Chapter 8: Needful Things


A thunderous bang. Casa Summers bounced as though dropped from a height.

Usually a night owl, Willow scrambled up from the couch and the laptop and ran wild-eyed into the hall, thinking it was attack, a mile-high Fudo trying to breach the wards so automatically chanting to strengthen them--

Spike erupted from the basement, pursued by billowing smoke and waving it off. Soot-streaked from head to bare feet, wearing only jeans, he looked like a cat that had experimentally poked a claw in a socket. And even from two yards away, he stank: pungent, like a haystack of singed herbs.

Vamps claimed magic smelled, tainted its user.

Willow had no trouble detecting this smell. As Buffy burst up the stairs, coughing and wheezing, holding a robe together in front, Willow wheeled to haul open the front door, gasping, “Spike! What in heaven’s name have you done!”

Chin lifted in unconvincing defiance, Spike asserted, "Done nothing. Why d'you think it was me?"

Willow ticked off points on her fingers. "First, you're all singed, and nobody else is. Second, you reek of it. Third, I know you. Should I continue?"

Not replying, Spike brought his right hand to his mouth, licking off blood: another stain for the abused hall carpet. Hugging him from behind, Buffy was demanding, “Are you all right?”

Everybody converged: Dawn in flannel pj’s, leaning over the stair rail halfway down, Angel from the den, Oz and rumpled Giles from the yard, even Mike, uncertainly upright and propped against the den’s doorframe, everybody talking at once, and scorched, seething Spike in the middle of it.

Angel made an odd noise loud enough to make Willow look. He was laughing. Spike barking, “Shut up, Poof!” did no good. Angel tipped against the wall, holding his ribs, emitting big uncontrolled Ha ha’s.

If not for Buffy hanging on, it would have turned into another Spike-Angel thump-fest. Spike subsided, literally fuming. Angel just kept laughing. Willow didn’t think she’d ever heard Angel laugh before.

With the door open, the smoke began to dissipate.

“So,” Giles said, adjusting a too-small orange UC Sunnydale sweatshirt Oz had apparently loaned him to sleep in. “Not Fudo, after all, it seems.” He snorted and turned half away…snickering.

Spike glared. Then within Buffy’s embrace, his shoulders hunched defensively. Looking at the floor, he burst out, “So maybe I don’t have it quite adjusted yet. Piece from here, piece from there, substitutions--what the fuck do you expect?”

“Dedicating the athame,” Willow deduced, arms crossed, tapping fingers. She lifted her head, sniffing judiciously. “Isn’t that hensbane? That’s no part of any dedication spell I ever saw. And…mugwort?”

“Mugwort!” If Angel laughed any harder, he’d fall down.

“Had to improvise, didn’t I?” Spike retorted, sullenly indignant. “Not like it’s something you can buy at a shop, ready-made.”

“No…but you could have asked me,” Willow countered, hurt and somewhat aggrieved that he hadn’t.

“None of your bloody business!”

“None of my-- Oh. I see. That accounts for the blood, then.” Spike, Willow realized, had attempted to power a dedication with blood magic--the most dire, and the most unpredictable, of earth magics. Not intrinsically dark but eminently unwise to mess with. The more you knew, the more you stayed away from such things.

Spike knew just enough to try it, she thought, and not enough to stop him. That's why he hadn't consulted her. “Spike, what exactly were you trying to do?”

Giles managed to quit giggling and discipline his face to something like gravity. “Yes, Spike--do tell us.”

“Yes, tell us about it,” Angel echoed sweetly. Willow scowled at him to no effect: he was enjoying Spike’s discomfiture far too much. “You know so much about magic, what could possibly go wrong?”

Giving Spike’s torso a squeeze, Buffy lifted on tiptoe to murmur in his ear, “I think you should. After all, we’re a team. And you nearly brought the house down on us!”

Wincing away from the volume, Spike shrugged free, complaining, “Try to do something useful, everybody takes it for a joke!”

“No, Spike,” Angel corrected happily, “you’re the joke. Now everybody knows it, that’s all.”

Willow speared him with a glance. “Angel, you’re not being helpful here.”

Angel lifted hands, solemnly disavowing evil intent. Then he grinned broadly, somewhat spoiling the effect. At least he shut up.

Meanwhile Spike had grabbed open the closet door and swiped up a bottle from Oz’s collection stored there. With Buffy in hesitant pursuit, he stormed out onto the porch and gone. As Buffy held the door-edge as though unable to decide between following (in her robe) and shutting the door, there was the noise of a motorcycle starting and roaring off.

Buffy shut the door and slowly attended to belting up the robe.

Appearing from the kitchen, Dawn began fumigating the hall with prolonged blasts from a can of air freshener. Angel winced, and he and Mike retreated back to the den: lavender was so not a welcome addition to the current stink.

Carefully casual, spraying, Dawn commented, “He’s beyond the wards. Should we be worried about this?”

They’d been holed up five days. Except for Oz and Giles, whose first cautious excursion to the van hadn’t provoked a renewed attack from Fudo, and who thereafter had come and gone at will, concluding that Fudo’s targets were currently limited to the principals, the fighters--the Slayer and the vamps. Willow hadn’t ventured out, not wanting to find out her status the hard way.

And Dawn and Angel had been occupied with Mike, semi-ambulatory now.

Looking mildly contrite, Angel leaned out to offer, “I’ll find him, haul him back, if you want.”

Not a great idea, since it would just put both of them at risk. Presumably Angel knew that, going by his lack of enthusiasm.

Buffy shook her head. “Spike really knows this town. If he gets into trouble, he can duck into some sewer. I don’t see how Fudo could go ginormous on him in there. And one on one, size not a factor, Spike can hold his own against anybody.” Turning, she requested, “Will, explain it to me: what was he trying to do?”

“Dedicate the athame. Sort of a magical tool--like a wand--except it’s a knife. You have to…well, charge it. Tune it. To make it answer to your will. It’s a necessary element in casting some spells--not an actual working knife. Blunt blade, small… My guess is that Spike wanted it to be more. An actual weapon. And he mixed weapon elements into the spell, and the mix…blew up on him when he combined them. The vamp blood, maybe.” Willow gestured open-handed: she could think of a score of ways such a spell could have gone wrong, even leaving out the blood magic. Just substituted ingredients, and spells at cross-purposes with one another, would be ample.

