"Spike," Angel said.

"Spike," Cordelia affirmed to the room at large.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Angel sounded as if he'd just stepped in something foul that he had no hope of getting off his shoe.

"Yeah, well that's kind of a long story--how about calling off Abbot and Costello here so I'm not perforated during the prologue?"

"I don't think so."

"Christ," Spike said, then spotted Giles standing off to the side. "Look, Giles, tell them I'm not dangerous. I mean, I am dangerous," he caught himself, "except to your sort." He raised his brows expectantly, then said, "Humans!" with exasperated force in the face of Giles's incomprehension.

"Why should I tell them any such thing?" Giles wondered, marveling at the audacity of the request. "And how do you know my name?"

"Ohhhh." Spike adjusted his posture and inspected his audience with a fresh and knowing eye. "I get it. Memory spell. Clever grauts."

Angel and Giles exchanged a look. "What did you do?" Angel asked Spike, voice heavy with accusation and threat.

"Isn't my doing." Spike's brows drew together, wings of umbrage. "And why're you so ready to blame me?"

Cordelia met outrage with outrage, huffing a humorless, disbelieving laugh. "Maybe that's because the last time we saw you, you were trailing loan sharks, chum, and nearly got our hotel burned down. And let's not forget the spot of friendly torture you inflicted on Angel before that, looking for your Ring of Marinara."

"Gem of Amarra," Spike said, each word uttered from the throat like a growl.
 
"Whatever."

"You never bring anything but trouble, Spike." Motionless, Angel nonetheless looked ready to pounce. "Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you right now."

Spike narrowed his eyes. "Well, that wouldn't help Buffy much, would it?"

Cordelia frowned at Wes, who frowned at Angel, who showed no expression whatsoever. "Who's the hell's Buffy?" Cordelia asked.

Spike stared at her and as the moment stretched Giles felt the world around him fading out at the edges, a kind of existential blankness tugging at his moorings, as if what he understood and knew of the world was just a story made up by interfering powers.

Then the moment snapped back into place and Spike said, "Buffy Summers? Little blonde dervish, dresses like Britney Spears, kicks like Jackie Chan? The slayer?"

Cordelia shrugged. "Never heard of her."

"You went to high school with her."

"I went to high school with a lot of forgettable people," she said, brows arching, her casual hauteur conveying everything one needed to know about her previous social standing.

"How do you know a slayer, Spike?" Angel challenged suspiciously. "Not your usual company of choice. Unless you're looking to put another notch on your belt."

"Oh come on. Don't tell me you've forgotten." The vampire layered incredulity over sarcasm. "Must be the mother of all memory spells to crack a nut that thick."

"We gonna stand here all night listening to this jabber?" Gunn broke in to ask of the room at large. "I don't know about y'all, but I don't mind forgetting what I can't remember, and I sure as hell don't care if I forget him." He glared at Spike, then looked to Angel. "Let's just dust him, go out for pizza."

"Ooh," Cordelia said, brightening. "Canadian bacon and pepperoni!"

Spike made a sound of expressive disgust. "You know, I hung under a truck to get here, not to mention wandered the L.A. sewers for three long and incredibly foul hours--do you have any idea what's down there?" He posture was stiff as a disdainful cat's, and he glared down his nose at them. "I didn't even want to come. You don't want to help, fine." The movement came faster than Giles could track, a lashing-out blur that resolved back to Spike, cross-bow in one hand and Gunn trapped like a shield in front of him, struggling to loosen the arm across his throat. "But I'm afraid I can't die today. Sorry."

Angel twitched threateningly and Wyndam-Pryce raised his own cross-bow higher; swinging it almost imperceptibly from side to side as he tried to keep a bead on Spike.

"Let him go," Angel said in a conversational tone, "and I'll make it quick. You hurt him, I let Wes kill you. Now that could take weeks."

"Oh, I'm not going to hurt him." Spike's tone said the prospect was droll. "See? Not even a wince. I'm just going to keep his manliness between us--make sure you don't ejaculate any of those naughty stakes my way. Course, you could try walking over here, take him off my hands. But maybe I go for Wonder Woman there next. Got a bit of demon in her, as I recall." He eyed Cordelia familiarly, half smiling.

"Creep," she said.

Briefly distracted, Giles looked at her and wondered what species of demon.

"Not weeks," Wyndam-Pryce said. "Months. That's how long I'll take killing you, Spike."

Spike mouthed a small kiss at him.

"I really don't think it would be wise to kill him at all," Giles said, taking the opportunity to wedge a foot in the proceedings. All eyes turned to him. Unsettled by the spotlight, he noted with care, "Everything he's said corresponds with the details of the letter I received."

"I'm sure it does," Wyndam-Pryce said, a curl of contempt in his tone that Giles could only hope was directed at the vampire. "He's probably engineered the entire thing--yet another of his schemes to entrap Angel or use our resources for his own purposes."

"Oh for...the love of Pete!" Spike shifted with tectonic frustration; Gunn, forced to shift with him, gritted his teeth.

"Wes," Angel said with a subtle change of stance. "Stand down."

"Angel--"

"Spike wants to talk. Let's talk."

Giles was fascinated by how Angel's focus seemed to distribute itself evenly between Wes, Gunn, and Spike, as if he were attuned to the next potential move of each man and ready to spring. If he did, Giles had no doubt he'd be a match for Spike's swiftness and strength. That didn't negate the risk to the others if it should come to a fight. But when Wyndam-Pryce lowered his weapon, Spike lowered his own and released Gunn without fanfare. Gunn whirled with anger immediately and looked interested in going mano-a-mano.

"There's only one dude I let get up close and personal and it ain't you. Try that again and see what happens."

Spike smirked.

Giles cleared his throat. "Very good," he said, interrupting and hoping to redirect discussion to more important matters. "Perhaps it's time to take this parley elsewhere." He met the eyes of the obviously unsouled vampire and hesitated over etiquette and absurdity. "We were just having a cup of tea before you...arrived."

"Well, that's...smashing. Like a ball-peen hammer meeting a kneecap." Spike strode forward, cutting a surly path between Angel and Giles so that they were forced to step aside. "Make it a cuppa blood and we're on."

"I hate waiting," Buffy said.

Willow looked up dryly from the book she was using for wynariver research. "This is news? I've known you for almost eight years now. I still remember the time you hopped the counter of the Espresso Pump because you couldn't wait for the barista to pull your bagel from the toaster."

Buffy frowned, memory access failing. "Did I really do that?"

"Finals week, freshman year."

"Oh yeah. Wow. Pause for that snapshot. That was back when I still thought I had a future."

"You still do. We're going to beat this thing." Only the edges of Willow's lips held a smile and it was a tired one, but she resumed reading, looking for answers. Even after so many years, with things so different, one head duck and she was the pose of innocence: Girl With Library Book, a sturdy supporter in the slayer's fight against evil, the best of George and Bess combined. But if she'd been a character in a book she'd never have gotten older, never changed. Somewhere in the eternal high school library, she was eating an apple and helping Buffy with homework; here she wore her hair in a loose chignon and three layers of colorless shirts against the cold and had deeper shadows under her eyes, and--and god, were those grey hairs or just a trick of the light? Here was her best friend. They'd fought and made up a hundred times over, and Buffy didn't know if they were growing further apart or just growing up.

Never mind that Willow had tested the limits of magic, or manipulated history to bring about the possible downfall of human civilization. Buffy needed her. The Titanic might be sinking, but someone still had to man the lifeboats.

"You sound so sure," Buffy said.

Willow blinked and looked up again. "Huh?"

"That we'll beat them."

"It's one of my up days," she said with a little shrug. "Mostly up," she amended at Buffy's skeptical assessment. "Okay, I had an up minute around three o'clock and now I'm cultivating my veneer of optimism."

Buffy offered a ten-watt smile. "You recovered yet from your stellar turn as Gypsy Rose Lee Junior?"

"My nipples may never unperk. Windchill. Plus, I got to strip down to my underwear in front of demons--once just a young girl's dream, now a reality."

"And for dream, read 'recurring nightmare'," Buffy guessed.

"Mm hmm."

