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Barb
"It was very romantic." Anya's feather
duster skirmished over the shelves of the display case, front-line troops in
the endless war against grime. "Also quite annoying. One would think
he'd given a little bit of thought--just a little bit, I don't ask for miracles--to
the demon aspect before this. I certainly spent numerous sleepless nights
obsessing about the fact that as mortals we're both doomed to become extremely
wrinkled and unattractive and then dead."
"Well, it is Xander," Giles pointed out.
"One might think, but Xander is not one." He closed the diary of Albert
Venn (Watcher of Luanne Scoggins, Lafayette, Louisiana, Called 1931, died 1937
of mysterious causes after an illicit affair with a local boccor), sat back,
and gazed at the lettering on the slender volume's spine, his thumb denting
his lower lip. After a moment thus engaged, he set the journal down.
He'd taken to carrying them with him, perhaps in superstitious hope of absorbing
some critical scrap of information by osmosis. "Anya... have you any past
experience with Slayers? Before meeting Buffy?"
The feather duster stilled, and Anya tucked
a silver-blond tress behind one ear, a thoughtful frown creasing her brow.
For once Giles agreed with Xander; the platinum hair didn't suit her.
She'd looked much better as a brunette, her face framed in golden-brown waves
which matched the rich grain of the wood shelving. Giles kept this observation
to himself--knowing Anya, her hair would be russet or jet black by the wedding.
She made a regretful noise and shook her head. "Not a lot. I granted
a wish for one once, back in the fifteenth century, but that wasn't in her professional
capacity." She brandished the feather duster at a particularly obstinate
corner. "We tend to avoid them. Most Slayers have this 'See demon,
kill demon' thing going on, and it's extremely annoying." At Giles's questioning
expression, she elaborated, "Most demons won't have anything to do with vampires
socially. It's not just dangerous when Slayers and you Watcher types lump
us all up together, it's embarrassing."
Her expression said What kind of ignoramus
wouldn't know that? Very likely she was right. Every now and
then, Anya's fierce devotion to human conformity slipped, and thousand-year-old
eyes looked out of that twenty-year-old face and made him feel young and foolish.
It was strangely invigorating. No wonder Xander was secretly terrified
of this wedding--even stripped of her powers, how long could he really expect
Anya to play compliant Samantha to his Darren? "I beg your pardon. Didn't
you once date--"
Anya gave vent to an unladylike snort.
"Oh, Dracula was a social climber. Besides, we vengeance demons aren't
much higher than vampires on the social scale--we start out human, just like
they do. But we're more powerful, and, of course, we have a union."
She came around behind the counter, secured the feather duster in the cabinet
under the register, planted both elbows on the counter and leaned forward to
see what he was reading. "Why do you ask?"
The shop bell rang, and for some moments they
were both distracted assembling the ingredients for a potency spell ("For a
friend!") for the nervous little man who crept into the shop as if he were buying
heroin on a street corner. "Many fewer side effects than Viagra,"
Anya assured him with a brilliant smile. "Most people don't even notice
the discoloration. And I'm sure your friend's significant other
will appreciate the numerous and prolonged orgasms." She shook her
head as the man scurried out. "I'm sure one of those ingredients is an
allergen. People get so red the moment they get near it."
"Fancy." Giles slipped his glasses back
on, pulled out another journal and began leafing through the entries.
"In these Watchers' diaries I've been studying, there are two distinct patterns:
Slayers becoming rigidly controlled killing machines, and Slayers becoming wildly
erratic." Another thoughtful adjustment of the glasses. "Every now
and again, a case arises which appears in the official reports to fall into
the latter category, but if one reads between the lines and squints a great
deal..." Giles sighed and shook his head. "I had some faint hope
that you might have a personal recollection of some of them. It would
be extremely useful to have an outside perspective on some of these events."
He no longer entirely trusted his own.
He'd grown too lax to be a Watcher, too wrapped up in Buffy's private joys and
sorrows, and couldn't help reading them into the accounts of past Slayers.
"Let me take a look," Anya said, reaching for the book. "Maybe something
will jog my memory."
Giles handed her the journal of the moment
and his notes on the other volumes. She scanned them quickly, a small
murmur of recognition escaping her. "This one," she said, tapping one
of the names on his list. "Maria Lupe. I wasn't involved, but I
heard about it. She was having an affair with one of the were-jaguars.
Quite a scandal."
"Are you certain? Her Watcher's account
indicates that she died fighting jaguar spirits."
Anya closed the book; the pages came together
with a crisp snap. "Of course I'm certain. I have an excellent memory
for gossip; it's a professional asset. And it's not impossible.
After all, Buffy's having sex with a vampire and she'll probably die fighting
vampires."
"Must you remind me? Of either eventuality?"
Giles ran his pen down the list--of the two dozen names he'd culled, over half
fell into the erratic group, and of those, over two-thirds involved... inappropriate
attachments of one sort or another. Not always romantic entanglements,
either; there were alliances of one sort or another, which (reading between
the lines and squinting a great deal) approached friendship. That surprised
him far more than the romantic entanglements. Of course in any group of
teen-aged girls, no matter how strictly trained and guarded, some would fall
prey to their own hormones sooner or later. Of the cases where such entanglements
were alluded to, only two of them involved a Slayer and a human male: the one
with the boccor, and another with her own Watcher. The rest were a potpourri
of the supernatural--jaguar spirits, vampires, selkies, werewolves...
I can't resist your sinister attraction
.
"Out of the mouths of babes and robots," Giles
muttered. Certain Slayers were drawn to their mortal enemies in spite
of rigid indoctrination to the contrary, as well as all common sense.
He was beginning to make his own deductions as to why; surely other Watchers
must have come to similar conclusions long ago, and struggled just as he was
doing now to separate human caprice from possible demonic influence. The
feeling nagged at him that he was re-inventing the wheel, but odds were good
that Travers was waiting with bated breath for him to file a research request
with the main Council library in London. The very fact that Giles had
done so would tell Travers more than Giles wanted him to know.
But unlike most field Watchers, Rupert Giles
had alternate sources of information available. "Anya... you have several
of your former colleagues in town for the wedding, do you not?" She nodded.
"Would any of them perhaps be willing to tell me as much as they can recall
about past liaisons between Slayers and demons? Especially about any of
these particular cases? And--is there any chance that D'Hoffryn has any
information on the nature and origins of Slayers in the annals of Arashmahar?"
Anya's expression was both shrewd and admiring.
"Possibly. He'll be here next week. He'll want compensation for
any information he gives you, of course--I'll negotiate for you, if you like.
I'm better at that than you are." Satisfaction sparked in her dark eyes,
and she laid her hand lightly across the back of his. "I don't like the
Council. They were extremely rude to you last year, and we lost a good
two days' worth of business while they were puttering around with their silly
tests and things for Buffy. They won't expect you to go to D'Hoffryn,
will they?"
