Possession
Chapter Twelve
Dawn blew on her newly lilac-colored fingernails, ignoring
Spike and Andrew. Not that it was easy. When Spike was around, Andrew talked
more than ever. Dawn wouldn’t have thought it possible, but apparently it was.
She would have liked to think that Spike might cool Andrew up, but that one was
definitely impossible. Besides, she was actually kind of fond of the guy.
Everybody else in the gang had someone special they were close to, but the two
of them were just kind of these satellites around the main group. Sure, Buffy
loved her, yeah, and so did Xander and
And Andrew, despite the fact that he’d paid for the house and was supporting all of them, was still the last and least of the trio of nerds. Tucker’s brother, an afterthought. Occasionally Dawn thought she saw Buffy jump a little when she looked at Andrew, like she was surprised he was there.
The two of them were on the fringes, even if Andrew didn’t realize it.
She thought of what Andrew had said once when they were watching a DVD of the original Star Trek series. Dawn had mentioned that a crewman was cute, even if he was drooling all over a blue-skinned alien babe in a feathered plastic bikini. Andrew had rolled his eyes and said, “Forget it, chica! He’s a red shirt.”
Crewmen who wore red shirts ended up dead, he told her. They were expendable. Not important enough to make the main cast.
She hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but now it seemed so clear. She and Andrew were red shirts.
Dammit, she didn’t want to be expendable! There had to be some way to become a blue shirt, or a green shirt, or whatever shirt was worn by people who didn’t have “kill me” stamped on their forehead.
Hey, Xander had done it, hadn’t he? He’d been the third wheel to the Buffy/Willow friendship, and had “demon bait” written all over him—look at how many he’d dated. But here he was, alive, and he’d ended up saving the world, when even Buffy couldn’t. He’d overcome his red shirt destiny.
If he could do it, so could she. She was magical, right?
A super-special key. She could save herself. And
she’d better start right away; look at how things had gone for the last few
years—well, her entire actual existence. Who had the thaumogenesis demon
attacked? Her! Who had Glory gone after? Her! Who had
Okay, all of them. But her first!
It was a pattern: go for Dawn. It was sheer luck that she wasn’t already dead. And that … well, it just sucked.
Maybe she and Andrew could go in it together—watch each other’s backs. She felt reasonably sure he didn’t want to die anymore than she did. It was probably on his mind as much as hers, disturbing him. Haunting him.
“—well, I don’t know about an elevator,” Andrew was saying. “But escalators are fun….”
What? “Escalators? Where?” asked Dawn.
“Over there,” said Spike, waving at the wall. “Escalators are okay, but the good thing about an elevator is that it doesn’t work unless you push a button. What would happen if you were sleepy or pissed and accidentally stepped on an escalator?”
Andrew’s eyes grew large. “You could plummet to your death,” he realized in a whisper, shuddering. He tended to sleepwalk, and the last thing he wanted to do was wake up dead because they’d installed an escalator. But it was so tempting—they had the money, and why not use it? If not on an escalator, then wha—“Oh!” he exclaimed. The others looked at him inquiringly. “We could put in a fireman’s pole,” he said dreamily.
Spike scowled. That did nothing to help with the dangers of taking the stairs while hung over. “Yeah, I don’t really think that’s—”
“Like in Bridget Jones’s Diary?” asked Dawn, sounding more enthusiastic.
“Yeah! We could take turns—”
“We are not installing a pole,” said Giles flatly, entering the room, a book dangling from his hand. Andrew heaved a sigh. It was nice, having a dad—dad-like figure, he corrected himself—who was so involved, but Mr. Giles was so strict sometimes. He was just like he had been in the library at school, only now he glared more often.
“Kennedy. Where is she?” Buffy asked curtly, standing in
the doorway.
“She left,” answered Giles, his voice tired. It hadn’t been a pleasant afternoon, and he thought he might require aspirin. Or possibly something in the Vicodin family.
“Left? She usually stays a lot later,” Buffy protested.
“Yeah, but that was when she and
“What’s so urgent?” asked Spike, raising his eyebrows.
“She, uh … borrowed my good axe,” lied Buffy shamelessly. As far as she was concerned, lying for a good cause was completely acceptable. Unfortunately, however, she wasn’t great at it. And Spike usually saw through her lies—he was a very perceptive guy. Unless, of course, she was telling him she loved him, at which point he displayed all the perceptivity of a block of wood. A block of wood that didn’t believe his girlfriend when she said she loved him.
But he must have been absorbed in catching up with his shows, because he lost interest and returned his attention to the magazine in his hand. “Yeah, gotta get that one back,” he said absently, flipping the page to find out god knows what.
“Yeah, I think I’ll go get it now,” Buffy agreed, heading outside while the getting was good. If she lingered, he might have asked more questions, and she might not come up with anything as good as a borrowed axe next time.
“Buffy, hold on. It doesn’t
necessarily mean anything,”
“It means she went behind our backs.”
“It’s just that she hates being left in the dark—”
“We didn’t leave her in the dark—we told her the same thing we told everyone else, and everyone else was fine with it,” Buffy pointed out reasonably. “She’s the one who had to go digging about the thaumogenesis demon. We told her it would disappear on its own, but she didn’t like that, did she?”
Buffy’s face was set, and the look of awful determination
on her face frightened
“I’m not jumping to anything. The demon has to kill Spike to stay around. Now Kennedy knows all she has to do is—”
“That doesn’t mean it’s her,” protested
Hardly anything was.
Buffy was silent for a moment, absorbing
Her Spike, dammit.
“You’re right,” she sighed. Before
***
Spike eased the front door shut, closing out
He was going to die, apparently. Possibly horribly.
Good to know.
It wasn’t a surprise; he’d always known he was mortal. Even when he was newly vamped and loved to taunt Angel about his prissy, safe kills, he’d known his life had hung precariously between dust and eternal youth.
That was what gave the fight its tang. If the risk wasn’t there, neither was the thrill.
But still … wasn’t like being human. As a vampire, it was sunlight, a stake, or beheading. That was it. Well, there was also removing the heart from the body, at least according to the Master, the old pervert. But nobody remembered the tried and true methods any more, just the flashy Stoker stuff. Sad, really.
But as a human there were so many ways to die that it was
miracle he was still breathing. Influenza could kill him, or a car accident, or
black lung disease. Did they still have black lung disease? Or that Chinese food
the other night! He’d been to
And now, apparently, death-by-rebirth was on the list as well. Kind of appropriate, wasn’t it? The death of others used to give him life, and now his death would give life to the thaumogenesis demon. Yeah, it was poetic justice all right.
Spike leaned his head back against the door and sighed. God, he hated poetry.
***
Xander pushed his face deeper into his pillow and tried to hold onto sleep. He wasn’t dreaming anything pleasant—wasn’t dreaming anything at all—but it was a refuge. When he was asleep, he didn’t have to open his eyes and see his dead girlfriend.
The effort was futile, of course. It always had been. He’d open his eyes and she’d be there, or not—whichever left him more on edge.
Stop it, he told himself harshly. That wasn’t him, was it? He was an optimist. If he wasn’t, he would have killed himself a long time ago. His parents would have been enough to do it, but there was always staking his buddy Jesse to add to the list, or losing Cordy—god, he’d barely survived that one. Now she was in a coma, as good as dead. He’d lost an eye—good old lefty. And Anya was gone, and he’d never even had a chance to say goodbye, or see her body. Life just kept getting worse and worse, and he didn’t even want to know what form of worse was coming down the road next.
Yeah, if he weren’t such an optimist, this would be a great time to kill himself, he thought hazily, beginning to drift off again. It would sure make things a lot easier.
“Yeah, pal, it’s not like you’ve got a lot to live for,” agreed Jesse.
Xander’s eyes shot open and he leapt up, his breathing suddenly ragged.
He was alone in the room.
Xander willed his heart to stop racing. It had been nothing. A nightmare, that’s all it was. Well, a daymare. A napmare. A bad dream.
He jumped slightly as the phone beside the bed rang, then snatched up the receiver. That was reality, not whatever had drifted through his head when he was mostly asleep. “Hello?’