As she talked, Willow had taken up tinkering with a small hand-sized gizmo that Buffy couldn't even have begun to describe; something with clockwork gears and turn-keys and small jointed arms like on a drawing compass, all rolled together. As Willow inserted the tip of her finger into a brass thimble, the whatsit gave a whir and a tiny blue arc jumped between two points.

"Okay, what is that?" Buffy asked. "Because I'm thinking a mechanical spider that swallowed a music box, threw it back up, then melted. How close am I?"

"I like to think of it as my flux capacitor," she said with a quirk of her lips. "But melted spider works too." Then: "It's really a wynariver. Or a model, which is as close as I can come." Her hands played restlessly with her toy, turning it over, making bits of it glow and spin.

"I'd really hoped the plans would be useful after..." Buffy hesitated. After all the trouble we went to get them, she left unsaid, but she could tell from Willow's face that she'd heard it anyway.

"They're useful. About ninety percent useful. The missing ten is the problem."

A brief silence fell. Buffy thought about the kids in their rooms without feeling any inclination to check on them. The corridor of white cells, ceiling strips dead, rooms lit by scavenged desk lamps they'd rigged up courtesy of Xander's electrical skills, had become a zone of avoidance since her visit earlier in the evening. But the cells made her think of Spike, once a prisoner there--Oz too, and she gave a moment's passing wonder to where he might be right now--but Spike distracted her attention back to him, just like always, even though he was a hundred miles away running messages. She thought of Angel for a minute, and of Giles, memories overlapping, sliding across each other like loose photos, the ones you couldn't put in the family album, so she let them go and tried to plot Spike's moves instead: how he'd make his way to Angel, what he'd do when he found him. She estimated his movements against her mental clock. Too soon for the truck to be on its way back yet. Maybe this very moment as she sat here they were researching this mess, calling Giles in England, making plans.

More likely just killing each other.

"Um..."

Willow's awkward little sound interrupted the twist of Buffy's thoughts. And, she realized with embarrassment, her hands.

"That's okay," Willow said as Buffy handed her the scrap of metal she'd unconsciously tied into a bow. "I didn't really need that part." This didn't stop her from pulling the rest of her gadgetry closer to her side of the table, Buffy noticed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's--"

"The waiting."

"The waiting." Buffy straightened her posture, pushing her shoulders back a titch. To improve her posture, her mom used to say: remember, you're not a bendy straw, you're a straight straw--the thoughts can't get up to your head if you're all bent over.

Get up to my head from where? Buffy suddenly wondered.

"You know," she said, "I can't do this. I can't mark time until Spike comes back, hoping Giles and Angel will ride in to save the day and tell me what to do next. I've spent the last few months running from one thing to the next without a plan. We've--I've just been reacting. I've got to get the 're' out and act." She stood and paced a few steps. "I talked big about how we were going to fight, ally with demons if we had to. And then this wynariver thing came up and--and I can't even blame it on that because I was scared. I was playing it safe. We've got almost nothing and no one and if I lost it--if I lost Dawn or you or Xander--"

She broke off and composed herself.

"Buffy, it's understandable." Willow sounded completely unsurprised. "That's how I felt about losing you guys. That's why I couldn't let you stop the invasion when it happened. You'd all have died by some fixed dice roll. There was no way I could sit back and watch while I lost everyone I cared about."

"But maybe you'll have to." Buffy turned, her stomach cramping, acidic with a fear she needed more than anything to control. "Maybe I'll have to. This is so big--" She made a nearly laughing sound that wasn't. "Every other apocalypse before this looks tiny in comparison. They never got far enough for me to see what it'd be like. Now I know."

She paused a moment, thinking Willow might have a response. When she offered nothing, Buffy had to quell a deep sense of disappointment. A debate-champion rebuttal might have let her put off dealing for a little while longer.

"I'm going to patrol," she said, putting on her coat. The word patrol rang oddly these days when vampires were the upstanding citizens and humans skulked in the shadows, but her duties were the same.

"Be safe," Willow said simply, as Buffy did up her top button.

It moved her without warning, like something seismic, deeper than the Hellmouth. On impulse she moved closer and bent to kiss Willow's brow the way she'd have kissed Dawn's, the way her mom used to her kiss hers.

This was all they had left at the edge of the world.

"What do you think of his story?" Giles asked.

He stood off to one side of the kitchen conferencing in lowered tones with Angel and Wyndam-Pryce--or Wes, as he'd invited Giles to call him. The man had clearly become Americanized in his time here. Across the room, Spike sat at the table, slouching back in his chair with insouciant ease as he read a copy of EW.

"Difficult to credit," Wes said thoughtfully. "I admit I'm prejudiced against trusting him, but even so, what he's describing would be demonic incursion on a grand scale, such as the world has not seen in centuries."

"That we know of." Giles, less at ease when off his home ground, wished for something to do with his hands. "But the letter--"

"Could be a fake," Angel finished.

"For what purpose? If it had been sent to you, I'd be more inclined to suspect his motives. But I think it's safe to say I'm a non-entity beyond the council." He sensed a sharper gaze from Wes, but ignored it lest he find pity there. "I can't imagine why any demon would choose me to further his plans." He shifted away from them, then back again, pacing out his troubled thoughts. "And there is the other evidence. The dreams, misplaced records, inconsistencies--all suggest memory tampering. I struggle to recall anything of substance from last eight years and it's," he took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, "it's a blur. Research, books, scraps of conversations--nothing tangible or even connected to anything else."

"I've had decades like that." Angel met his eyes. "But you're right. There's something going on, and I'm beginning to think it's larger than any mischief Spike could stir up."

"You absolute wankers!" Spike said, voice rising to heated injury, drawing their attention his way. He was yelling into the opened magazine. "Nicolas Cage is about as Sid Vicious as I am Tina Bloody Turner!" Dropping his head in his hands, he groaned. "Oh god, I feel unwell." His head swiveled and one raven-dark eye scoured them. "Are you old women done fannying about, then? Made up your minds to save the world? Real big of you, by the way."

Giles sighed and turned back to the others. "Of course, we can always hold the option of killing him in reserve."

"Yes," Wes said without hesitation. "Good plan."

Angel nodded easily. "Works for me."

Xander grabbed Anya's shoulders and swung her toward the wall roughly enough to rattle the jarred herbs and toad giblets. Lips parting on a gasp, she lifted her chin and grabbed his belt, working it undone and then unzipping him. Her hair flared in an unruly crush across the wall behind her, and then she changed positions with him, knocking him into a rack of greeting cards and sending it banging to the ground. He rolled her back against the wall a moment later, pushing her skirt up her hips to cup her ass and grind into her. Soft and manicured hands pulled his dick out of his jeans, working it stiffly upright.

"Nails!" he said. "Watch the nails, baby."

She bit her lower lip and began to hustle out of her panties. Bracing his free hand against the wall by her head, Xander helped her, then put both hands up and let her guide him inside. That accomplished, she got her clutches on his ass, moving him how and where she wanted him to meet the demanding squirm of her body. He obliged by leaning against the wall as if to do push-ups, not touching her anywhere except...there.

For a minute they didn't even kiss, just looked into each other's eyes and kind of smiled around the heavy breathing. Anya of the seventeen invisible freckles, whose irises held tiny gold daggers when they caught the light. My eyes are too widely spaced, she'd conclude after an hour spent complaining to the mirror. And my nose is asymmetrical. Xander, how can you stand to look at me--I'm deformed!
 
But he looked at her now, and looked and looked, and meanwhile their hips lapped together like waves smacking pilings. I've got a piling for you, sweet thang, Xander imagined telling her. Long enough and thick enough to fill your greedy little...

But he'd learned that relationships lasted longer if he didn't say the man-thoughts aloud. Anya had very strict guidelines for dirty talk and the ability to chop down a mighty oak at thirty paces, though she was usually in closer proximity to his testicles than that. All the more reason to speaketh not naughty, but speaketh wise.

"Anya," he said simply, brushing his face against hers to smell her hair. The classics always worked best; a woman's name was the highest possible endearment--unless it was the wrong name, but only an amateur made that mistake. He'd graduated past that stage.

She nipped his left ear and tongued it with pointed wetness like a paintbrush, making his hips pick up speed as he nailed her. "Your face is all scratchy," she breathed.