"I doubt it. In fact--"
Both of them jumped as the door to the basement
slammed open. Spike stalked through the doorway, tranquilizer gun slung
over one shoulder and his duster billowing behind him like an anime hero with
his own private wind machine. A stormcloud bruise bloomed across one razor-edged
cheekbone, and his clothes were splattered with a sticky tracery of violet ichor.
He marched straight up to the counter and dumped a squirming mass of mauve tentacles
tipped with marble-sized, gooseberry-green orbs onto the blotter by the cash
register. "Got any more of these?"
"Scirivin eyes?" Anya eyed the... er...
eyes hungrily. "No, none in stock at the moment. You should put
those on ice. They're more potent if they're still twitching."
Spike propped himself on one elbow against
the counter and crossed a booted foot over the opposing ankle. "Yeh, I
know. You want some in stock?"
The avid delight in Anya's face was quickly
masked by professional detachment. She picked up one of the quivering
eyestalks and examined it. It writhed in her hand like a giant nightcrawler.
"Hmmm... torn at the root, not severed cleanly... not the highest quality."
"Bollocks. You find someone who can make
a Scirivin stand all prim and proper while they trim its eyestalks and you can
buy from him."
Anya looked surprised. "You didn't kill
it?"
"Fuck, no. Won't grow a new crop
of wrigglies for next month's rent if I'm so gormless as to kill it, now will
it?"
"You have a point." She pursed her lips,
poking at the remaining eyestalks with a felt-tip pen to assure herself that
all of them were still twitching. "Flat fee or on commission?"
"Flat, for now. I need the blunt."
"Twenty dollars apiece?"
"Fine, whatever."
"Spike, you're supposed to haggle
." Anya sounded almost offended as she opened the cash drawer and started
counting out twenties--all neatly sorted so that they faced the right way.
"It's no fun if you don't haggle."
Spike's grin was lupine. "Lurin' you
in, pet. Flat fee now. Commission later. And a retainer."
Anya paused mid-count. "Retainer?"
"Yeh." He slapped the counter, making
the eyestalks jump. "You want to sell demon bits; I can provide 'em fresh
off the demon. And as I've such low overhead and we're such close friends
engaging in cash transactions and all, cheaper than your out of town suppliers.
'N fact, you got a customer what wants something special in the way of scales
and spines and dangly bits, I'll undertake to hunt it down." His eyes
went hard. "Subject to a few restrictions. And if the Slayer asks,
you'll certify--in writing, sodding well notarized if necessary--that anything
I sell you's got at least one use that doesn't involve exploding eyeballs or
extended painful death throes."
"I think that can be arranged." Anya
handed Spike his money and a receipt, produced a plastic bag from beneath the
counter, and gingerly swept the spaghetti-tangle of eyestalks into it.
She knotted it neatly at the top and handed it back to Spike. "You can
put that in the refrigeration unit in the basement on your way out. Your
retainer's going to be purely nominal, of course--would fifty dollars a week
do? And I'm thinking a five percent commission."
Spike reared back in outrage. "Nominal
my lily white arse. Don't think you're going to impose on my good nature,
Anyanka, just because you're easy on the eyes and I've a soft spot for birds
with a talent for evisceration. The going rate for suppliers runs closer
to five hundred a week. I done me some checking up before waltzing in
here with your eyeball bouquet. And as for commissions--fifty percent.
I'm the one out getting my valuables nipped off to supply you with Nagrak toenails."
Anya leaned forward, blood in her eye.
"Ah, but you're inexperienced. I'm not going to pay you what I'd give
a seasoned professional. Seventy-five dollars a week and a ten percent
commission, and that's final."
Giles pretended absorption in the journal before
him, but his curiosity was piqued. The ways and means by which Spike supported
himself was a subject usually avoided by unspoken agreement. It
went without saying that most of were them were dubious and some of them
were downright criminal. Over the last two years the outright criminal
had comprised a smaller and smaller percentage of the total--Buffy might
make disapproving noises, but all in all, sharking pool and looting the
lairs of the demons he killed were preferable to lurking in alleys in game face
and trying to scare human passers-by out of their wallets.
This, however, was something else again.
Giles slipped out from behind the counter and made his way to the bookshelves
in the back of the shop. A glance back at the counter showed him Spike
and Anya, platinum heads bent together in low-voiced colloquy--Spike explaining
something in great detail, with emphatic gestures, while Anya typed furiously
into the computer. "...have a business plan?" "...won't like you
cutting in on their territory, but..." and "Clem can get us an in with..." floated
over to the bookshelves. Apparently Spike had very specific ideas about
the sort of business arrangement he was entering into. Giles scanned the
shelves for a moment, plucked a copy of Santiago's Boca Del Infierno: A Bestiary
from its place and flipped it open.
The woodcut illustration of the Scirivin demon
resembled an ambulatory muffin top covered with mold; it was roughly five feet
across and a foot tall, not counting the carpet of waving eyestalks. Non-
sentient, subsisted on sewer slime, secretes acid, aggressive if provoked, eyestalks
useful in scrying spells... it certainly didn't look like anything illegal,
immoral, or even fattening. But it couldn't hurt to make certain.
Giles adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. "I hate to interrupt
a doubtless lucrative transaction, but Anya--are we certain this is entirely
legal?"
Anya and Spike exchanged a look, and Spike's
lip curled. "Knew that was coming up sooner or later."
"Legal, yes," Anya said, drumming on the edge
of the keyboard with her pen. "And even moral, if that's your real question.
Scirivin demons are neither sentient nor endangered." She hit a key and
the printer hummed to life behind her. A moment later it spat out several
pages covered with columns of figures. She picked up the pages and sorted
through them, then handed the one from the top of the stack to Giles. "This
is from our inventory. Spell component on the left, quantity in stock,
price per unit, etcetera. As you can see, mainly herbs, minerals, and
animal products. This--" she handed him two more pages-- "Is a list of
legal demon products we don't usually carry due to problems with availability--in
other words, because the supply's been sewn up by the same black market operators
who deal in vivisecting harmless Hombja'moleev demons for their musk glands."
Spike buffed his nails on the lapel of his
duster and smirked. "Until now."
Even on a Monday, Christmas crowds made finding
a parking spot an exercise in skill and coordination approaching one of the
higher levels of Tomb Raider, unfortunately sans access to Angelina Jolie's
stunt crew. Buffy sharked her way back and forth across the eight or nine square
blocks of downtown Sunnydale for fifteen minutes before finding a spot blocks
away from where she wanted to be. Another five minutes of backing and
filling and at least one nerve-wracking crunch later, she gave up and left the
SUV at a drunken angle, front wheels scraping the curb and rear wheels a good
foot and a half away. Parallel parking was obviously a demon-inspired
Slayer trap.