He should have consulted her before putting such a boneheaded plan into action. Yeah, sure--like he ever did that.

“I shouldn’t have found it funny,” Giles observed contritely. “Or at least shouldn’t have admitted it. I’m sure he meant well.”

“Nearly brought down the wards,” Willow declared, grimacing. “Not funny at all. Now I have to check every one--see that they’re all water-tight, so to speak. Fudo-proof. Say--where’s Oz?”

Glancing around, Giles speculated, “Gone back to the van? I’ll look.”

“I don’t think so,” Buffy said, starting up the stairs. “He must have left through the kitchen. So I think he’s gone after Spike. So that’s sorted: the two of them should be able to handle anything that comes up. I’m gonna camp out in my room, OK? Until the basement airs out. Spray down there next, Dawn, all right?”

“I’m on it,” Dawn agreed, brisk and cheerful.

Willow shut her eyes, trying to summon the concentration to determine the soundness of the wards. Giles slipped a hand into hers, tacitly offering to let her draw on his stored power. Too cautious, too aware of the cost and the consequences to be an active mage, Giles was a quiet reservoir of energies that he made available to Willow from time to time. His company and support were soothing, strengthening.

“They’re all right,” Willow reported at last. “They held.” She released Giles’ hand to rub her eyes worriedly. “I just hope he has the sense not to try anything away from here.”

“Yes: even from the inside, the wards have a dampening effect. A protection of sorts, limiting the worst sorts of backlash from spellcasting gone awry. I trust he knows that?”

“Whatever he was trying, it was complex; and all his spell components are here, unless he raids the Magic Box, for which Anya would gladly endow him with boils, or worse. So I think we’re all safe from well-meaning amateurs for tonight--him included. Giles, it’s all so complicated! None of us knows what we’re doing or how to do it! None of us really knows what we’re getting into! I don’t yet have a clue what to do about Fudo, much less Quor’toth!”

Giles rested a hand on her elbow. “Do we ever? We’ll deal with the situation as we find it, as we always have. With as much preparation and forethought as is possible, under the circumstances. For instance: I haven’t yet had a chance to report what I’ve learned from Ethan about circumstances in Quor’toth. If the wards are secure, come sit down and I’ll explain.”

**********


It took several hours before Spike was drunk enough to (mostly) forget his intention to cut back on the promiscuous aetherizing. Leaving wolf-boy to watch the doings, he shot free of his body, utterly clear-headed and distracted for only a little while by the first tender, effulgent pinks and golds of morning. Then, recalling his errand, he gave himself a mental shake and was plunging through the wards protecting Casa Summers. He’d been lawfully invited: the wards let him through.

When he stopped, he was in the basement, hovering over the card table on which the athame and the remaining spell components were laid out--trying to suss out what had gone wrong.

Was the fault in the materials, the spell, or the procedure?

When he tried to lift one hand-written page to check the one underneath, he discovered the frustrating downside of being immaterial: he couldn’t touch anything. His fingers just passed through, the same as he’d come through the roof and the intervening floors. Stood to reason, once he considered it, but that didn’t make him any happier about it.

Naturally, he couldn’t lift the athame, either. Its hollow haft was open, ready for the offering--just as he’d left it. But the little knife had been…wakened. Spike felt as though it was considering him accusingly, with a smug, sullen I won’t and you can’t make me! flavor. He didn’t know how he knew. He didn’t smell, see, or hear the impression. It was simply there to senses he didn’t yet know how to put names to. Grokked it, then--as good a word as any, he supposed.

It was personal, this defiance, this rejection. Little bastard of a knife didn’t sodding like him. So maybe all the parts had been correct, but the athame was silently telling him to blow it out his ear. ‘Cause he was a vamp, maybe. Vamps and magic mostly didn’t get on. If so, he was screwed, and his whole idea of making a weapon that could be effective on the aetherial plane…a weapon that could stand against Fudo…was down the tubes.

But maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe it’d just been the wrong offering.

He’d settled on the littlest finger on his right hand--the one he’d miss least, the one that wouldn’t cripple him up much while it healed. The thing had blown up the instant he’d begun to cut, after all.

Maybe he’d considered his own comfort too much. Maybe only a true sacrifice--something that would goddam cripple him--was what was called for, proportional to the power he wanted back from the athame.

He found the fingers of his right hand wrapped protectively around his left thumb.

He made them unfold.

“Don’t you dare. Don’t you even think about it.”

Startled, he looked around and it was Joyce--Buffy’s mum. And Dawn’s, after a fashion, too. He blurted, “What the hell are you doing here?”

Showing him a stern expression, Joyce Summers folded her arms. She was all silver-shimmery and semi-transparent. She demanded, “And where else should I be?”

“Oh. You’re a ghost.”

“Bingo. And it’s just no end of frustration, let me tell you. I tried and tried to get through to Dawn, but she thought I was the First. And as to Buffy,” Joyce added, with an eye-roll, rotating in a floaty way to face the far end of the basement, “just forget it. I can’t compete with Slayer dreams. And awake, she doesn’t see me at all!”

“It’s her aura. All in tatters, it is,” Spike replied, drifting alongside, the both of them contemplating the figure almost lost in the huge bed.

She’d come back, Spike realized. Even though the basement probably still stank (he couldn’t tell) and she knew there was next to no chance that, having stormed out, he’d slink back before daybreak, Buffy had crawled under the duvet and cranked the electric mattress pad way up to 10 so everything would be all warm for him whenever he staggered in. Because it was her place now, that he’d set up for her. Their place, really. And even lonesome in the big bed, she wouldn’t sleep anyplace else.

Feelings weren’t the same on the aetherial plane. You felt the same things, sure, but at a distance. Like emotions turned into ideas and you considered them, all cool and deliberate, not caught up blind in them like the usual.

Except now. Finding Buffy there, Spike wanted to curl down inside her. He wanted to make the ragged edges of old pain all smooth and golden, the way he felt they should be. He wanted her to lift out of the body so he could take her careening high, to see the clear, crisp Sunnydale of the mind, everything bathed and revealed in its hurtless light.

Without thought, he reached out…and his hand disappeared into her shoulder. Without contact. Without touching. He pulled his hand back quickly.

“Sometimes, I just want to shake her,” Joyce confessed. “Or hug her. Doesn’t matter, I can’t do either. But with things so upset, I just don’t feel ready to…be anywhere else. Go wherever it is that ghosts go….”