Drawing back from the tangle of her curls he studied her cheeks and then her pretty mouth, which panted to the rhythm of his thrusts. He could ask if she liked it or if she wanted him to shave the rebel stubble. Instead, he kissed her with politically incorrect roughness, stabs of tongue leaving her as slick and open above as she was below. Just as roughly she kissed him back, piping cries against his mouth. His arms flexed as he held himself up, hands flattened to the wall, and he drove inside her until she twisted with frantic movements he recognized and her cries reached a certain pitch, answering the question of whether it was good for her; then he could let go, thrust after violent thrust and a slide toward home, a few curses acceptable in the heat of the moment.

Afterwards, she was disheveled and sated with pleasure, patting her hair back into place, smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt, glowing and smiling in exactly the same satisfied way she did when she wrangled another ten percent discount off her wholesale prices. Her happiness was rare but amazing to see. Affection welled in him.

"Xander," she said briskly, capturing his attention as he buttoned his shirt. Hands clasped together in front of her, she did a giddy Meg Ryan hair toss. "I'm pregnant!"

He fumbled a button, missing the hole entirely. "Okay, I don't think it's actually possible for you to know that yet...is it?"

"Oh, I've known for a while now."

"Wait," he said. Then held up one finger. "Is this flight-of-creative-fancy pregnant, or oh-dear-god-we're-really-having-a-baby pregnant?"

"We're really having a baby!"

"Oh dear god."

"Are you happy? I can't tell. Your tone is fishy and unsettling. Say something happy." Anxiety pushed her voice even higher than normal while her hands made a twist of themselves.

"Oh...god." He sat down on the nearest chair and missed it by a few inches, ending up on the floor almost under the table. Since it was so handy, he lay back and let it shelter him.

"Xander!" Anya's treble bird call of worry began the moment he hit the floor. "Xander--Xander, get up. You're having a baby, this is no time to be hiding under tables!"

"Or, possibly, the best time."

"Get up, you--you baby-making swain!" Anya kicked his ankle.

"Ow!"

"Sexy, sperm-flinging blackguard! I should've known you'd try to ditch your responsibilities. You get all your little buddies to shimmy up into my ovaries, and then the first chance you get, you wriggle off like a worm to get drunk and gamble away my baby's child support."

"Anya!" He made a grab for her ankle and missed as she swung back for another kick. "Cut it out! I'm not wriggling." Well, he kind of was, but only because she kept lodging the toe of her sandal in his shin bone. Unable to quell her, he scooted back out of range. "I'm just taking some time to process this sudden and--" Scary. "--unexpected news like any normal man would do. Under the nearest piece of furniture."

"Must you behave like a chump? Do you think you're starring in a Wodehouse novel?"

"A who now?"

Anya's heels were pacing back and forth, and even her ankles had a distressed turn to them. "I'm going to be a mother and you're not happy. I'm going to be a mother and...and I want mine."

Not for the first time Xander tried to visualize Anya's mother, and as always ended up with a mental image of Endora making his life a not-quite-in-law torment.

"She was a small woman with strong hands," Anya said, sounding forlorn. "When the village smithy knocked up Hrefna, the idiot girl, she dragged him to the lake and buried him face-down in the mud."

Waiting with a strung-out, gut-clenched anticipation, Xander heard her sniff. Surely there had to be more. "Until...?"

"What?"

"Buried him face-down in the mud until what--until he cried 'uncle'? Until he promised to marry her?"

"Huh. You try talking with a mouthful of mud. Too late, buster."

Not missing the lack of in-laws, Xander decided. He hitched forward to the edge of the table until he could see Anya standing with her arms wrapped around herself in martyrdom, a picture of tragic, abandoned motherhood. "So...how pregnant are you?" he asked.

She stared at him as if he were crazy. "There's no 'how', breeder boy. It's either-or."

"I mean, how many months?" He got up from under the table, eyes fixed on her belly whose tiny swell could have meant too many pork rinds or nothing at all.

"Three."

"So we have six months."

Even to his own ears, his tone came out grim; Anya hunched her shoulders further at his words and took on a stricken, stunned expression. "Is it really so dreadful?"

Xander dragged himself from his thoughts and realized how he'd sounded and that without even trying he'd reduced a thousand year-old demon to tones of pleading uncertainty. He rested one hand on her shoulder and slid the other lower, fingers pushing under her shirt hem and stretching across her tummy. She drew in a breath.

"Six months to clean up this town," he said, holding her eyes. "And make the world safe for democracy and little Harrises."

"Jenkinses," she corrected automatically, but started to look as radiant as she was supposed to.

"Jenkinses."

"Kiss me!" It was a command, all breathless and shiny-eyed for want of him, Xander Harris. He was nine feet tall, he was the procreator, he was the man. He obeyed.

Before they left, Wes touched his arm and took him aside. "You were asking about Faith earlier," he said.

Giles's interest quickened again. "I'm not sure I understand the mystery surrounding her presence here."

"Yes, well." Wes drew in a breath. "Angel doesn't really like to talk about it."

"That I gathered."

"They used to be...close."

"Oh." Giles's brain froze on the implications of Wes's delicate tone, the idea of vampire and slayer together in a liaison banned by the council as far back as its regency stretched, and connected it with the hints Spike had let drop about his relationship with this Buffy Summers. If she was in fact what she claimed to be, and if both Wes and Spike could be believed, there was something very wrong with the current status of the slayer line. "I-I see," he went on, tipping his head a moment to force his thoughts past the resistance of not wanting to believe. "You understand that I'm here not just to investigate this matter in Sunnydale but to retrieve a slayer. The council cannot continue to operate as it has been. The slayer is its raison d'etre--without her, there is no council. When I return, it will be to arrange her release from prison."

"Of course." A halting note in Wes's manner suggested irresolution, as if were nerving himself to say more. "As to that--"

Before he could finish, Angel joined them.

"We ready?" he asked. Less question than impatient prod; he jangled without moving and his jaw was granite. "Spike's working my nerves. If we don't get out of here, I'm going to ram a chopstick through his eye socket."

Distracted, Giles frowned. "That won't kill him, will it?"

"I'm thinking lobotomy," Angel said blandly, hands in pockets. "If you do it right, it can last two, three months on a vampire."

Wes and Giles both stared at his expressionless face for several moments before Wes cleared his throat. "Well. Safe trip then."

Giles walked with Angel to the lobby where Spike was pacing and smoking; as they arrived, Cordelia flanked Spike with air freshener and began an aggressive campaign to spray him out.

"Hey!" he snapped, raising an arm to fend her off. "Watch the--"

"No smoking, you giant useless mosquito!"

Giles felt his heart skip; each time one of them provoked the vampire it seemed certain he'd lash back and deliver the grievous harm all others of his kind inflicted without hesitation. But now he only sighed, dropped his cigarette, and ground it out with his boot in a theatrical way. He'd told some half-incomprehensible story about a military chip in his head; it was beginning to look as if that too might be true.

"Let's go," Angel said, and the three of them fell into step as they headed out the door.

"Still not liking this new plan." Spike's voice was tight. "Taking the truck back was a sure thing."

"Nothing's a sure thing," Angel said. "I'm not dangling from a semi all night just to trigger an alarm or get caught during a spot inspection."

"Noooo. Might ruin the crease in your trousers." Spike cast a sidelong look at Giles. "You sure you can punch a hole in this force-field?"

"If what you've told me is accurate," he replied with acerbity.

"Sure of that, are you?" The vampire's tone was pointed back at him. "Been paying your yearly dues to the Society of Ineffectual Warlocks, Ripper?"

Giles gritted his teeth a moment before saying, "I've kept my hand in. And don't call me that. How do you even--" He caught himself and let the issue go, while Spike's mouth folded itself into a sardonic smile.

"Let's hope that hand's not as shaky as your memory."

For months Buffy had avoided Valley Center, the neighborhood around Revello Drive. Homes once belonging to humans had been allotted to Grauth bigwigs and the area was now too well policed by guards to move around in freely. From the south hill bordering the campus she could look down on her old stomping grounds and see the lights of the Army jeeps moving from block to block. There was no other traffic to distract from their circuit they made, and the longer she watched, the easier she was able to predict their repeating grid pattern: left turn, up two blocks, right turn, down four blocks...it was like Ms. Pac Man.

