You surely must understand, Bohr, that the whole idea of quantum jumps necessarily leads to nonsense. If we are going to have to put up with these damn quantum jumps, I am sorry that I ever had anything to do with quantum theory. -- Schrödinger

Something unknown is doing we don't know what. -- Sir Arthur Eddington

Willow growled and Spike was gearing up to play ref when Dawn came in shadowed by Tara and radiating a mood so electrically charged it shorted out any further confrontation. She glanced at Buffy and Xander, gave a brief "Hey" that left them nonplussed, and stopped in front of Willow.

"I need your help," she said flatly. "You do what I want, when I say, no argument. You do this favor for me, and I will do anything for you." Willow, eyebrows on the rise, began to look intrigued, and Dawn paused, letting the terms burn into the air between them. "Anything."

"Anything except sex," Tara amended. "Right, Dawn?"

Dawn and Willow continued to contemplate each other in the ultimate stare-down while an awkward pause swept over the group. Tara folded her arms and looked far more piqued and worried than she should.

"Dawn?"

Spike flashed on an image--three birds in a bed--and shoved that one into his mental wank drawer.

"Dawn!"

"Yeah, all right then," Spike broke in, ready to move the conversation along. Dawn was just a chit of a girl no matter how tough a game she talked. Give her to Willow and it'd be like putting the chick in the cat's mouth. "What's up, petal?"

"My foster parents." Dawn turned away from Willow, eyes blurring when they met his. "They're in the ghettos."

The Harrises. Not even blood relations; though if you were an ex-key created by meddling monks, that point might be moot. Family was family when it came down to it, and Spike gave a nod that passed for sympathy. He couldn't tap a deep well of the stuff, but Dawn never asked for much.

"Rough," he said, feeling uncomfortable, gaze shifting to Xander to see how he was taking the news of his folks. No love there, no sign that blood was thicker than venom.

"You've got to get them out," Dawn said. But her demand was to Willow, which left Spike unreasonably miffed. Apparently him being a great and mighty vampire slayer didn't cut it these days, least not when it came to graut politicking. Fair enough. Still, she might have looked to him. Derring do could be done. He could swoop in, say, under cloak of darkness, and--

"Is that a fact?" Willow seemed amused, but not enough to provoke a fight.

Buffy had moved to her sister's side and was touching her arm rather awkwardly. "Dawn. I'm so sorry. Can I do anything?"

"I don't know." Dawn gave her a stony-faced look. "Can you do anything?"

"I could--" Buffy hesitated as if wanting to make promises she didn't know how she'd keep. She glanced at Willow, a touch of resentment obvious. It was hard to say if Dawn's dismissive snub shut down further offers or if Buffy just admitted defeat, but she fell back a little and didn't finish whatever she'd been planning to say.

"You can pull strings, right?" Even asking for help, Dawn glared at Willow. "Get them moved back home?"

At first Willow seemed indifferent to the plea but then she caught Spike's eye and something in her face shifted. "Right," she said to Dawn, sounding almost pitiably eager now. "Of course, no problem! I mean, I think. How hard could it be? Grease a few palms, kick a few backsides--"

From an aloof stance near the wall, Xander made a skeptical sound, and in Pavlovian response, Willow bristled, lips unpeeling just a mite, fingers curling.

"So that's settled," Spike put in quickly, before they could tilt lances for another one of their endless jousts.

"Not to cramp anyone's fun," Angel said. He'd come up silently enough to startle a few people. "But there are better uses for our time." He sounded irritable in his quiet way, and Spike noticed he had blood streaking his hands and shirt. Not the tasty dinner kind, either.

At his reminder, everyone looked with various levels of guilt toward the sprawling disaster area behind them. Moans came from the pallets where the wounded lay, and the churn of voices and smells, along with the rising heat, made Spike edgy and restless.

"What's the sitch?" he asked.

"Two dead, a dozen more on their way. Gunshots. Messy." Angel didn't blink as he relayed the information. "The rest aren't so bad. We found a few doctors."

"Good," Spike said absently, still gazing at the people. It was like standing on a tiny island in a sea of blood, a thin reef of friends separating him from the mass of wet, wailing humanity he'd rescued. Part of him--the monster he couldn't shake, always hungry--just wanted to fall back and drown.

"You did a hell of a thing tonight," Xander said, his praise coming out of the blue. He didn't move from where he was standing, but it was as if he'd suddenly stepped closer.

Spike kicked away the temptation of pride. No point getting used to it, since he had none most days. "Got lucky, that's all."

"Not all good luck," Angel said, and Spike was ready to snap back at the bleeding obvious until he realized the other vampire was staring at his bleeding thigh. "You've been shot."

"Yeah?" Spike glanced down with a frown. "Didn't notice."

"Might as well dig it out now." Angel swept a dispassionate look across the others. "Anya could use some help," he noted.

Amused at this unsubtle direction, Spike watched the others fan out into the crowd, then hitched himself onto a crate and let Angel kneel and play doctor. "Could've been worse," he said after a few moments, responding to the unspoken judgment hanging in the air.

Angel hooked his fingers into the bullet hole and ripped Spike's jeans away from the wound, then looked up. "Did I say anything?"

"Hey! You know how hard it is to find jeans on the black market right now? They're like gold, mate."

"Sorry." Angel probed the wound, which had already closed over, before taking the knife from his hip and slicing it open again.

"And don't play like you don't know what I mean," Spike added, mood deteriorating with the death of his favorite Levis. "Go on. Might as well get it out. Unhealthy to repress."

"What do you want me to say? That you shouldn't have gone off half-cocked like Don Quixote to take on an entire demon army single-handed, risking your life against ridiculous odds because you were too impatient to wait or ask for help?"

"Yeah. That." A smile of grudging affection escaped Spike before he could flatten it. Thank Christ Angel wasn't looking up. The other vampire had somehow, even while speaking, managed to compress his own lips down to a grim little line of pique. But his touch with the knife remained incredibly gentle.
 
"You really piss me off sometimes."

"Sorry, Sancho. Couldn't wait. Had to strike while the iron was hot."

Angel finally looked up, serious and not giving an inch--angry too, Spike could tell, because he was more clam-faced than usual. "The iron was hot yesterday and it'll be hot again tomorrow, Spike. You hit that camp because it was fun."

"Well, yeah," he admitted. "You know me, plucky and adventury." He winced and braced as Angel knifed the bullet loose, but admired the twist of metal when he saw it between the other man's fingers. "Make a nice earring," he observed. Thwarting his fashion tendencies, Angel pocketed the slug, and Spike sighed. "Not going to start a massive brooding campaign, are you?"

"Would it do any good?" Tight voice of a tightly wound man.

Instead of answering, Spike looked across the room to where the others had taken up tending the refugees. Most of the people were clustered together in segregated groups around the floor, crates and blankets forming makeshift rooms, and he could see a crude social Darwinism already in action, humans angling for better real estate, hoarding the choicer food. Not a lot of demons had joined their exodus, but enough to unsettle things. He wondered how many of the humans he'd liberated had simply taken him for one of their own kind. Most, he'd wager. He'd kept game face to a minimum.

Within the pool of hunched and sleeping bodies, one girl perched cross-legged on a weapons trunk, oblivious to the missile specs and warnings stenciled on its side. She was watching him. Spike caught her eye, assessed her back. No more than twelve but old enough for work camp. Old enough for some graut to take a fancy. He ought not to care. The whole human race started off at a crawl, half of them little girls, and they all came to the same dead end.

Done in by her steady eyes, Spike finally sketched a salute, laying two fingers to his brow. The girl lifted a hand and saluted back, careful to imitate him. With respect for the solemnity of the moment, he nodded and let his gaze move on.

As if directed by an internal compass, it unerringly found Xander. Back half turned, he was opening tins of food with a hand-crank, passing them to Buffy for dispensing. An assembly line of two.

"Could get interesting," Angel said. "Having him back here."

Had he asked for color commentary on his private life? No, he bloody well hadn't. Irritation returning, Spike pushed to his feet. "I don't need an Agony Aunt. Bugger off and find something to do."

Angel delivered a mild "As you wish," with an entirely straight face.

Insufferable git.

"How're things?"

Wiping her hands free of creamed corn, Buffy cocked her head for thought at Spike's question. "Well, this isn't exactly how I imagined my role in the resistance. Also, I thought I'd have one of those kicky berets. But, feeding the hungry, no shame there."

No shame, but when it came to sympathy, it felt like she'd opened a vein. The refugees were in a terrible state--she thought this might even qualify as a plight, the kind of disaster you held red-ribbon fundraisers for. She'd been trying not to look too closely at anyone, afraid she might start crying.

Spike on the other hand was treating her to his patented vampire inspection, eyeballing her clothes and indexing her body mass in a critical way, as if she were a dowdy and underfed minion he was starting to have reservations about.

"Speaking of feeding the hungry," he said. "When's the last time you shoved some carbs in your furnace?"

"Carbs are evil, dangerous, and the enemy of all I stand for," Buffy informed him seriously. "It's my duty to help eradicate them."

"What--no good carbs in your tidy little world? What about soul food then?" He raised his brows while she groaned at the joke. "Doughnuts?"

"Doughnuts only appear harmless. In each creamy center lurks a heart of darkness." Buffy hesitated, then caved. "You don't have happen to have any lying around, do you? Maybe one with sprinkles for me to...eradicate?"

Spike moved his lips in the faintest of smiles. "Wish I did. Not exactly swimming in sweets here, lately."

"So I see." At a momentary loss, she looked around the enormous room, getting her bearings. "This place has changed a lot."

"Well, we tried to keep it homey," Spike said, striking a blithe attitude, then immediately dialing it back down. He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and hooked his thumbs over the edge. "Want the ten-cent tour?"

They circumnavigated the main room, hitting its highlights, then walked down the row of containment cells together. If Buffy counted them off, she could still identify the exact one Spike had been in when they'd rescued him. It gave her a twinge and she thought it must be odd for him too, being back here like this, not that he'd ever show it. He'd long since passed out of the Whining Era and into the Stoic.

Buffy eyed the furnishings rigged up by the kids to make the cells habitable. "This is...kind of sad," she said.

"You're welcome to try for better."

She'd offended him without meaning to, and could hear all the frustration and effort of the last several months in his voice. "I wouldn't know where to begin," she said with honesty, her own voice low.

Her feet drew to a halt in front of a cell with a collage of magazine pages covering the walls and a foot-deep strew of clothes across the floor, the perfect replica of a teenage girl's room relocated a hundred feet underground. It couldn't be Dawn's. Dawn's would have weapons.

"You've done more here than most people could ever hope to achieve--"

"Oh, spare me the watcher's pep talk." Spike sounded unimpressed and testy, and his gaze kept skittering off as if he were embarrassed. He never took praise well, but something else seemed to be on his mind. "Look," he said, finally meeting her eyes. "This is mostly Angel's doing. I just work here."
 
"Angel?"

"He's the one who saw the writing on the wall, stockpiled all this--" Spike waved a hand. "Kept me in the dark about it too, even before the grauts came along and took the sun out of Sunnydale."

"I don't understand." She tried to match up what he was saying with what Willow had told them in L.A. His moody tone was equally hard to interpret.

"Not sure I do either. You're better off talking to him."

It was no answer, but she didn't press. She studied him as he slumped against the wall. His jeans were spattered with gore and caked with drying filth, his shirt ripped, his hair a mess; he was fiddling with his lighter, obviously jonesing for a cigarette he didn't have on him. He looked tired, and then he looked up at her. No smile, just that old, steady vampire regard that even now could make her twitchy.

"What?" he asked.

His challenge almost tempted a smile from her; he was so true to form that she could almost cite the page number of the watcher's handbook on vampire aggressive behaviors. "Is there anything you need?" she asked. "I mean now, from me?"

Spike looked aside, playing it cool. "You're here," he said with an indifference she recognized as feigned. "Enough for now. You and Angel'll get things sorted. Me, I'll just--"

"Fight the good fight," she finished, giving gravity to the words he always uttered so dryly. She wondered if he was having any doubts; his jaded expression didn't ease her mind and she longed to offer him support. "You are a champion, Spike. I know you like to shrug off the whole destiny thing, but you've more than proved yourself. No one can say you aren't the chosen one--"

But people had tried, and something must have irritated that old sore spot recently, or maybe it was just her long absence that had Spike rolling his eyes and making a yak-yak gesture with one hand. "Yeah, I know the sales pitch." He launched into bored sing-song: "'Into each generation, a vampire slayer is called. One vampire in all the world, a chosen one, granted the strength and skill to hunt his own kind and to stop the spread of evil.' Epic honor, comes with a nice gold cross and no retirement plan."

"Spike, I know it can be hard--"

He uttered a sound just short of a laugh. "What would you know, little girl?" He ran a hand through his hair, looked suddenly even more tired. "You haven't even been here."

The blow hit her where she lived, in the guilty, aching place under her ribs. She'd let him down long before the Grauth came along and ripped all her memories away, but even that felt like her fault. She dropped her gaze. "I'm sorry--"

"Leave it. I don't need a retread of old ground. We've got new battles to fight." He walked off on that reminder and left Buffy alone in the corridor to wonder just how much ground she'd lost with him by pulling out of Sunnydale and whether she could ever get it back.