“Heaven, innit?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

“Buffy has.”

“Really? So that’s why I couldn’t find her! I looked and looked but I couldn’t find her anywhere. I thought once Dawn called me, and I tried to go, but my body didn’t fit right anymore, somehow, and I didn’t want her to see me that way, so I thought better of it. So. Spike. If that’s the best you can do, don’t even bother. About the little knife there,” she explained, gesturing at the card table in response to his blank and slightly indignant stare.

Having drawn himself up and lifted his chin, Spike met Joyce’s eyes and deflated, bending his head. “It’s me, right? ‘Cause I’m a vamp. I’m not good enough.”

“It’s…inappropriate. The fit isn’t right between the intention and the execution. But that doesn’t mean there’s no merit to the idea,” Joyce added quickly. “The offering will, well, offer itself. And when the fit is right, you’ll know.”

She was just trying to make him feel better about the spell going all pear-shaped on him. Amused Angel and had Rupert snickering but no use beyond that except to make him look a right prat.

He wanted solace.

He wanted Buffy.

Even though he couldn’t touch, he flowed down beside her into the warmth he couldn’t feel, into the wonderful Buffysmell he couldn’t smell, imagining her slow, sleeping heartbeat he couldn’t hear. He felt something, though: when he’d been quiet awhile, he could feel her aura, her life energies--where they were smooth, and where they were ragged, broken, and hurting. He snuggled down over one of the hurting places and petted it slowly, steadily, in much the same half-awake way he’d stroke her arm, or a breast, in the drowsy aftermath of loving.

He wasn’t thinking about Joyce, so he didn’t notice when she left.

The next he knew, he was rousing, still mostly drunk, in a large sewer pipe, with wolf-boy (who he hazily recalled had fetched his boots and a shirt, obliging as a valet) still keeping patient watch, so that was all right. Oz offered a cell phone, and it took Spike a minute to think what to do with it since he mostly relied on the speed dials. Since it wasn’t his phone, he had to make his mind cough up the number, then dizzily make his finger push the right tiny buttons in the right order.

“Who is this?” came Dawn’s suspicious voice.

“Just me. Let me in through the tunnel, Bit. Lost track of the time.”

“It’s ten freaking o’clock in the morning, if you want to know!”

“Yeah, well.” Surveying the curved slimy walls, he saw a mark at a junction and knew where he was. “Be there in about five minutes. Or more like ten,” he amended, staggering to his feet.

“Bike’s parked in the street, right above,” Oz commented with an upward glance.

Spike thought a moment, then pulled the keys out of his pocket and handed them over. “’F you dump her, I’ll take skin in exchange,” he warned.

Oz showed a small, down-pulled smile, not seeming much troubled by the threat.

As Oz went toward the ladder at the junction, Spike turned and started slowly along the walkway, drawing a hand along the wall to keep from stumbling into the sludge. Knuckles scraped and a few lame places, so he guessed he’d got himself into a fight someplace along the line. Even with some bangs and bruises, it was good to be back in the body, though. He’d quit yearning after the astral plane. Gone off it, somehow. Probably for the best, considering.

**********


Willow was in the hall talking to Oz (standing with downcast eyes, not saying much, but that was Oz, so achingly familiar, so awkwardly comfortable, and he might have known what spell Spike had been trying to cast, the spell-go-boom one, at least that’d been Willow’s excuse for accosting Oz when he slouched in the front door a minute or two after the noise of the arriving bike cut off, and he seemed to do a lot of that these days, slouch and look aside, anyplace but at her, except when he thought she wasn’t looking, and his aura so shaded brown and wistful though he didn’t say anything about the them-that-had-been and course neither did she, it would have been too sad, she being so conspicuously totally 100% gay now, so she was just asking him about what Spike might have said, totally good reason, not personal at all) when Dawn came banging up the basement stairs bent and turned half backward to tell off Spike, climbing and then arriving behind her.

Spike looked mussed and…exhilarated, Willow judged. Not like last night. Well, that was Spike, wasn’t it? Things passed off him easily, once he’d blown up and wrecked everything in reach, which fortunately hadn’t been here for a change. They were all wound a bit too tightly, what with the Fudo avoidage and the staying in the house day after day and the not knowing when they’d be leaving and Christmas so close, not that Willow cared about that but Buffy did, angsting in the kitchen, making lists for Oz and Giles (the only ones who could leave without risking the enormousness that was Fudo) of things to fetch for the holiday festivities nobody really cared about but Buffy but, well, Buffy. Any major holiday to her was a Sacred Duty, to prove that nothing had changed when in fact everything had.

Not so much bouncy, Spike, as intent, anticipatory. Ignoring Dawn’s tirade, he immediately located Buffy in the kitchen, his vast, flailing aura preceding him and wrapping around her like wind-driven flames.

“Not now,” Buffy said, irritably shrugging him off and moving a little way around the kitchen island, intent on her list.

No need to be asking Oz when Spike himself was there to be cross-examined: Willow moved into the kitchen doorway, Oz and Dawn (wanting to finish dressing Spike down) behind her.

“Won’t take long,” Spike was wheedling, making puppy eyes, reaching out, but Buffy avoided the hand that would undoubtedly have pulled her into an embrace. “Ten minutes. Couple hours, maybe.”

They’d made one full circuit of the island, Buffy avoiding, Spike pursuing in tentative lunges.

“Spike, not now. Can’t you see I’m busy? You know how close Christmas is and I have nothing, nothing ready! Mom would be so disappointed. I don’t even have a fricking tree! No!” Again, Buffy slipped aside and eluded him, gave him her back but obviously not losing an ounce of her Slayer awareness of a vampire intent on closing with her because every time he reached, she was gone. Like the coordinated dance they did putting away groceries, or sparring, or fighting, each completely aware of the other’s motions without even needing to look. Only not, of course, since it was a dance of avoidance.

Ducking and dodging, circling, Buffy went on, “Not that I expect you to care. Or even understand. Just leave me alone, will you? Is that too much to ask? One fricking peaceful hour when you’re not bugging me, or blowing things up, or laying there like a stone and off in your damn astral realm? Go play with yourself. I’m busy. Some of us have to be responsible around here, not ducking out every chance with the attention span of a gnat! Geez, don’t you ever think about anything else?”

Buffy wheeled, both fists braced on the island-top, list in one hand and pencil in the other--a pencil she was now holding point-up, like a stake. Spike had stopped too, hands flat on the island. They regarded each other across it.