When she had a handle on the territory, she skittered like a rockslide down the hill and crossed through several backyards. No dogs anymore--not as pets, anyway. A mixed blessing; less risk for her, but after jumping a chain-link fence the sight of an empty doghouse and dry water bowl made her throat feel funny.

Passing by the dogless house, she heard a television and for a moment surreality took over. She thought maybe she'd just imagined it all: the invasion, the months of night, her purpose for being out and about. At a window she stopped and stepped up onto a small woodpile to peer through the curtains; through the pastel blue shades was a living room with wall-to-wall and faux wood-grain paneling and flying mallards, and on the couch sat two Grauth watching Gwyneth Paltrow on the VCR, their child stretched out on the carpet in front of them, head propped in his hands.

It was still her nightmare world.

Hands in coat pockets, she stepped out of the yard and onto Oak, walking down the middle of the empty street.

She'd always patrolled best alone, and she'd never been able to describe to Willow or Xander how it felt to pass through her town at two or three in the morning, when it was just her and the vampires and Claire, the waitress in the all-night diner who had never gotten killed, not in thirty years on the job. She couldn't tell her friends that her deepest sense of kinship was usually with the things she hunted, and she hid the extent of her willingness to toy and banter with her prey, to quip and rassle and exchange gossip, at least with the old hands. One vampire named Lewis she'd let off for three months running; night after night they'd stumbled across each other, him carrying a coffee and a doughnut bag back to his squat, her heading to and from kills. They got to know each other by chance. She scrapped with him a half dozen times at least, but he was a tenacious mix of charm, lingering pacifism, and luck, and at least once she sighed mid-fight, lowered her stake and told him to go home, she had better things to kill that night.

And now there were no vamps to share the night with, because they had clubs to hang out in, homes to return to. It was just her, boot soles lapping at the asphalt that seemed to glitter with diamond dust around every street light. It made her feel heavy and dull; it took an act of will to veer off the road and blend into the shadows of the sidewalk. The illusion of being a ghost in her old haunts could snap in an instant if someone stepped onto their porch and saw her, a human in the wrong place at the wrongest possible time.

Until now she'd avoided her house on Revello. She'd heard from Spike that it had been taken for the use of a Grauth officer; no less than she'd expected. The slayer's old home had to be a prestigious local landmark, didn't it? If you're not going to burn it, steal it. Almost every night as she lay down to sleep in her hide-out she'd pictured her home as it must be now, taken over by demons. Before Spike had brought the salvaged keepsakes she'd imagined the walls stripped bare, every photo of their family crumpled into trash, every china plate shattered, her mother's old college watercolors carried to the dump.

Most of that actually was gone by this point, she felt sure. The house itself was left; she stood next to the giant palm and stared at it now. The house was left, but it wasn't hers.

It wasn't the first time she'd lost her home. First to go had been their house in L.A., the place of all her little-girl, mom-and-dad memories, sold to strangers. She'd hated leaving and it had taken her a long time to warm to this new address. It had never been the right shape--her feet always wanted to take wrong turns, the kitchen lay to the east, not west, and its doorway didn't have the height marks where she'd been measured before each new school year, just like her bedroom didn't have the scar where she'd kicked the wall with her ice skate during a world-class snit.

Buffy noticed that the old mailbox had been replaced; it was no longer the Summers residence, but the Khamythi. Did the Grauth even have mail service? Owls carrying letters to and from Hell? Like she cared.

Professional skulking skills and familiarity with her own property would have made it easy to infiltrate; Buffy walked up to the front door and knocked. The porch light clicked on after a few moments and the door was opened by a demon still half in uniform, jacket off and tie removed, top shirt buttons undone, cardigan softening his image. He was holding a drink in one hand.

"Yes?" he said. By some arrangement of age and feature, he looked like a beloved character actor, one of those best-supporting sorts you can't name but see in every movie. He blinked out at her in confusion as if she'd just turned up on his doorstep to sell cookies. With her signum and delicate humanity, she must not have seemed a threat. "What do you need, girl?"

"What do I need?" She mocked the question. "How about my life back?"

He began turning away at once to shout or reach for a weapon, but she darted across the threshold and seized him by the neck. The glass tumbled from his hand and he hung in hers, voice choked off by her grip.

"Or how about just revenge?" she asked.

His neck made a satisfying sound when it cracked, and she stepped over his fallen body into the hall. In the foyer she looked from side to side, checking for targets but noting the redecoration. There was noise from the dining room and she moved toward it just as someone came around the corner, a Grauth woman in a twin-set and pearls. Buffy met her with a flat palm to the chest and threw her across a table laid out for dinner. The woman's body knocked aside a chair and dishes and a gravy bowl and she came to rest amid the destruction, an ungainly centerpiece with legs dangling over the edge.

As Buffy drew out her knife she was aware of screams on either side, the movement of small bodies scrambling from their chairs out of her way, but it didn't deter her from striding forward and planting her knife in the demon's neck. She thrust it in and wrenched it back out as a blur of motion circled the far side of the table. Gravy and blood mixed on the tablecloth and she stared at it, mind shutting down to a test pattern before she finally looked over at the two small demon children huddled in the corner, arms around each other.

When she hefted the knife the smaller child wailed and hid his face in his sister's shoulder. All she had to do was throw the weapon, retrieve it, and cut the surviving one's throat. Simple as killing kittens. Really ugly kittens who wore Gap Kids tee-shirts and probably didn't eat all their peas, and her hand wavered while she despised her own indecision.

"Stop sniveling," she said. "Stop..." Her voice broke, chin trembled. She left the room, went to the basement and got cans of gasoline and splashed them all around. Back in the dining room, the kids were still locked together; they looked up in fear as she came in.

"Get out," she said. As soon as they trusted her reprieve they ran past her out the front door, shrieking loud enough to bring help. She glanced around and picked up a burning candle from what had been her gram's sideboard and carried it to the front hall. Standing there, she took one last look around her house and then tossed the candle to the floor. Flame sheeted up from the gasoline, forcing her back outside. Up and down the street, demons were starting to open their doors and step out onto their porches, and a flare of headlights from an approaching jeep cut through the trees and bushes.

Buffy took flight.

On stage when she should have felt most trapped, she was free. Everything looked different in the gold glow of the spotlight: out in the darkness of the club, the upturned faces of the demons seemed almost benevolent as they listened to her sing. The clink of glasses and silverware was muted up here, and the edges of the room were softened.

And then her song ended and the clapping cued a zing of terror through her veins because she had to smile and walk off the stage into the wings, where other less pleasant duties waited.

"Lovely, my dear." Major Strauch clapped and beamed, gaze dipping to her low-cut gown just long enough to make her shudder. "Every night, they slip further under your spell."

If only that were true. "Thank you," Tara murmured.

The major took her arm despite her slight flinch and guided her around the curtain ropes and set drops toward her dressing room. "I'd hoped the Peacock would be merely a stepping stone for you. It's a bit louche, I'm afraid, compared to the Officer's Club. But I think we'll keep you on here. The atmosphere's more...relaxed. And I want you to be comfortable."

The major had arrested their progress and now held Tara's hand; in the narrow corridor, she was forced to step back against the wall to keep any distance between them. His words gave terrible news, and she tried to keep panic from her voice. "But the club--I, I thought--I was looking forward--" To being in Lowell House, she couldn't say. To being close to my friends who are hidden in an underground bunker beneath your club.
 
"I shall do my best to make it up to you." He ducked his head closer. She turned hers. Wanting to strike him, she froze instead, one flushed cheek presented to him. If she stared at the corridor floor instead of him, she could postpone this for another moment, pretend there was nothing to fear. Then his lips grazed her cheek and she shut her eyes.

"Humans have such lovely necks," he said, planting a kiss lower. "One can see where vampires get their fetish. But yours--" She felt him draw back and stroke a line from ear to shoulder, and she twitched to face him again, forcing her eyes open. Major Strauch was frowning. "I'm afraid yours has a flaw."

"I'm sorry," she said, swallowing and hyperaware of how close his fingers were to her fluttering pulse. Fear wasn't arousal, but he might make that mistake.