The general was not happy. Some men when unhappy camouflage the feeling behind protocol and discipline; others have a kind of anger that runs cold rather than hot. General Nilec, a cold man most of the time, boiled hot with unhappiness. His unbuttoned uniform jacket said that he'd been roused from bed with bad news and hadn't yet recovered; since entering his staff room he hadn't sat down at the meeting table. He paced behind his chair, the Imperial State sigil as his backdrop. Whenever he paused he looked like a propaganda poster for the war effort. Naziren suspected he knew that. The general was conscious of his image, even when discomposed.

At the general's next circuit over the parquet tiles, the tall, ornate doors across from him banged open and his chief of operational support hurried in. His coat was buttoned, cloak fastened smartly, cap angled with parade-ground precision on his head. Nilec, who'd paused at the entrance, seemed to be taking notice of this.

"General," said the operations chief, tucking his cap under one arm. "My aide informed me of the incident at the work camp." He wavered at Nilec's unrelenting gaze and swallowed hard enough that the nervous apple bob of his throat was visible from across the room. "We'll double our guards at the other camps until the slayer is caught, sir. We'll--"

Nilec unholstered his pistol. The gesture stopped the other man mid-speech, while the officers seated around the table averted their eyes, shuffling through their official documents with a newly discovered interest. In a single fluid movement, the general reversed the gun and extended it to the operations chief, who took it miserably.

It appeared that a position was opening up on the general's staff. But Naziren was laying no bets on his own promotion, so he took only an impersonal interest. As the doomed officer raised the gun to his temple, he crooked one finger and gestured a footman over.

"Bring me a cup of tea," he said. "Lapsang Souchong."

A shot rang out and the footman nodded, their exchange punctuated by a dull, collapsing thud at the other end of the room.

As the ex-operations chief was discreetly dragged away by junior officers, General Nilec glared at his staff, leaning forward with hands on the table. "I have reached the end of my tolerance for failure," he said in an even voice that suddenly launched into a shout: "Failure is death!" He slammed one hand on the tabletop for emphasis. Unnecessary emphasis, Naziren thought. The garnish of a cheap demagogue, not an Imperial officer.

Straightening, Nilec fixed his gaze on the man seated to his left. "Colonel Liyoge, you are in charge of operations."

Liyoge looked dismayed, but hid it almost at once. "Thank you, General."

That might have been a cue to discuss new organizational plans, but Nilec's temper hadn't yet burned out and he turned it on them again now. "Tonight, rebel forces led by the slayer attacked one of our camps and freed over a hundred prisoners. At the same time, the civil defense barrier was penetrated at the south end of town." Nilec paused while a murmur went around the table at this unexpected news. "The tunnel system is riddled with enemies of the state, and the slayer remains free. An unfortunate lapse on our part. Wouldn't you agree, Colonel Naziren?"

Though he'd expected to be put on the spot, Naziren didn't intend to conclude this meeting by shooting himself. "The slayer is one man. If our army can't secure the town, I suggest we remedy that deficit first."

Provoked, the army major general turned a ranking glare on him. "Are you blaming my command?"

"It isn't the job of Special Forces to compensate for the shortcomings of our troops, Major General Garon."

"You half-blood dreffa, how dare you--"

"Silence!" Nilec bellowed. "You may well blame each other." He gave them an unpleasant smile. "As I blame you both. I expect immediate action to secure the tunnels," he cast a look at Garon, "and to root out the insurgents."
 
Garon nodded. "Of course, General."

An unsettled, waiting silence fell while Nilec finally took his seat and then scoured Garon with another glare. "Immediate means now!" As the major general beetled off, Nilec folded his arms on the table. "Meanwhile, Colonel Naziren will tell us why his department has so far fallen short of capturing the slayer, and Colonel Liyoge--" The new operations chief nearly jumped. "--will share his plans for securing the civil defense barrier against any further breaches."

Liyoge and Naziren traded a glance down the table with the shared expression of men vying for second place in firing squad order. Nilec took the decision from their hands.

"Colonel Naziren."

"Sir?"

"I've been informed that our trophy officer, Captain Rosenberg, knows the slayer...intimately." A thin smile. "How exactly have you been exploiting this relationship?"

Willow felt Xander's gaze knifing between her shoulder blades. Lifting her head from the rags she was tearing, she stared straight ahead and pictured him standing there behind her like a mirror or a shadow. She smiled to herself sourly, resisting a childish urge to turn and stick her tongue out. That'd be undignified, right? They weren't kids any more. That was the problem. One, anyway. It had been a long ride to Sunnydale and the success of her mission made her gloomy. She'd escorted the white knight to his king's side--was she still needed here? Hardly. Anyone could rip bandages.

"I'd forgotten what a good act you put on." He was at her shoulder and she hadn't even heard him coming.
 
She hated how easily he provoked her, that she'd been forced to go and collect him for Spike, that she was forced to look his way now. He stood studying her as if she were something in a jar, like a tumor that had been cut out of his life. He'd done the cutting, hadn't he. They'd been best friends since grade school but come high school it all went bad, and it'd had nothing to do with Spike, not then. Magic came between them first. Xander, judgmental and superior--he never had a clue. Always using his fists, too stupid to take what the world offered. Bud White with a grudge, tight-lipped and miserable, doomed by family and alcohol and fear, so afraid of being a faggot he ran out on the only person who'd ever looked twice at him.

Oh well. That'd had worked out nice for her.

"You've got Spike wrapped around your little finger, don't you," he went on, tilting his head and quirking a half smile. "Miss Peaches and Cream." He sounded normal, even mild, his hostility so readily on tap he didn't have to strain.

She felt naked and mouselike without her magic. He could rip into her any time he wanted to, and she'd be helpless to all that throwback male power. But she smiled back sunnily.

"Behind every great man is a great woman. But you had trouble filling that position, didn't you?"

"Do you think you're anything more than a temp?"

Willow lost her smile. "Every day, when he needs me--I'm here. And I'll be here five years from now, and fifty, when you're just a handful of worms in the ground. And one day he'll forget you, just like that," she snapped her fingers and threw away a handful of nothingness, "and I'll still be here."

Xander took a step closer, no longer bothering to hide the coldness behind his eyes. "If you ever mess with his head, I will break you."

"I don't need to take away what's already gone."

Tossing away the bandages, Willow cut through the crowd as best she could, every necessary side-step abrading her patience. Bodies everywhere. It was like a meat locker. An unpleasantly warm one, where the meat was turning.

"Going somewhere, Red?"

His voice always sent a thrill through her, right down to her toes, even when she was grumpy or reluctant or contemplating how he'd look as a frog. She let Spike take her hand; he used it to revolve her gracefully in a dance step that brought her into the curve of his arm, then guided her into the east wing corridor toward the old bunk rooms. Pressed against his muscled side she felt light and clingy as a feather; it was tempting to just go boneless and let the glide of his body carry her along. Masculine strength wasn't so scary when it was his.

"Didja have a good time tonight?" she asked, chipper girlishness surfacing from the burial ground of her old self. "You're all juiced up, aren't you?"

He didn't answer but the look he gave her was appropriately smoldering, and she could sense a thrum of excess energy below the surface of his skin that fighting hadn't released. He pushed open a door with his hip, whirled her through, and lifted her up, all so quickly it took her breath away, but she didn't hesitate to wrap her arms and legs around him like one of those little clip-on koalas, and whatever happened to those, anyway?

They were in one of the base bathrooms, all pale-green tile and flickering strip lights, and he settled her ass on a sink and began taking off her jeans with determination while she sat and grinned, wriggling but letting him do the work. His hunger was reassuring. She was the one he wanted. She understood him better than anyone, his darkness and power, his moods and needs. When he thrust inside she was already wetly aching, and she cried out and slipped off the sink, but he caught and held her.

"Did you miss me?" she asked, hoping the huskiness of her voice made the question less pathetic.

"What do you think?" He was smiling, his doting expression out of synch with the rough movements of his hips in a way that excited her.

"You missed me." Giddy and happy, she let her eyes close and head fell back, setting her hair to swinging. "And you're all bloody and dirty and you--you couldn't wait--"

"You like bloody and dirty." He slammed into her hard with the words.

"I do. Oh!" There it was, uplifting, exploding, and a little meow of bliss might have escaped before she sighed, "I do."

He ran a thumb along her cheek, kissed her. "Trip all right?" He was pulling away, zipping up even before she'd stopped pulsing, and she wished he'd slow down a little, eat her out once or twice, but maybe now wasn't the best time.

"What do you think?" she rejoined dryly, tugging up her jeans. "I went, I got your boy, I came trotting back. Do I get a cookie? Or just the--"

"Don't call him that."

It was like a ruler rap to her knuckles, flat and sharp and hard. Throat a little tighter, she tossed her hair and checked her make-up in the mirror, biding her time until he turned her around, firm hands on her waist.

"Don't be sulky." His voice had gentled again, reproving but indulgent.

"I'm not. I just--"

"You're just a bad little girl," he said knowingly, "full of evil thoughts, hankering, greedy as a tot in a sweet shop. Want to chew up the whole world, spit out what you can't swallow. You're like me." His words and smile thrilled her, and his touch wandered, mapping her neck and the good place behind her ear. "They've got us both in the collar." His gaze dipped a moment and she could see bitterness in the shape of his mouth. "Wish I could change that. Power you up and god--these bastards wouldn't even know what hit 'em."

"I'd wipe them clean off the earth," she said with earnestness. "Melt them and pour them back into their hell-hole and plug it up forever."

"I know it, love."

She smiled up at him wistfully, and he smiled down, and they didn't have to say anything else, because they got each other. When he looked at her like this, nothing else mattered. It was all good.

Willow caught Xander's eye immediately as she returned to the main room--he'd been watching the door, how sad--and made a show of smoothing her sweater before giving him a tiny finger-waggling wave. He turned away.

Just before she reached the exit, Dawn moved to block her path. "Where are you going?"

Awww, thought Willow. It was kind of adorable, that puffed-up, kittenish attempt at authority. Even with a Bowie knife sheathed on her hip and a gun in one steady hand, the girl looked about fourteen and not exactly scary.

"Back to my comfy bed, roaring fire, and Chablis."

Dawn regarded her coolly. "Ever think of sharing the wealth?"

"Not really, no."

Hefting her gun a notch, Dawn considered Willow from head to toe in a deliberate way. "You know, take away those magic glamours and the fancy uniform, and you really are kinda short and shabby."

She smiled and Willow bit her tongue and smiled back, regretting her inability to cast hexes. Never smart to let the brat rattle her. And besides--

"Didn't you need a favor from me?"

Dawn's smugness vanished with satisfying speed. "Yes. And I'm coming with you. No comfy bed for us until my parents are back in theirs."

With a few measured steps, Willow entered Dawn's personal space and trailed one painted nail along the barrel of her semi-automatic. It twitched like interested flesh. "I thought you were just kidding about the sex, but if you're feeling keen--"

"You to your comfy bed," Dawn clarified snappishly. "Me to my sleeping bag. Or, I mean--to Tara's. But no sex!"

Willow put on her pity face. "Lesbian bed death already? That's a shame. I can see why you're both so worked up."

Teeth were gritted. "No sex between you and me."

"Yes," Tara said, popping out of a nearby nowhere and giving Willow a surly look. She folded her arms and moved into Dawn's orbit like a soft, moon-faced satellite. "No sex," she repeated as if Willow were a schoolgirl needing lessons drummed in. "No cuddling either. And none of those sultry bath scenes where you have to clean each other's wounds and the mirror gets all steamy and--" She broke off, cheeks pink, and let her hair curtain her face.

"Okay, baby." Dawn looked ready to cut the conversation short with her Bowie. "I think we're all clear."

"Kinda insecure, aren't you?" Willow said to Tara with a bright, faux interest.

"Some people find that charming," she retorted, lifting her chin again, defiant despite her blush.

"Good for you," Willow said. "You keep telling yourself that." Circling around them, she headed out the exit. "If you're coming, come," she called back to Dawn.

"Be careful," Tara murmured, once the other witch had passed out of hearing range. There was worry in her face and a hunch to her shoulders that made Dawn feel protective, as if she were the older one instead of the younger.

"I'll be more than careful," she said, and gave Tara a tender peck on the lips. "I'll be safe."

A low boom broke somewhere underground, distant enough that it might have been mistaken for a piece of machinery kicking on--ventilation, say--but strong enough to shiver the mirror over the sink and ripple the water where Spike was washing up. He rested his hands on either side of the porcelain, watching till the shockwave subsided, then let the water drain, carrying away the blood and grit he'd rubbed from his skin. Nails edged black, for want of a nail file--well, no great loss. Hair could do with another rinse, probably looked like a bleached hedgehog, spines sticking out all over, but he couldn't be arsed.

"Is that normal?" Xander asked.

Spike looked up to see the other man's face in the mirror where his own should have been. Disorienting, the tricks mirrors played. Made him feel insubstantial despite the weight of years.

"No." He turned. "They're blasting the tunnels. Figured they would, sooner or later."

"At least it wasn't close."

"How far you make that?"

"Couple of miles--maybe more. Big blast, though."

"Probably the tunnel entrance near the camp."