Spike flicked a glance at the doorway--Willow, Oz, Dawn, and now Angel looming behind, Willow noticed--and then replied, “Isn’t like that. Not altogether,” in an embarrassed mutter.

And it was true: instead of the usual blazing crimson of Tantric energies, his aura was shot through with hazy blues and greys--a sort of Cirrus aura like a summer sky with filmy clouds moving fast, high aloft. Buffy’s, by contrast, was sullen slate, with yellow glints of annoyance. Tight against her body contours, it walled her in.

“Not doing that anymore,” Spike said earnestly. “Need…to be here. With you.” Another glance at the door, aware of his audience. “C’mon downstairs. We’ll talk. Only talk. Just a little while.”

He reached toward her face, palm cupped to lay against her cheek, thumb wide to set against her protesting lips. She slapped his hand away, eyes flashing. The two motions almost too quick to see but the result immediate: Spike’s aura just flicked out. Died. Not really, Willow corrected--it just went still, and tight as a sheen of oil: a normal, minimal vamp aura.

Willow began uneasily, “Buffy--” as Spike dipped his head in a moment’s thought, then turned, pushed through them, and disappeared back into the basement with Dawn in startled hot pursuit, calling after him.

Angel murmured, not quietly enough, “Drama queen.”

Elbows on the island, pencil reversed and meditatively bitten, Buffy was again absorbed in her list. She glanced up, annoyed, when Willow tapped her arm. “What is it now? Will, I’m never gonna get done--”

“You think that was nothing. It wasn’t. It was something.”

Buffy hitched a shoulder. “He’ll get over it. I may be his fricking cow, the way vamps view things, but I’m not on call 24/7. I have a life. I have priorities. I’m not all over the place, leaping into whatever comes into my head from second to second. I can concentrate! That is, whenever I’m not getting interrupted--”

Trudging glumly back from the basement, Dawn accused, “He’s gone again, if anybody cares. Thanks so much, Buffy! Why’d you pick now to go all Ice Queen instead of the other eight thousand daily opportunities? Oh, wait--that was your first chance today to dump on him in front of everybody. You didn’t want to waste it. Right.”

“I didn’t dump on him! It’s just…. He gets so….”

“Horny?” Dawn suggested sweetly. “Lonesome? Needy? Hoping not to be treated like dirt? Well, a jolly Ho Ho Ho to you, too. You sure know how to spread the holiday cheer, Buffy! I’ll go make myself useful: sort the surviving ornaments. That’s assuming we can get a tree up before New Years. Geez!” After a frustrated flap of her arms, Dawn exited to the basement, slamming the door behind her.

“Buffy….” Willow said again, but Buffy snatched a down vest off the pegs by the back door and escaped to the porch, shutting the door with a controlled click that was a slam in all except volume.

“Think I’ll use the front door,” Oz remarked to himself.

“Yeah: a farce would need more doors. So everybody could slam their own,” Willow agreed, drifting along beside him. “But…aren’t you tired? You’re not obliged to babysit him every minute.”

“You were right: something changed. I smelled it. Curious,” Oz said with a hint of a smile and worried eyes, “what it might have been. It’s my mandate,” he explained, “from the Powers to get this show on the road. Don’t want to be missing a boxcar when we pull out. Or an engine.” Pulling on a cap, he was zipping his jacket as he went down the front steps and jogged toward the street--taking his van, apparently.

The outside air was frosty. Willow shut the door.

**********


Finally Buffy finished the list of super-secret presents--ironically she’d been working on presents for Spike when he’d made such a pest of himself: he might not care about Christmas, but it was the first since he’d become part of the household and her acknowledged consort, so presents were absolutely due--and got something like lunch together. Since Oz was missing, it seemed Spike wasn’t back either.

Middle of the day. He’d probably laired up someplace to sleep. No big: she’d cell him at sunset. He could sulk to her directly then. Get it out of his system.

Over tuna sandwiches with potato chips and the proper excellent kosher pickles on the side, she asked Willow uncomfortably, “So what was the big hairy deal, before? It’s not like I never said No before. Sometimes, he’s the La Brea tarpits and superglue combined. Or something.” She could feel her face heating at coming even that close to referring to her private life. Sex-with-Spike life. And him propositioning her right in front of everybody, when everybody would know, all insane-o and blatant. She’d promised to back him up, but that had been something entirely else. She still couldn’t believe he’d done it. Dumbass!

“Not now.” Willow threw a meaningful glance at Angel, conspicuously trying to be inconspicuous while fixing mugs of blood for himself and Mike.

Angel was shy about that whereas Spike dumped disgusting things in and loudly slurped and smacked his lips over the result. When he’d still relied on the bagged, that is. Now he had her, he’d quit the bagged stuff entirely. Buffy reflexively rubbed the mark on her neck, expecting the usual tingle and heightened awareness. Nothing. Did she try the wrong side? Quickly she touched the other side, that should be Angel’s mark. As though he’d felt the touch, Angel at once turned and looked at her, wide-eyed and startled, and she was so freaked by that she didn’t notice if she’d had any reaction. Bending her head, she surreptitiously tried again, one side and then the other. Nothing. Just old scars.

Cracking a crisp pickle, pinkie delicately outstretched, Dawn commented, “Not exactly subtle, no. But then the windows rattling and the thumping and the yelling--”

“Dawn!”

“--was hardly covert ops, you know. I was sooo glad when Xander finished sound-proofing the basement and you guys moved down there! I don’t really need a vicarious sex life, you know.” Pausing for an introspective frown, Dawn lowered the pickle from on high and crunched.

Xander. Buffy hadn’t talked to him in weeks. Way before Giles’ arrival. Before the excursion to Terminal Beach, even. Buffy remembered feeling guilty for not inviting him and Anya along, not that she’d known where they were going, but that hadn’t prevented her from feeling guilty for not including them once she was there. And the three SITs. And the cousins--the half dozen or so remaining vamps who acknowledged Mike’s authority. None of them knew anything about what was going on, and that was wrong. She should call a meeting….

But all of them could run errands. Choose a tree. Get the presents (she’d trust Xander with the plastic or Oz of course but nobody else). She had a whole network of potential help she somehow had pretty much forgotten.