Heads turned as she walked by, and why not?
She felt good. She looked good. The brisk wind and bright sun put
pink in her cheeks and the memory of last night's diversions put bounce in her
step. Her lavender knit cap and matching scarf added a kicky accent to
her cream blouse and heather skirt (grey indeed; who knew vampires were color-blind?).
She hadn't been this confident in ages--not
since facing down the Council last year--and it felt wonderful. She'd
knocked them dead at the interview--poised, cheerful, enthusiastic, but not
in a scary call- security way. Swinging along down Main Street, her gym
bag slung over one shoulder, she was morally certain she'd gotten the job.
Not that she really looked forward to four weeks of dealing with hordes of frenzied
Christmas and post-Christmas shoppers, but the clothing department of Oshman's
was infinitely to be preferred to some of the other jobs she'd gone in for--if
she got this one, at least she'd be in daily contact with cute ski outfits and
hundred-and-fifty-dollar pairs of running shoes.
Of course, it was only a temporary position,
which she was infinitely grateful for, even as she tried to be responsible and
grown-up about it. Focus on the basics. Job good. Money better.
Especially considering the bills pilling up on her mother's old desk, and the
letter in this morning's mail she refused to think about just now. It
would be good for her, Buffy remonstrated with herself, getting out and connecting
with people. Even people who really shouldn't be trying to cram
themselves into neon yellow spandex bike shorts at this stage of their exercise
regimen.
The walk to the Magic Box provided another
chance to scope out the ground for tonight's operation, at least. Buffy
automatically noted the current positions of dumpsters and made calculations
about the best places to corner Tanner in the event that he was alone, and ran
through scenarios for getting him alone if he had his posse with him.
She paused in front of the salon on the corner, irresistibly drawn by the smell
of wet hair and perm solution. She peered through the front window.
If the job came through maybe she'd splurge and get her hair done.
The Buffy in the window glass looked right
through her, out at the street drenched in bright winter sunshine and the passers-by
on the sidewalk behind her. Buffy put her hand to the cold expanse of
glass, fingertip to fingertip with her reflection. Like touching a ghost.
Two months ago, I was dead. She'd pass her reflection at the door,
change places, and she'd become the ghost again, a wan, flat, colorless creature
floating untouched through her own existence...
The suffocating numbness spread through her
so swiftly that for a moment she was incapable of drawing breath. Her
heart struggled to beat. She called images up like talismans: Dawn, snitching
her blue cashmere sweater, irritating and infinitely precious. New shoes.
Willow's silly Elmo-skin top. Blueberry pancakes. Spike's eyes,
wicked and tender; Spike's hands, large and clever and fitting so well to every
curve of her body; Spike's mouth, oh, Spike's mouth...
The emptiness within her thinned and faded
away like morning fog. Buffy took a deep breath and turned away from the salon
window, walking back out into the sunshine. She was meshed with the world
again, feeling the slight pinch of her heels, the chill December wind lashing
drifts of sycamore leaves through the gutters. That these moments still
occurred was terrifying. That they were only moments now, brief interludes
in a day full of worry about the meeting with Mrs. Kroger, excitement
about the (fingers crossed!) new job, anticipation of tonight's battles--that
was the miracle. A seagull was carving blinding white chevrons across
the bright pale blue overhead, and it struck her that Spike's eyes were no
longer the color of the sky. The sky was the color of Spike's eyes.
Oh, God, I need this job.
Spike wanted to help so badly. Dawn,
and even Willow and Tara, didn't get why she couldn't let him. Surely
Spike wasn't doing anything that awful for money these days, and didn't
all of them overlook his minor transgressions already? Would it really
hurt to take the odd twenty for groceries, if only two of those twenty had accidentally
leaked out of the hip pocket of some unsuspecting Bronze-goer?
That was the whole problem; way too easy for
her to go from overlooking little things--because it was Spike, and he made
her feel like slow-motion fireworks--to overlooking medium-sized things.
Hopefully she'd never be so far gone that large things and Extra-Super-Big-Gulp-sized
things were overlookable, but... wasn't that exactly the eventuality she'd made
arrangements with Faith for? There was a constant chick fight going on
between the part of her that just wanted to dance and shag and kick vampire
ass and look fabulous while doing it, and the part concerned with following
rules and doing the right thing for the right reasons and gaining the approval
of parents and teachers and Watchers and ex-boyfriends and social workers and...
and... that guy over there, the one with the hat.
None of her friends seemed to realize how very
precarious was Good Buffy's chokehold on Bad Buffy. Especially when Good
Buffy secretly longed to get in on the tastefully slutty outfits and ass-kicking
herself. Give Spike an inch and he'd spoil her and Dawn both rotten, cater
to their every whim with all the devotion he'd lavished on Drusilla back in
the day. Very, very wrong, all that whim-catering, of course. Foot
rubs, breakfast in bed, mysteriously-appearing designer clothing in her size...
Talk about sinister attraction. It was totally unfair that she
had to smack her own conscience around on top of contending with Spike's
lack of same. Bet Spike never suffers from internal monologues.
Buffy stuck her lower lip out, indulging in a small pity party, complete
with cake and ice cream.
She couldn't make it last long.
No one had held a gun to her head and forced her to jump Spike's delectable
undead bones. The tingle up the back of her spine informed her that said
bones were within jumping distance as she rounded the corner. The
Magic Box's blue--was everything that shade of blue these days?--storefront
loomed up before her. She was simply going to have to be strong.
Fair wasn't in the picture; she'd known all along that with Spike, she was always
going to have to be the one to make with the restraint. Fortunately
for all concerned, Spike enjoys restraints. Darn it, that was a
perfectly innocent sentence when it started out. Monday, 12:14 PM
-- Sunnydale residents startled by loud crash when Buffy Summers officially
fell into debauchery. "I couldn't help it," Ms. Summers told reporters.
"The dominatrix outfit came with the cutest thigh boots."
The shop bell jingled merrily as she pushed
the door open. Giles was seated at the library table, awash in journals
and chewing on the end of his pen, his hair sticking up in rumpled tufts.
Spike was lounging against the front counter, cleaning the disassembled trank
gun while Anya toted up a column of figures on the adding machine. All
three of them looked up and gave her distracted smiles as she bounced in, but
all in all there was a distinct lack of hail-the-conquering-Buffy in the air.
Anya leaned over and pointed out a figure.
"That would be your estimated quarterly income. Any commissions on items
sold would be in addition to that."
Spike nodded with the mystified air of one to
whom finances were an unexplored continent, but who does not wish to appear
a complete dunce in front of the natives. "It'll do."