They looked at each other for a few moments, and it seemed like Xander realized at the same time he did that they didn't have much to say. Or too much--so much that all they could gab about was what passed for business. In a minute or two they'd have to get on with it, figure out their next move. But neither of them seemed inclined.

Spike plucked his shirt from an adjacent sink, shook it out for a critical squint, sniffed it, then tossed it back as a bad catch. Settled his weight against the cold porcelain. Fingered the tear in his jeans. Xander shifted to lean against a stall and said a lengthening nothing, leaving it to Spike to speak again first.

"How's L.A. then?"

"Smoggy, temperatures ranging in the mid-sixties, zealots trying to raise a demon queen, and this small talk really bites."

Spike ducked his head a little and uncurled a wry smile of acknowledgment. "Yeah." A pause, and then his voice lowered on its own, as if there were intimacy to be had. "You worried about your parents--being in the ghettos?"

"What parents?" Xander was expressionless. "I don't have parents. Dawn has parents. I have memories of crazy drunks who tied me to a tree during happy hour. That whole sobriety-and-religion thing, that was the post-Xander era. So they fostered a kid. Big deal. You think that's from guilt?" Intense eyes held Spike's, dark as the well of history. "That's not guilt. That's disappointment. When your car breaks down, you don't fix it. You buy the new model."

Suppressed anger poured off Xander and its heat lit a strange, answering glow inside Spike. He'd missed that fire. Missed the fireside.

"They've been good to her," he was obliged to say. What he didn't say was how he'd made sure of it.

"I'm sure they'll get a nice plaque in hell. 'Best Mom and Dad, Second Time Around.'"

His voice held an edge sharp enough for a clean shave or a cut throat, and Spike wanted to comfort him, but he couldn't remember how. His gaze wandered across Xander from boots to hips, from fidgeting hands to wide shoulders, until he caught himself at it, made himself look up, found Xander watching him, hawkish and hungry. It sent Spike zero to sixty in record time, a rush of blood to his prick and longing to his heart. But the memory of rejection kept his muscles locked in place; he was a dog trained to heel and wait for a permissive word.

When one didn't come, the old anger bit deep. Only difference now was, he'd already done his best and his worst, teased Xander and punished him, and the only success he'd had was driving him away. His anger was tired.

"Suppose we'd better..." he said, pushing off from the sink.

"I'm not happy," Xander said out of the blue, and it made Spike stop, take a closer look at the shadowed eyes, unshaven jaw, fringe hanging all in his face like some grunge guitarist's. "I hate L.A. Hate fighting a losing battle, watching my friends get taken apart piece by piece, a little here, a little there." His voice was flat, matter of fact. "And I hate knowing you're ninety miles north playing footsie with Willow and I was stupid enough to leave you."

Dark eyes burned into his and Spike went still, trying to work through what he meant from what little he'd said. "We playing true confessions? Or's there some point to this?"

Xander shook his head. "No point." A small crack of a laugh. "None."

"You just trying to wind me up then?" Spike's face tightened. "'Cause I don't have time for your mea culpas, pet. You know I can't bloody think when you--" A hand came out to touch his trace along his jaw, cutting off the flow of words. It hurt. His scalpel-fingered boy.

"I'm not taking all the blame. I wanted to be your friend."

"And you are." Spike struggled against sarcasm, kept his voice even. The words weren't untrue, but he could have made them sound that way, oh so easily. Half his waking existence was spent mastering his own cruel bent--the other half trying to remember why the hell he even had to. Joys of being a slayer.

Another boom reverberated quietly through the walls and they both cocked their heads, listening, measuring, using the distraction to evade each other's eyes. Then they left the bath and headed for the Initiative core. On the way Spike grabbed another shirt, still buttoning it as they entered the cavernous chamber.

"Angel!" he shouted. From the sleeping pallets, a few heads lifted, but most people were either wholly awake or soundly asleep, unmoved by explosions or noisy vampires. Spike and Xander maneuvered through the bodies to meet Angel in the middle of the room, Anya and Buffy joining them.

"You heard it too?" Angel asked.

"That last one was closer." Spike looked around the room, contemplating both the structure and the array of guests. "Should be safe here. We're under the campus," a glance up, "under their bloody club. Can't see them bringing the blitz here."

Anya hugged herself lightly, as if feeling for holes in the elbows of her sweater. "If they don't know where we are, then what're they doing?"

"Closing off access routes," Xander said, glancing at Spike. "Trying to control our movements, drive us toward whatever they've left open--that's where they'll be waiting."

"They're working blind." Angel sounded certain of this, daddy vamp calming the kiddies at bedtime, and Spike was as ready to be reassured as any of them. "It's just retaliatory action. Whoever's in charge is saving his own...head." He'd clearly had another word in mind but edited it for Anya's sake. He went to the big table, the rest of them following, and pulled a rolled map from a nearby box. They cleared off dinner plates so he could spread it out and then studied it together. The map covered the entire surface and showed the town's sanitation and utility tunnel systems; routes had been marked with highlighters and cramped notes filled the margins.

"How up-to-date is this?" Buffy wondered.

Spike flattened the creased paper with one palm. "Map's about five years old, but not far off, least when it comes to municipal works. Gagworm burrows not shown, of course."

"Of course."

"Green's the tunnels we've been using," Spike said, pointing out a stretch that led from the area of Initiative to the town center. "Anything we know's open. Yellow for caution zones--still plenty of demons lurking around who can't abide fresh air, make it hard to pass."

"Orange for closed tunnels," Xander finished with a guess confirmed by Spike's nod. "So all this unmarked area," he brushed his fingers across a patch of map, "hasn't even been scouted?"
 
"Well," Spike said in a neutral tone, "we've been short of warm bodies until now." A glance at Angel. "Cold ones too for that matter." He thought he'd concealed his defensiveness, but a look at Xander told him otherwise.

"That's right," Anya said, sounding more perky than the rest of them combined. She cast her appraising eye over the sleeping refugees. "But when these slugs wake up, we can put them to work!"

Perky should be classified as a controlled substance, Spike decided--though a hit of that about now wouldn't go amiss. The other humans were starting to wilt and he didn't feel so apple-fresh himself.

"Night's rest'll do us all good," he said, tugging the map toward him and rolling it up bit by bit under his hands.

His words sent them drifting off in search of their resting places, all except Angel, who stood by with that watchdog loyalty which sometimes triggered Spike's temper but just as often disarmed it. A baffling old bastard, his grandsire. A soul had lamed him long ago--gypsies, curse, wet blanket, tragic--but having a slayer in the family had turned him downright cuddly, at least after a few years of  tough love and prize fights smoothed their reunion. Good thing he had no soul of his own, they'd probably be swapping Hallmarks and stuffed teddies by this point. Hard to admit, but without Angel he'd have gone round the bend fast in this gig.

Of course, even after all the negotiation and compromise, shared battles and bottles, he got flashes of the old Angelus. Bones had a long memory for pain. But it was the bleed of his heart that kept Spike up most nights. And it wasn't Angelus who'd sunk his fangs there.

"You okay?" Angel asked quietly.

Spike could pick out Xander's heartbeat from a hundred, hear him breathing across a crowded room.

He raised his head, impassive and perfectly schooled. "Never better."

"A slayer at large," Liyoge said, following Naziren through the main hall. "Rebels attacking the camps. And your witch mysteriously shaking every agent set to tail her." He sucked air between his teeth in vague commiseration. "A difficult time for you, Naz." On the front steps, he gloved himself against the cold and adjusted his cap while waiting for the car to be brought around. The wind blew up the corners of their coats and snapped the flags that hung from the facade. It was snowing again.

Naziren glanced up into a darkness blurred by countless flakes as if he had definite opinions on the snow. "You recruited the good captain."

"Dear Will. A pretty and promising young woman." He'd always liked the dangerous type. "But I was only acting on the recommendation of field agents."

"I think the general has made it clear we share responsibility, Operations Chief Liyoge."

Liyoge grimaced and avoided his look.

A car pulled up to the curb and Naziren turned to him. "Can I offer you a lift?"

"I'm expecting my own--"

Naziren gripped the back of his neck and dashed him against the car, then shoved him through the rear door obligingly opened by the chauffeur. "Let me give you a lift," he said, climbing in behind.

"You mad bastard." Liyoge sagged in disarray while Naziren took the opposite seat. Disbelief and outrage filled him with a sensation like too much air in the lungs, and he made a show of touching a handkerchief to his bloodied nose. "I could have you up on charges."

"We've achieved mutually assured destruction, then. My operatives have amassed quite a file on you." He drew a folder from a case on the seat and flipped through its pages. "Gambling, drugs, loose women--" He paused on a photo Liyoge couldn't make out, tilted it, then dropped it back and let the file fall shut. "What boring vices you have. But still quite illegal, at least the way you practice them. Make yourself a drink and stop twittering."

Liyoge lowered his handkerchief from his face and obeyed, choosing a decanter from the drink caddy and pouring himself a double measure. He'd heard all the stories about the other man--who hadn't?--but had never personally seen his bad side before now. Damned dirty pool, this attack. He found himself taking an inventory of his interactions with Naziren, but couldn't fault himself on any point--he'd done nothing to deserve this.

A thump of heavy artillery resonated through the car, making it shake and jerk as the driver lost and then regained control of the wheel.

"Garon will blast the town from under our feet," Naziren said. "The fool. But we," he grabbed Liyoge's gaze with his own, "need to think more strategically."

"Strategically," Liyoge repeated, unsure what the other man was getting at.

"Cooperatively."

"I recall cooperating with your car a few moments ago." Liyoge brushed a few fingers down the side of his nose. "It was painful."

Naziren withdrew the accouterments of his gentleman status, a silver cigarette case and lighter that he handled with the delicate care one might use to set the ignition on a bomb. "Sharp sudden blows help clear the mind. My father taught me that. So let's see if we can reach an accord, shall we?"

"Go on," Liyoge said warily, pouring a fresh glass of something decadent, amber, and human-concocted and making a mental note to requisition the brand for himself.

"I've had agents shadowing Rosenberg for weeks, hoping to get a lead on the slayer's whereabouts. She always gives them the slip."

"But you have intel--that she's seeing the slayer?"

"A hunch."

Liyoge frowned. Ruses and intrigue were not his métier, but he was beginning to sense a larger design. "Why was I told to recruit the witch? To catch a vampire?"

"Oh, we thought the slayer dead." The half-breed had such a smooth tongue that even a probable truth sounded like a lie. "But the captain is a tool with many uses. As are you, Liyoge."

Little point in taking offense. He eyed the leather case that held his folder and wondered what it would take to ransom it. "What do you want?"

"You're chief of operations now, responsible for the defense shield, the camps. I need to bring Rosenberg in for questioning, but I don't want to sacrifice my relationship with her for short-term gain. She knows you. You'll lead the interrogation."

"So I'm to be, as the humans say, bad cop." Was that really all the other man was asking of him? "No problem," he said, crafting a sudden capitulation that was both brisk and easy. "You only had to ask." He added the last note almost as an afterthought, with a touch of malice. Let Naziren think he'd wasted his ammunition for a trifle.

"Did I? Well." A smile lifted Naziren's mouth. "I'll remember that."

Liyoge felt the level of his spirits sink again. Best top them off, he thought in resignation, and reached for the decanter.

Dawn had liked Willow once, back when she was younger and more easily impressed by her big sister's friends; when everything they did seemed cool because they were older. Bronzing it to hear bands; wearing sneakers with tassels; listening to cheap indie CDs; carrying hefty textbooks with highlighted pages. When Dawn had chosen to move to Sunnydale as one of the "Summers women" instead of staying in L.A. with her dad (like everything, just another brick in her monastery of false memory) she'd been eager for anyone's attention. Willow had been nice to her then, a fellow geek who loved chess and chemistry and who actually looked at her when Buffy didn't. In return Dawn had crushed hard, charmed by the fuzzy sweaters and friendly smiles, the how's-school-going-Dawnie? questions that seemed to hold real interest, even when asked in passing.

Too bad she'd turned out to be a power-mad bitch with a taste for pyrotechnics and a careless habit of putting her friends in danger.

Willow's Reich-sponsored accommodations were even more opulent than Dawn had expected.

"You have got to be kidding me," she said as the doorman tipped his hat and gave them entry into the hotel. In jeans and a sweater, Willow still swept through the lobby with the panache of a movie star returning from a premiere, earning nods from the staff and discreet glances and whispers from several lounging guests. Her red hair picked up the rich, golden light of the interior, a fiery torch carried by the arrogant lift of her head. She walked like one of them now, Dawn noticed. The enemy.

The walls rose high, curving into a vaulted ceiling from which dangled a crystal chandelier big enough to crush a basketball team or two. In the lobby center a fountain played, and date palms strained upward around the room, fronds making their own chandeliers. There was a lot of marble underfoot. For some reason Dawn thought of the Marx Brothers.

Having developed a slight case of tourist gawk, she nearly bumped into Willow, who'd paused at the front desk.

"Your messages," the clerk said, passing over several creamy envelopes with wax seals. Not a cable bill or pizza flyer among them.

They continued to the elevators, neither of them noticing how the clerk picked up the phone to make a call as soon as they'd moved on.