A fullscale Christmas party, then. With everybody. The cousins were reasonably well-behaved and if there was liquor, they’d like it. And Spike would keep them in line if Mike couldn’t yet, though it seemed Mike was better, not that she’d paid much attention. She should start a list….

“Huh?” she said, when Willow nudged her and waved fingers in front of her face. She found the kitchen empty except for the two of them.

“I think Dawn’s right: it’s like the napkins.”

“What?”

“When he came in he was pretty serene, like he’d processed the spell that didn’t work. Wasn’t bothered about it anymore. With a big ol’ yen on for you, which,” (Willow shrugged, smiling) “is not exactly unusual. Not that I was looking. Well, I was but only because I’d been noticing Oz’s aura, so I saw Spike’s when he came in, and it was pretty normal for him anyway, all Northern Lights shimmery, not that I’ve ever seen the Northern Lights except on PBS--”

“How much coffee have you had, Will?”

“Enough to finish ordering all my presents. I may be Wicca but I’m not immune to social conventions. Besides, we all need an upper. Wanna know what I got Xander?”

“But you’ve been home.”

“I let magic fingers do the walking. Internet,” Willow explained, happily waggling fingers again, as if on a keyboard. “Even wangled free rush delivery.”

“Oh.” Buffy could have done that. It hadn’t even occurred to her.

“I made a fresh pot, though. Want some?” Willow asked, sliding off her stool.

“Nope. I don’t need caffeine to contemplate the depth of my dumbth. I bet even Giles thought to order over the Internet.”

“Probably. He does e-mail and even occasionally Googles, according to him. Anyway, like I said, here’s Spike all reaching and hoping and flicker-glowy, and then you slap him--”

“Pushed his hand away,” Buffy corrected, glowering.

“It was a slap, Buffy. And his candle went out. Aura down to next to nothing, just a regular vamp aura. Couldn’t channel sunlight with it like that, I bet. Couldn’t access the astral plane if he tried. Major shut-down.”

Buffy set her nibbled-at half sandwich down. “Will, sometimes we do open warfare, with bruises and marks afterward, just for fun. A little push like that, that’s nothing.”

“No. It was something, to get a reaction like that. I think Dawn’s right--something just snapped, like about the napkins. It wasn’t about napkins at all, so this wasn’t just about the slap. I imagine he’d react about that way if we disinvited him, locked him out. That’s all I’m saying, Buffy--that it was something.”

Buffy rested her forehead on her propped fists. Spike was such a prima donna, sometimes. Such a drama queen, blowing up over nothing. Although he hadn’t exploded, hadn’t even twitched, since Angel’s arrival. On what, for Spike, passed for best behavior since then. She’d even seen him with the laptop, working on the translation, a time or two, although without the glasses he was too vain to wear when Giles or Angel might see him, so he’d probably ended up with an eyestrain headache, though she didn’t recall his complaining about one.

Maybe he was due. Maybe it was no more than that. Probably. Though a dignified exit through the basement passage hardly seemed to constitute an explosion….

“I’ll cell him later,” Buffy said around a bite of sandwich. “Let him whine and rant as much as he likes that way, instead of in front of everybody. Isn’t it weird to have to leave the house to get a single scrap of privacy?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

Buffy shrugged. “So: about Oz. What’s his aura like, and what are you doing observing it?”

Willow looked uncomfortable, making twisted origami out of a napkin. “It’s mostly like a forest. Greens and browns...and quiet. The wolf of it, I guess. It’s always been like that. Pretty steady state, actually.”

“And you’re checking on it why?”

“He’s different. We’re different. But…not. It’s complicated.”

“Yeah,” said Buffy, carefully casual, neutral. She understood what a big hairy deal it was to admit things out loud and in public. It meant you had to acknowledge them to yourself. And the fastest way to drive Willow into full Oz retreat would be to try to make her say old times there were not forgotten. Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland.

"Will, how come you know about the napkins? You weren't even there!"

Willow blinked at her. "You were sitting right there when Dawn told me about it. I think you need caffeine!"

“No, thanks," Buffy responded, as Willow actually did get up and go to the coffee maker. "S’cuse me.”

Hustling to the hall table, Buffy scooped up her cellphone and pushed the quick-dial preset for Spike. After five rings, she held the phone away from her ear to find out if she could hear the answering ringing anywhere within the house. (Even though Spike’s phone was pocket-sized, he forgot it more often than not.) She even leaned into the basement for a minute. After thirty rings, nothing. Not even an automated voice announcing that his phone wasn’t in service.

Asleep, then. Probably. And Oz keeping an eye on him, so nothing could happen.

Did Oz have a cellphone? If not, she should see he got one. She should add that to the equipment list.

**********


As Dawn toted the stacked ornament boxes into the front room, Mike started to get up creakily to help. When she waved him off with the flap of an elbow, he subsided carefully into the big chair as she laid the boxes on the couch and then on the floor.

It wasn’t right to depend on him to do things all the time, just because he was willing. Wanted to, even. Not when otherwise she was always pushing him away, shutting him out. Like Buffy had done to Spike. That had to hurt.

She absolutely didn’t want to hurt him. Didn’t know how to stop, not that he ever complained--just looked straight at her with those wide grey eyes, wolf eyes or maybe an Alsatian, but not pleading puppy eyes. Just seeing across the distance, recognizing it and still looking….

Spinning, she flopped down next to the chair, leaning and reaching over the broad arm to wrap fingers around Mike’s arm, that she didn’t have to be so careful about joggling anymore, blurting, “You should just go. As soon as you can, you should get clear of this. Of us. You got hurt on our account--might have dusted. But it’s--”

“Didn’t, though. Spike and my Sire, they took good care of me. And you helped. All past, Dawn. Almost all healed. No need for you to bother about it.”

“That’s not the point!”

“All right,” he responded amiably. “What is the point, then?”

“This business…about Quor’toth, it’s--”

“About Angel’s son,” Mike interrupted calmly, and Dawn goggled at him. “Angel told me,” Mike explained. “To be sure I knew he had a son and I wasn’t it. And he had get, and I wasn’t that either, though Spike’s his only on one bounce and he made me direct. Didn’t want me thinking things were how they’re not. That I’m anything to him but a responsibility, because Spike made a fuss about it and he needs to stay on Spike’s good side right now to get anything done.”

“Like telling you you’re adopted and shouldn’t expect anything but scraps?” Dawn demanded, indignant on Mike’s behalf.