Buffy seriously considered breaking out the
old pom-poms. "Hi, guys! The interview went really well. I
thought I'd get some training time in before Dawn gets home from school--The
Kroger's due at our place at four. I really think I nailed this one,"
she said, adding, when effusive congratulations were not forthcoming, "Oshman's.
Over at the mall. It'd only be temporary, sales and inventory until after
the Christmas rush, but it starts this week and I'd get two paychecks out of
it and one would come before Christmas so we could have a real dinner and presents
and..." Jeez, what did it take to sell these people? "Electricity, which
I hear is popular this year? Plus it's selling the cute kind of sports
clothes you're not actually supposed to sweat in, so employee discounts?
Major bonus."
"That's... er... capital news," Giles said.
"Yay, Buffy!" Anya chimed in obligingly.
Buffy aimed a sorrowful only-you-can-save-my-mood-now-Obi-Wan
pout at Spike, who immediately abandoned the lure of the trank gun and gave
her a great big delighted grin, dimples and all. "Good on you, Slayer.
Should last you till the Council sees reason and ponies up, any road."
Mollified, Buffy allowed him to take her gym bag and followed him back over
to the counter. She slipped an arm around Spike's waist--lack of winciness,
check; healed up completely. He bent and purred into her ear, "Famished
for sight of you, love."
"Mmm. How can I resist a man who's all
over purple gooey stuff?" Buffy tipped her head back, and received far more
satisfactory congratulations in the form of one of those eternal breathless
kisses. Maybe teeny, tiny amounts of demon lover spoilage were tolerable, if
she resolutely kept the badness thereof in mind? That's it, I'll
let him spoil me, but I won't enjoy it. She craned her neck curiously
at the papers covering the countertop. "What's up?"
Spike took a deep breath and Buffy felt her
stomach sinking. Uh oh. That's the Deep Breath of 'I can explain
everything, Slayer.' Occasionally big with the entertainment value, but
never of the good. Spike had that rehearsing look on his face, as if she'd caught
him before he had his spiel completely worked out. "Right. It's
like this, Buffy--"
Anya patted Spike's shoulder with a proprietary
smile, as if he were a particularly clever puppy who'd just learned a new trick.
"Spike is no longer an economic parasite!" she said proudly. "He's a productive
member of the free market, selling his skills in healthy competition with his
peers!"
Buffy pulled away slightly and cast wary eyes
up at Spike, who was glaring the glare of the extremely cross vampire at the
oblivious Anya. "And these skills you speak of would be...?" Buffy asked.
Sarcasm-o- grams to order? William the Bloody, vampire gigolo?
"He's a free-lance demon hunter," Anya said,
beaming. "Note the free-lance. Not an employee of the Magic
Box, should anyone from Immigration and Naturalization or the IRS happen to
ask."
Buffy wriggled a finger in one ear. "I'm
sorry, I must have misheard, because I thought you just said Spike had become
some kind of demon hunter. As in killing demons for money."
"Love, it's not exactly--"
Anya overrode him. "Spike already kills
demons for money. Or at least, he kills demons for fun and sometimes he
takes their belongings or body parts to exchange for money. Hadn't you
noticed? It's made him quite unpopular. Really, Buffy, you're having
sex with him; you ought to exhibit a little curiosity about what he does, even
if you're not really interested. It's only polite."
Buffy unclenched her jaw sufficiently to form
words. "I'll keep that in mind. So the big difference between Spike
the economic parasite of yesterday and Spike the brilliant entrepreneur of today
would be...?"
Anya opened her mouth to explain further, but
Spike reached across the counter and (surprisingly gently) closed it.
"Difference is I'm not killing 'em for fun and games," he said. "I'm doing
it businesslike, going after particular demons I know we can make a good profit
on."
I can't let my guard down for a second,
can I? She could feel herself freezing, veins and arteries becoming
brittle latticeworks of ice from the heart all the way out to the tips of her
fingers. Surely anyone touching her in that moment would have found her
colder than Spike. The anger was directed as much at herself as at him.
Stupid, naive little girl. Buffy pulled away from him, stepping back far
enough to look him in the eye. "I thought," she said, "that we'd talked
about this, and you weren't going to do it."
The muscle in his jaw was doing the twitchy
thing. "We talked, Slayer, and as I recall agreed we weren't going to
profit from anything exclusively used by the forces of wickedness. Oh,
I forgot--does 'we talked about this' mean 'Spike agrees to ask Buffy's gracious
permission before wiping his arse?' Sorry. Lost my Buffy-to-English
dictionary."
Buffy blinked furiously. She was not
going to start crying. She was too mad to start crying. "Damn it,
Spike! Don't you dare make this about me!"
"Why not? Isn't everything about you?"
Nose to nose again, really furious this time.
"No, it's about them!" Buffy waved an arm in the general direction
of the street. "It's got to be about them, or I really am nothing
but--did you really expect that announcing you were selling contraband demon
guts to some sleazy black market scumbag would make me happy?"
"Excuse me, but as the sleazy black market
scumbag in question..." Buffy whipped around; Anya stood her ground and met
her eyes with pinch- mouthed irritation. "I would never endanger this
store or my standing in the Sunnydale business community by selling illegal
goods. What's your objection to the business arrangement I have with Spike?"
Buffy cocked her head to one side and assumed a vacuous stare.
"Aside from it being wrong to chop people up and sell their livers? Gee,
I don't know. Let me think about it."
"I'm not killing anything with the brains to
complain about it. I'll save that for my own after-hours amusement.
Since when are demons people to you, Slayer?" Spike's lip curled in equal
parts amusement and disgust--equally infuriating, anyway. "You spent an
ounce of worry in the last two years over whether I've confined my fun to killing
the nasty varieties? Fuck all, Buffy, would you blink once at taking Clem's
head off if you'd not been introduced? "
No, she hadn't, and she probably wouldn't,
and Clem was no danger to anything but small furry mammals. The
idea that there was an entire new arena where she'd feel obligated to police
Spike's behavior (and, God help her, her own) made her feel faint.
She was barely wrapping her brain around the concept that there were
any non-nasty varieties. The whole thing was getting way too complicated,
with good demons and bad demons and demons who used to be people and people
who used to be demons and if a train leaves Seattle at 5:00 AM traveling towards
Denver at sixty miles an hour can you trust a soulless vampire any further
than you can throw him? Buffy slapped her palm down on the counter, sending
papers flying. When in doubt, resort to violence. "That's beside
the point. I'm not the one demanding cash for taking back the night."
"Only 'cause you haven't talked the Council
of Wankers into it yet. Jealous?"
Seethingly; how come you get paid for having
fun? Buffy turned on Anya. "Wasn't there some reason why
haven't you ever carried any of this stuff before, Anya? Oh, right.