"Oh hey," Willow said as they waited for the elevator. "The Sunnydale Opera is opening the new season with Madame Butterfly." Her affected tone fell just short of boredom, but then she looked up from the invitation with heavily lidded eyes and a roguish smile. "Do you think I should ask Spike? I could sneak him into the box with me. I've got this new red dress--well, more cleavage than dress, really."

"You want to put his life in danger for a dress?"

"The question is, does he."

Dawn flicked a gaze at Willow's chest. "I'm thinking, with your cleavage, you should probably just bring him back a program."

"I'm thinking you're going to make someone a nice pet monkey one day."

"If you get your powers back?"

Willow's smile was no smile at all. "When, sweetie. When."

"Oh, right, shaking in my boots now," Dawn said, stepping into the elevator. They stood next to each other at a measured distance, both looking straight ahead as the reflective door closed with a ping. "I'm completely cowed." She paused and lowered her voice to a snark. "Cow."

"You said something earlier--how did that go? 'You do this favor for me, and I will do anything for you.'" Willow quoted the words in a breathy falsetto, not deigning to look at her.

Waltzy elevator music filled the small space from a bad speaker. Dawn curled her fingers and forced herself to breathe toward calm instead of reaching for her gun. "I'm not happy asking favors," she said, treading a middle ground between curt and apologetic.

"Especially of me," Willow noted, sounding strangely normal and sad for a moment, as if they were still on friendly terms and this was just a blip in that friendship. It made Dawn's throat tighten and she became aware of how tired she was. Years and years of tired. She wasn't old enough to be this tired.

"I trust you only as far as Spike does," she said.

"Then you should relax, shouldn't you?" Moment over.

The elevator slid to a stop and within a few steps they were at the door to Willow's suite, which opened on its own--or so Dawn thought until she passed the threshold and saw a red-furred demon in a servant's uniform effacing himself against the wall. Crossing the foyer, Willow shed shoes and jacket, then drew off her sweater and tossed it aside. The red demon buttled after her discards, straightening in time to catch the sweater in his face. It snagged one horn and dangled. He didn't change expression.

Willow, her back a stripped canvas of milky white skin, vanished into the main suite with the command, "Bring me a White Russian, Benny."

After a moment's scrutiny of the foyer--grandfather clock, statuary, ornate lamps on marble tables--Dawn gave a hmmph and followed, boots clomping on the glossy checkerboard tiles. She ignored the sitting room and the temptation of its crackling fire, stepped over a crumple of jeans, and trailed Willow into what turned out to be her bedroom. Empty bedroom. Frowning, Dawn moved further inside, then stopped in front of an oil painting of reclining women in gauzy gowns, one holding a book of poetry. She guessed it was poetry because the other women looked half asleep.

"Girly," she commented to herself, turning to inspect the rest of the room, which was less so. Masculine paneling and wood tones, a bed with dark red canopies that looked Oriental in style, red leather chair, wardrobe, dresser, long mirror. Books.

A steady spattering sound drew her to a nearby door and she glanced through to see the shape of Willow's body behind steam-clouded glass.

"No sultry bath scenes," Dawn murmured.

Reminder in place, she backpedaled and bumped into a table. A silver tray bearing several letters caught her interest. She didn't hesitate to pick through them and read the elegantly scrawled cards in a casual search for evidence. Evidence of what didn't matter. Political treachery, some romantic liaison behind Spike's back--both equally unlikely if she wanted to be honest, and that should have made her glad, right? Because she needed the witch. Needed to trust her.

As far as Spike does.

For now.

"Dearest Willow," she pretended to read, "Thank you for that lovely night in the ammo dump as we made love on the shell casings of our spent passion. I hope your rash has cleared up. Until next time, my darling little eel. Love, General Nilec."

She chucked the card down, picked up another, this one an invitation to a masked ball. "Ten thousand turgrik in unmarked bills is waiting for you under the bridge--come at midnight--come alone. The Reich thanks you for your betrayal of the human race and hopes you'll shop with us again soon."

A soft voice slithered over her left shoulder: "What are you doing?"

Dawn jumped and dashed the rest of the letters back on their tray. "Nothing!"
 
"Wishful thinking will get you nowhere, Dawnie. We're fresh out of vengeance demons." Smiling in a smackable way, Willow sauntered over to her wardrobe and dropped her towel.

"Will you please stop being naked in front of me?" Dawn asked testily.

"That line only works when we're not in my bedroom. Speaking of which--"

"I'll be in the other room. Try not to take too long with the fetishwear."

She brushed by the butler as he entered with Willow's drink on a tray. The butler bowed his head and continued into the room, offering his mistress the cocktail. She waved it off though, and he set the tray on the dresser and helped her into her uniform jacket.

Willow admired her reflection, running both hands down her tunic from breasts to hips. "Just look at me, dressed up and somewhere to go. Pay me a compliment, Benny."

"The very air is intoxicated by your presence, miss, and the stars out-dazzled by your eyes."

"Ooh! Pretty. I concur."

With a whirl and a hum she returned to the outer room, coming to a stop when she found Dawn standing in the middle of the rug, hands raised and expression tense.

"Captain Rosenberg--"

She was whipping up her pistol before the words even registered, but a hand clamped around her wrist from one side, and a second, even meatier hand fell on her shoulder from the other. "Ow," she protested weakly as the gun was taken away, trying on a pout while calculating the exact angle she'd need to connect knee to balls.

"Easy, Captain. No need for a fuss." The guardsman who'd unarmed her stepped back. "We're just here to escort you to headquarters."

"Glad to see I'm not the only one disobeying orders."

Angel glanced up as Buffy sat down across the table from him. She'd found a hooded sweat somewhere, plain grey, three sizes too big. Wisps of hair escaped her ponytail as if loosened by exertion and not simply carelessness; ivy-fine tendrils a man might twist with his finger or sketch with a pencil. And he could have sketched her any way he wanted her, wicked or ethereal or nakedly ripe, but she'd only be those things on paper. Without his influence, she was just herself, kind and wholesome. All she needed was a silver whistle and she'd be Coach Summers again, a ridiculously young watcher trying to keep her reckless star player in the game.

"I don't need much sleep," he said.

"I seem to have the opposite of jet-lag. Jet-speed, it feels like." She cracked her neck and then ran her gaze over the tools and scraps covering the table. "Still the Renaissance man, I see."

"I was born too late for that. I'm getting nowhere."

Buffy looked at the wynariver he held. "Don't say that. I think it's a great...eggbeater-pinwheel-flashlight thingy. It's got all those gears and widgets and it's very shiny."

He tossed it in the middle of the table, crash-landing it on a tin of screws that scattered with the impact. A childish gesture, and why not; his emotions felt as small and useless as the cogwheels he'd been tinkering with. Buffy might decide to blame herself for his grouchiness, and he almost apologized to pre-empt any misunderstanding. But the baser part of himself wanted to be annoyed with her, a nice change of pace from the weeks he'd spent annoyed with himself.

Buffy picked the device up and turned it around in her hands, poking polished fingernails into its crevices. "Wait," she said, "this isn't supposed to explode, is it?"

"At this point, anything would make me happy. Imperfectly happy. Glad...dened." He paused, then leaned forward, arms resting in front of him. "It's a model of a device that neutralizes magic. They're all over town now. Our spells are useless."

"Oh, Willow mentioned this--a wine, wine-river?"

"Wynariver. Once I have a working model, I can figure out how to disable them."
 
"Can't you just--"

"No."

She frowned, then brightened. "Oh, hey, what if you--"

"We tried that."

Studying the item, she asked, "It's a magical device, right?" He nodded. "So how are you supposed to get it working without magic? Isn't that like a Catch-22?"

"It jams mystical frequencies." Angel turned the sheaf of blueprints so that she could see the hen-scratch of demon languages bordering the design. "But if you have the key--"

"You could tap in. So what's the key?"

"A spell. Here." He tapped the script with one finger. "That's not the problem. This is."

Looking at the new spot he indicated, she bent her head closer. "A crystal. That's it? That's all you need?"

Stung by the skepticism in her voice, he shifted back in his seat, the pleasure of collaboration cooling. "It's not labeled. I've tried everything, every stone with occult properties."

"Except whatever works." At his level gaze, she added haltingly, "And I'm being State-the-Obvious Girl. Right." A pause for thought, lashes lowering. "It has to be one people don't normally think to use. Something expensive and hard to get, like--"

"Rubies or sapphires," Angel finished, as it all fell together for him. It was just that obvious and sudden, a lightning strike fusing a dozen loose fragments together into something he could see and understand from all sides. "Mount Siliyik." He read the confusion on he face and explained, "The Grauth are mining there for gems."

"A ruby would have more power," she said, matching his own thoughts. "But, god." She picked up the wynariver, found the spot for the crystal and measured it between two fingers. "It'd have to be big."

"Maybe not. Not for just a model. Damn it! I should have thought of this--" On my own, he mentally finished, compressing his lips before he could hurt her. He felt like a fool. It smarted.

"You would have."

"Anya has a ring," he remembered, ignoring her attempt at reassurance. "Ruby's her birthstone."

"And you think she'll give it to you?" Buffy's brows rose. "Anya?"

They both looked over to where the ex-demon lay curled under a blanket, twitching with dog dreams, then Angel glanced back at Buffy. "She's sleeping. I'm stealthy." He got up.

"Watch the fangs."

"I'm not going to bite her," he said, wondering if he should be affronted.

"I meant hers."

Angel knelt next to Anya. Her face was turned halfway into her pillow, mashed and obscured by curls. Wheezing sighs and mutters filtered out from behind the veil. One arm was thrust under the pillow, hand curled up behind it like a dead spider; the other hand, the one he wanted, rested on the floor. He lifted it and held it with care, then slid the ring off.

"Bees!" she gasped, tearing her hand away and swatting at the hair in her face. "Bees, bees, bees!"

He froze, resting on his haunches and holding the ring, but after a few seconds she groaned a sleepy complaint and shifted, burrowing further into the pillow. When her regular sighs resumed he withdrew, feeling like a hero who'd robbed a dragon's lair. Buffy mimed a cheerleader's hurrah.

It didn't take long to pry loose the stone and adjust the gauge of the wynariver to accept it. This was the kind of moment for a deep breath, but instead he met Buffy's eyes briefly, contemplating how dumb he'd look if this didn't succeed.

"You know," she said, tipping her head in a thoughtful way, "I've missed working with you like this."

"Me too," he said quietly. He smiled just long enough to feel warm and awkward, then read the spell from the plans. "Saddai citu menste, nyin Sytos, nyin Mitrev, cad riddin, wyr gleh."

The filaments around the crystal glowed and spread out along the arms of the machine until they reached the encircling discs, which began to turn. Levers and wheels shifted and brought to life a blue, helical core. The whole thing hummed and balanced on a single spindle, like a top.

"You did it," Buffy said, grinning like sunshine at him and looking as if she might clap her hands. "It's spinning and glowing and okay, what's it doing?"

"What they all do. Inhibiting magic."

"Oh. Well, that's...kind of anticlimactic, actually."

Buoyant with success, Angel almost allowed himself another smile. "But now I can test my theory." Careful not to jostle the wynariver's balancing act, he lifted one of the outer discs and slowly realigned it from north to south. "If this works, we should be able to--"

The disc settled into place and a bubble of electrified air expanded in an incalculable instant, ripping through them like a shockwave from a tiny exploding star. Nearby, Anya grew agitated, face pulling tight, eyes moving beneath the lids, while a few pallets over, Xander rolled in her direction, reaching out in sleep toward her. In one of the Initiative cells, Spike shifted restlessly on his mattress, kicked the blanket lower, and murmured, "Buffy." In the back seat of a limo rolling across town, Willow's eyes suddenly went wide. Across from her Dawn jerked upright, panicked. "What's happening? What--" But Willow shook her head; the Grauth guards sat too close and were frowning at the outburst.

In the Initiative, Angel shuddered and stared at Buffy, seeing her. Seeing her. She stared back with the same illumination and dazed wonder. For the second time that night Angel's memory woke, shifting him from the unreal to the real with jarring abruptness. He'd forgotten her and remembered and forgotten again, and now with a surge of emotion he took her hand, desperate to keep hold of her this time, like a man grabbing for help as he drowned. He was only a man because he loved her. If he forgot her, he forgot himself. He forgot everything.

"Buffy."

"Angel!" Bewilderment and fear merged in her expression, gave her urgency. "What's happening? I wasn't me and you weren't you--"

"I know."

"It's crazy--" Her face changed to dismay. "Oh my god. Spike's me--the slayer me. Spike. Spike!" She sounded as if she'd just caught him wearing her panties and tap dancing on a table, and Angel felt the wrongness just as keenly. "We have got to fix this, this--this whatever! Now!"

"It's me," he said, his gut a twist of guilt. "I'm unstable--there are these dimensional shifts--" His thoughts jumbled together and he wondered how to explain the last six weeks quickly in a way that would make sense to someone who hadn't been there. He wished Wes were around. "We've been fighting a sorcerer. Harkness. He used to be a physicist. He wants to raise a demon, something that shouldn't exist in our dimension. He's channeling powers that go beyond magic. He's messing with the fabric of the universe. I got in the way."