“Doesn’t matter, so long as the scraps keep coming. Scraps like that. He’s cut me off now, seems like. Figures I can do without. Likely I can. Can do without most things. Don’t need much.” Lifting the mug in his other hand, Mike drank down the last of the blood, then bent to set the cup safely aside on the floor. “Spike’s right,” he commented absently, sagging into the chair, head tipped back and eyes shut. “Pig blood, that’s swill. Only had it a couple times before, never want to again. Maybe tonight I’ll be well enough to get out.”

“And hunt,” Dawn supplied tightly, and got a nod in reply. Mike had never been coy about that side of his life with her.

“Maybe he’d go out with me, see I don’t mess up too bad. Or maybe Spike would, though he’s mostly left me alone since this.” He sketched a thumb diagonally from shoulder to hip. “Didn’t want to be an impediment between me and my Sire, mostly, I think. Let us get on however we could. Hope so, anyway. Hope he don’t feel I’m the impediment, shrugged me off the first chance he got….”

“Oh, no! You shouldn’t think things like that!”

Mike blinked at her sleepily. “Things are how they are. Shouldn’t take things for granted. Don’t need much and got enough to keep going, I guess.”

Dawn was indignant at his lack of indignation, at how patiently he accepted the unacceptable. “That’s what I mean: you should go. Do your own vamp things, like you used to, not just trail around after us. It’s not right. It’s not fair. This isn’t your fight. Nobody asked you to get involved.”

“Nobody said I couldn’t, neither. Until they do, this is what makes sense to me. You want me gone, Dawn?” Mike asked with calm directness, like he didn’t care about the answer, either way…or he already knew what the answer was.

“I think…. I think you should want to go. Be sick of us by now. All of us. The Slayer that tolerates you, the Sire that barely acknowledges you and the almost-sire who’s a genuine asshole sometimes and grudges accepting help from anybody all the time, and the Imperious Key, who won’t, who can’t--”

“Hush, don’t fret yourself about it. I understand.”

“Understand what? Because I don’t!”

“Yes, you do. It’s what you told Spike, and he told me, a while ago: you can be a girl, and go with girl ways, mortal ways. Or you can be the Key and live forever. Can’t do both, though I know it tugs at you, having to give up the one or the other. You can be Spike’s, or you can be mine. But not both. I understand that, finally, and I’m all right with it. Right enough, anyways.” He patted her hand consolingly and she wanted to hit him. Either that or bawl all over him. Mike went on, “There’s noplace to go to, anymore, that I want. There’s only away. And why would I want that? Until I’m stopped, I’ll be with you. You don’t know--might come in handy, a time or two. Like with Fudo.”

“That? That wasn’t handy! That was suicidal! You nearly got killed!”

“Bought enough time for the others to get there, deal with him. Did what I could and what was needful. Spike and my Sire, both, they thought I done good enough to go to the trouble of fetching me back from the edge. Got a feed or so from you, too, I recall.”

“That wasn’t reward, that was me being so scared you were just gonna dust and blow away on the wind, never any Michael any more, never no more--” Leaning and reaching, Dawn hugged him as hard as she dared, likely harder than she should, but he never complained, wrapping arms around her and resting his cheek against hers.

“And all this to convince me I should leave. Going about it wrong, I think.” He kissed her forehead and drew a long, savoring breath against her hair, then held her a little away by the shoulders. “Can’t help with the fence you’re balanced on, Dawn. Can only watch and hope all goes well for you. Things are how they are. Don’t have to concern yourself about me. What’s lacking, between us, is not the most important thing. Only seems so to you. Not important to me at all.”

“Yeah: Sue’s not important!” Dawn accused.

“She’s not. And she knows she’s not. And doesn’t much care, because vamps generally don’t. It’s all convenience and…who’s on top.” Mike gave her a smile as she made a wry face. “Far as my pack’s concerned, she’s on top, and that’s enough to make her happy enough. She’s not the center of the turning world, though. Doesn’t know enough, feel enough, to want that. She’s not jealous of you, just likes to dig the point in a little because she knows she can get your goat that way. No need for you to be jealous of her, neither. She has no goat worth the getting. No goat you want, except to have her not have it, and that’s not very nice, is it?”

“Sometimes I’m not very nice,” Dawn admitted, folding against his chest, so solid and uncluttered by biological creaks and bangs. So unnatural and steadfast. “So have all my arguments convinced you to leave?”

“Nope.”

“Good.”

**********


After trying and failing to make contact with Spike’s cellphone while wandering around the house collecting items to toss into a white wash, Buffy froze on the stairs holding a single grimy white sock. “Will?” she called upstairs, feeling the elevator drop of near-certain suspicion. “What day is it?”

“Today?” Willow’s voice responded from her room.

“Yes, today!” Buffy simultaneously rolled her eyes, thought swear words, and confirmed with a wincing glance at the bottom third of the front window that it was already dark outside, complete with street lights. “Is it Monday or Tuesday?”

“Tuesday, I think…. Yeah, Tuesday.”

OMG, OMG, it was class night!

Skidding into her bedroom, Buffy wrestled into her least wrinkly set of sweats. Twisting up her hair enough to secure it with a scrunchy, she scuffed into sneaks while clambering down the stairs, holding to the rail two-handed, yelling for Dawn, who poked her face out of the den like some funhouse pop-out. Buffy nearly collided with her but skittered around at the last second. “Dawn, supper: order out, organize one of your messes, I don’t care. Or no: I’ll bring back Chinese!” she flung over her shoulder as she dashed for the SUV.

“Buffy,” Dawn called anxiously from the porch, “should you be--”

Belatedly recollecting Fudo, Buffy paused a second before jamming the ignition key determinedly home and screeching over the curb. If Fudo showed, she’d just lock all the doors and drive like a maniac, that’s all. Run red lights. Maybe break speed limits.

The basic attacking-demons drill, in other words.

But she’d found herself the most menacing thing on the street when she wheeled into the side lot of the Community Center and sprinted for the big font doors. Only twenty minutes late--maybe they’d waited. Maybe she could come up with some credible excuse instead of admitting she’d completely forgotten the Safety through Fitness course she taught twice a week and the twenty or so kids had paid actual money for and how could anybody expect her to keep everything straight, with all that was going on--

Navigating the corridor, she braked to a breathless saunter at seeing the lights on in the exercise/dance room at the end; she stopped completely, dumbfounded, when she heard Spike’s voice from inside, through the open door.

