“Well—I don’t remember—” Spike began, face heating a little.

“You’re blushing!” exclaimed Dawn, pointing to the flush crawling up Spike’s face.

“I was just being polite,” Spike mumbled. “What’d you want me to say? ‘Too many windows for my taste?’”

“Yes, very polite for a vampire,” agreed Buffy dryly, although she didn’t recall the remark at all. He must have made it when she’d called the hospital to check on Willow, but she didn’t really remember much of the non-essential chatter. Except, inexplicably, she had a clear memory of him telling her mom that Buffy played the … triangle?

“Wait a minute,” Buffy said to Dawn. “You weren’t supposed to be listening!”

The mood at the table began to lighten, and tongues slowly began to loosen. Only Giles remained silent as the young people began to tease each other.

Looking at them talk and laugh, he envied them their ease. They had youth’s gift of taking things lightly, and it had been years since he’d felt that. It had begun to leave him years before, after the involvement with Eyghon and Randall’s subsequent death. Jenny’s murder had only increased it.

When Buffy leapt from the tower, the last bit of his youth had died. Even her return couldn’t spark it back to life.

He watched them at the table, and they seemed impossibly young, all of them. Even Spike, the eldest of them. Maybe him most of all.

That wasn’t right. It wasn’t the way of things, the young dying before the old. Tara dead, and so many Potentials, and their Watchers, and still Spike walked the earth. It was outside of the natural order. Obscene.

And something inside Giles told him that nothing good could come of having Spike back with them. Nothing at all.

***

They were really, really loud, and Dawn wished she had earplugs. Everyone else could sleep in late the next day if they wanted, but Dawn had school, and why couldn’t they be quiet?

Andrew was playing video games in bed, which he wasn’t supposed to do, and Xander was talking to himself or had the TV on. It seemed like it took forever for everyone to quiet down, but finally Dawn fell asleep. It was a deep, dreamless sleep, and she wasn’t sure what woke her up hours later. A noise? She was still for moment, heard nothing, and then relaxed, eager to drift off again. At least everyone was quiet now, she thought groggily.

Then she turned over in bed, and saw him. He was sitting on the chair closest the bed, watching her.

Dawn managed not to jump. “What are you doing here?” she asked, unnerved.

Spike leaned in closer and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile, and she shivered.

Down the hall, Xander jerked out of a deep sleep. Something was wrong, he just wasn’t sure what. And then there it was again—Dawn screaming. Not like the capable young woman she was becoming, but terrified. Helpless.

It made Xander’s blood run cold.