"God," she said, and he could tell her thoughts had been running on a separate track. "I can remember being in England, at council headquarters--getting your letter, flying out here to see Xander. It's like a whole separate life. This freaky clone-Buffy. But Harkness--Xander told me something about him, but I don't--I don't understand."

"I don't either. But I change things. Except I don't--things change around me. I can't stop it. Fred's been working non-stop but she can't figure it out." He didn't say how very much that scared him. "She and Wes put a spell on me to keep it under control. I thought it would hold."

"So the wynarivers were suppressing the spell's magic, but when we reversed the polarity--"

"That's not exactly--never mind. Yes."

"The spell was restored. And we were us again. The right usses." Buffy looked at the device, pulled her hand from his and reached out as if to touch it, then stopped. "We have to let the others know. And we can't let this--"

Something blew and the wynariver spun and wobbled in erratic, widening circles. Angel braced against a feeling of being sucked into a windtunnel and shielded his face as gears popped loose. A spiral of energy flared white for one long sustained moment, then winked out.

Back across town, Willow was surreptitiously edging a hand toward the gun of the guard next to her when reality twitched. In disoriented fear she shut her eyes, but by the time she opened them again she felt just fine. "Huh," she said. "Did you guys feel that? Like a big champagne bubble popping in your head?" Dawn looked pointedly away without answering.

Cautiously Angel lowered his arms. Minuscule fragments of ruby littered the table, along with some not-so-spare parts he'd spent weeks collecting. The wynariver lay on its side, metal arms darkened and twisted as if burnt.

"That was..." Buffy paused for a long time but didn't finish her sentence.

"Weird," Angel finally said, blinking.

"I guess we need a bigger ruby."

"Did you," he began, then halted. They looked at each other searchingly.

"I was going to ask you," Buffy said. "If you felt--I thought I remembered something." She bent her head and touched the side of her neck, eyes unfocused. "A dream I once had--where I knew you. Except, not like this. Different." The words stumbled out of her.

"I felt it." He wasn't sure what else to say.

Looking uncomfortable, Buffy seemed just as eager to let the issue go. "Can you fix this?" she asked, running a hand across the debris.

"I think so. We'll have to find another stone."

"Two." At his questioning look, she smiled wryly. "One for the wynariver, one to keep Anya from throttling us." She got up, brushed dust from her top. "I'll let Spike know."

She took a few steps away, then turned. "Maybe we should let him sleep a little bit longer."

Angel paused, and his mind reached for something but didn't find it. "Good idea," he said, taking up work again. "Even heroes need rest."

Willow lounged against the wooden chair like a showgirl posing between dance moves, legs splayed, one arm draped over the back. It didn't seem possible for a body to be that supple or obscene when fully clothed, but the clinging uniform and polished boots were just the snakeskin of the snake. Under the bare-bulbed lamp dangling above her head she looked sharp and garishly painted, the cover of a pulp novel. Black leather, red lipstick, ivory skin. Give her a bullwhip and she'd never lack for clients.

"I'm cooperating, aren't I?" She made an appealing face at the men, her smile suggesting that she was happy to find herself in their custody. "There's no reason for the girl to be here."

One of the Grauths--the one Willow had addressed as Naziren--shifted to look at Dawn. She shrank in on herself, lowering her eyes and trying to appear scared and unimportant. It wasn't hard. They'd taken her gun and her knife.

The other one spoke, his voice fluting and posh for a demon. "She's a snitch?" He came closer and tilted Dawn's face up for a better view. "Rather young."

"Our culture worships youth," Willow replied dryly.

"Dawn," the Grauth said, drawing her name out.

From the corner of her eye, Dawn saw Willow's face take on guarded calculation, then smooth out again. The loose splay of her body seemed more tense. Could they know her own relationship to the slayer, Dawn wondered. She'd been Spike's friend for years. That might be in their files.

"Pretty name," the demon decided. "Pretty girl."

"She can go," Naziren said.

"Not quite yet." The Grauth caught Dawn's shoulder as she started to leave and directed her to a chair. "She was in possession of unauthorized weapons. I'm not sure we can let that slide." He flashed a meaningful smile at Willow, and Dawn pulled away and seated herself, concealing her belligerence with difficulty.

Straightening on the chair, Willow clasped her knees. Her legs remained too wide for a PG rating--she looked ready to perform a trick involving ping-pong balls in naughty places. There were times when Dawn envied Willow's double-agentry and imagined herself in the role: gun in garter belt and martini in hand, double-oh-seven-of-nine, a glamorous Jane Bond sweeping Tara off her feet. But at this particular moment her own flannel and hunting boots felt like armor. Let Willow have the spotlight. She felt safer in the shadows.

"Can't we overlook one tiny infraction, Colonel Liyoge? Dawnie's just protecting herself from those rude, misguided rebels." Willow's lips curved into a custom-made smile for the Grauth. No magic, but even Dawn could feel the charm being exerted.

"Answer our questions and we'll see what we can do," Naziren put in, lighting a cigarette from his position by the wall. He kept to the dark edges of the room like a moth resisting a candle.

Liyoge moved to loom over Willow. "This attack on the camps is a bad business."

"Terrible," she said agreeably.

"At nearly the same time, the defense barrier was compromised. Unfortunately, our warlocks alerted us too late to locate the source."

"Someone escaped?" Willow asked, concern reshaping her face. It looked almost real.

After studying her a few moments, Liyoge raised his shoulders in a casual shrug and began circling her chair. "Escaped or entered. We don't know which. Why don't you tell us?"

"Me?"

"Your name was mentioned in connection with both incidents."

Liyoge stood behind Willow now, but she didn't turn. She radiated the innocence of a little girl, happy to help with grown-up questions. "Mentioned by whom?"

"It was mentioned," Liyoge said flatly.

He circled into sight again. It brought him close to Dawn, his back half to her. Willow stared up at the Grauth while he stared down. The moment stretched taut along with Dawn's tingling nerves. Their evidence might be a bluff--Willow'd had nothing to do with the raid on the camps--but the danger was real. She was inching forward on her chair and measuring the distance to the gun on Liyoge's hip when Willow finally smiled and said, "I guess you've caught me."

The Grauth officers exchanged a look.

"I needed some fresh air, thought I'd take a walk." Her voice lilted. "So I got out my trusty spellbook and abracadabra, one back door. Or wait--I got on my broomstick, jumped over the moon. Hit the L.A. clubs and whammied myself home in time for breakfast."

"I'm glad you can find the humor in a state security breach, Captain."

"Oh come on, it's a funny accusation. I have no magic. No one does. You've seen to that."

"Yet the breach occurred. And the attack--led by the slayer, a man with whom you are notoriously intimate."

"Before we parted ways." Willow leaned back, looking comfortable and interested. "I thought he was dead. In the permanent, ashy way of deadness."

"He is not," Naziren said from the shadows.

Liyoge began to pace a short circuit back and forth in front of Willow's chair. "We've put our trust in you, Captain Rosenberg. I've staked my own personal honor recruiting you. Some say that no human deserves rank in the Imperial Army. Maybe they're right."

"Haven't I served you loyally?" Willow asked, her voice taking on a chill. "Hitched my star to yours--embraced the dark side?"

"You're still only human. Your sympathies lie with--"

Willow stood abruptly, forcing Liyoge to step back. "My sympathies lie with those in power."

"Maybe we haven't given you enough power," Naziren said, finally moving forward, a ringmaster taking the spotlight. "We never wanted to waste your potential, dear Will. Impotent, hobbled--you're of limited use to us like this." The anger that flashed into her face didn't seem to faze him and he went on, low and compelling: "We can give you the spell keys to bypass the wynarivers. You'd be an Imperial warlock, far stronger than before." He stroked a wing of hair off her face, tucked it behind her ear to reveal a hash of sorcerous scars. "Before the council of watchers reduced your powers to hat tricks and jinxes."

Flinching back, Willow smoothed her hair loose again. "But I have to prove myself," she said, filling in the condition he'd left blank.
 
The intensity of Naziren's gaze deepened, and Dawn wanted to put herself between him and Willow, break the dangerous current. "You'll only be proving what you already know--that with power you are your own mistress, not some man's. Let us restore you to your former glory. Tell us where the slayer is."

It should have been a cheesy movie moment; Dawn desperately wanted it to be. The kind where you pause on false suspense for a commercial break, already knowing that nothing will tempt the heroine to betray her lover. But the look on Willow's face scared the trust right out of Dawn and left her cold.

She looked as if she'd just been handed a present.

"I can't believe you broke my ring!" Anya wailed for the umpteenth time.

Ump, as it turned out, was the magic number where bad reached unbearable. Her voice bored into Xander's inner ear like the ceti eel in Wrath of Khan, making him very suggestible to the other voice in his head which said to stuff a Nerf ball into that torrent of words for the good of humanity, dear god in heaven, his kingdom for a Nerf ball. But sadly he had no kingdom. Someone else's kingdom for a Nerf ball. King Tut's, King Ralph's, King Kong's.

Spike, a more patient man when it came to women, patted her shoulder comfortingly. "We'll get you a better one, love. Big as a baby's head."

After a ditzy smile of cheer, Anya appeared to lapse into pondering that disturbing image, and who could blame her.

"We do need a big stone," Angel said. "Not head sized, but--" He measured some air with his hands, trying to convey a few approximations while they all watched, then gave up somewhat lamely. "Big."

"So we go to this mine, right? A snatch and grab job, in and out." Xander cut a glance Spike's way for affirmation, but he didn't seem taken with the idea. The set of his mouth flattened and he stared at the map that had been laid out again on the table.

"No," he said after a moment, lifting his head. "I'll get the stone. The rest of you will stay here." Resolution hardened and clipped his words. Anyone who heard him speak in that tone knew to take it as a warning. When angry, Spike was a spark in a whirlwind, unpredictable and usually quick to burn out. In cold command he was almost impossible to stir.

Which of course obligated Xander to piss him off. Raising a hand, he said, "Pause for sanity check. Non-expendable slayer goes on dangerous mission alone. Again. Survey says?" He glanced around the table.

Buffy crossed her arms. Angel lowered the angle of his head a precise five degrees and managed to express his displeasure with no further effort. They both struck the same grim note Xander had. It was as if the years rolled back. How many times had they squared off just like this, negotiating the terms of some mission that might turn out to be their last?

"Xander's right." Buffy was fired up, her crossed arms a screen keeping the blaze barely in check. "You can't go all Lone Ranger every time there's a problem. I mean, why did you bring us here? To baby-sit civilians and serve soup?"

In the background a kid Xander vaguely recognized from high school--Justin? Joss? Jonathan--paused at Buffy's comment, irritation flashing across his face, then moved on with his carton of soup cans.

Spike's jaw tightened. "I lost two civilians on the last mission to that mountain," he ground out. "And you're here to do what I say you do. These people need nursing and they need training." With every word his voice got more deliberate. "There's more than enough work to go round, but if you can't stick it, by all means, there's the door." He nodded his head toward an emergency exit.

"That's not what I meant," Buffy said in sharp defense, but the way she uncrossed her arms and shifted was an admission of guilt even Xander could read.

"Sounded like it to me," Spike said coldly.

"This is beside the point," Xander said, reclaiming the vampire's gaze. The curve of Spike's neck held a polite attentiveness; his patience an edge. "You're not flying solo."

They locked eyes. Xander could actually see Spike's temper rising. "I can cover the ground faster by myself--if I've got to worry about you, you're a liability, not an asset. I haven't got time for games and I haven't got time for--" Head snapping around, he interrupted himself: "What, Anya?"

Anya, who'd been waving her hand for half a minute like a nerd determined to show off in class, lowered it and asked, "Why are you even going to the mountain? It's miles away and there are plenty of rubies closer than that. Lady Elked has a whopper, ninety-seven carats. She wears it as a pendant--oh, and she keeps it in a safe in her townhouse." In the pause that followed she looked around at everyone's bemused expressions. "Home security is more important than ever in these troubled times."

Xander watched Spike's face soften into a smile for her that she returned with triumph, and a stab of petty jealousy hit him between the third and fourth ribs. In his absence, the women of Sunnydale had clustered round the slayer like spinsters flocking to an unmarried parson in some bedside British novel. And Spike soaked it up like a hot muffin soaked up butter. Annoying, butter-soaked muffin parson. Also--bisexuals? So not trendy anymore. Sure, he had that whole vampire thing going, perfect excuse, but Xander suspected it was just greed.

"Did I do good?" Anya asked.

Spike pulled her into his side with one arm and kissed the top of her tousled head, earning a giggle from her that made Xander's right hand clench in reflex. "Better than good. You did swell, sweetheart. I'm going to steal you a nice pair of earrings. And, course, any loose cash lying about."

"Cash!" Anya cried, and clapped her hands once in delight. What was she, twelve?

"So. Cat burglary it is," Xander said aloud, challenging Spike with a calm stare. Calm. Oh yes, he could be calm, and make no mistake about it, he would be going along on this mission if he had to bell the cat and dog his heels. He smiled. Barely. "Where do I pick up my mask?"