"Let's fix that." He dipped a hand into one pocket and she felt the air thicken, her vision begin to grey out; but it wasn't a knife of course. Just a necklace. A filigreed trio of red stones on a gold chain that dangled from his grey fingers a moment as let her view it. "Turn," he said, and she had to. He removed the necklace she always wore, a gift from Willow, and let it drop into her hand. The cold metal of his own gift slid up around her throat like a garrote while he worked the clasp. "There." With a grunt of satisfaction he turned her again to examine his gift. "Much better."

He kissed her for real then, lips against her own, rough mustache making her think of childhood and the affection of relatives who smoked and drank too much and gave embarrassing hugs at holidays. But this was much worse, a violation, and though her hand dug against his shoulder to push him off she couldn't.

When he pulled away, he sighed. "Regrettably I must attend to business--and you, your art." He bowed his head, an imitation gentleman, and left her by her dressing room door whose gold star mocked her for being a good girl.

Tara pushed inside at once and tried with trembling hands to set the door lock behind her; but she'd forgotten, there was no lock. Her legs bumped a cushioned stool as she made her way to the dressing table. In its hard, white light and reflection she sank to her seat and saw her mouth quiver, her eyes blur. Too much lipstick, too much eye shadow. She looked like a whore, like the local girls her dad used to judge and scorn. Lifting her arms made the whore's arms lift and she hesitated, poised to remove the gaudy necklace, before letting her arms lower again.

He might come back. She couldn't wipe her face clean, couldn't take off his gift. And before she could think of what else she could do, the door opened and Malivia came in.

The Grauth woman went immediately to the dress rack and began sorting through it with pursed lips, probably searching for a gown for the next set, one that would not make Tara "look like a stuffed goose," as she'd observed yesterday. She caught Tara's eye.

"Fix your make-up," she said. "You've got the complexion of a peeled potato. The customers will think you have tuberculosis."

Goose, potato. Add some greens and she was dinner. Biting down a response, Tara turned to the mirror and swiped some blush over her already red cheeks. As she did so, her gaze fell on an envelope that had been left propped in front of the mirror, her name looping across the front, accompanied by a single rose. She threw both away in the small wastebasket beside her table, then straightened up into Malivia's slap.

"How dare you." She bent to retrieve the note, then opened it and read it. "Another of your many admirers. You'll join him at his table after the next song." A critical look peeled another layer off Tara's composure; she didn't answer, but didn't rebel. After a moment Malivia lifted a crystal decanter that sat on the end of the table and poured a tumblerful of amber liquid. Eighty-proof fumes of rum sweetened the air when she stretched it forward.

"No," Tara said.

"Without assistance, your personality will win no favors." Unsmiling and unbending, she pressed the glass on Tara again.

Favors, Tara thought, and remembered why she was here in the first place instead of safe in bed with Willow.

The alcohol tasted like medicine, like a bad choice at a high school dance--and then it warmed her like a spell blossoming in her chest. She looked at herself in the mirror, adjusted an earring that had been coming loose, and thought: I can do this.

She took another sip to be sure.

Darkness swept by on other side of the car, broken in regularly spaced intervals by the sodium lamps along the interstate and more occasionally by the splashes of signage and lights clustering each exit. Angel was driving, "Because it's my car," he snapped when Spike tried to take the wheel. ("Sure you remember how to get there?" Spike rejoined snarkily.) Giles sat across from him, grateful for the generous width of the seats. The other vampire had been relegated to the back, looking miffed at first but gradually sprawling to fill the space and taking on the aspect of entitlement, like a debauched rock star being chauffeured to his next gig.

Giles imagined he could feel the unsouled vampire's gaze from time to time on the back of his neck; the creature had downed two tubs of pig's blood before they'd left ("God, what muck"), but pig was nowhere near potent as human blood fresh from the vein. It struck him that he was riding in a car with two--two--vampires, in a cooperative and civil fashion, when a week ago he'd never consorted with their kind at all. Not knowingly. He wished that Wes were present to provide human company on what might turn out to be a far more dangerous trip than originally anticipated. A former watcher was better than none at all.

"It's unfortunate that Wes couldn't join us," he remarked aloud. "This Harkness...he's very dangerous?"

"I really shouldn't be leaving," Angel said by way of answer. Tension marked his profile and the line of his jaw as he stared ahead at the road, and Giles sensed that most of his thoughts lay elsewhere, with the people he'd left back in L.A.

"Always the superhero." Spike's voice was a drawl of mockery. "Why, the entire city might shut down if Vamp Man here wasn't on the job, pratting across rooftops, swinging his mighty dick at the forces of evil."

"Do you ever shut up?" Angel asked, not taking his gaze from the road but directing the words back over his right shoulder with threadbare patience.
 
"You used to like it when I talked," Spike said in honeyed tones. "Told me my voice was like wings beating poetry against the sky."

Apparently this had been true at least once and remained unaffected in memory, for Angel compressed his lips, hunched his shoulders, and said nothing. Vaguely horrified at the turn of conversation, Giles directed his attention out the passenger side window and dearly wished he'd never crossed the Atlantic.

"Of course," Spike lilted on, oblivious to Giles's pain, "that was a long time ago, in another country; and besides, your wench was dead...and not shagging you that year, as I recall. Something about a favorite piece of horseflesh you rode to ruin. Or was it a maid?"

"Drop it."

"Oh, relax." Spike's manner turned expansive, with a gloss of false geniality that Giles felt might rub thin at any moment. "Rupert here's a man of the world, aren't you, Rupes?" Giles said nothing, but Spike didn't need a doubles partner. "And besides, we're all happy families now. I have Buffy, you've got a date with destiny."

"That's right." Angel's lips curled in amusement and his voice lightened. "You're squiring a slayer now. Not your most convincing story, Spike."

"What could I do--poor girl, heart broken, turning to me in time of need. Like a golden goddess, showing me a better way." He began speaking archly enough, but downshifted between thoughts as if something plainer and perhaps more true lay behind the facile words. At least, he sounded as though he believed them, and Giles began to contrive how he might find time to question Spike later; a souled vampire was a fascinating anomaly in itself, but a vampire without a soul who aided the forces of good? He wondered if it could be their particular bloodline--some mutant strain passed from sire to sire--that beget a disposition toward caritas.

Then again, could just be the climate. California was a land of infinite madness; it might be time to set up a field office here.

Angel chucked a laugh toward the back seat. "William the Bloody getting religion. Now why do I find that so hard to believe. Then again, when it came to the ladies you always were a bit...soft."

A growl unfurled from the depths of the car like that of a leopard sighting prey, and the hairs on the back of Giles's neck rose. Half-consciously he braced himself in his seat in case the car took a sudden swerve.

"Now you're just jealous," Spike said. He'd lowered his voice further, drawing out the words like a dagger along velvet, the subtext of menace palpable enough to make Giles turn his head. "Not having a slayer of your own."

"What would I want with a slayer?" Angel asked, his affect flatlining.

A wash of white light passing through the car illuminated Spike's face for a moment, caught in a smile of malicious satisfaction. "What indeed?"

She left her house burning behind her and ran light-footed across neighboring yards, hopping fences and keeping to the trees until she was blocks away. When she turned and peered back she could see smoke rolling up into the night sky and a chopper circling as it observed the site. Another one chattered closer to where she stood, its spotlight sweeping. Fronds of palm leaves turned brilliant white for a moment, missing her coat sleeve by inches, then moved on.

Destruction jazzed her. Why hadn't she done this before?
 
Striking out on a path for downtown, she evaded searches until she'd reached the historical district, which was looking more historical every day. They'd peeled up the asphalt to uncover the cobblestones; put new facades on the stores; hung ye olde signs everywhere, like the one proclaiming the Ox & Boar Tavern, which had replaced a Quizno's.

It was pretty, if you liked living in the past. Buffy didn't. The past belonged to the dead and was being forced on them by a bunch of bizarrely nostalgic goblins.

Curfew hadn't yet fallen and there were still a few people out and about, some merely getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible; others hanging about like extras waiting for their big song-and-dance number. Coming up on the Alibi Room, Buffy glanced down at the cellar door. The red light above it cast a hell-glow on the bouncer and on a knot of demons who sat on the steps smoking. Her passing ankles caught their attention and they looked up. She saw the recognition in their faces and stopped, leaning over the rail.