“Xander? It’s been so long.” The voice at the other end of the line was clear, distinct. It did not sound like a dream.
It sounded like Cordelia.
Chapter 13:
“He hung up on me!” Cordelia said, staring at the phone in her hand in disbelief. What, they hadn’t talked in a few years and suddenly she was someone Xander felt comfortable hanging up on?
Lorne clucked sympathetically. “Well, I’m sure he didn’t—”
“Xander Harris does not hang up on Cordelia Chase,” she announced irately, pressing the redial button. “Xander? Xander Harris, don’t you hang—son of a bitch!”
“Do it again, sweet cheeks?”
Cordy scowled at Lorne. “What do you think?” she snapped.
Xander came down the stairs so fast he stumbled into the living room. Andrew gasped as he watched Xander’s hurried descent, fully expecting the heart of the Scooby gang to be ripped out with a tragic fall which no magic, no matter how dark or forbidden, could repair. “Did you see that, Mr. Giles? Spike was right!”
“Spike is never right,” said Giles automatically.
“About the escalator, I mean—”
“We are not having an escalator installed.”
“Everything okay?” asked Dawn, ignoring the byplay. Xander looked kind of wild-eyed. Not really Xandery, actually.
The phone rang before Xander could reply. “I’ll get it!” cried Andrew. “It’s rung a bunch of times, I bet the phone company’s doing something—they’re just mad because I wouldn’t sign up for their DSL—I mean, it’s slow as molasses.…Hello? Oh, hold on! It’s for you,” he told Xander, holding out the phone. “It’s Cordelia Chase!” Andrew couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice; Cordelia had never spoken to him before. She’d been a cheerleader at Sunnydale High, and almost homecoming queen.
Giles and Dawn started in surprise. The last they’d heard, Cordelia was a vegetable. An impeccably groomed vegetable, gradually fading into memory.
Xander looked shocked as well. “You can hear her?”
“Yeah. And she sounds really mad,” added Andrew.
Xander took the phone as Dawn began chattering excitedly.
“Cordelia?” Xander asked gingerly.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, HANGING UP ON—”
Xander hastily pulled the phone back from his ear. “I was just, uh, a little surprised.”
“And surprise makes you hang up … twice? I didn’t think it was possible, but you’re even more spastic than you used to be.”
“I’m sorry,” Xander apologized, still feeling dazed by the whole dead girlfriend/not dead ex-girlfriend dynamic. “I just—the last thing I heard, you were still in the coma.”
Cordelia abruptly stopped raging. “You thought I was—they didn’t tell you?” Her voice dropped several degrees and promised heads would roll. Now she was just an afterthought, was she? That was it! “Look, I had a vision.”
“What—”
“About Kennedy.”
“What about Kennedy?” asked Xander in surprise.
“Kennedy—danger.”
“What else?”
“That’s it,” answered Cordelia. “Oh—except….”
“What?”
“Who’s Kennedy?”
Xander chuckled a little. The answer seemed so mundane compared to the rest of his life. “Willow’s girlfriend. Well, ex-girlfriend.”
“Oh. Okay, then. Just an FYI,” said Cordy absently, hanging up. A second later his statement sank in.
“Wait, did he say Willow likes girls?”
Lorne looked at her, bemused, and shrugged.
“Well, just how long was I unconscious?”
Giles decided to skip the aspirin and go straight to the Scotch. Yes, Cordelia was alive. It was fine news. He didn’t know why he’d been startled—people returned from the dead almost daily, it seemed; waking from a coma was barely worth mentioning, by comparison. News only fit for wrapping fish.
Besides, there was plenty more to worry about, if he was of a mind to worry. And it seemed he was.
Training had been a disaster. Which, admittedly, had been his fault. Of course, if anyone had bothered to tell him that Kennedy and Willow had broken up, he likely wouldn’t have asked Kennedy why Willow had spent the night at the house. And he probably wouldn’t have asked, when Kennedy told him they had broken up, where she intended to go. Which he had only said because he was surprised, and never dreamed she intended to stay if she was no longer seeing Willow. And which was a mistake.
Kennedy had bitterly accused him of hating her—him and Buffy and Xander and all the rest. Of not supporting her. Of not wanting her there.
The unfortunate thing was that she was right.
He didn’t hate her, of course. But he was becoming old for a Watcher, or at least he felt that way. He’d been shepherding Buffy for nearly seven years, her and her entire pack of friends. He’d lost his girl twice. Jenny had been stolen from him. He’d mentored and fought an unimaginably powerful witch, and suffered the loss of most of his friends and colleagues in the destruction of the Watchers’ compound. By the end of it he’d been reamed. He’d been offered the leadership of the council, but had turned it down. He was too exhausted to consider running it. The other survivors were training fresh blood—fresh Watchers, that was to say.
And as selfish as it sounded, he’d only ever been Buffy’s Watcher, and that was how he wanted it. She would be the last Slayer for him—first and last. It was a system rooted in control and manipulation, an endless cycle of planning and fighting, and he was weary of it. He was an academic, not a drill sergeant, and he was weary of betraying his nature to fulfill his family’s traditions.
Maybe Buffy had been right about letting the girls train as they wanted, not indoctrinating them as the earlier Slayers had been. The way Kendra had. The way Buffy would have, if she’d been found earlier.
There’d been too many blank-eyed automatons forced to fight and die.
He’d remain with Buffy—he wouldn’t desert her again—but that was the end of it for him. He would take on no further responsibilities. God, sometimes he felt so tired. Like it was no use anymore. Like giving up. Sometimes it was almost irresistible. He had to fight against it, and sometimes he was just so weary of fighting. Giving up was so tempting.
He should have been hopeful, now. He’d been trained—raised—to view good versus evil as an eternal struggle. But now there was an army of Slayers, and so much could be done. Evil could be fought on so many fronts, in so many ways. For the first time, the possibility of crushing darkness seemed viable. Maybe not soon, but someday.
Yet for some reason, it didn’t excite him.
Yes, he was indeed growing old. Too old for this foolishness, this soap opera. Too old for it all.
Nothing’s going to happen. Nothing’s going to happen, Willow told herself over and over again. Because if she said if often enough it would be true, right? Kennedy was not possessed by the thaumogenesis demon, and she didn’t want to kill Spike; Buffy wasn’t going to kill Kennedy in a righteous rage, or be killed by her instead. Nothing was going to happen. Nothing.
Willow turned back to the house and opened the front door disconsolately—then jumped aside hastily as Spike fell back, almost smacking into her. He’d been leaning against the door, apparently. Probably listening. God, what is it with Buffy and lurky guys? Willow wondered.
They traded suspicious looks. “What are you doing?” Willow asked.
“What are you doing?’ returned Spike.
“…Waving goodbye to Buffy?” suggested Willow after a minute. “You didn’t hear anything, did you? Not, uh, that there was anything to hear,” she added hurriedly.
Spike’s mouth tightened, and that was enough of a giveaway. “You know!” she blurted out. “Oh no, Buffy didn’t want you to know—she’s gonna be so angry!”
“Just because I found out your bird’s looking to kill me?” Spike asked dryly. Seemed that he was the one who should be upset, not Willow. She always had been a little dramatic, though—what with casting spells over old boyfriends and trying to end the world over dead girlfriends and who knew what else.
On second thought, maybe he should try not to piss her off.
“She’s not trying to kill you—probably,” Willow denied. “Just maybe. We don’t even know if she’s the demon.”
“So, maybe Kennedy’s the demon, and maybe she’ll try to kill me, and if not, it was all just a big misunderstanding?”
“We don’t even know she’s the thaumogenesis demon!” repeated Willow in frustration. Why didn’t they listen to her?!
“Kennedy’s the thaumogenesis demon?” exclaimed Giles, standing in the doorway to the living room, his fingers clasped tightly around a glass of something brownish that Spike suddenly, desperately wanted a gulp of. “And she wants to kill Spike?”