“--not exactly what you signed on for, right. But for those who want it easy, there’ll be the usual routine of jerks, easy throws, balance and stance practice. And those that are up for it, you might want to consider the contract escort service, like I said, and you can stop snickering anytime now, Candy. Not that sort of escort service. Paid protection. We’ve got off a bit late for Halloween and Christmas, but we might be able to put things together to cover the New Year’s do’s. Six would be a good number for that. You can let me or Anya know by Thursday, she’ll be putting together the business arrangements, goin’ to the Chamber of Commerce folk, and like that. Yeah--Anya. The lady at the Magic Box. See that a few more of your chums make it home without getting eaten. Jerome?” A pause while an indistinguishable question was asked. Spike responded, “Yeah--the heavy duty action. Patrolling. Thinking about that, a walk-along, anyway, but the girls here and the semi-reliable cousins, over there, for the actual fighting until I think somebody is fit to handle themselves ‘gainst whatever demons we run into that are more annoyance than dangerous. Not a one of you I’d risk yet against a Trisaps, whose basic strategy is to fall on you. All three hundred dripping pounds. And no, you do not want to know what’s dripping, or from what. Or Hellhounds, we get a fair number of those in the cooler weather. They have their annual games just north of here, and a few spill over. Or-- Doris?” Another question. “Yeah, sure, the escorts will need some kind of uniform. Something simple, to start with. You want to take that on? You’re in beginning design. Well, that’s fine. Do up some sketches so I can check you ain’t put on twenty pounds of sparkly shit, tassels, Vatican Guard crap. Oh, you so would!” Laughter. “Functional, yet stylish. Like the-- like Miss Elizabeth does. You can join us anytime, pet.”

He’d heard her--her lone heartbeat out in the corridor. Or smelled her, maybe. As she stood in her grungy sweats, neither stylish nor very functional, wanting to disappear, Spike leaned out the doorway, took in the ensemble with a lifted eyebrow, and leaned back inside, commenting to the class, “Or you could take the utilitarian look: about halfway between ninja and jammies.”

That was plainly her entrance line. Assuming the semi-panicked grin she kept specially for the class, she sidled in and made a small, nervous wave at the blur of faces before her.

There seemed about the usual number. As Spike blessedly kept on talking, drawing the attention of the class away from her in his usual effortless hogging of any available spotlight, literal or figurative, Buffy found the blur resolving into actual known faces, some even with names. And about half the number were in the black-and-red of the colors--the three SITs, Amanda, Rona, and Kennedy; and seven vamps, the latter clustered off to the right, prudently out of striking distance but looking comfortable enough despite Sue and another fledge Buffy didn’t know lounging under the bright fluorescents in open game-face.

Spike’s voice registered again, saying, “--Miss Elizabeth’s here, she’ll take you through your jerks and all, if she’s brought the pads. Or whatever she says. Candy, can you start a sign-up list for the escort business? There’s dosh goes with that, by the by. Let you know how much when we have a few bookings.”

“And the patrols?” Candy asked brightly, the slut, with her artfully disarrayed waterfall topknot and garish purple spandex workout outfit Buffy sometimes suspected of being paint.

Spike shrugged. “Can’t hurt, but ‘m not promising anything at this point. Don’t intend to get anybody more than cracked slightly crooked because dead is real ugly an’ causes talk. Ain’t that right, Sue.”

“If you say so, Spike. I guess you’d know,” Sue responded cheerfully, as though unaware her snarling, snaggle-fanged game face was one of the more hideous examples. Maybe she really didn’t know, Buffy realized: no mirrors.

Then she realized that Spike had eased into the hallway. That he was leaving.

For a second she locked up, wild-eyed and frantically smiling. Then she lunged out into the corridor. Spike was nearly to the front doors, shrugging into his duster as he got a cigarette out for lighting.

“Spike!” A strangled squeak. “Spike!” Sneakers squeaking on the shiny vinyl tile, she pounded down the corridor as he waited quizzically with his back holding the left-hand door open, all slinky black leather and casual. “Spike, we have to talk!”

He waited a beat, conspicuously patient. “Due someplace now, pet. I’ll--”

“No, now! How can we start the escort--”

Something flickered a second in his eyes. Then he attended to lighting the cigarette. “Said I’m due someplace.” He clicked the lighter shut and put it away. “Got my business, and you got yours. All those downy chicks, waiting inside for you. Got them all warmed up for you, didn’t I? So you can take them through their tricks, all in good order.”

“What’s this too cool for school act?”

“Act,” Spike repeated as though mulling the word, turning away, letting the door start to hiss shut. Buffy banged the metal frame with the heel of her hand, arm braced. But her nearly neglected responsibility to the class held her, as he’d known it would, the sneaky bastard.

It galled her that he’d remembered the class, and she hadn’t. It galled her that he was going about his own business and abandoning her to hers instead of backing her up the way he was supposed to.

Payback for her slapping him down, this morning? Maybe. He could be petty when he was ticked off.

It didn’t feel like that, though. He was too aloof, too composed, to be secretly giggling inside at a well-executed gotcha.

It was, as Willow claimed, something. But Buffy, who thought she knew all his moods, didn’t know this one and didn’t like it one bit.

Poking head and shoulders out the door, pushing at tendrils of hair already escaping the scrunchy, she shouted after him, “Turn on your fricking phone!” and got an offhand, over-the-shoulder wave in reply, marked by the swinging coal of the cigarette.

Thinking grimly Later. followed immediately by the agreeable thought of rowdy make-up sex, Buffy trudged back up the corridor, her sneakers going squeeka, squeeka, squeeka like a bad grocery cart.

**********


Standing on the sidewalk, Spike critically watched Mike get down from Oz’s van--a step and then a turn, one hand still cautiously on the doorframe, finding his balance. Not really up to being out on his own yet, and they all knew it.

Leaning on the bench front seat to talk through the open door, Oz asked, “You want me to come with?”

“You eat people?” Spike responded bluntly.

“No. No, hardly ever,” Oz said, trying to make a joke of it.

“Then you don’t want to come. We’ll manage. Swing back in an hour or so.”

As Spike started off, Oz called, “What if Fudo--”

Spike waved and said nothing, walking slow enough that Mike could fall in alongside.

Mike wasn’t gonna admit he was worried about Fudo, but he was looking around in a guarded, slightly spooked way that didn’t go with hunting, so Spike volunteered, “No problem there. Fudo, that is. We came to an arrangement.”