"Slayer," said a Dryac with chipped tusks. An Anamovic demon in a natty red suit twitched at this and hunched his shoulders. "I heard you were dead."

"Listening to propaganda will lead you astray."

"Told you," said a parasite demon to his pals. "You owe me twenty bucks."

"You bet on me?" She didn't know quite what to think about that.

"Oh yeah," the parasite demon said. "Long odds, too. Hey, you mind coming inside? Just to settle the bet. Lots of interested parties, but they won't pay up without proof."

"What, so your betting buddies can try to kill me?"

"Aw, they wouldn't do that." At Buffy's raised brows, he backtracked. "Okay, they would. But you can take care of them, slayer. I'll even help--after they pay, though. I got my own debts to cover."

Buffy hopped over the rail and landed in the stairwell outside the bar door to face the demons. "Come on," she said as they huddled with new wariness. "Let's go polish my tarnished rep. But," she paused the parasite demon with a hand to the chest, "only if you tell me your name and buy me a drink."

He looked surprised, rubbery mouth hanging open for a sec. "Yeah, sure. Okay. Vik. Pleased to meetcha."

Past the bouncer and just inside the bar, Buffy surveyed the room. "Willy still run this place?"

"Nah," Vik said. "He moved up in the world. Got himself a new club across town, real class. All the grauts go there. Big players."

"That's right. I heard that."

"They got blackjack, baccarat, you name it." Vik paused in the middle of the room and called out to the bar's inhabitants. "Hey, look who it is. The slayer!" Mutters and growls rose in reply. "That's right. Pay up. Rico. Cheryl. Two-Nose." The last demon shuffled up and handed over a few bills, sniffing at Buffy with four nostrils' worth of disdain.

Vik was making small, tsky sounds as he counted his bills. "Dunno why I bother," he said, half to himself. "Dollar's completely devalued and the exchange rate's for--hey!"

Buffy had yanked loose a handful of bills and brought them over to the bar. "A bottle," she said to the shaggy thing behind the counter. "And none of that green stuff."

They took seats at a table. The appearance of a bottle attracted friends and they were joined again by the Anamovic and Dryac. In the marginally better light of the bar, the Anamovic's red suit showed rips and stains. All of them looked down at the heel, and as Buffy scanned the bar, she saw signs of hard times everywhere. A few more parasite demons were easing out a side exit, making themselves small as if to escape notice, but she noticed them. It might not be safe here for very long. Reporting a slayer's whereabouts to the authorities could earn some lowlife a lot of brownie points, and no one here had loyalty to her.

"So is there a reward out on my head?" she asked her drinking companions. They exchanged glances.

"A respectable one," the Anamovic said in a voice like bitter coffee-grounds. "But you won't see me going out of my way to aid the grauts." He turned his head and spat on the floor, cleaning the name from his mouth.

Buffy rested her arms on the table. "I thought it was a brave new world. A brotherhood of demons, free and equal."

Their stares were frankly amazed now, making her feel very blonde. "You kidding?" Vik said. "No free or equal here, sister, unless you're a greyback."

The Dryac pounded a fist on the table with sudden force, enough to jog their glasses and send the bottle reeling like a bowling pin, saved only by Vik's quick grab. "They carry human guns," he complained. "Roust you from bed, line you up to be counted. Shoot whoever makes noise. One peep--pow!"

"We did as we pleased before," the Anamovic put in. "Stayed out of sight, minded our business, avoided the known patrol routes--"

"Wait, what? Known patrol routes?" God, Buffy thought, had she really become so predictable?

"--and no one bothered us. Now they make us carry identity papers, say, 'Here, come live in a nice building, like a human.' But when you do--"

"Pow!" finished the Dryac, with another sharp bang on the table, followed by a shot of vodka.

Vik sighed. "Didn't know the good old days were that good, till they were gone."

"Maybe it's time to do something about it," Buffy suggested.

"They put my brother Sumeh in a work camp." The Dryac was pouring himself another sloppy shot and his announcement quieted the others. "For getting rowdy, no more. They make us think this vast night is ours, but they trick us." He looked at Buffy morosely. "For getting rowdy," he repeated. "But in front of a lady graut, and she takes offense. The Dryac's manhood frightens her."

"Some women are so delicate," Buffy commiserated. She took the bottle and poured drinks all around, the demons huddling closer with outstretched glasses. "So where's this work camp?"

Drinking was like packing alcohol-soaked cotton balls right into your head. Tara's thoughts were softer and heavy with memories. The candles scattered around the club tables and the jewelry on women's ears and necks made her think of holiday dinners, of the year she'd spent waiting tables at the Holiday Inn banquet room. She'd been remembering her family earlier, the family she'd disowned. She was finally alone among demons. This was the end she'd always feared, and it seemed inevitable, fate catching up with her.

She wound her way toward the table Malivia had pointed out. As she reached it, a Grauth rose and drew a chair out for her. Another Grauth remained seated, next to a human woman in a stunning blue dress. Tara nodded as she was offered a champagne cocktail and tried hard to pretend she was at ease, not gawky, not petrified to her fingertips. The woman turned toward her companion as she accepted a light for her cigarette, then extended her open cigarette case across the intimate table, offering Tara one.

Tara shook her head. "No thank you."

The woman smiled. "I'm Rosa," she said in a friendly way, then lowered her gaze to Tara's throat. "What a lovely necklace."

"I wish you'd stayed in the store." Xander couldn't keep the worried note from his voice and kept sneaking little looks at Anya's tummy. Her coat was buttoned up, so there wasn't much to see, but under those buttons was a button-sized baby, half Harris, half Jenkins. A Henkins. He didn't like to think of her carrying his unborn cub around in front of her, as vulnerable as a jelly doughnut inside the softness of her belly. Maybe he should make her some body armor--find a spare hubcap, even a nice cast-iron frying pan that she could tie around her waist.

"I'm probably safer out here than you are," she said, walking alongside him down the quiet street. "I'm building an extensive clientele in the Grauth community. They all come to me to herb away their funguses and cream off their grotty little rashes. Of course..." She gave a sigh. "Who knows how long that'll last. Oh, Xander. It's all falling to ruin!"

The baby news had crowded aside other considerations for a while, but apparently not everything was rosy in the world of Anya. "What do you mean? What's falling?"

"Everything. This magic ban--it's killing business. The wynarivers nullify anything more complex than a simple sleeping potion. But it doesn't matter."

"It doesn't?"

"A few more weeks and I'd have sold out all my stock. I'm cut off from my suppliers. Not even the Klyxx-ix are teleporting in. They had the most charming line of greeting cards." She sighed again. "Literally charming--with these cunning little pop-up hexes."

"I'm sure things will pick up," he said, though he couldn't imagine how. "You could branch out from the magic stuff, carry lingerie, novelty toys--or hey, maybe you could use your contacts with all those Grauth ladies and finagle yourself some new suppliers."

Anya stopped walking in front of a ranch-style house fenced by shrubbery, forcing him to halt with her. "I don't understand."

"Well, the trade routes are open again between here and L.A." The look on her face made his shoulders hunch toward his ears. He tried on a weak smile. "Didn't I mention that?"

"Oh my god! When were you going to tell me? Next time the sun rose? Or maybe when little Debbie here was born and squalling for food?"

"Little Debbie? Anya, that's a snackfood, not a baby name. Do you want to doom her to a childhood of playground taunting? Being pelted with cupcakes: not nearly as much fun as it sounds."

"Oh," she said, momentarily distracted. "That would be cruel. I suppose we could go with my second choice, Berkhildr."

"Debbie it is, then."

Anya began walking again. "I can't believe you knew about a reopening of trade and didn't tell me. You know my feelings about commerce."

"I told you Spike went on a mission."

"What's Spike got to do with this?"

"He went to L.A. to get Angel."

"Oh my god, Xander!" She stopped again on a dime to goggle at him; he was starting to get dizzy.

"What?!"

"He could have picked me something up!"

"Anya, he's trying to bring back help. Asking him to bring back a quart of milk wasn't the first thing on our minds."

"You're making light of my vocation again."