Because the people who sell it are slime!" She snatched her hand back
and clenched her fists at her sides. "I've had run-ins with them before.
One of them thought Oz would make a great throw rug." She threw a beseeching
look at Giles for support, but he was watching the exchange with aloof interest
and said nothing.
Spike snorted. "So because Spells
R Us down the road sells Hands of Glory at half price and has more customers
go missing than Mrs. Lovett's Pie Shop, that means all magic stores are owned
by ravening ghouls, eh?" He thrust the list of spell ingredients at her.
"Not claiming I haven't disposed of a few gizzards with the shadier blokes in
my time. Way I see it, if I'm going to kill something anyway, it's a pity
and a shame to see the useful bits go to waste, and a vamp's got to eat.
But for this deal it's going to be straight up. If you'd ever bothered
to learn a thing about the beasties you've been killing for the last six years,
you'd know there's not an item on the menu to raise a bishop's eyebrow."
Buffy shoved it back at him. Ghora, Scirivin,
Luxos... she didn't know enough about the arcane science of demonology to tell
if he was being truthful or not, though she had no reason to believe Anya was
lying about it. "So from now on you're only going to help out if it'll
bring in a profit?"
"I didn't say that," Spike snarled. He
began re-assembling the trank gun, snapping pieces back into place with brutal
efficiency. "Look, Anya's the one with the soul and the tax number.
That's why I set this up the way I did, making her the middleman, because this
time it is all about you, Buffy. Honest cash. And we--" he
jabbed a forefinger into her chest, "--have a deal. You're going to take
it, and it's going to help pay your sodding bills and buy your sodding groceries
and buy the Bit something nice for Christmas. You're not meant for waiting
on people, love--you're better than that."
The conviction in his voice rasped right down
into her bones, a seductive pain. Her breath caught in her throat.
"No. I'm not. What I do, what I am--the Slayer has to be
for something. I won't--I can't," Buffy gritted out, "take
a single penny from you."
Spike's voice went low and hard. "I'll
know what your word's worth, then, won't I? You told me to do what I thought
was right, Slayer--even if you hated me for it. And what I think's right
is taking care of my girls." He jammed the last piece of the trank gun
back into place and nodded to Anya. "Be on my way. Thanks."
"You're welcome." Anya directed a smile
at Buffy, a tight, sharp- toothed expression that made one suspect her demon
aspect wasn't as long- lost as one might like to believe. "Xander says
if I can’t say anything polite, I shouldn't say anything. So I won't say
anything to you right now." She began clearing the scattered papers off
the counter, then, with icy hauteur, added, "Peter Parker sells photographs
of himself. I checked."
Buffy stood frozen, the tense lines of Spike's
back as he stalked off down the basement stairs burnt into her retinas.
She'd said and done all the wrong things, and was still flailing for the right
ones. She smashed her fist into the counter and ran for the training room,
slamming the door behind her.
Buffy had changed into sweats and a tank
top, pulled her hair back in tails and ditched the heels for sneakers by the
time Giles entered the training room, and was whaling furiously away at the
punching bag. Every blow featured a paired imprecation"Stupid..."
(kick) "Pig-headed..." (punch) "Brain-fried..." (chop) "Vampire!"
Giles watched her critically for a moment.
She was not so much sparring as attempting to pummel it into submission.
"You're leading with your left."
She gave the bag another vicious blow.
A seam popped. "I hate him!"
"Under normal circumstances I'd call
that a healthy turn of events. Buffy..." Giles refrained from pulling
off his glasses; he'd polish right through the lenses at this rate. There
must be some special category of Oscar reserved especially for Watchers consoling
their Slayers over a quarrel with her vampire lover, a lifetime achievement
award in irony. By all rights he should be taking this opportunity to
nudge her towards breaking it off, but... but. "Much though it pains
me to defend Spike in any capacity, out of consideration for our insurance premiums,
I feel bound to point out that he hasn't done anything wrong. Yet."
"Yet! Exactly!" Buffy executed a spin-kick
which would have taken the head off of a Zagros demon, dropped flat to the training
mat to avoid the bag on the backswing, leaped to her feet and unleashed a flurry
of punches. "He doesn't--unh!--get it. He'll never get it.
He's incapable of--mmf!--getting it." She drove both fists into the bag,
sending it careening wildly in circles. "And I'm the dorky tourist in
No Soul Land, convinced that if I just talk loudly and slowly and use words
of one syllable--I'm deluding myself that this could ever work."
"Very likely so." Giles shoved his hands
in his jeans pockets.
Buffy collapsed cross-legged to the mat and
yanked off the purple happy-face scrunchy holding her ponytail. Strands
of honey-blonde fell to her shoulders and she stared at the scrunchy with horror.
"This is Dawn's. My life is in shambles and I'm wearing Dawn's
scrunchy." She wrapped the scrunchy around her hand, toying with the elastic.
"It's all gotten so complicated." Her voice trailed away, soft and devoid
of emotion. "I loved Angel. That was all I had to know. And
then it wasn't--it wasn't enough. I loved Riley. And that wasn't
enough either. So what makes me think it'll be enough this time?"
Giles sighed and sat down on the bench against
the wall, the dark green vinyl hissing under his weight. What had Maria
Lupe's Watcher felt, seeing a slim brown hand laid across dappled tawny fur,
dark liquid eyes caught up in pools of molten gold? He wished he could
call across the centuries--Was she happy? Did her heart shine in her
eyes when he walked in? Did he batter himself bloody against his own limitations
for her sake? Were your reports to the Council as full of careful omissions
as my own? "It won't be." Buffy's breath took a short wounded hitch.
"Love by itself never is. But without it, you would most certainly be
doomed. My dear girl... Spike is like the dog who walks on his hind
legs. The wonder is not that he does it poorly, but that he does it at
all. If that's not enough for you..." He left the real question--should
it be enough for you? --hanging in mid-air. "Best end it now before
either of you is hurt more." He hesitated. "It's hardly an encomium,
but remember that Spike kills because he loves to kill. The money's as
secondary to him as it is to you."
"Secondary." Her laugh was
hollow. "Our bank account's almost empty. I added it all up two
or three times, and I know math wasn't exactly my best subject, but it won't
be long before checks start bouncing. The child support covers Dawn's
school books and clothes and lunches and stuff, but there's nothing left over.
Mom's ADC check will be cut off next month when I turn twenty-one--Dawn'll still
be getting hers, but it should go towards college. Willow and Tara can
only chip in so much, and I got a letter from the insurance company this morning
saying that our shingles were shot and we had to get a new roof or they'd cancel
our coverage." She looked up, her eyes damp and bright, lichen on wet
stone. "That's, like, ten thousand dollars. Or more. Even
if I do get this job with Oshman's, Spike's moneymaking scheme is looking really,
really good."