"That's a hell of an offer," Willow said, but she let nonchalance undercut her words. Couldn't show her excitement, didn't want to overplay her hand. "You understand, I don't know if the slayer's alive." Naziren gave her a complicit smile and said nothing. She took that as encouragement and ignored Dawn's increasingly urgent expressions behind the men's backs. "But if he is, I can help you capture him. You just have to know how he thinks."

"And how does he think?" Liyoge asked.

Willow let her lips curl in the faintest of sneers. "Like a human. He's brainwashed in the blood of the lamb, all brotherly love and braveheart. Next time you need propaganda, you should hire a watcher--if they can make vampires kill their own kind in the name of humanity, you'd be a shoo-in for the Nobel Peace Prize." She wandered to a window and yanked the blind obscuring it. With a snap and clatter the featureless room was overwhelmed by the facade of City Hall, which rose like a castle across the civic plaza, spotlights throwing its dome and spires into relief against the night.

"The slayer feels sorry for his food," she said, settling one hip on the sill. Below, a pair of guardsmen strolled across the historical cobblestones, past the statue of the brave soldier who seemed to be aiming his rifle at them, before disappearing into the shadowy palms. "Only cows and pigs for him now." She turned her head and matched gazes with Naziren. "Threaten his people. The good citizens of Sunnydale. Get the word out there'll be reprisals for the attacks on the camps--unless he turns himself in."

Dawn's fists were clenching. Willow could see her boiling, ready to spill over into words that would earn them both a firing squad. "Meanwhile, I'll see what I can find out," she went on smoothly, rising from the window. "Word on the street, gab in the pubs." The confidence of her stride parted the two Grauth, who let her pass. "Come on, Dawnie. Time to earn your keep."

In the hall, Dawn started to hiss something, but Willow grabbed her elbow in a twist and pulled her along, out of danger's earshot. When they turned a corner into an alcove, Dawn pivoted and slammed the heel of her hand into Willow's throat, knocking her against the wall to hold her there.

"Bitch," she said. "Tell me why I shouldn't kill you."

Choking: not fun. Also, kind of a barrier to making those life-saving replies. She brought a knee up but Dawn blocked it and retaliated with a vicious heel to the instep. As her vision began to cloud, Willow lifted one arm. A blade snicked out from her sleeve, coming to rest with precision against Dawn's throat. After a moment, Dawn loosened her hand and Willow was able to jerk free.

"Not nice, pint-sized." In a rough move she reversed their positions, pinning Dawn to the wall. Her knife had slashed a thin, shallow line along the girl's skin. "You don't really think I'd betray my lover, do you?"

"I just watched you," Dawn said coldly, managing an insolent slump despite the fist digging into her breastbone, her attitude suggesting she could break away but chose not to.

"Idiot." But her good mood--magic, she'd have magic again--made Willow forgiving and almost fond. "I've got a plan. Spike will be on board once I tell him." She let Dawn go, smiling to restore peace as she tucked her knife away. "He'll turn himself in. They'll have lots of questions. He'll string them along till I get my mojo running, and then bada bing--we'll rescue him, kill some greybacks, and wrap it all up with a night at the opera." It worked out so neatly, pretty and tidy and right, like a math equation. And exciting, too. The brainless feebs she'd gone to school with had never gotten it. Math could be beautiful when it was like this.

Dawn stared at her and gave a squeak of a laugh that conveyed disbelief. "Okay, you know you're nuts, right?"

"Nutty like a fox, baby."

"You want Spike to turn himself in for torture."

"Of course I don't want that," Willow said, a pump of anger quickening her heart. "But he only has to hold out for a little while--and it may not even come to that."

"You're putting him in the enemy's hands so you can get a fix." The accusation was flat with contempt. She was just asking for a good workover, something to take her down a peg, but Willow kept her voice even.

"Get it through your head," she said, stepping close. "Magic is the only thing that'll make a difference in this war. Not guns, not some macho kamikaze one-man raid, and not those little knife games you're getting so fond of. Magic. Me. I'm the only thing this town has going for it. The only thing standing between your parents and a tragic end. So unless you want them to spend the rest of their lives trapped here like bugs in a jar, I suggest you shut the hell up and get out of my way."

She turned on her heel and left Dawn white-faced against the wall. Never let it be said she didn't take the time to teach the children of tomorrow.

"I think we took a wrong turn at the dead rat," Xander said, studying the folded map while Spike shined the flashlight at it.

Spike shifted closer and transferred the light to his right hand, freeing his left to trace a finger along the marked route, and he was saying something about a shortcut but Xander spaced on the words, all parts of himself shutting down except for the spot between his neck and shoulder where Spike's right forearm rested for support, fitting itself to him like a pipe laid flush against the curve of a flange.

"...along here." A tap of finger to paper brought Xander's focus back to the map. "Should bring us within a block of the house," Spike calculated, then paused. Xander felt his gaze, then the weight removed from his shoulder. The vampire took a step away and shined the light ahead of them, making it a casual movement, as if there was nothing to it. And maybe there wasn't. Maybe there wasn't anything to them anymore.

The expected gut-wrench of jealousy and regret didn't come. Apparently there was only room for fear right now. He'd lost Spike a long time ago, but up until now he'd thought you couldn't lose a person more than once. He'd been oh so wrong. And here was a joke: it was only when memory came back that Xander even realized it had gone missing. The vertigo of crossing into Sunnydale and getting hit with the double whammy of loss and recovery had stayed with him. It seemed important to notice things, the way you'd jot notes on your hand to remember--the stink of the sewer, the way his shirt rubbed his skin, Spike's face in the shadows. This world was real, solid. But his fear of losing it again was a nightmare, as if his entire life was a paper napkin scribbled with a phone number of the one person he wanted to call. It had been taken from him. Sons of bitches. Fucking grauts. He'd already learned to hate them.

"You all right?" Spike asked. It was hard to read his expression in the darkness.

"Oh yeah." He found his last ounce of reassurance, but it tasted weak. "The sewers of home. Is there anything sweeter?"

The little chuff of air Spike gave was magnified by the acoustics of the tunnel to sound closer than it was. Goosebumps rose on Xander's skin. He'd heard that low-pitched laugh a hundred times in close quarters like this; a few times, across a pillow.

"Suspect the sewers of L.A. give you your money's worth."

They walked on, indifferent to the puddled filth under their boots. Familiar, bad, unimportant. "They lack the Sunnydale ambiance," Xander said, affecting the same offhand tone he might use to compare restaurants he didn't especially care about.

"How's the vamp community these days? Rodrigo still ruling the Heights?"

"Nah. The Cambodians own that territory now."

Spike shook his head. "Don't know why they call this place the Hellmouth."

"Amen," said Xander.

It was early morning, the time of day Giles most preferred even if the sky held no promise of sun. Mornings, the Peacock was closed for business and only a few prep cooks, the janitor, Malivia, and himself gave it life. But Giles rose earlier than Malivia and cherished the hour before she came downstairs to begin her daily rounds and torments. He sat on stage and picked out notes on the piano, a cup of tea resting on its corner--under Grauth occupation he grew more indifferent each day to the insult of hot china on polished wood.

The music he made was weaker than the Grauth idea of tea. He had no proficiency; his skill was for the guitar, but his was gone. It had been lost along with all his other possessions during the initial invasion.

"I close my eyes," he sang, "only for a moment, and the moment's gone. All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity. Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind." A melancholy adagio was as fast as his fingers could manage, but it seemed fitting for such a morning. With nothing and no one else breaking the quiet, he could almost pretend that the unlit club was empty, that he wasn't. "Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea. All we do crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see..."

Catching sight of Tara at the edge of the stage, he broke off playing. She smiled and gave him a guilty wave before approaching with a curve of shoulders and head duck of diffidence, like a pupil afraid of importuning a teacher. He'd tried to curb that habit with reassurances that she was never a bother, but suspected that some trace of his impatience must be ineradicable; the barest sign and she'd shy like a horse scenting blood. She was often a reminder to him that a softer human nature did exist, that power could take different forms. For Dawn's sake if nothing else he made a regular effort to recognize her value.

"It's early to be out," he observed, descending from the stage with his tea to meet her. His gaze skipped from her wind-chapped face down to her neck and then her shoulders. "Where's your signum?" Concern made his voice sharp, and damn it, already he was chiding her, a librarian asking for a hall pass.

She pulled aside the lapel of her coat to flash the symbol pinned to her blouse. "The guards on morning patrol know me--they stop for coffee and help me open the shop."

"How thoughtful of them," Giles said, dropping his gaze to consider the steam rolling off his tea.

Whatever had been on the soft curl of his tongue--sugar and strychnine--made her own gaze lower, her hair slide forward like drawn curtains. "I brought you some things," she said, handing him the package she carried.

He set his tea on a table and took the bundle of paper and string, reminded of how grocers used to wrap meat when he was young, before cellotape and shop freezers were common. Everywhere he looked now, the world of his youth was creeping back, detail by detail, as if elves labored in the small hours to restore history, so that each morning he might find something new--a tombstone radio tuned to "The Goon Show," a toast-rack, a coal scuttle, cigarette cards and inkwells and snooker tables. Things older than him; the world of his youth was, after all, just the lingering culture of his parents and their parents before him.

Inside the package were three watcher histories from his magic shop library, a box of Twinings, and a miscellany of candy bars, soap, and socks. Things one might collect for a prisoner who had not even the smallest comfort at hand.

"Thank you," he said, feeling grateful and ashamed.

"It's not much. I just thought you might want something that reminded you of home."

Home. She said it so simply, as if she knew where his home was, even if he didn't. "Yes. It does...remind me."

Her face fell a little and she stepped closer. "Giles, if you want to leave, I'm sure Spike would understand."

"I'm here for a purpose." He seated himself at the table, settled back into his chair, and took a sip of tea, each apparently casual movement calculated with an exactitude that would reveal nothing. Two years of student drama society; a lifetime of masquerade. "I've already gathered valuable intelligence, but there's more to be had. To leave now would be premature--we'd be remiss not to take advantage of this opportunity." His words sounded reasonable even to him. "Besides, things could be worse."

"I've never been sure if that's optimism or pessimism."

"I wonder myself. On the side of optimism, I count it lucky I was on hand that night and not one of you. And of course that I was noticed for my voice and not my roguish good looks."

Tara was hard to distract; his self-mockery didn't bait her into compliments nor lighten her frown. "So what have you learned?" she asked. He caught a hint of challenge in the question and immediately his mind stuttered like a car running out of petrol and came up blank.

"Oh, yes, well. There's a certain colonel, Colonel Tregor in the Labor Ministry, who has a penchant for black powder--the, er, drug--which could make him susceptible to our influence. And rumor has it that Lady Elked runs quite a sideline in society blackmail, with incriminating material on a number of officers." He was floundering. "I'm sure I'll learn more," he said, voice rising to a hopeful pitch. He lifted his tea cup to halt the drivel coming from his mouth. "Soon." He took a sip.

With unexpected resolve, Tara shook her head. "It isn't worth it, Giles. I'm going to tell Spike you need to be evicted."

"I believe the term is 'extracted,'" he noted gently. "And I'd rather you didn't. It may not sound like much, but I assure you, the Peacock is a hub of--of information and covert activity--"

"Mister Giles! Mister Giles!" A boy with a grubby face and clothes Oxfam would have spurned came running into the club, breathless and clutching a piece of paper.

Giles glanced sidelong at Tara, feeling caught out and faintly embarrassed.

The boy lurched to a halt and thrust the sheet into his hands. "They're putting these up all over town," he said, and after a brief pause that brought no response from Giles, added, "You said to let you know if anyone was looking for the slayer."

"Yes," Giles said distractedly. "Thank you, Wiggins. Good work."

After a moment he looked up with grim eyes and passed the paper across the table to Tara. It was a placard, its sketch not a perfect likeness but unmistakably Spike, even to the glint in his eye and a dry smirk around the lips. SLAYER, the caption read in English and Grauth. Wanted for crimes against the state. 10,000 turgrik in reward for information leading to his capture.

Someone had betrayed them.

The bounce of lights and voices off the tunnel walls ahead halted Spike. He snapped off his torch and lifted a hand to stop Xander from walking further. The angle of his body brought his hand into contact with Xander's chest, palm flat against ribs. Heat radiated through wool and a rising heartbeat tugged Spike's attention away from where it should be. When he glanced back at Xander's face, he found it blank.

"Soldiers," he said in an undertone.

Xander nodded and twisted his head to search the tunnel around them, sharp and silent. Without doubling back, the only place for concealment was a rift where the masonry had crumbled away from the ancient timber that shored the tunnel. They stepped in, faced out, and held still, invisible in the darkness as the soldiers neared and passed. In the narrow recess their bodies pressed back to front, familiar as sin.

The slide of Xander's arms around him was no great shock. Spike let his eyes close for a moment. Xander belted his waist with an arm, stroked a hand up along Spike's ribs, coming to rest over his dead heart.