"But in a loving and supportive tone of voice." He laid a hand on her shoulder and turned her gently back in the direction they'd been heading; once more she began walking, once more he fell into step.

"I suppose I have to forgive you for not informing me right away. We did get caught up in our mutual passion."

"Thank you."

"I'll talk to Lady Elked first thing tomorrow." Anya's vision was focused inward on a web of capitalism. "I'm sure she'll know someone influential on the supply side. I intend to have a few sharp words with Omo too. He should have bee--"

"The lights are off." Xander stood at the end of his front walk and studied the darkened windows of his house. "They must be asleep already."

"We could come back another time," Anya offered, with only a touch of reluctance. She got on well with his parents, sharing their political and economic views to a disturbing degree, offering them advice on no-load mutual funds, presenting them with inedible bundt cakes on every visit. She had the mix of blunt speech and strained good manners that distinguished her as country club material. She also thought his father's jokes were funny.

"I want to get you that heating pad. It'll be good for your back. And I think mom has some extra appliances you could use."

"That would be nice," Anya admitted as they headed up the walk. "I've been regretting my decision not to install a kitchen in the Magic Box. Not to mention that sauna Buffy wanted. If only I'd known a demon invasion was coming. Damn Willow."

"Now, now."

Xander knocked on the front door. It swung open under his knuckles. He felt the proverbial chill climb up his spine, an itsy-bitsy spider that raised every hair along its path. "No," he said, trying to ignore what he'd already seen--the cracked window pane, the broken lock, the dirty footsteps on the porch. He shoved inside and nearly tripped on the hallway runner, which was bunched up by the bottom of the stairs. "Mom!" he yelled. "Dad!"

"Mr. and Mrs. Harris?" Anya called, following him in.

He ran through every room, taking in the overturned furniture, the empty spots where things had gone missing--a chair not where it should be, a mirror no longer hanging on the wall. Bewildered, he searched downstairs and upstairs, even the basement where his old bed remained, covered in storage boxes. Returning to the kitchen he pulled open the drawers with careless force until half of them were hanging crazily on their runners.

"Xander." Anya hovered by his side. "I don't think your parents would be in there." She sounded genuinely concerned for his sanity, and he clenched his hands and sought calm, reminding himself that she said the most annoying things at the worst possible times not because she was a bad person but because she was upset, and then again, maybe in some miswired, demony part of her brain she'd calculated the odds that his parents had been shrunken down into tiny people who might live in their own cupboards and was sincerely rejecting the idea.

Any reassurance was good reassurance.

"I gave my mom a gun. It's not here. I think some of their clothes are missing--there's furniture gone too."

"So they might have just moved."

He turned his head and stared darkly at her, watched her pale white throat swallow. "Nobody just moves anymore."

"It wouldn't be the camps. They wouldn't let them take furniture."

And that was good news, wasn't it. Not the camps. Something to be happy about. With an uprushing flare of rage, he swung around and kicked a chair, sending it flying across the room into a cabinet.

"So they're in the ghettos," he said, and gave a little laugh of less than zero humor. He stared at his mother's kitchen floor from a long, long way away. She'd always wanted to replace that tile. At the sound of his name beating against his ear, he roused himself. "She always wanted to replace that tile." It was the only thought that came out.

"An officer's life isn't an easy one," Tara's companion confided. He had an elegant face with heavy eyelids and an intricate pattern of ridges and whorls bordering the sides, as if someone had embroidered him at birth.

"No?" She tried to hit a sympathetic note.

"We carry out the orders of our superiors and gamble with the lives of our subordinates. Responsibility and blame lie equally at our feet--they hound us from the cradle of destiny to the lonely despair of the deathbed." He drew up a deep sigh and his tone of sorrow did not alter in the slightest as he continued: "And the pay--the pay is far less than you would expect."

"Oh?"

"Even for one of my rank, barely enough to keep one's tailor properly attired. By Sytos, if I didn't have family money, I'd have had to go into banking."

Rosa tinkled a laugh that drew the Grauth's attention. "Now, Colonel Sordicov, I can't imagine you anything but a soldier."

"Very kind, m'dear. I must admit, I've a family tradition to uphold. Fa and grandfa were both war heroes, you know. Took only a half-bottle and they'd be baring their wounds at the dinner table. Unmentionable places, most of them. I almost did 'em one better, though. Came damned close to losing the Sordicov family jewels in a rebel incident a while back."

"Damned rebels," the other Grauth said with feeling.

Tara darted a nervous glance at Rosa. Though she didn't know the woman at all, humanity was a bond that needed no words, or so she thought. But Rosa was gazing raptly at him, one hand resting on his arm. "It's a shame that a few unhappy souls have to ruin it for the rest of us," she said. "You've done so much for our people."

Rosa's hand slipped off the Grauth's arm and moved smoothly to pick up a drink. She met Tara's eyes now and her ruby-red lips carved up dimples as if she'd simply passed a social remark no more offensive than speculation on the weather. Tara felt something sharp and icy lodge beneath her ribs.

"Quite," Sordicov said, raising his drink to the sentiment in a lazy toast. "But then there's lovely gals like you, extending the hand of friendship, what?" He patted Tara's shoulder and she shied away, disguising her movement by reaching for her own drink. She downed it in three gulps and let a waiter refill it.

"And why should we not?" Rosa asked in a sweet tone. "We extend our hands and you fill them with jewels."

Both Grauths threw back their heads and laughed uproariously. With blurred eyes and shaky fingers Tara found her glass and held it tight, wanting to drink more but afraid she'd make herself sick if she did.

"Yes, by Sytos," Sordicov said, laughter finally settling. "Well, I'd have little to offer in that area if it weren't for my good friend Aurelius. Won't hear a bad word about the man. Changed my whole opinion of vampires."

Tara squeaked a breath. "You--you know Spi--Captain Aurelius?"

Sordicov smiled at her, then spread his smile around the table. "See how the birds fluff the feathers and trill when the fellow's name is mentioned? A man might as well toss his hat in the ring with competition like that."
 
"I don't think you and Pyit need worry," Rosa said. "The captain is like all vampires--sweet charm on the outside, cold inside."

"You know him too." Confusion mingling with champagne, Tara stared across the candle-lit table at Rosa. She didn't know what to think. Was this coincidence, was she supposed to know something she didn't? A code word, a secret hand signal?

But Rosa said, "Everyone knows William," in a dismissive way, then got up to dance with Pyit, leaving Tara alone with her ignorance, her escort, and a cocktail that might have been her fourth or her fifth. Keeping count wasn't important, but the glass was still half full. She fixed that.

Buffy knew all the words for what she was feeling. Like Eskimos describing snow, she could classify anger and fury and rage; anger was the flimsiest; you could be angry at friends and come back from that okay. Fury she directed at people who'd wronged her, at Fate when it sucker-punched her, at the whims of monsters. But rage was wild and deep and tasted like forever. It was fuel, it was what kept her going, and it was ordinary. She carried it around with her every day, beneath the cold layers of herself, and usually she tried to keep it trapped down there, like something chained in the basement. When Angel used to talk to her about his demon, how hard he had to work to control it, she recognized herself. She was the reflection he didn't have.

She couldn't remember if she'd ever told him that or not. A lot of their conversations had been almost man-to-man, both of them saying only the minimum necessary words to get by, both of them holding onto their secrets as long as possible, until emotions blew loose and spilled out.

"That's it," the Dryac said, as they settled side by side on their bellies, peering through the brush that lined the ridge as they scoped out the camp below. "The west barracks are for humans; the east for our kind."

"So, uh, what now?" Vik asked.

Further down, the Anamovic shifted and sighed, with animosity or impatience. "Nothing now. Guards on the watchtowers, lights and dogs and guns. I don't even know why--"

Buffy flipped herself over the ridge as if performing a handstand off a horse and took off down the slope in a zig-zagging run. Behind her she heard bewildered voices chiming and overlapping. "What is she doing?" and "Crazy slayer!" Then the sounds of them scrambling to catch up. And it was crazy, no question. The slope was bare of trees and the klieg on the nearest watchtower was sweeping its beam along the ground towards her like the arc of a lighthouse. When it was a few yards away she stopped and dropped flat behind a rock, letting her body mimic its shadow; a collection of curses and thuds behind her indicated the others were copying her move. Then the beam passed and she jumped to her feet and began running again.