It was far easier to disdain money when
one had it in quantity, Giles mused. "The job isn't perhaps the most savory
in the world, but it may prove useful--if Spike's known to be out hunting demons,
it gives us a good cover to do likewise without alerting the Council that you're
still slaying."
"Right. My moneymaking scheme,
which is ever so morally superior." Buffy buried her face in her hands, all
small and muffled. "You know what's scary? When he tells me I'm
too good to sell clothes or wait tables, something in me wants to believe him.
How can I possibly trust him to do the right thing when I can't trust myself?"
"You were perfectly willing to endanger
our ruse by leaping into the fray last night. I doubt your mercenary instincts
have completely overwhelmed you." That elicited a small, hiccupy laugh.
Giles slid off the bench and knelt beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder.
"Buffy...
I never thought this day would come, but I agree with Spike. Not that
you're too good to wait tables--there's no work that's beneath anyone if it's
done with good will--but that you're good enough to do better. Perhaps
you'll wait tables for now, but for now isn't your entire life."
He felt the rise and fall of her back
under his hand, so deceptively frail beneath the cotton tank top, scapulae as
light and fragile as a bird's creasing the curve of her spine. When she'd
first come back he could count each rib; now there was muscle there, thin and
solid. After a moment she straightened and sat up, weary but resolute.
"So. You said there was other stuff you wanted to talk to me about?"
"Yes." Giles got to his feet, removing
his glasses and rubbing the back of his neck against an incipient tension headache.
"When I spoke to Quentin Travers last, he dropped some obscure hints as to why
he was reluctant to allow a Slayer independence, financial or otherwise, from
her Watcher."
"Ooh, yeah, the willful bit." Buffy got
to her feet, glanced at the somewhat worse-for-wear punching bag and walked
over to the pommel horse. "Any minute now I'll be wearing my knickers buckled
below the knee and smoking cornsilk behind the barn." She pulled herself
up onto the horse with a single graceful motion.
"I've done considerable research in the last
few days on Slayers who've lasted as long as you have--there aren't many--and
I believe I'm getting an idea what Travers has been hinting at." He stopped.
How to introduce this? "I believe Travers expected me to draw exactly
this conclusion, and I believe he was counting on my being shocked at it.
Needless to say, he seriously underestimates my threshold for alarm."
Buffy's breath hissed between her teeth as
she flipped over. Giles took automatic note of her form, though it had
been some time since he'd found any serious flaws to criticize. "Alarminess
factor high but non-critical. Check."
"Actually I find it rather intriguing," Giles
said. "Bear in mind that this is largely speculation on my part.
Has it ever struck you as odd that an organization such as the Watcher's Council,
which keeps exhaustive records of its activities and has lasted in one form
or another for at least two millennia, hasn't so much as a fireside tale concerning
the event which justifies its existence? We have several accounts of the
origins of vampires--and setting aside the question of how accurate any of them
are, why have we no equivalent legends of the origin of the Slayer?"
"Eh. It registers a 2.5 on the weirdness
scale." Buffy went into a mid-air split, toes impeccably pointed.
"Personally, a little too busy being the Slayer to bemoan my lack of a thrilling
origin story. At least before the whole Dracula thing." She made
a rueful face. "And not much afterwards. Avoidance and repression
work so well for me." She flowed into a handstand. "Besides, the
inconvenient part where you have to die before a new Slayer's called?
Not a lot of opportunity to pass down secret origins and Aunt Martha's gingerbread
recipes."
"Mmm." Giles sat down on the bench
again and leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "The odds of the truth
surviving from the Neolithic to the present is virtually nil, quite correct--but
mankind is a storytelling beast. If the truth was lost, why haven't we
made up a few comforting lies to take its place? How did the First Slayer
come to exist? How is a new Slayer chosen when the old one dies?"
"Huh." Buffy went through a few
more spine-twisting contortions, barely breaking a sweat. "I guess I always
assumed that Slayers were the flunkies of the Powers That Be."
"Hardly. Recall that Whistler told
you that the Powers never saw you coming. Primarily, I would assume, because
according to prophecy you were supposed to have died the previous year; ever
since you've been a wild card. But were Slayers the especial province
of the Powers, I would expect the Powers to check in on them occasionally.
Consider what few facts we have. The first Slayers arose not long after
the first vampires, created or summoned specifically to deal with them.
They are always female, always Chosen at the age of fifteen. There are
dozens, perhaps hundreds, of potential Slayers alive at any given moment.
The Council has some rather unreliable methods of identifying them, and attempts
to do so and train them as they did with Kendra--but as you and Faith can attest,
many Slayers aren't identified by the Council until after their powers manifest."
Buffy gave him an upside-down frown.
"And this relates to my lack of paycheck how?"
"Dracula claimed that your powers were
rooted in darkness. In a sense he may have been correct. I believe
your powers may be of demonic origin. As the saying goes, set a thief
to catch a thief. Whatever or whoever created the Slayers, it was not
the Watchers' Council; we are latecomers, trying to harness a force we don't
fully understand...and perhaps rightly, fear."
Buffy froze mid-figure, the whites of her
eyes showing all the way around the pupils. She dropped to the floor with
a thump, still gripping the handles of the pommel horse with white-knuckled
intensity. "Dracula was all 'Join me, Buffy, and we can rule the galaxy
yadda yadda.' He was running a con. Wasn't he?"
Giles replaced his glasses. "I'd
hardly classify him as a trusted source, but our encounter with the First Slayer
supports it. It--she--was a primal force, scarcely human, contemptuous
of human ties--Buffy, do stop hyperventilating."
"I can't be a demon!" Buffy grabbed his
arm in wild-eyed panic. "I kill demons! This is not ew. This
is beyond ew. This is Return of the Son of Ew Meets Abbott and Costello
Vs. the Wolf Man!"
Giles winced and pried her fingers out
of his biceps. "I didn't say that you were. I said that it's possible--possible,
mind--that your powers are of demonic origin. Something similar, perhaps,
to the origins of the vengeance demons--human women infused with a greater or
lesser degree of demonic essence. In the case of Slayers, strength, speed,
agility, accelerated healing, prophetic dreams, and an affinity for weapons.
Possibly other talents, if our experience in channeling the First Slayer is
any indication, that few Slayers live long enough to realize. If I'm correct,
this goes a long way towards explaining the Council's desire to keep it a secret,
and their reluctance to grant you independence of your Watcher. A Slayer
aware of her origins..."
Buffy swallowed hard, looking sick.
"That's not all it would explain."