“We don’t know that,” rushed out Willow as Spike swore. “But, uh, she might be, and, uh, she might be under the impression that killing him is the way to go. But she might not!”
“Why the devil wasn’t I told this earlier?” demanded Giles, incensed.
“Jesus, Will, you told him?” said Xander, shouldering his way out from behind Giles.
Spike felt tension ripple down his forehead and tensed in anticipation of vamping out. But nothing happened, and the realization that it was just a miserable headache—a hangover, followed by an unexpected and not especially welcome update on his mortality—only made him feel worse. Biting something had never sounded so tempting. “Why don’t you just call the others and make it a convention?” suggested Spike cautistically.
The others ignored him. “You knew?” said Giles to Xander, sounding aggrieved. “Did everyone but me know that that Kennedy wants to kill Spike?”
“Kennedy wants to kill Spike?” repeated Andrew, hidden behind Giles. “I mean, I knew she didn’t like him, but she doesn’t like anyone—my god, are the rest of us in danger?”
Beside Andrew, Dawn clapped her hand over her mouth; she recalled, suddenly, why Buffy had killed the thaumogenesis demon years before. Because it was going to try to kill her in order to stay alive.
“Is she the thaumogenesis demon?” blurted out Dawn, nudging Andrew and Giles out of the way to stare at Spike. He’d just come back, and she was losing him again. If it were a couple of years earlier, the thought would have terrified her. But that was before he slept with Anya, before he attacked Buffy. Before he came back quiet and timid with his soul. Before he died. Back when she still thought she knew him, and he’d teach her the finer points of shoplifting and iambic pentameter.
She didn’t know why the thought of losing him again upset her, but it did.
“Oh, bloody hell,” barked Spike in frustration. He’d thought the Scoobies bad before, but now they were worse, the whole lot of them, living together and in each other’s pockets the whole time. Couldn’t keep a secret, couldn’t have a good row, probably couldn’t shag without the whole company listening in. No privacy, someone’s finger in your pie every minute of your life until you were ready to go insane. The rest of them watching you like a bug, a science experiment, and Spike had already had plenty of being a goddamn experiment. Gotten sick of that quite a few years ago, as it happened, and had no intention of being a fly under their thumb—a butterfly under their micro—whatever the hell those things were, god, did becoming human kill his brain cells somehow?
“That’s it,” Spike muttered, swinging away from the others and heading out the door. Someone put a hand on his arm, but he shrugged it off without even a glance. “I want a bloody drink,” he grated. “Alone.”
The house was loud and buzzy for several minutes after Spike’s dramatic exit. People talked, Dawn fussed, Giles lectured. At his insistence Willow revealed the texts she’d made invisible. The look he’d given her—so disappointed, so distant—when she’d made his books reappear had made her want to cry. Now everybody knew what Buffy had wanted to keep hidden, and god knew what was happening to Kennedy.
Giles was poring over his books, a stormcloud over his head, when Willow slipped away. She tried to suppress the feeling that she was doing something wrong. It wasn’t wrong. Couldn’t be. Could it? She was protecting Kennedy. And protecting people from Kennedy. That couldn’t be wrong, could it?
Her fingers shook as she lit the little brazier. She hadn’t bothered to take it with her when she moved into the apartment, months ago—she had plenty. And maybe if she didn’t move all her stuff, maybe she was really still here, and just spending nights at the apartment.
Maybe she’d known, deep down in her heart, that it wasn’t going to work between her and Kennedy.
But that didn’t mean she’d stopped caring about her.
“Stay their hands, and still their hearts,” she murmured softly. “Let them do no violence this night.” She reached for the bags of herbs she’d placed beside her, but her hand stilled. Was this … it? What Tara had warned her about? Why she left her? Using her magic casually, selfishly?
But it wasn’t selfish, was it? And it wasn’t casual. If it protected Kennedy (…or Spike, or Buffy, thought Willow), it wasn’t casual. Maybe it was selfish, but Willow couldn’t believe it was wrong. Tara had been right about it, then.
But this was now, and Willow had to find her own way.
For a moment Willow wondered if they’d still be together if Tara hadn’t died. After a moment the thought sunk in and she shoved it aside, reproaching herself bitterly. Of course they would still be together. Of course. Their love was eternal.
Like her and Oz? Or Buffy and Angel?
Maybe nothing’s eternal, thought Willow, disheartened. Maybe it’s all an illusion.
But even if it was, it was still all they had.
Willow dropped the herbs into the flames, and they crisped and smoked as she repeated the magical words. The smoke wisped above her head and dissipated in the cool autumn air allowed in by her open window. It was done.
It was all she could do. Now she could only wait and—
“Willow?” Giles’s sudden question made her jump. “What have you done?”
Kennedy smacked at the punching bag moodily. If she could work up a little rage it would help, but at the moment she just felt like laying down and crying. At first she’d told herself that Willow would change her mind, that it was a weird little Scooby thing/Wicca thing/who-the-hell-ever thing, but she’d been kidding herself. Willow wasn’t going to change her mind; she was back in the smothering bosom of her friends, content to be merely a sidekick. A supporting player. How was it that Willow couldn’t see she deserved more?
It was them. The others. They hated Kennedy. It had to be them. She loved Willow so much—the strong, powerful parts, and the sweet, shy parts—Willow had to know that, had to see. Had to feel how much she loved her. But she cared about them more.
God, it hurt to come in second.
Salt stung her eyes, and she sucked in her breath, forcing the tears back. She didn’t want to be sad. Sadness didn’t help anything. She wanted to be angry, because then she’d have something to fight against. Thank god for the thaumogenesis demon.
Christ, did she just thank god for a demon? She really had gone off the deep end.
She thought back on what Fred had told her—supplementing the little Buffy and Willow had seen fit to share; Kennedy had known immediately it had to be more than they said. It could assume any form it wanted, create weird illusions … and live in this reality permanently if it killed the one the magic that created it was done for. In this case, Spike.
Looks like Buffy was protecting her boyfriend again. It was a little thing she did, thought Kennedy bitterly, punching the bag harder. Protect her boyfriend, and keep things to herself. Just some of the little things that made Buffy Buffy.
God, she didn’t even know why Willow liked her. “Buffy, Buffy, Buffy,” Kennedy spat, punching harder and harder. “Why is it always about Buffy?” She pulled back for a killer punch, but it never connected. As she swung, a strong hand caught hers in an ungiving grip, holding it immobile.
“Looks like you get your wish,” Buffy said with a dangerous smile. “Because this one’s all about you.”
Chapter 14:
“I’m not doing magic!” Willow rushed out, then colored at both her obvious lie and her equally naked attempt at placating Giles. “I mean, yeah, I’m doing magic, but it’s good magic! Good, non-selfish magic.”
“Would Buffy and Kennedy think it’s good, non-selfish magic?” Giles challenged. Willow cringed; he’d heard the whole thing, apparently.
“I just want them to be safe,” Willow argued. “Tomorrow things will calm down, and everything will be fine.” Willow had the feeling she was being somewhat optimistic, but she squashed the thought ruthlessly.
“I think you may be severely overestimating the value of a night’s sleep,” Giles said dryly.
“It’s for the best,” she insisted.
Giles’s eyes sparked. “Your judgment in that area hasn’t always been stellar.”
Willow bowed her head, frustrated. What could she say? No matter what she did, no matter how tightly she reigned in her magical impulses, trying to destroy the world was something people didn’t just forget. What could she say—hey, I’m not nearly as homicidal as I was a year ago! She’d tried to kill them, all of them. She hated thinking about it, hated being reminded of it, but she didn’t deserve not to have it thrown in her face. If she thought that, she wasn’t sorry enough.
But still, she had to try. “You … you encouraged me to do more magic, not to let myself be crippled by what happened after … after….”
“That was about controlling the power within you,” corrected Giles. “This is about manipulating people.”
“This is about protecting people!” Willow countered.
Giles eyed her keenly. “Two minutes ago you undid your spell to hide my books, and already you’re up here casting a new spell. And if you really thought it harmless,” he added as she opened her mouth to interrupt, “I wonder that you’re doing it hidden away up here, with the door shut, without the consent of those affected. I can’t help but think that’s the kind of thing you would have done when you first began misusing magic.”