Lips tightening, Spike could say nothing while the soldiers passed, their boots splashing the muddy sewer water just yards away. He was angry--told himself he was goddamn angry--then forgot the point as the graze of Xander's body became a push and pull. He worked himself back in an answering, silent grind, a dance without music. A steady hitch of breath was heating the side of Spike's neck, then Xander brushed his lips there and Spike broke and pulled Xander's hand between his legs. The Grauth's voices chopped across each other harshly, near enough for mortal danger--stinks like human soup down here; can't take any feckin' more of this--while Xander dragged his hand up and down. Spike mimicked the movement, shoulder blades slicing a hard chest, then Xander was unzipping him and reaching in. The knot of silence drew tight in Spike's throat. Already coming, he might have shouted if Xander hadn't clamped a hand up to stop him. They wrestled in a quiet frenzy until Xander's hips jerked and his teeth closed on Spike's neck. Spike groaned into the hand covering his mouth.

Afterwards they stepped apart and Spike zipped up, his back to Xander, ignoring the rough clean-up the same way Xander ignored his. When they finally turned and looked at each other, they found nothing to say. They continued on.

Anya plunked a pan down on the table in front of Jonathan. It made a light sloshing sound and had a familiar, unsavory odor. "Someone peed in the soup tureen."

Repelled, he stared at the object, then up at her. Anya had a way of making him feel doubtful, voicing her askew perceptions of the world so confidently that he had to double-check his math, so to speak. Then again, in Sunnydale reality always did seem a few decimal points off.

"It is an Army bed pan," he said. "It's meant for pee."

She sat down across from him while he gingerly slid the bed pan aside. "I may not be able to alter reality any more, little boy, but if I say a thing's a tureen, it's a tureen."

"I'm not a little boy," he objected irritably, then remembered how unwise it was to argue with Anya as she gazed at him with a level of incomprehension both massive and frightening. "Unless...you say I am," he added with caution.

"The refugees are getting on my nerves." Anya's thoughts had moved on, and Jonathan breathed again with relief. "They're asking for clean clothes and board games. Some want to leave. They think they can just walk out of here and go home."

Pity stirred in him as he looked at the people on the floor. Most people had woken from their night's rest and the buzz of conversation had gotten louder as the hours dragged on. A few were crying, rocking, and the wounded were being cared for, but most just looked lost. Buffy was resetting a woman's broken arm. Angel was standing in a knot of men, listening to a petition or complaint. The man speaking to him pointed across the room to where sundry demons crouched, shooting craps.

"Spike'll be back soon," Jonathan said, squashing down his unease.

"But where are they going to go?" Anya was for some reason peeling the labels off empty cans and smoothing them out into a pile. "They can't stay here. There's not enough room, and even if there was, they're noisy and they smell. I want them to go away."

Even for Anya that was blunt, and yet it was true. He should feel a bond of common humanity, compassion for his fellow sufferers, but he hadn't felt it in high school and he didn't feel it now. Last night an old woman bit his ankle when he tried to take her dinner plate away. He'd be happy as Anya to see the wretched refuse gone, but when it came to figuring out where they could settle, his own imagination failed.

With an awful sense of guilt, he admitted, "Yeah."

"Well, hey!" A hand slapped him on the shoulder to match that false heartiness, and Jonathan went on alert, stiff and wary as Willow took a seat at the end of the table. She'd been like him once, a geek on the fringes--red pigtails, shy smiles, dorky jokes. When the cheerleaders took the halls, sweeping aside everything in their path, he'd often find himself pressed up against the lockers next to her. Magic had changed all that, made her glossy and hard and crueler than any cheerleader could ever hope to be. She knew the geek code and she'd used it against her own kind.

It wasn't that he blamed her for hopping the first train out of Loserville and riding it to the end of the line. Maybe Luke could resist Lord Vader, but who else in their right mind would turn down power, success, minions? He understood completely. He just didn't like her anymore.

"Hey," he said. Anya echoed his greeting with lackluster acknowledgment.

Scanning the room, Willow asked, "Where's Spike?" Right to the point. No wasting pleasantries on droids.

"Out." Jonathan tried to be terse, but he found it hard in practice. He liked to provide intel. "He went with Xander to find a ruby. For the wynariver."

Willow whipped her head around and pinned Jonathan with a look. There was something terrible in her eyes, not the blackness of deep magic, but something that made him instinctively cringe and wish he'd kept his mouth shut.

"What?" she said, rising to stand over him. Her voice was so loud that heads turned. "What are you talking about?"

"Angel got it working--he reversed the field--but it overloaded. They needed a better gem."

"Because they ruined my ring," Anya supplied in the tone of one who keeps a running tally of all debits and credits against her personal account.

"Where are they?"

Jonathan glanced at Anya before answering the question, but no help was to be found there. "In town," he said with reluctance, hoping nothing bad would come of sharing this information. "At Lady Elked's."

"No--oh no."

Her theatrical tone left Jonathan cold, with the faintest hint of disdain. He had no sympathy for her problems any more, unless they affected the slayer. And then it began to sink in: she'd only be this upset if it did.

She was murmuring to herself. "I didn't have to..."

"Have to what?" he asked sharply.

"I have to go. If Spike comes back, keep him here. It's important."

She swept off, Darth Vader with black cloak billowing, and Jonathan watched her go with deep worry. She was the slayer's woman. He wasn't supposed to question her, to doubt her, to harbor this deep mistrust. But he did.

"Well?" Dawn challenged when Willow appeared at the camouflaged escape hatch. The door clanged as it was shut, but no more loudly than the crickets and restless night birds around them in the brush. "What did he say to your plan?"

The witch flashed her a look that gave Dawn the heebie-jeebies. "He wasn't there. He went into town."

Coldness touched Dawn's spine, right around her lower back where she'd replaced her pistol. "We've got to get to him. He might--"

"I know."

"If he--"

"I know."

They were on the same page for once, Dawn thought as they took off at a run. Somehow that didn't reassure her.

"When I was little I thought cat burglars stole cats," Xander said as they climbed into Lady Elked's townhouse through a second-story window. "My Uncle Rory stole cats. I'd hold the bag. He told me the Army needed them to carry canteens of water to the wounded. Later I found out he was studying taxidermy. And that we weren't actually at war."

Pausing by a marble bust of a ferocious-looking Grauth with curly ram's horns, Spike watched Xander lever himself over the sill, bump into a table, and nearly topple a vase, which he caught and righted only at the last moment.

"Cat burglar's quiet," he said dryly. "Like a cat."

"I know how to keep quiet." The seriousness of Xander's tone made the comment pointed.

Spike let that one pass and navigated around a herd of overstuffed chairs toward a ghastly ancestral portrait that either hid a wall safe or guarded the gates of hell. The ornate frame must have weighed a hundred pounds, but he lifted it off and set it down lightly on the carpet.

"Bingo, Raffles." Xander played his flashlight across the safe. "Now for a light-fingered caress of the tumblers--"

Spike punched out the lock and pulled the door open.

"--and another childhood fantasy bites the dust."

"No time for fantasies," Spike said. More harshness bled through than he'd intended, but what the buggering fuck did it matter, not like he had a soul.

"No?"

Ignoring him, Spike began pulling out the contents of the safe and stacking them on the bureau beneath it, opening whatever looked likely. Diamond parure in a fitted case. Pearls in a bag. Fat leather wallet of ribboned documents. Box of photos and papers. Next to him, Xander examined everything he discarded.

"Money sticks, earrings, more earrings," Spike rattled off in growing impatience. "Woman must have ears all over her body. Earrings, earrings, gun, earrings."

"Nice gun."

Spike turned away from the safe with the last velvet bag as Xander slipped the gun into a pocket. "This must be it," he said, pulling out a pendant with a red gem in the center of a diamond cluster. He rubbed his thumb across the surface, then tilted a closer look around the room they'd broken into, noting the elaborate fireplace, the Persian rug, the trinkets that covered every surface like a china snowfall. "Eat the rich," he muttered.

"Hey," Xander said, drawing his attention back. He was leafing through the documents. "Could these be important? I can't make anything out, but if she's keeping them in the safe..."

"Take it all. Little misdirection won't hurt."

Xander tucked the packet away, then returned with Spike to the open window, where they both hesitated. "Want to kill anyone while we're here?" Xander asked.

A smile twitched to life in Spike's lips, and he looked off to one side, afraid that Xander would smile back and he'd be tricked into giving away too much, too easily. "Nah."

"What if I stayed?"

The thoughts didn't follow and for a moment Spike didn't get it, then did. Tension crept back into his shoulders, made his neck stiff. What kind of mealy-mouthed, prick-teasing question was that, for fuck's sake?

Aloud he said, "You've got your own patch now. Different city, different life. Just like you wanted."

"Not like I wanted."

Something snapped in Spike. "You said this was a curse you had to shake," he said furiously. "Said it wasn't normal. Like anything's normal, you stupid tosser." The words tumbled out, rising in volume. "I'm not normal. Never will be, never want to be. I wanted you. You left. It's done. I've got someone else now."

Xander dropped his gaze, mouth tighter as if he were keeping back things he knew better than to say. Boiling over, Spike had plenty more to say, five years' worth of plenty, but just then a light went on in the hall, throwing a wedge of light into the room, and a voice called, "Bunny? Is that you?"

They climbed out with due haste, knocked into each other on the wet shingles, slipped around in a comical pas de deux, and fell off the roof together into a shrubbery.

"Ow," Xander said.

Rolling off the shelf of leaves, Spike stumbled back several paces and saw that they'd dropped into a topiary shaped like a Brontosaurus.

"Bloody hell," he said with feeling, and then: "Xander, don't move. You're trapped in a dinosaur."

Xander turned his head and peered across a heap of leaves at him with a regretful expression. "I know. I'm trying to change." Yanked from his nest with Spike's help, he staggered to his feet in a shower of loose leaves and then stared. "Oh. That's...surprisingly literal."

"Come on."

They ran across the grounds as more lights went on and dogs began to bark. Reaching the edge, Spike cupped his hands to boost Xander over the wrought-iron fence before leaping himself. In the distance screams of outrage came through the window they'd left open. The street adjoining Lady Elked's townhouse was deserted and they sprinted across it and ran into an alley moments before a patrol Jeep zipped past.

"There's a tunnel entrance somewhere around here," Xander said, apparently remembering local landmarks.

Frowning, Spike cocked his head. "You hear that?" He took a few steps toward the far end of the alley and listened, filtering out the siren wails and dog barks. Somewhere ahead in the city center a voice was echoing off the buildings, augmented by a loudspeaker. He met Xander's eyes briefly, then took off in the direction of the broadcast.

Willow and Dawn kept pace with each other as they ran across town. The dead streets were coming to life, arteries trickling with morning commuters, the Grauth in cars, humans on foot as they headed out of their restricted quarter and into the wealthier city center to perform whatever menial jobs they'd been lucky enough to be allotted. The number of patrolling guards had increased along with the swell of travelers and as Willow and Dawn dashed across Eucalyptus Street just in advance of a passing convoy, two guards slowed to intercept them on the other side.

One raised his hand to halt them while the other lifted his gun in a disturbingly casual way.

"Ho now, where's the flame?" the first guard asked. "You don't want to be running, little geese. You know what they say--" He opened his mouth to deliver his homily, then paused to scratch one horn with a vague frown. He turned to his companion. "What do they say, Grek?"

"A running human is a dead human," Grek supplied, raising his gun a notch higher.

Impatience etching her face to tension, Willow flicked her cloak back to reveal her insignia. "I'm a ranking officer in Reich Army Intelligence on Imperial business. And you--are delaying me." The last three words were bitten off.

"Sorry, sir." The guards parted to let them pass, and when Dawn glanced back over her shoulder a moment later they were already moving on.

"I remember when you couldn't talk your way out of a hall pass," she said as they picked up speed again.

Willow didn't break stride or even look at her. "History will remember me differently."

As they neared the outskirts of City Hall, the voice on the loudspeaker grew sharper and stronger, carried through the alleys of the surrounding buildings, but Xander still couldn't quite make out the words.

"Whoa," he said as he spotted a large poster on the brick wall ahead of him, the face on it recognizable, the fact of it chilling. "This is so not good."

Stopping beside him, Spike scrutinized the poster. "Yeah," he said. "They got my nose wrong." He sounded critical and piqued.

"Not what I meant. If they're outing you, they're turning up the heat. This kind of thing," he gestured, "it inspires people, gives them hope. The Grauth wouldn't risk elevating you into a rebel hero unless they're planning an all-out manhunt or worse."

With one thought they glanced down the alley in the direction of the civic plaza. Gut twisting, Xander knew by Spike's face that decisions were already made, fate set on its stupid course, but he tried the obvious on the chance the vampire might listen for once. "We can't stay here."

"They're calling me." Spike cocked his head with a listening air and a resigned look that Xander hated. "Calling for the slayer."

"I'm thinking: don't go." Words that might have been glib rose instead from a deep, tight place in Xander's chest.

Spike showed no sign of having heard him. "Better see what they want."

They made their way to the edge of the plaza, Xander scanning every rooftop to make sure they weren't walking into an ambush. A growing crowd of humans and Grauth filled the square, necks craned for a view of the City Hall steps, where an officer stood at a podium, speaking into a microphone. Behind him a rank of guards kept watch, guns held upright at the ready. On a platform off to the side of the plaza, a gallows had been built and spotlighted, and a woman stood with her neck in a noose, hands behind her back. Even from this distance, Xander could tell she was crying.

"Oh my god," he said, taking it all in. Over the hushed crowd, the officer's voice was ringing, amplified by the loudspeakers.