Dawn shot a worried glance at the kitchen
clock as Willow packed the necessary ingredients into her trusty blue nylon
duffle with her usual care: incense and burner to the left, herbs in the portable
spice rack, athame in its sheath to the right. Willow gave her a reassuring
smile. "It's only two. We'll have it all out of the way before The Kroger
gets here."
"I know." Dawn went back to her
microscopic examination of the counters for crumbs, cat hair, or any evidence
that human beings had used the kitchen for food preparation in the last fifty
years. "I'm not nervous. I just want everything to be perfect."
She checked behind the toaster and started re-arranging the flour and sugar
canisters. "The living room got vacuumed, right? And ohmigod--"
She dashed for the refrigerator, flung open the door and pulled out the jug
of pig's blood, yanked off the cap and headed for the sink. "I should
dump it, right? Or no. There should be a clever explanation, like
it's for paint thinner or something. I'm freaking, aren't I? I shouldn't
be freaking. That's Buffy's job." She stuck the blood back into
the fridge. "I'm going to clean my room. Again." And she was
off, hair a chestnut banner behind her, footsteps thumping up the stairs double-time.
"She may look like Dawn..." Willow intoned.
"She may sound like Dawn..." Tara
responded.
"But she's a Pod Person from the planet
Mars!" they chorused together, dissolving into giggles.
"OK, serious now." Tara wiped her
eyes. "We've got all the components for the glamor spell?"
Willow peered into the duffle. "Pocket
mirrors, Scotch tape, photos of average-type people, check."
"Components for the crazy-curing
spell?"
She's upstairs, cleaning her room.
Willow squirmed for a moment, then realized that her lack of response
was leaving absent-minded territory and rapidly approaching distinctly odd country.
"Um, it doesn't need any. Just like the one I used on you, y'know?
Totally words and finger-wavy stuff." She held up both hands and wriggled
her fingers illustratively. Tara sat back, playing with an amethyst crystal,
her brow wrinkled.
"Wow--for all those people, I thought
you'd need the focus a ritual would provide. That's..." She trailed
off, obviously wanting to ask questions and just as obviously afraid the questions
would be ill-received. "Impressive," she finished, offering up the word
for inspection with hopeful eyes.
"It's not that big a deal." Willow's
airy shrug as she took the amethyst and stuffed it into the duffle felt false
and nervous in her own muscles. "I already had the basic spell worked
out, remember? All I had to do was modify it."
Tara kept looking at her for a long moment,
then said, "Components for the draining spell?"
"Amulet, uncharged, check. Funnel, amethyst,
incense--oh, fudge, darts!" Willow dropped the duffle to the floor and dashed
over to the stove and the two-quart saucepan which had been huddled forlornly
on the back burner for the last two days. A proper witch, she sometimes
thought, would have had a cauldron like Amy Madison's mother had owned, but
here she was stuck with a piece of battered Revereware. Willow lifted
the lid and peeked inside; the darts were still steeping in Infusion of Icky
Stuff--hellebore, nightshade, the usual suspects.
Willow took a wooden spoon (the special Potion
Spoon, under no circumstances to be used for whipping up cookie dough) from
its hook on the wall and fished out a dart. In the overhead light of the
stove they were starting to reveal a greenish, phosphorescent luster.
"I think these are ready--I'll just quick run them over to Spike's crypt."
She pulled a Ziplock bag from the cupboard beneath the sink and began spooning
darts into it, careful not to dribble any of the liquid on bare skin.
They glowed malevolently, and Willow turned the bag this way and that, admiring
her work. Was this or was this not cool?
"Don't take too long," Tara said.
For a second Willow was caught in those
deep clear eyes like a fly in amber; time slowed to a snail's pace and Tara's
words seemed to resonate through the room, carrying meaning far beyond the obvious.
Then the moment was gone and Willow gave her beloved a quick confident grin.
"'Course not, I'll be back before four."
She gave Tara a hurried peck on the cheek
and waved as she went out the kitchen door. She looked back, once, as
she walked down the driveway; Tara's form was silhouetted in the nearer of the
kitchen windows, watching over her--a guardian angel, or a guard dog?
Willow felt an unreasonable stab of anger; did Tara still not trust her, after
all they'd been through?
It was a beautiful day, bright and breezy
and a little bit chilly, with the bare white branches of ash and mulberry trees,
the last of their golden leaves still clinging in defiance of the wind, intersecting
against the invariant green of palms and pines. The sort of day other
towns in colder climes had in October. Sometimes she forgot how picturesque
Sunnydale was in daylight. Willow strolled down the streets, taking her
time, feeling the comforting warmth of the magic curling within her. The
bag of darts, safely tucked away in her book bag, bumped against her side, and
she ran over what she was going to say in her head, changing a word here and
a sentence there. She was only going to get to say it once, and it had
to be perfect.
She crunched down the gravel path which
wound between the tombstones until Spike's crypt came into sight. The
strains of "Sheena Was a Punk Rocker" drifted through the quiet cemetery, telling
her Spike was home and up and about--she'd been a little worried that he might
be asleep, considering how little he'd probably gotten last night. Willow
shifted the bag from one hand to the other and knocked on the crypt door.
No answer. She sidled round to the nearest window and pressed her nose
to the grimy sill. In addition to the music welling up from downstairs--how
many speakers did Spike have attached to that dinky little turntable, anyway?--the
TV was on full blast, but there was no one in sight--had he stepped out, or
was he downstairs? She hated just barging in the way Buffy did; it always
seemed so... familiar. She grabbed the dusty iron bars of the window
grill and half-hopped, half-pulled herself up for a better view. There
was Spike's favorite beat-up old armchair, the new(er) settee and the scatter
of books and magazines across the low table, the looming stone angels and the
sarcophagus--no Spike.
Willow dropped down and gnawed on a fingernail.
She could leave the darts, but then she'd have to think of another excuse to
drop by and catch him alone--no easy task these days when he and Buffy were
joined at the hip. Ew. Next on the Not-Going-There Channel...
Working herself up for this had been hard enough. Reluctantly, Willow
returned to the crypt door and gave it a little shove. Unlocked as usual,
it swung in and Willow took a few tippy-toe steps inside, keeping to the lee
of the nearest hunk of decorative funerary marble. Underneath the pounding
beat of the music, a low rhythmic chanting became audible.
"...hundredn'fifty-seven, hundredn'fifty-eight,
Timmy, you git, she's lying through her teeth! hundredn'fifty-nine..."
Willow peered around the body-sized urn at
the same time Spike jackknifed up from behind the settee, hands laced behind
his head. "AAAHHHH!!" Twin yells of surprise drowned out both the
Ramones and Samantha's latest machinations: Willow dropped her book bag, Spike
lurched backwards across the crypt floor, and both froze, identical expressions
of embarrassment on their faces.
Willow recovered first. "I didn't see
that if you didn't."