“This is different!” It was, wasn’t it? thought Willow desperately. It had to be.
Giles smiled slightly, a joyless expression. “It always is, isn’t it?”
Willow was silent as Giles left the room.
She couldn’t think of anything to say.
Dawn liked Cordelia—and why not? Cordelia had always been nice to her. And sometimes she’d been pretty mean to Buffy, and Dawn had kind of appreciated it. Which was, admittedly, petty, but she’d grown out of it. Right?
But that didn’t mean she wanted to hear twenty minutes straight about how talking to Cordelia was the high point of Andrew’s existence. “That’s great,” Dawn said, interrupting Andrew mid-stream. It was still about Cordy, but she’d stopped listening to specifics a few minutes ago. She had more important things to worry about. “Did you notice anything?”
Andrew pondered that for a minute. “I think she sounded taller,” he offered.
Dawn rolled her eyes. “I mean, about Xander when he came downstairs—he seemed scared.”
“Well I’d be scared, too, if Cordelia was as mad at me as she sounded at him,” Andrew reassured her.
“No,” said Dawn, although she winced at the memory of Cordelia’s wrath. “Really scared, even before he got the call. Remember how he came down the stairs? He’s frightened of something—something big.”
“Well, there is the whole Spike-in-jeopardy scenario,” suggested Andrew. “That kind of scares me.”
Dawn shook her head. “He’s been dealing with that kind of thing for years. This has to be bigger.”
“Killing Spike is big,” pointed out Andrew.
“Well yeah, but not to Xander so much.”
Andrew was silent for a minute, working through it all. “They didn’t tell us that much, though,” he said finally. He hated being out of the loop. That had been the best thing about the Trio—he’d been in on everything. He’d been Number One, Riker to Warren’s Picard. Now, sometimes, he felt like … Barclay. He hated being Barclay. He’d been Barclay his entire life.
“Maybe there’s something else they’re not telling us,” said Dawn quietly.
“Or maybe there’s something they don’t know,” suggested Andrew.
Dawn’s eyebrows swooped down. Not know? The others not know? Buffy and Giles and all of them not know? That couldn’t be good. “We have to take care of it,” she said authoritatively.
Andrew cringed. He wasn’t really very action-y, he was really more commentator-ish. “I think we should leave it to the others,” he said. “They know what they’re doing.”
“You just said maybe they don’t know,” pointed out Dawn.
“Well okay, but you … you confused me!” accused Andrew.
Dawn shook her head. “Andrew, we have to handle it. We, us. We don’t have a choice, we’re red shirts!”
Andrew’s jaw dropped. “That’s not true—we are not red shirts!” he protested. “We’re valuable and high-ranking crewmembers whose loss would deal a fatal blow to the show—I mean, the Scoobies,” he added hurriedly, ignoring his Barclayish feeling from the moment before. “Like Tasha times ten!”
That was true, right? He was important, to all of them. They all knew his name, and loved him, and relied on him; he couldn’t be a red shirt, he wasn’t just there, on the outside, he was—
Thud.
Andrew’s train of thought derailed when Xander walked right into him. “Sorry, pal, I didn’t see you there,” Xander said over his shoulder, not slowing down, or using Andrew’s name, or even really looking at him.
Andrew gasped. “Oh my god, I am a red shirt,” he whispered.
Dawn gave him a good hard stare. “Then don’t you think it’s time to do something about it?”
Andrew hesitated—so long she thought he’d forgotten what they were discussing. Then his sheepish gaze hardened, and he nodded. “All for one?” he asked, holding out his hand.
Dawn covered it with her own. “And one for all.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Buffy coldly.
“I’m working out,” Kennedy snapped, jerking her arm back and freeing herself from Buffy’s grasp.
“You know what I mean,” said Buffy.
“What? I’m not like the others, I don’t spend so much time worshipping the great god Buffy that I know what you’re thinking all the time, so you might actually have to use words to tell me what you mean,” said Kennedy in annoyance.
Buffy lost her patience. She’d never had much with Kennedy anyway, and it had all been used up. Her mouthiness, her constant pushing, her leading the others in throwing Buffy out of her own house—this was it! “Stay away from Spike,” Buffy gritted.
Kennedy raised her eyebrows. “Sorry to break it to you, but he’s not enough to turn me.”
Something inside Buffy snapped and she lunged forward, grabbing Kennedy by the shoulders and shoving her against the wall. “Stay. Away. From. Spike.”
Kennedy tried to shake her off, but Buffy held her in an unforgiving grasp. “Let go,” demanded Kennedy, squirming.
“I’ll let go when I’m good and ready. Did you hear me?” Buffy added, giving Kennedy a shake for emphasis.
“You’re a psycho!” gasped Kennedy, panic beginning to enter her eyes.
“I know what you did—I know you were digging around about thaumogenesis behind our backs. And you know what, Kennedy? I think it’s time you headed out of here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s time to pack your bags and clear out,” Buffy spat. “Go back to your family, go to the Watchers’ compound in England, set up camp on the ruins of Sunnydale—I don’t really give a damn. Just get out.”
“What? Like this town isn’t big enough for the both of us?” Kennedy said in disbelief.
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“It’s a free country—I can live where I want,” Kennedy protested.
“Think so?” Buffy mocked, her face right in Kennedy’s. “Think again, little girl. I have had it with you. Do you know why Willow thinks I’m here?” She didn’t even wait for an answer. “She thinks I’m going to kill you.”
Kennedy stilled.
“But I’m not. I’m here to warn you: I’m sick of games, and I’m sick of playing around. You get out of town, now, or I promise you … there’ll be hell to pay.”
Willow tapped her finger against her laptop impatiently. When she was squirrelly, she took comfort in being online. It soothed her, for some reason—maybe because computers were the first thing she excelled at, the first thing she won praise for. The first way she was able to help the gang.
And now, with the others scattered—angry, despondent—Willow didn’t feel nervous at all. Not a bit. Just because they were all demon-ridden, and Giles was in his study with the door locked and steam coming out of his ears, and Xander said he’d go crazy if he stayed there a moment longer, and Dawn and Andrew had “very important shopping to do,” according to Andrew, and Spike was god knew where drinking, and Buffy and Kennedy were probably at each other’s throats, nope, she wasn’t at all anxious.
“Will?”
Willow screeched and jumped up from the kitchen table, knocking the computer screen and hastily grabbing the laptop to prevent further damage.
“Is everything okay?” asked Buffy, frowning.
“Fine!” gasped Willow. “How’d it go?”
Buffy shrugged. She wasn’t proud of what she’d done—she’d practically threatened Kennedy (Practically? her conscience taunted her. What part of “Get out of town or there’ll be hell to pay” isn’t a threat?), which made her feel guilty. She didn’t own the town, and god knew she hadn’t liked it when Angel ordered her out of L.A. a few years back. Even if it hadn’t been about Faith, even if it hadn’t been Angel, she wouldn’t have liked it.
And for all she knew, Kennedy wasn’t even the demon. It could have leapt out of her body and into someone else’s, or maybe it was never in her at all. Maybe it was just floating around, gunning for Spike.
But what the hell did Kennedy hope to accomplish, hanging around a bunch of people who didn’t like her? Inflicting herself on them, just because she could? Even if she wasn’t the demon, what was the point? To hold onto a relationship that was dead? Buffy’d had enough experience with that to know it didn’t work, and would just make everyone involved miserable.
Maybe she should have said some of those things to Kennedy, instead of just, Get out of town, now!
But all she had to do to tamp down her squishy feelings of regret was think of the thaumogenesis demon, two years before, beating the life out of her. She was the Slayer, and she’d barely been able to defeat it. Spike didn’t have a chance—so she wouldn’t take a chance. “Where is everybody?”
Willow squirmed. “Well, Giles is in his study, and everybody else is out.”
“Out—what, to dinner? Why didn’t they wait?”
“Umm … they kind of went out separately. Spike said something about getting a drink,” Willow said vaguely.