“What arrangement.”

“Sort of ran into him in the pipes, about noontime,” Spike continued. “After I’d sent wolfboy off on an errand. Couldn’t neither of us get an advantage, so I made him a proposition. So far, nobody’s actually done anything that’s harmed his precious Balance, so rightly he shouldn’t come after us until we do. Logical bloke. Idealist, I expect. Living by rules.” Spike tapped out a cigarette and lit it meditatively as they approached the hospital. He surveyed the tiers of lighted windows. “Offered him an advantage later if he’d hold off now, till we’d actually done something. So we have a sort of a truce going. Long as it holds, Fudo’s not a problem.”

“What advantage.”

“Not your concern, Michael. Keep your mind on what’s at hand.”

As usual at St. Elizabeth’s, there were a couple of hospital staff--female: cleaning crew, by the smell, for all that they were muffled up in coats and scarves; anyway, Spike could hear their voices if there’d been any doubt--waiting in the lighted bus shelter. One apiece: seemed about right.

But as Spike and Mike joined them, a bus pulled up and the two chatting women got on, oblivious of their escape. The two vampires traded a glance. Then Spike led off to the hospital itself.

St. Elizabeth’s was in Mike’s hunting territory, but Spike knew it pretty well. Continuing to take the lead, he took the first set of stairs next to the bank of elevators. As Mike eased the door shut, Spike paused on the landing, listening for anyone moving in the stairwell. Finding all clear, he headed down toward the blood bank.

In his chipped days, he’d had an arrangement with Russell, a night shift worker--the occasional blood bag in exchange for a consideration, generally money, but the odd suck job hadn’t been out of the question when he was completely skint. Been all toplofty with him, Russell had, desperation being hard to hide. After the first few times, Russell had been smug besides, figuring Spike needed him too much to do anything permanent, not knowing that the chip kept Spike from taking more than what was freely offered. Spike didn’t need that sort of help anymore, so he figured tonight was payback.

“Well, look who’s here!” Russell commented genially, turning from a computer as Spike entered. “Ain’t seen you in--”

That was all he had time for before Mike swept in and took him.

When the sounds of struggle stopped, Spike quit loading his duster pockets with slippery, thawing bags from the outdated bin, directing over his shoulder, “That’s enough.” When, predictably, Mike didn’t leave off, Spike pried him away, hitting him a few times in the process--short, sharp punches. Mike folded pretty fast. Didn’t yet have the endurance to take on one of his own crew, let alone Spike, which was why Spike had kept them separate tonight--so Mike wouldn’t have to face a challenge less benevolent than Spike’s. Not that Spike didn’t enjoy it, putting the pup down--just didn’t do more than what was needful.

Unconscious Russell still had a pulse, which was likely more than he deserved, but Spike was practicing moderation these days.

“Never know,” he said, dragging Russell nearer the door, “when it might come in handy, having an inside man in a blood bank. Got to be thrifty. Think ahead.”

“Hell with that,” Mike responded, arising heavily, holding the glaringly white counter for support. “I want it all.”

Arranging Russell into a pose of attempted escape, Spike replied absently, “‘Course you do. But you can manage if you try hard enough. Turned that new Dalton, didn’t you?” He conceded, “S’pose your control’s not the best just now. But you hunt with me, you abide by my rules.”

Russell would do, he judged. Having jerked the door off its top hinge, further simulating a break-in and attack, Spike collected another handful of outdated bags, then picked up the phone. Dialing the number of Security from memory, he said, “Help!” in a strangled voice and let the phone drop.

He and Mike were down the hall and into the morgue before the elevator decanted a couple of Security blokes. The morgue held nothing of interest but had its own entrance and its own elevator. The elevator had a keypad control, letters/numbers like a phone, and the combination was D E A T H 123 that nobody had bothered to change in at least five years. Spike tapped in the code. When he’d herded Mike inside, he hit the button for six: the cancer ward. Go high while Security was going low, find a couple-few unfortunates practically on their last breath anyway, give them a soft send-off and satisfy Mike’s hunger for taking the last, the death.

Spike could do without that now, and the blood was none the worse for the disease, except that it tasted peppery, a bit. Get himself fed too while he was about it, since Russell wouldn’t have survived any additional drain.

Didn’t want to face Buffy again in blood debt and her likely all roused and sparky with him, smelling all kinds of delicious. Likely he’d give in to temptation, not hold to what he’d decided. Slayer, she’d need all her strength from here on, since he’d seen the Balance clear and known there was no place for him on the Quor’toth expedition. More useful for him to see to things here. Build on what they’d begun, like the class and the escort service and the patrolling.

She wouldn’t like it and probably would fight admitting it, that he was no more use to her, not with Quor’toth. A liability, even, given a mixed contingent of humans and vampires for whom it was impossible to pack food for more than a day or so. And never in this world or any other would Buffy OK the vamps living off the land, so to speak.

Angel, with his fucking regimen of pigs’ blood, hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Neither had Buffy, obviously. But Spike had, and resolved himself to the only available alternative: he’d stay behind.

It’d been enough to satisfy Fudo, for the moment.

That would prevent Dawn from going, given Spike’s promise; and in turn hold Mike in place and therefore any of his crew he might otherwise have bullied into volunteering, once he was up to such again. Keep the vamp contingent to Angel, which would probably please Angel all to hell and be more manageable.

And Buffy wouldn’t always have to be looking over her shoulder for Fudo, could move freely to make whatever preparations were necessary--for fucking Christmas or whatever.

A good bargain. An acceptable truce, however little Spike liked it.

The poverty ward on the cancer unit was pretty much wall-to-wall beds. It stank of pain, diseased organs, death, fear--a banquet to vamp senses. Mike sailed right in, an angel of death in bluejeans and a black T-shirt with the sentiment Hire the Handicapped with a picture of a legless guy speeding along in a wheelchair.

Less avid, slightly afflicted by pity, Spike decided the bagged he’d collected would do for him well enough. Not that he cared all that much, so long as it was human and not completely gone off. And by the smell, most of the terminal patients were doped completely off their heads: he didn’t need that distraction. Leave Mike that fun, then--no sense in the both of them getting too happy-stupid to get away in good order. Have to be sensible, responsible now. Think ahead; do what was needful.

Both vampires began feeding.

______________________________________________

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