Spike slumped back on his elbows, blew out
his cheeks, rolled over and got to his feet. "Could scare a bloke out
of ten years' death, you could," he grumbled. "Made me lose count.” Vampires
doing sit-ups barely even registered on the Sunnydale Odd-O-Meter, but Willow
sometimes wondered, considering supernatural vampire strength and speed and
all, just what purpose Spike's compulsive working out served--male vanity?
Or another method of distancing himself from his own past, the shadowy Ur-William
glimpsed now and then behind the leather and bleach and sinewy grace?
Spike hitched dangerously low-riding black sweat pants up on narrow hips and
bent over to turn the volume on the TV down. “What's the occasion?
Slayer decide I'm on the bench for tonight? Happens a law-abiding vamp
can take a stroll downtown any time he feels the urge, so--"
"No, no--I haven't seen Buffy since this morning.
Special delivery." She unslung the bookbag from her shoulder and dug around
inside for the darts, pulling them free and holding the glowing packet up for
inspection. "Here you go. One of these puppies should knock anything
with feet off them."
Spike took the bag and grinned, an extremely
nasty expression indeed. "Thanks, pet. I'll see they all get good homes."
"Why would Buffy--did you guys have a
fight?"
He shrugged, affecting nonchalance though
his eyes were hard and his mouth had an angry twist to it. "Difference
of opinion." When Willow didn't make a move to leave, he paused, obviously
uncertain. "Did you want to sit for a bit? Nothing worth watching
on telly, but I've got cocoa." One shoulder twitched in a half-shrug.
"If you're cold. Being pathetic and human and all. You lot ate me
out of house and tomb last time you were here, might as well finish it off."
Dang it, did he have to be thoughtful,
offer of hospitality, be as close to nice as Spike got? Willow felt sweat
breaking out on her forehead. Darn. Vampires could smell fear; did
she smell scared? Did nervous and semi-guilt-stricken count? "Actually
I have something else to
give you." Though why should she feel guilty? It wasn't like she
was going to hurt him--why, he wanted this. He'd said so hundreds of times.
She was doing him a favor. "It's kind of... well, I was pretty pissy to
you after Buffy came back. I'm sorry, and I want to make it up to you."
He was startled, she could tell; startled
and, she thought, touched. Spike cocked his head to one side with that look
of startlingly gentle inquiry which--well, if she'd still been of a mind to
admit to urges of the het variety, she could see why this was a look which made
Buffy melt. "Ah, Will...no need for that. I'm a bad, rude man and proud
of it, and if I can't take as good as I give I deserve the thumping."
He grinned again, a much more appealing version this time. "Though if
you're taking orders, I wouldn't say no to a plate of chocolate walnut chip.
Make up for the biscuit crumbs you left in my bed."
"It wasn't exactly that kind of chip
I was thinking about," Willow said.
"Eh?" More head-tilt, winter-sky eyes
full of confusion--what was the matter with him? Spike was a smart guy;
surely he had to realize what she was hinting at--ask, heck, beg, make it easy
on her! "Will, what are you getting at?"
"I can take the chip out."
The expression on his face was something to
see. Hope. Exaltation. Horror. Doubt. Fear. Joy.
(And do not, do not think about the hunger.) Before nerves could overwhelm her
she rushed the words out. "OK, so you know how the Initiative doctors
said that the chip was embedded in your cerebral cortex? And how removing
it could leave you a vegetable?"
Spike propped himself against the urn,
arms folded across his chest. "It rings a bell." He looked rueful.
"I didn't believe the wanker at the time--shouldn't matter if he took an eggbeater
to the noggin, should it? Vampire; if I'm not dust, it'll heal. But I
did some reading up later and the bleeder was right in his way--the physical
damage would heal right enough, but no guarantee the post stitch-up personality
would match up to old Spike in wit, charm, and general refinement."
"Well, there's more than one way to skin a
cat." Willow hid one hand behind her back and began making a series of
movements with her fingers. "I wouldn't know where to begin with the surgical
route, but sense a piece of silicon and plastic in the middle of a nice squishy
brain? Cake, piece of. And teleporting a goddess five miles up,
kind of a strain on the faculties, but teleporting a quarter-sized doohickey
one foot to the left? Not so much."
Magic required focus, required words and gestures
and components. You couldn't cast a spell by will alone; you had to take
the magic and funnel it through the proper channels, word balanced against word,
sigil against sigil, catch the power in a delicate, adamantine net of conditions
and requirements... "Tonight we're going up against human-type people,
right? And the last time you almost got your head peeled open, 'cause
you couldn't fight them. Not helpful. But if you could fight
them--"
"Hold hard, Will!" Spike straightened
and began pacing, hampered slightly by the sunlight pouring through the open
doorway. A frown creased his brow. "You can really do this?"
She smiled--innocent, helpful Willow.
"No reason why not."
He was hovering on the edge, right there,
one foot over the precipice, every instinct in him screaming Do it, do it!
She'd seen that look. She'd worn that look. She and Spike were alike
on so many levels, and she knew, knew, knew that in a second he'd fall to the
temptation, because there were offers no one could resist, and if he asked,
it wasn't really her fault, was it...?
"Let me talk to Buffy first," he
said, and Willow's nerves transmuted to rage in an instant. How dare he?
How dare he, when she'd-- Her fingers closed convulsively on the last
word: Remove, in Ameslan.
There was no law at all that said the
language of a spell had to be a spoken one.
Spike swayed, caught himself, and stared
at her in wild conjecture. His voice was a harsh, barely comprehensible
growl. "Will--"
She held out her hand; in the center
of her palm was the tiny glittering circle, still damp from cerebral fluids.
Spike's hand went to the back of his head, raking through the thick blond hair,
finding nothing but unbroken, undamaged skull, and for a second there was nothing
but Oh, God, no! in his eyes, but in another second it was vanished,
replaced by a terrible elation. She felt a nasty, weaselly kind of satisfaction--No
better than I am after all, are you, Spike? "Souvenir," she heard herself
say. "Because, you know, you're a Scooby now, and we trust you."
His mouth worked; no sound came out.
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention my
part in this," she said, gently, but with a force behind the words that made
the air sizzle. "To anyone."
And she left him there, dumbstruck in
the doorway to the crypt, and started the long walk home. She walked swiftly
now, pulling her sweater close about her, and as she stumbled through the bright
sunshiny streets she found herself gasping, sobbing, tears running down her
cheeks--fear, relief, betrayal--but whom had she betrayed? There was a
sick awful feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was going to throw up,
barge right into the living room and barf in Mrs. Kroger's lap, she was
sure of it. "I did it," she said, choking on the words. "I did it.
Are you happy?
Is this enough?"
For now, said the voice
of liquid ebony. For now.
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