“A drink? Why would he want a drink, after getting plastered last night and being hungover all day? That doesn’t make sense,” Buffy protested.
Okay, this was the part Willow hadn’t been looking forward to. “He was kind of upset,” she admitted.
Buffy frowned. “Upset? Why?”
Willow drew a deep breath. “Because-he-found-out-the-thaumogenesis-demon-might-want-to-kill-him,” she rushed out.
Buffy scowled. Of course! Of course, what else could it have been, except exactly what she didn’t want him to know? “How’d he find out?”
“He was listening at the door when we were arguing, before you left.” Willow cringed a little. Buffy was getting redder and redder, like her head might explode.
“Dammit!”
“He was kind of calm about it at first,” Willow assured her hastily. “But then the others came in and there was kind of a scene and some shouting, and he became kind of upset.”
Buffy went still. “So let me get this straight … everybody knows? So if the demon was in any of us, it knows about killing Spike?”
Willow nodded miserably.
Without another word Buffy turned and headed back the way she’d come.
“Where are you going?” Willow asked worriedly.
“To make sure he’s okay,” said Buffy swiftly. She didn’t question her ferocity; it was enough that she felt it. Understanding would come later.
It had been years since she’d felt so driven to protect someone besides Dawn. But he could be anywhere.
He could be in danger, and not even know it.
He wasn’t at the Plasma, the club Buffy had taken him to the night before. Unfortunately, that represented the sum total of the bars in town that Spike knew.
He has a sixth sense about bars, Buffy thought crankily. A bar sense. The ability to pick out even the smallest, most hidden watering hole and make himself at home. Maybe he’d even found a demon bar Buffy wasn’t aware of, thinking it would be like old times.
Only now he wasn’t a demon; he was prey. Not just to the thaumogenesis demon, but to the lowliest fledgling. And no matter how weak or untried, they were still stronger than him.
Oh, god.
Buffy began to run.
She never imagined Santa Rita had so many nooks and crannies, or so many bars. And she never imagined she’d be walking around for so many hours, still looking for Spike.
The sounds of retching coming from a nearby alley drew Buffy’s attention for a moment. Lovely, just—“Spike!” gasped Buffy, starting towards him.
Spike wiped the bile from his mouth as his stomach finally stopped heaving.
“Spike, what are you doing?” she scolded, helping him clamber to his feet.
“What are you, my mother?” he returned sullenly, jerking away from her and swaying on his feet. “Next I suppose you’ll want a shag.”
Buffy blinked. His train of thought eluded her, but it probably made some kind of sense to his whiskey-soaked brain. “Not right now,” she said dryly, steering him out of the alley.
He slipped his arm around her, fondling the sharp thrust of her hipbone. Apparently the word shag was enough to change his mood entirely. “We’ve had some good times in alleys, haven’t we?” he slurred, bumping up against her and letting her know that he might be drunk, but wasn’t incapable. “Met in an alley. Told you I’d kill you, remember? And that time outside the Bronze?”
“That was outside the Bronze,” she reminded him.
“Not that time! The time we’d just dusted a couple of vamps and you were mad ‘cause I copped a feel in front of that girl we saved. You said—you said—”
“I don’t—”
“Said it just proved I couldn’t love, because if I did I’d stop making things harder for you. Said you were miserable and I was making things worse.”
Buffy flushed. She knew, now, that his love for her had been real. It had sent him to Africa—his love and his guilt. She’d been so sure no one could love without a soul, but she’d been an idiot. A smug, prejudiced idiot, holding onto a panacea for pains long past.
“Spike—”
“But that didn’t stop you from unbuttoning my jeans, now did it? Just made it easier for you to leave me afterwards. Easier to step over me and go back to your friends and your lily-white life.”
“I’m not leaving you now, Spike,” she pointed out softly. She had much to regret, but she couldn’t think about it, not now, maybe not ever. If she thought about it, she’d never get out of bed in the morning. Bad decisions, stupid actions, cruel words.
“Sure, you’re not leaving me. Got a soul now, don’t I?” Soul, fucking double-edged sword. Punished him from the moment he got it. Made sure he wouldn’t hurt her again. Made it possible for her to love him, maybe. Someday.
Made him realize, more than anything, how hopeless his love for her had been. He could have loved her until the sky fell, and she would never have loved him back. He had thrown his love away on her, and it hurt, it hurt.
He mumbled something she didn’t catch, and she leaned closer. “What?”
“‘Desire of the moth for the star,’” he said muzzily.
“What? What star?” asked Buffy, glancing up. “What moth?” He was drunker than she’d thought, apparently.
“‘The devotion to something afar,’” he continued.
“Devotion to a star?” Buffy clarified, humoring him.
“To something hopeless. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless.”
Well, that didn’t sound good. “Nothing’s hopeless,” she said briskly, continuing to guide him home.
“Everything’s hopeless,” he corrected her, his voice sounding clear for a moment. “Everything.”
Chapter Fifteen
Xander’s head hurt. And his eyes. And his fingers. Okay, most of him hurt. He really didn’t feel that good about driving at the moment, but it was still better than being at home.
It didn’t really help with the nausea, though.
“Maybe we should have brought Buffy along,” Xander suggested to Willow as he drove the two of them over to Kennedy’s for Willow’s things. “That’s some high-powered box-carrying we’re missing out on.”
“She didn’t want to leave Spike,” said Willow absently, watching the neighborhood change from the upper-middle class environs in which Andrew had built their mini-mansion to the borderline-urban district where Willow and Kennedy had rented an apartment. It was a great location, Kennedy had told her, convenient to restaurants and a cineplex and a good gym, close to the university. As if those things were more important than the Scoobies.
Xander winced in acknowledgment. Yeah, Buffy was clucking over Spike like a hen with one bleached-blond chick, while Spike did his best brooding Angel impersonation. Xander didn’t hate missing that, actually. Almost enough to make a guy stay in his room to avoid it, if his room weren’t already inhabited by a dead fiancée.
Xander pulled into the complex’s parking lot and turned off the engine. “You sure you’re ready for this?”
Willow hesitated a moment. “It has to be done sometime,” she sighed. “It might as well be now. Get it over with, right?”
He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling behind his hangover shades. “Let’s go,” he said.
Before the door, Willow stared at the key in her hand. “I called,” she murmured—not trying to delay going in; not at all. “She isn’t home. It should be okay.”
“Will—”
“Let’s go,” she whispered, sliding in the key. Despite what she’d said about Kennedy not being home, she peered around the door as if expecting Kennedy to be standing there, ready to stare at her balefully the entire time Willow packed.
But she wasn’t. The apartment was quiet, bright with the late morning light. Xander silently followed Willow into the apartment and shut the door behind him. He put down the stack of boxes he was lugging and handed one to Willow. “Where do you want to start?”
“The bedroom,” she said, practical as ever. That was where her most important things were. If Kennedy came home while they were still packing, Willow knew there was no way she’d just keep going with Kennedy there looking at her, making her feel bad. They had to get the important stuff first. “Can you go through the spare room? There are some boxes of books in the closet I never unpacked—you can go ahead and take those down.”
He nodded, watching as she disappeared into the bedroom she’d shared with Kennedy. Not that he thought she’d run out all upset or anything, but … well, it was a possibility. There was nothing fun about breakups, even with nutty girls nobody but you liked. He could have written a book one that one.
He waited until he heard the opening of drawers and Willow mumbling to herself as she arranged things before heading into the spare room. It had never really been decorated—a couch along the wall, some workout equipment, and some boxes that they still hadn’t gotten around to unpacking—and that was pretty much it. It was the same as the day they moved in, right down to the—the—
It took Xander a minute to realize what he was seeing. It shouldn’t have—he’d seen similar things often enough. Then it sank in and he stood there for god knew how long before realizing Willow was talking to him from the next room. Then he heard her in the doorway, and snapped out of his daze.
“Do you have any—Kennedy?!” Willow gasped
“Don’t look, Will,” Xander said swiftly, pulling her out of the room. He reached behind him and fumbled until he pulled the door shut, then dragged Willow to the couch. She was shaking and gasping and beginning to cry, but she didn’t resist.