"We've asked the slayer to turn himself in," he said. "Time and again, we've offered leniency if he'll only cease the brutal massacre of innocents. Time and again he has refused, sending back the bodies of our comrades as his message--but his victims are not just Grauth--they're humans, like you," a hand outstretched to the crowd, "who've committed no crime but to live as best they can in this brave new world. His crusade hurts all of you. This vampire feeds off you!" The Grauth paused to let the outrage sink in.

"For our vampire allies," he went on with righteous complacency, "we've established blood banks to take your patriotic donations. But this slayer kills your children, your wives and husbands. Just last night he attacked an Imperial Work Center, butchering dozens. Why? Because, as he wrote in this letter to us--" He raised a piece of paper, then lowered it to read. "--'I'll kill all humans if I have to. You will have no hostages against us."

He paused in affected sorrow as murmurs spread through the crowd. Stunned, Xander finally understood the phrase "farrago of lies." Still no clue what a farrago was, but that didn't get in the way of his certainty. He looked to see how Spike was taking this. His jaw was wire-taut, drawing a line of fury under his profile.

On the steps, the officer raised his bowed head. "But we do have hostages--the poor, misguided souls taken in by the slayer's guile. Like this woman," he gestured at the gallows, "Lisa Crowell, a terrorist with six Grauth kills to her name--"
 
"No," the woman on the gallows broke in, turning a desperately pleading face to the crowd. "It's a lie! It's all lies! I don't know any slayer, I never even--"

A soldier on the platform stepped forward and struck the woman's head with the butt of his gun before gagging her.

"Justice will be served," the Grauth officer said, and nodded at the hangman.

The suddenness of it caught Xander completely off guard. The hangman pulled the handle, the trapdoor opened, the woman dropped. Somewhere in the crowd another woman cried out and was quickly silenced by those around her. Next to him, Spike closed his eyes.

The officer squared his shoulders and paced the length of the steps, microphone in hand, voice rising. "We know you're listening, slayer. Executions will continue until you come forward, one every fifteen minutes. Only you can stop this! Come, and we'll offer them rehabilitation. If you don't, their lives are forfeit."

Spike turned to Xander, pushing the stolen ruby into his hand. "Take this to Angel. It's down to him now."

"They're going to crucify you." He imagined he could feel every one of the ruby's facets in the white-knuckled clench of his fist.

"It'll take a while." Spike sounded unconcerned. "Interrogation, bit of torture. I expect it'll be days before they drag me out for the grand finale."

The neutral calculation made Xander's throat constrict. "We'll get you out before that happens."

"You do that," Spike said, then hesitated before adding, "If you can. Otherwise...Saint William has a nice ring to it." The joke didn't quite come off, or maybe he was half serious.

Xander could feel Spike watching him, waiting for him to look up, but he wasn't ready for that yet. Spike's jacket collar was frayed, he noticed, trying to fix something into memory. He used to be more fastidious about his appearance. But with the shine rubbed away, it was easier than ever to see what was underneath. Focused on the immediate need, Spike would hang if it meant saving even one human. A demon, grudging, cynical, literally soulless, he shouldn't care whether another housewife lived or died. But he did his job. Xander still didn't have a clue why. He was like one of those magic tricks where you keep pulling at the scarves but never get to the end or figure out where they're coming from. Why did he ever cave to the watchers when there was so little in it for him? He wasn't weak but he'd given in; wasn't human but spent the last century hanging out in smoky jazz clubs and salons and cafes and mosh pits, attending overcast rugby matches and dress balls, reading poetry, eating unnecessary onion rings, watching soap operas, over-tipping maternal waitresses he had no intention of killing, all of this right up to the point when the watchers collared him. And here he was.

The clock was ticking and Xander knew he had to walk away. Any moment now. "Remind me why we do this hero gig again?"

Spike shrugged with feigned nonchalance. "I'm in it for the money. Dunno about you."

"At least you were drafted. Me? Idiot."

"Yeah," Spike said, almost allowing a smile. He reached out and smoothed a lock of Xander's hair down, and then there was a kiss--a brush of cool lips, over too fast, not even a rude tongue to remember him by--and he was gone.

"Damn it," Willow said as they reached the plaza and crashed up like a wave against a shore of bodies. She couldn't see anything over the heads of the gawking crowd, and when a wide man with a tall hat stepped in front of her, she clapped her hand to her pistol in pure annoyance, fingers curling around the grip. But shooting her fellow man was bad and wrong, plus he'd probably just fall and block her way, so she let her hand drop again. "They said they'd wait until I got back."

"Looks like they started without you," Dawn said needlessly.

Willow led the way around the edge of the square, carving a path through the fringes of the crowd. Men leaned against the wrought-iron fence that bordered the neighboring park. Above them in the trees, kids perched like monkeys to watch the show.

"I had this all choreographed." She pushed aside a knot of kids she might have gone to high school with. Behind her, complaining voices rose then lowered abruptly into horrified whispers. "I told them I'd put the word out," she said, more to herself than to Dawn, anger deepening as she nursed the insult of how they'd blown her off. "They're so inept. It's like they're staging a school play instead of a--"

Dawn grabbed Willow's arm just as she was about to walk into a large wooden platform that shouldn't have been there.

"Oh my god," Dawn said.

Willow's gaze rose and locked on the body swinging from the gibbet, head lolling above the noose, hands still bound. "No." Denial broke out in a million prickles of gooseflesh and a sweep of vertigo nearly knocked her backward. "This wasn't supposed to--they weren't supposed to actually kill anyone." She looked at Dawn for confirmation. "It was just a trick, to get him here."

Face white, Dawn couldn't seem to keep her eyes away from the platform, and Willow turned back to see a guard dragging away the body while his partner shoved a new victim into place. The man began gabbling a prayer as the Grauth fixed the noose around his neck.

"The slayer is a coward!" Liyoge declared from the steps. His microphone picked up the surge of his own voice and drove a shriek of feedback into Willow's head, making it ring and ache. "How many more must die before he accepts responsibility for his actions?"

"You are so stupid," Dawn seethed, snapping Willow's focus back on her. "I can't believe I let you do this--that I wanted your help!" She elbowed herself past a cluster of people, working her way behind the platform and toward the steps.

Willow seized her arm, whirled her to a stop. "Where are you going?"

"To find Spike! When I tell him what you did, you're through. You'll be lucky to spend the rest of this war in an Initiative cell polishing your leg irons. Or maybe he'll finally listen to us and put you six feet further down."

A pair of guards glanced their way, attention pricked by Dawn's sharp voice. Willow stiffened as one caught her eye and then nodded at him. She had Dawn's weapons in hand before the girl could even react.

"Take this rebel into custody," she ordered the guards.

Dawn gaped in shock for a moment, then went for her throat. The transfer was a struggle, and when the girl was secured between the Grauth, hands bound, she spat at Willow in a predictable and futile gesture of contempt.

Wiping her face with one black leather glove, Willow found it remarkably easy to meet Dawn's eyes. "Put her in isolation," she told the guards. "Feel free to use a choke-chain if she gets testy."

Released of her watch-dog, she made her way to the front of City Hall and with great relief saw Naziren lurking off to the side, watching Liyoge with the skeptical eye of a theater critic judging an understudy's performance.

"Colonel Naziren--"

"Ah, Rosenberg. Excellent timing. I must congratulate you. I had my doubts that this plan would work--"

"About this plan--"

"Here, I think, is the man of the hour."

Heart jerking against her ribs, Willow followed his gaze and saw Spike ascending the far side of the steps as guards swarmed to enclose him. He saw her at the same moment. Their eyes met, his lit with relief, and then she watched the comprehension sink in, the shock detonate: betrayal, pain, anger.

The guards cuffed Spike's hands, knocked him a few steps closer to the podium. From the crowd rose a clash of cheers and jeers in almost matching force, and in the space of a few seconds the orderly mass of bodies began to shift and boil into incoherence. Too much frustrated energy, too much feeling--too many humans, Willow realized in a flash of foreboding. Not enough Grauth.

"The slayer!" Liyoge announced.

And the crowd surged forward.

Angel considered himself a patient guy, but there was a limit, and he'd maxed his out. He held his face like granite and stared into the eyes of the woman talking to him, willing her to succumb to his vampire authority, his leashed menace, to a honed and steely gaze that made mortals quail and minions cower.

"...and that brings us to item number eight, regarding the unequal allotment of blankets. Certain elements among the refugees have been hoarding the blanket supply and nesting in them." The woman spared a pointed look for the Gromnere demon next to her. "It's the request of the Coalition to Represent Unified Sunnydale Humanity that blankets be collected and redistributed fairly, starting with humans, who have the most right to them."

"Well knowing that humans outnumber the blankets," the Gromnere snarled, "thus our kind will have none!"

"You have fur," the woman snapped back. "And you stole those blankets!"

The Gromnere bristled and its pelt became pink. "We won't yield them without a fight. We've marked them with the spoor of our clan."

"Oh my god." The woman raised her clipboard to her bosom as if to shield against any sudden spoorish strafe.

On the far side of the Initiative chamber a red emergency access door burst open with a bang that captured Angel's attention; over the heads of his petitioners he saw Xander arrive in a breathless state, look around, then pause, half doubled over, clutching his ribs. The mixed scents of blood, sweat, and adrenaline struck Angel from across the room even through a crowd of other bodies. He walked forward with no further regard for the refugees, forcing them to step aside as he swept through.

"I beg your pardon," he heard the woman huff as he left.

He knew it was bad and as he zeroed in on Xander he made a stone of his heart against whatever news he might hear. He didn't claim much imagination, but when you had experience and a demon you didn't need any. You already knew the worst that could happen.

"Tell me," he said when he reached Xander's side. He pulled the other man's hand from his shirt; it came away bloody.

"This--nothing. Just some guards who got in my way." Xander straightened up, and Angel saw his face clearly for the first time, rigid stoicism over intense fear, like a victim who sees the fangs descend and realizes just how he's going to die. "Spike." Xander took a steadying breath. "He's turned himself in. They were killing people, calling for the slayer. He went."

Angel tightened his mouth against the sharp and angry things he could have said about Spike's impulse control. The person he needed to say them to wasn't here.

"I brought this," Xander went on, and handed Angel the ruby they'd gone to find.

They'd left the repaired wynariver ready for another go. The chamber around them was abuzz with arguments and the air seemed to hold a static, waiting charge of electricity that hadn't found release. Buffy, Anya, and Jonathan converged to join them at the table. Xander pulled his jacket tight in a way that hid his wound, but everyone else's attention was focused on the gemstone.

"You got it," Buffy said.

Angel popped the stone from its setting, tossed aside a hundred thousand dollars' worth of diamonds with complete indifference, then made some final adjustments to the wynariver.

"It's so large." Anya picked up the ruby, face flushing with an almost sexual glow as she turned it between her fingers. Lips parted, she seemed to be slipping into a light trance. "It'd be a shame to blow it to smithereens."

Buffy glanced back toward the main area of the room expectantly. "Where's Spike?"

"Prisoner," Xander said.

Anxiety ricocheted around the group and the others raised their heads. Buffy looked stricken. "What? How?"

"If this works, it won't matter how." Xander was lockjawed and grim. "We need magic."

"Can't Willow help?" Anya let Angel take the ruby away from her, no longer distracted by its charm. "Isn't that what she does now--pull strings and bully people?"

"She was here earlier," Jonathan said, looking queasy as if a thought had just struck someplace hard and low. "Looking for Spike. It seemed...urgent."

Even Angel paused what he was doing to regard Jonathan, arrested by the word. When he met Buffy's eyes, he could tell they were sharing the same uncharitable suspicions.

Of them all, Xander looked the least surprised. The calmness of his face said that this wasn't even a speedbump in the skidding car wreck the day had become. "If she had anything to do with this...that's it. Those old ties don't bind anymore." He glanced up and around. "I hope she doesn't owe anyone here money."

"We'll get him back," Angel said. He picked up the plans and launched the key-spell again with determination. As a glow began to expand along the wynariver's spokes, everyone around the table took a pointed step back. Discs revolved and the core lit up as the spell came to an end and the device balanced on its spindle. After only the briefest hesitation, Angel lifted the prime disc and realigned it.

The wave hit at once, something cold and large slapping him from a kind of sleep. Again, he thought. Again. Son of a bitch. It was just as shocking the second time around--the third--as memories of Buffy surged through him, restoring him to life like blood through dead veins.

"Holy crap," said Jonathan, staring saucer-eyed at the wynariver.

Incomprehensibly, Anya had pulled up her shirt to inspect her belly, palming its contours. "Are you all right?" she asked it. "Hello in there!" She raised stricken, anxious eyes. "Xander, I forgot our baby!"

Xander had fixated on her belly as well, and looked as if he were expecting an alien to burst out of it. "Anya," he said in a raw voice. "Oh god."

"Spike's not the slayer." Jonathan sounded disappointed as reality struck, and gave Buffy a skeptical once-over. "You are. That's...weird."

Oz joined them with an amazed light in his eyes and a tiny, lopsided grin. "So, hey, did anyone else just feel a massive shift like the universe collapsed and refolded all our identities in some crazy origami?" His hands danced in the air