From across the living room Anya looked at him and shrugged carelessly. “What are you looking at me for? I didn’t have anything to do with it. You shouldn’t be surprised, though. Just another Scooby roadkill.”
“Let’s see,” said Dawn, nodding to Andrew. He was older, but she was kind of the boss, because … well, because he was Andrew. She didn’t think he minded—he liked having someone else make the decisions. Besides, if he was in charge probably the first thing he’d do was order dorky uniforms and create a Team Red Shirt secret handshake.
“Are you sure this will work?” Andrew asked a little nervously.
“It’s better than nothing,” she said. Actually she had no idea, but the stuff looked good to her. “You can do it, right?”
“Umm, well I was thinking about that, and I’m not sure it’s the way to go,” began Andrew. “How about if we tell Willow, or Mr. Giles?”
“Willow and Giles aren’t telling us everything,” Dawn pointed out.
“Mr. Giles didn’t know—”
“Okay, Giles didn’t know, and I don’t think he should know this either,” she cut off.
“Why not? He knows lots of things.”
“Because there’s no way he’d let us do this if he did know.”
“Well, that might not be a bad—”
“Andrew! Red shirts! Remember!”
Andrew sighed and hung his head. Of course he remembered. They were going to die and three episodes later no one would remember their names. “It’s just that I gave up magic when I embraced the side of good,” protested Andrew miserably. “If I give in to the dark forces again they could consume me.”
Dawn pressed her lips together and counted to ten. Andrew didn’t seem to get that they were in danger now, and they should start protecting themselves as soon as possible, otherwise they were dead ducks. And as for his magic powers, he was less Dark Willow and more Doug Henning.
Which still made him tougher than Dawn.
“Do you want to die?” she demanded.
“No! No, of course not, it’s just that I—I have reformed, and there are other ways to do things besides magic. Look at Willow!”
“Willow. Does. Magic,” gritted Dawn.
“Well yeah, but she doesn’t do it for any little thing.”
“Dying is not any little thing!”
“We don’t know that we’re even in danger!” said Andrew desperately.
“They wouldn’t have hidden Giles’s books if there was no danger,” scoffed Dawn.
Andrew looked at the floor. Dawn was great, but she didn’t know everything. She didn’t know what the rush of power was like, and how you could feel like you could do anything, that the world was your candy shop. But Andrew remembered how it felt with Warren and Jonathan, when they had just joined forces and the whole of Sunnydale was ripe for their plucking—before it started to go wrong. When he felt like he could do what he wanted, when he wanted, and that he would always win. And he’d never forget that girl—the girl Warren had brought them, the one who broke her neck on the stairs and looked up at him with horrible blank eyes. And he’d never forgot how just a few words from Warren, his Gandalf, his Yoda, had made it seem like nothing more than a speed bump on the way to their inevitable global conquest. Because they were above it. They could do what they wanted.
It was strange how being around the Scoobies made think of those things. He’d forgotten about it for so long, and he liked not remembering. It was a lot easier to sleep when he didn’t remember it. With the Trio he was one of them, and with the Scoobies he was just on the sidelines. But being around them made him want to be better. He’d never be a Buffy, but maybe he could be a Xander. Even in high school, that would have been like a dream to him.
Beside him Dawn was rambling on, but he wasn’t really listening. He tuned her out occasionally—sometimes she could be sort of nasty; she’d kicked Buffy out of her own house! And that made Spike leave, so it was twice as bad.
“I mean, are we just going to sit around and let—” Dawn continued.
“Xander and Willow are back,” Andrew interrupted in relief, glancing out the window and seeing the SUV pull into the driveway. “We’d better help with Willow’s stuff.” He was out the door before Dawn could stop him. She might be right, but he wasn’t ready yet.
Maybe he would later, but not yet.
“Dead?”
Xander nodded tiredly in response to Buffy’s disbelieving question.
“Dead dead?” squeaked Andrew. He felt sick. God, Dawn was right! Kennedy had been on the sidelines just like them, and now she was gone, despite her Slayer strength. And despite being kind of mean. If it had killed her, it could kill any of them. It could kill him!
Xander winced, glancing over at Willow. Her face wasn’t enraged, wasn’t miserable, wasn’t even stunned. It was just … old. And now she had to go through it all again. “Yeah, Andrew. Dead dead.”
“How—how was … how?” asked Dawn hesitantly.
“Her neck was broken.”
“The demon,” whispered Buffy, wrapping her arms around herself. She’d known there would be trouble. There always was.
“Why would the demon attack Kennedy?” said Spike, making Buffy turn to him in surprise. He’d been quiet all day—the natural result of too much alcohol and an unexpected update on his mortality—but suddenly he felt completely sober. “What would killing her do?”
Willow flinched and shook her head “I—I don’t know. Maybe she caught it doing something. She hated to sit around and wait, she thought it was useless and … cowardly. She must have had a plan,” she speculated, her voice strained. A tremor ran through her, and she clenched her jaw. “I’m—I’m going upstairs,” she finished. Xander reached a hand out to her, and she stepped away, refusing his comfort. She didn’t want it. Not now.
The others watched her go in silence. Buffy thought, remotely, that this had happened so many times, in so many ways, that they’d be used to it, but it was always a kick in the gut. It never got easier.
“Kennedy was closing in on it and it killed her,” whispered Andrew, shaking his head.
“Oh for god’s sake,” snapped Giles. “That’s nonsense. We all know who killed Kennedy, and it wasn’t a demon.”
The others stared at him. “What are you saying?” Buffy asked in disbelief.
“I’m saying there’s only one person who stood to gain by Kennedy’s death, and that’s Spike.”
“Spike?” Dawn whispered, looking stricken.
“That’s ridiculous,” Buffy said sharply. “It wasn’t Spike, he wouldn’t do something like that.”
“He’s done it many times before—”
“He’s human now!”
“And must have been feeling particularly mortal and vulnerable at the time. And considering he believed that Kennedy and the demon were one, and planning his death, it’s not surprising he struck out at her.”
Finally Spike spoke, his voice chill. “That’s a load of shit, mate, and you know it. Exactly how am I supposed to break a Slayer’s neck? In case you’ve missed the Slayer saying it, I’m human.”
“Last night Kennedy couldn’t have saved herself—Willow made sure of that,” Giles said grimly.
“What are you talking about?” Buffy demanded.
“Willow performed a spell to prevent Kennedy from doing violence.”
“To protect Spike?” asked Andrew.
“To protect Buffy,” corrected Giles. “And Kennedy. The spell was for both of them. In case their confrontation got out of hand.”
“Jesus,” muttered Xander, sinking into an armchair as Buffy swore under her breath.
“So Kennedy’s dead because Willow did a spell and took her power?” asked Dawn.
“That’s not why she’s dead,” he denied flatly, his gaze resting on Spike.
Buffy pushed aside her anger at Will’s interference. That could come later. That definitely would come later. “He was here last night,” said Buffy, steel entering her voice.
“Not all night,” Giles pointed out evenly. “He left only a few minutes after you did. Plenty of time to kill Kennedy after you left her. And no alibi.”
Xander spoke up. “Actually, he has one,” he corrected. “He was with me.”
Buffy leaned close to the door, hoping that she didn’t hear Willow casting a spell inside. And hating that she had to worry about that.
There was nothing to hear. No chanting, no crying, no nothing.
“Will?” Buffy asked softly, opening the door. Willow looked up from where she sat at the end of her bed. Her cheeks were a little damp, her eyes tired and hopeless. “God, Will, I’m just—sorry,” said Buffy, bending to hug Willow tightly.
At first Willow was stiff in her arms, but she slowly awakened to the comfort of her friend’s embrace. For a moment she rested her head against Buffy’s slim shoulder, and was surprised to find that it made her feel less alone. “Thanks,” she mumbled.
“How are you doing?” Buffy asked carefully, pulling back a little to look in Willow’s face. Her eyes looked old, but not … black.
Buffy was pitifully relieved.
Willow drew a shuddery breath. “It’s my fault she’s dead,” Willow whispered.
Buffy tensed. She’d planned to wait on it a little while—but if Willow was going to bring it up.…“I—”
“I should have been there,” Willow continued dully, as if Buffy hadn’t spoken. “She was feeling reckless and taking stupid risks. If I’d been there, she wouldn’t have felt so—desperate. But I couldn’t stay with her. I just couldn’t do it. Do you know how that makes me feel?”
“Will—”
“Even now—you know I could have brought her back.”
Buffy froze. “You’re not going to—”
“I didn’t even think of it,” said Willow softly, her voice full of self-loathing. “I walked into the room and there she was, and her head was at a weird angle and her eyes were open, and I didn’t think about it. I watched them as they took her body out. I went to the police station with Xander, and answered questions, and heard them say ‘the victim’ over and over again, and I knew they meant her, and I still never thought about resurrecting her. How’s that?” she finished, her voice wobbly.
Buffy touched her shoulder. “That’s great, Will.”
“No, it’s not. I didn’t not think about it because it was wrong. I didn’t think of it because I didn’t love her enough. It was horrible to see her there, but my world didn’t end. It didn’t make me think I wouldn’t be able to live without her. I just didn’t love her enough. She deserved better than that,” she concluded.
Buffy was tempted not to say anything; she didn’t want Willow to feel any worse than she already did. But she had to know—she had to find out—“The spell you did on Kennedy and me—the one that made us lose our strength….”
“Spell?” Willow looked at her blankly for a moment before comprehension cleared her expression. “No, I dissolved that a few minutes after I cast it. I was worried, and not really thinking too well, but I decided Giles was right about it being dangerous, so I broke it. Kennedy had all her strength last night … she just didn’t have me.”
Spike heard Dawn before he saw her. Her silly little shoes—mules, she called them—made clomping sounds, like a clumsy horse as she stepped onto the porch into the growing twilight.
“I didn’t think it was you,” Dawn said.
Spike smiled faintly. “Sure you did, Platelet.”
“I didn’t want to think it,” she amended softly. “I’m glad you and Xander had each other to drink with.”
“More drinking near each other,” Spike muttered with a grimace. “There wasn’t a lot of talking going on.” Him moaning about his encroaching death and Xander whinging about his old girlfriends about summed it up. That and Bartender? Another round.
“I’m glad anyway.” She hesitated, then added, “I don’t want you to die.”
“Niblet—”
“But I’m not Niblet anymore,” she said, suddenly fierce. “Or Platelet, or Little Bit, or any of those things. That’s—over. Too much stuff happened for that to be okay any more.”
Spike stared at his feet, feeling his cigarette burning perilously close to his fingers. “Sure,” he said, forcing himself not to attach an endearment to it. It wasn’t easy.
Nothing seemed to be these days.
He remained out on the porch long after Dawn had gone in, and his cigarettes had lost their tang. He was human now, and easily tired. He wasn’t at his most alert; if he were, he would have heard the faint creak of the porch, or sensed someone’s presence behind him. He would have noticed in time, and not when the arm was wrapped around his throat
“Look what I’ve got here,” whispered Wood against Spike’s ear. “I guess all things really do come to those who wait.”
Chapter Sixteen
Spike tried to struggle, but Wood’s arm was heavy around his throat.
“Of course you came back,” Wood hissed. “Bad penny always does, right? Always shows up, always makes trouble. It’s about time somebody—”
“Get out of my way and give it a rest,” snapped Cordelia, shoving her way between the two men and putting her hands on her hands on her hips impatiently. “It’s bad enough I had to listen to that all the way here, but someone will die a horrible death if I have to keep listening to it. And I don’t mean Spike.” She regarded the two of them crankily. Wood was tall, dark, and handsome, but had—wait for it!—a Slayer fixation. Not to mention a sense of self-importance that was kind of exaggerated for anyone who wasn’t her. Besides, one cute, brooding, Slayer-whipped guy in her life was more than enough, even if he was going in for Lassie at the moment. And three hours in a car with Skankarella and the Dark Avenger was enough to put anybody in a bad mood.
“He’s bad news,” argued Wood.
“He’s not exactly news,” Cordelia pointed out. “He was hanging around being a pain in the butt before you even knew Buffy’s name.”
A muscle tensed in Wood’s jaw, and Spike had the feeling Wood was tempted to push past Cordy and try again. “He’s trouble!”
“Well, he’s Buffy’s trouble,” said Faith from behind them. She looked at Wood and jerked her head towards the street. “Why don’t you get the bags, big guy? Princess didn’t bother to bring her wardrobe with her when she got out of the car.”
Cordy ignored Faith and stomped into the house. God, that woman was foul—the last few months, with her hanging around like a zit no amount of Proactiv could get rid of, had been enough to make the coma look good. And maybe even the last few months before the coma. Which, considering everything that happened… ewww.
Wood ground his teeth and trailed Faith back to the car. Seeing Spike, healthy and guiltless and alive, like he had any right to be there—any right to exist at all—made his bile rise. It was disgusting, against nature. “It’s him,” he spat. “He’s the one who killed Kennedy.”
Faith forced herself not to roll her eyes. He had a Spike thing—she got that. Spike killed his mother, made him an orphan. Left him alone in the world, where it was cold and horrible and nobody gave a fuck. It was still better than what she’d had, she thought with a twinge of bitterness. At least he had the memory of a mother who loved him.
Anyway, Spike wasn’t the same guy as the vampire who killed his mother, and she couldn’t judge him like that. Because if she did she’d have to start judging herself the same way, and the last time that had happened she’d gone straight to hell. Blamed herself, hated herself because of an accident, then tried to live like it didn’t matter. She couldn’t go down that road, because she knew it wouldn’t lead her anyplace good.
Faith shook her head. Okay, gotta stop thinking about it. “No way a human could get a jump on a Slayer like that,” she pointed out reasonably. He should know—they’d sparred often enough. He was big and strong—just the way she liked ‘em—but he’d never been able to get the drop on her, even when she was sleepy or hungover or sore from a hard night of slaying, or … other stuff. And Spike was a little thing next to him. Well, not that little. More … wiry.
Yeah, wiry, thought Faith, a lascivious smile crossing her face as her mind drifted. Lean and tight.
“He shouldn’t be here,” Wood insisted, as if she hadn’t even spoken. “Living with the Slayer, like he’s a damn king or something. Goes up in ash and comes back again, no, it doesn’t matter if he dusts, he’s special, he gets a second chance.”
“We all get a second chance,” she said sharply.
Pain crossed his face. “Not everyone.”
Faith bit her tongue, cursing her big mouth. “Look, I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant,” he returned carefully, not looking at her.
He always did. At first she’d been relieved—no one had understood her before.
But sometimes it wasn’t a relief.
Sometimes it was better not to be understood.
It was Andrew’s shrill shriek that alerted the others. It was loud enough to draw Willow from her room, Giles from his study. And none of them, in their various imaginings, expected what they found.
“Hey guys,” Cordelia said with a wry smile. “I’m back.”
Cordy was glad to be herself again. Not Coma-delia, not Glow-delia, not even the non-Cordelia who’d carried a god like a damn incubator, god, what was it with her and demonic pregnancies?
But supernatural pregnancies and all, she was especially glad to be Cordelia when she saw how everyone’s faces dropped when they saw Faith and Wood. Nothing like other people being unpopular to make you feel better, she reflected with shameless pleasure. Even if Xander had jumped halfway out of his skin when he saw her, like the big girl he was. If she was the scariest thing he’d seen lately, he was getting soft. Well, softer. And she wasn’t even going to try to figure out what he meant when he said, “She isn’t real!”
And now that the Scoobies had wrapped their minds around the fact that they were here and real and the initial excitement had died down, everything was … well, not so hot, really. They sat around the coffee table with pizza, and no one was talking much, and hey, what did she expect from a day that started with a vision of Kennedy’s dead body?
Cordy sneaked a quick glance at Willow, wondering how she was holding up. She looked composed, but … well, come on. Her girlfriend was newly among the dead. She couldn’t be doing that well, right?
Then Willow looked in her direction, and Cordelia glanced away swiftly, not wanting Willow to think she was staring. Once upon a time, back in Sunnydale, she wouldn’t have bothered, but she’d grown since then.
She stayed down after Faith and Wood went upstairs. Giles had offered them rooms, to Buffy’s obvious discomfort, and Faith pulled Wood away, something about breaking in the bed. Cordelia didn’t want to think about it, or she’d need a damn brain scrub like Gunn had gotten. Dimwit, to let Wolfram & Hart into his mind like that—what good could come of it?
“Idiot,” Cordelia muttered.
Willow leaned towards her a little. “That’s what I used to think, but she was really good when she helped us out with the Potentials last winter,” she said earnestly. “And she didn’t go all psycho killer, either. She’s different now.”
Cordy didn’t bother to correct Willow’s assumption; the idiot thing applied to Faith too, as far as she was concerned—she didn’t care what Angel said. “Everybody’s different,” said Cordy a little wistfully. “You’re a big scary witch, I’m half demon, Angel runs Evil Inc., Spike is human, you all live with the biggest geek in the world and it isn’t even Xander, there’s a whole world full of Slay—oh, and I knew you were gay!” she added suddenly.
Willow blinked, not quite following Cordy’s train of thought. “Uh … okay, that was—okay…”
“I’ve had things on my mind, that’s all—visions take up a lot of my time,” rambled Cordy, not wanting Willow to think she was so self-absorbed that she didn’t realize other people had lives. Lives which were, apparently, completely different than they were in high school, but it wasn’t like she spent her high school years giving birth to demon spawn, either, and that’s how she spent most of her time in L.A., right?
Right. “I mean, boom, I’m just sitting there and then—”
“You saw her? Today, in your vision?”
Cordy shut up abruptly. Yes, she’d seen her. It was why they’d made the trip down to Santa Rita—the vision of Kennedy’s lifeless body. She’d said that earlier, when they’d arrived, but maybe Willow had been too upset to absorb it. “I’m sorry, Willow.”
Willow’s face took on a faraway aspect. “It was awful to see her like that—all broken…” Willow whispered, barely audible.
“They made you identify her?” asked Cordy sympathetically.
Willow didn’t answer, and suddenly Xander was leaning over her protectively. “We found her. We went there to get Will’s things, and there she was.”
“You found her?” repeated Cordelia. “But in my vision, it was Giles—he was there, I saw him standing over her.”
Xander gave her a politely skeptical look. Wesley had claimed that Cordelia had visions, but Wesley had also thought he was the best Watcher in the whole history of watching. Hell, he hadn’t even been the best Watcher in Sunnydale. “Just how precise are your visions, anyway?”
Cordelia hesitated. Sometimes pretty damn, but others … “Not very,” she admitted reluctantly. “Not a photograph as much as a collage. A really … inventive collage.”
“What are they like?” he asked, nudging aside a box of congealed pizza and sitting on the coffee table. It hadn’t been that many years, but it felt strange to be around Cordelia again. Some people stayed friends with their exes, but he’d guess their breakups didn’t involve being impaled on rebar. Just a guess.
Cordelia scowled at the question. A year or two earlier she might have felt differently, but since she’d come out of the coma, the visions had seemed kind of … unnecessary. And if the visions were unnecessary, was she necessary? She’d kept them for so long despite the pain, refused to give them to Groo, gave up her dream life to become a demon to tolerate them, and what happened? The rest of them repaid her by joining Wolfram & Hart? What was up with that? She became a demon, and they just gave up and jumped on the Hell Express? “They’re … different,” she said evasively. “What about you? Still dating demons?”
Willow’s eyes were on Xander even before he blanched.
“What?” Cordelia asked blankly.
“I—I’m going to bed now,” said Xander, eyes dull. He was gone before Cordelia could speak.
When she turned back to Willow, she found the redhead studying her. Remotely, as if she were a bug. “You know about him and Anya, don’t you?”
“Hmm? Oh, they dated or something, right?” What, did Willow expect her to keep up with every little thing that happened back in Sunnydale? It wasn’t like she wasn’t busy over in L.A. Managing Angel Investigations, becoming a princess, being unconscious—her schedule’d been very full.
“They were going to get married.”
It took a moment for that one to sink in. “Married? Xander was going to marry Anya? Is that a joke?”
“Xander, uh, left her at the altar, and she died last spring when we were fighting the First. Right before Sunnydale collapsed. He didn’t get to say goodbye. He didn’t even get to see her body,” Willow finished softly. Maybe he was lucky she thought. That way it wasn’t seared into his mind. He could remember her vital, not gray and lifeless and stiff.
Cordelia was silent for a long time. “I didn’t know,” she said finally. “No one said anything about it after I came back.”
Willow smiled weakly. She’d never liked Anya—she’d been able to hide it, finally, but her dislike had never disappeared—but she knew Anya had really cared about Xander. That was what mattered, wasn’t it? That she loved Xander, and he loved her. Not what other people thought.
Anya got what they all got. Dead. It was kind of funny, really; all these years, all these apocalypses, and the Scoobies were still alive and still together. They’d just lost their lovers, one by one.
“They all die,” she muttered to herself. “It doesn’t matter if we’re in Sunnydale or not, it just follows us.”
“Are you sure it was supernatural? Not a burglar or anything?”
“Do you really have visions about burglars?”
Cordy looked at her hands. No, she never had.
Willow could feel her temples beginning to hurt again, like they had at the police station. Talking about it wasn’t helping anything; it just made her head hurt. Maybe it would have been better, she thought, if she’d just gone upstairs to her room; the others had been sneaking glances at her all night, then looking away, as if waiting for her to burst into tears. Or maybe some of them were worried she’d become homicidal and try to end the world again. Funny how that kind of thing stuck with people.
She wasn’t going to cry, though—much—and she definitely wasn’t going to end the world. But despite the fact that her presence was obviously making people uncomfortable, she still felt she should be there—they were here because of Kennedy. And Kennedy had been there because of her.
That didn’t make it any easier, though. “Kennedy was a Slayer,” she said finally. “It had to be something big. Not a burglar.”
“She was a Slayer?” Cordy exclaimed in surprise. “I mean, I knew you’d mojo-ed the whole Slayer system, but nobody told me Kennedy was one.”
“She was amazing,” said Willow quietly. “So strong, so brave. She wasn’t afraid of anything. It had to have been a demon.
“Nothing human could defeat her.”
The art of the deal had many steps, Gunn had learned, and socializing was a surprisingly large part of it. To seal the deal it was best if the big guy himself was there, but news that some other vampire had gotten the Shanshu had sent him into the king of all funks and now he was off brooding, or sulking, or thinking, or whatever it was that Angel did when he was upset. Maybe he was locking some of Gunn’s staff in a wine cellar with a couple of vampires; Charles didn’t know. All he knew was that Angel wasn’t here.
Fortunately, their client didn’t seem to mind. “Another round, Mr. Nayer?” suggested Gunn, raising a hand to signal the waitress. Even from the other side of the nightclub he could see her shudder. He couldn’t blame her, really; Nayer had been making passes in various degrees of repulsive all night.
Damn good thing he was so well paid, Charles reflected. He never would have imagined the bastards at Wolfram & Hart worked so hard—just thought they kicked back and watched the evil money roll in. Admittedly it was easier work than patrolling the ‘hood, but the amount of schmoozing just to secure a deal with a lowlife like Nayer was ridiculous.
“Excellent suggestion,” Nayer agreed, his eyes glittering madly. “We’re becoming such good friends now, aren’t we, Mr. Gunn? I feel as if we’ve known each other for years.”
“I completely agree,” said Charles without a drop of sincerity. “And please, Mr. Nayer, call me Charles.”
“Charles,” repeated Nayer, smiling at the waitress as she made her way to the table. “I believe I shall. And there’s no need to stand on such formality, Charles.
“Call me Ethan.”