"This is madness," Vik huffed, but an upbeat note carried the words aloft, and the others began to laugh and then hoot and bellow. Which wasn't at all good, but no problem, she could switch plans midstream, if you could even call this a plan, so she let them be the distraction she needed to take the watchtower, let them rattle the fence and try to break through the mesh as she leapt straight off the ground, caught hold of a beam, and swung herself up. The tower was runged like a jungle gym; she didn't even need the ladder that zippered up the camp-facing side. Scaling its height reminded her of the night she'd raced to save Dawn on Glory's tower, and she sped up, boot soles finding traction in unlikely places.

She was trying to reach the top before any alarm was sounded, but didn't make it; its whoop began to rise and fall as she broke the surface of the platform. Heads turned and shouts rang out. Buffy kicked a machine gun from a guard's hand and sent it flying over the edge toward the ground, where she hoped one of the demons would be savvy enough to grab it. The guard went flying a moment later, off the toe of her boot, following his weapon. The remaining guard shoved himself at her, opting for hand-to-hand combat that she would have advised him against, if he'd thought to ask. Dumb demon.

A few swipes and grunts and then he was keeling sideways under her hands, looking outraged as he died. She tugged the gun from his grip, took quick stock of it, then turned, raised it across the camp, and began to fire at the soldiers running toward the fence. Some fell under her first burst; the rest scattered. Pausing, she looked around the platform: two chairs at a rickety table; bread, bottle, slab of cheese; cigarettes and lighter; coils of rope; toolbox and oil can--probably for keeping the lamp or generator running. Handy, she thought.

Two minutes later a rope was flung over the edge of the platform and a body bounced down on its length, away from flames that were billowing out to consume the structure. Bullets spat at the figure, setting it swinging. Meanwhile, Buffy spider-dropped down the other side on her own rope, out of sight of the soldiers. She made it to the ground and kicked in the door of the guardhouse that formed the base of the tower. It was empty, but through the opposite door lay the camp. As she was gearing up with deep breaths to run through it, a clatter came from behind her. She spun and barely kept from shooting Vik, who raised both hands in eager pacifism, though he held a gun of his own now.

"Just us," he said to her as the Anamovic lurched into view behind him, a bleeding bullet hole in one shoulder. Chunks of burning wood began to drop from the ceiling above them. Just us, she thought. That was actually funny. Funny, the kind of creatures who were starting to fit into her "just us" category these days. "The other one's dead," Vik added. "The Dryac."

"We're not," she pointed out. She geared herself up a second time, more deep, buoying breaths. "Ready?" She didn't say for what and they didn't ask, but nodded and followed when she burst through the door into the camp.

Bursting like that propelled her forward into a muddy field and she had only a second to orient herself before grey faces swung her way in startlement. Then she fired, and ran, and fired some more. Grauths went down, others stayed up, bullets went by her. One air-kissed her left ear, another smacked her in the thigh, and suddenly her head was clear with shock and the fight had turned serious, deadly, better than sex. She was still running and rolling; on one roll she came up muddier than she'd ever been in her life and slammed her gun up under a Grauth's jaw, breaking it with a smack. She pulled his gun loose as he fell and leapt over him with unstoppable momentum.

The west barracks were close, one long windowless building ahead, another to her left. She didn't see any guards around them, so nothing kept her from running up the nearest set of steps and breaking in the door. Inside, dim lights showed two facing rows of bunks with a narrow walkway down the middle. People were sitting up in confusion, faces turned toward her entrance, their voices cluttering together in fearful murmurs.

"Get up!" she said urgently. For another moment they remained frozen and gaping as her nerves twisted higher, and then people began scrambling, bodies streaming by her on either side out the door. "Here," she said, blocking the first man who looked alert and competent. She pushed one of the guns into his hand. "Get them through the front gate. There's an entrance to the tunnels at the top of the ridge, near the electrical pylon."

He nodded and shouted for the others to follow him, and they swarmed. Buffy allowed herself a moment's pause to check her bloody thigh, then looked up. Above her between two lights was a ceiling vent holding a fan; she climbed wincingly toward it using a bed for a ladder, pushed the fan loose, and climbed through onto the roof. It was corrugated metal, not much of a slope, and she was able to take up a sniper position on her side. This was growing more familiar every time she did it. Much longer living the rebel life and she'd have to get herself a bandanna and a tattoo and a new name. Sarah Connor, maybe.

"Hasta la vista, baby," she murmured to a Grauth taking aim on a running woman. She fired; he didn't. Humans, one. Grauth, zero.

Standing next to Tara in the ladies' lounge, Rosa was a presence of perfume and satin, freshening her lipstick. Tara stole glimpses in the mirror, resenting the other woman's easy beauty and the treason it covered, and trying not to show her feelings. Further down the counter a Grauth woman touched up her wig and then snapped her purse shut, darting a spiteful glance at them as she left. Rosa watched her go in the mirror and turned to Tara as the door swung shut behind her.

"Are you all right?" She touched Tara's shoulder, the curve of her fingers a soft question mark.

Drawing away, Tara nodded. "I'm fine." Uncertainty made her voice clipped and impolite.

"It's hard at first."

Tara swallowed down acrid bubbles of champagne, hating the kindness of Rosa's eyes. "At first?" she repeated. She felt stiff, unyielding, but the words came out in a waver.

"Pretending. Not screaming when they touch you."

The recognition of a shared truth seized Tara's gut. "Are you--did Spike send you?"

A head shake. "He didn't mention you'd be here. He pointed you out though, at the Winter Ball, during your last song. He said you were a friend."

"He said that?" The strange turns of fate hit her with terrible suddenness and tears pricked her eyes.

Rosa smiled slightly and imparted another layer of meaning with her direct gaze. "A friend of ours, he said."

"Oh. Oh, yes. I'm that, that kind of friend." Relief at having caught some part of the code at last made her almost giddy and she blinked away her absurd tears.

"Did he place you at the club?"

"No. I'm not even sure he knows I'm here." She frowned. "Did he...place you?" She wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but the sound of it disturbed her. Rosa's job description was much clearer and more obvious than her own.

"Yes. Yes and no. I'd be here anyway. He just makes my time here more useful." There was an edge to her voice for a moment, and something Tara recognized as resignation.

It seemed safe enough to confess, "I don't know what I'm doing here. I was supposed to be at the Officer's Club by now. I was just supposed to be singing." Rosa laughed at this, and it sunk in for the first time how unlikely that was. "I mean, singing and listening for intel?" The word was too strange for her to say without self-consciousness.

"There's information to be learned." Rosa glanced at the lounge door, then back at Tara. "We'll talk later, where it's safer. I can help."

Except it wasn't just singing and listening, and Tara wasn't sure any help would be enough. "I don't know if I can do this."

"Drinking is good," Rosa said matter of factly. She removed a compact from her clutch bag and handed it to Tara. "This is better."

Bemused, she took the compact, thinking at first this was another critique of her washed-out appearance. But inside the case there was loose black powder that looked nothing like make-up. Rosa licked a fingertip, laid it in the powder for a moment, and then licked her finger clean again.

"I don't understand," Tara said.

An old smile crossed Rosa's young face. "Like I said, nina. I can help."

"She was young, she was pure, she was new, she was nice--she was fair, she was sweet seventeen! He was old, he was vile, and no stranger to vice--he was base, he was bad, he was mean--"

Giles pressed fingers to one temple where his pulse was throbbing and tried to massage away his impulse to whip around and shove a stake through Spike's ribs. Angel seemed even closer to snapping; Giles thought he heard the steering wheel creak in his tightening grip between snatches of Spike's off-key singing. Pressured by Angel's foot, the car was accelerating, speed conveying anger without a word. But he had a word.

"Spike!"

"--and he said as he hastened to put out the cat--"

At some other time, in a pub, were he rat-arsed drunk, Giles might almost have been charmed. The vampire had the rollicking, good-natured tone of someone who could amuse himself with a piece of string, and he was so flamboyantly, flag-on-your-sleeve British that he stirred a pang of homesickness under Giles's vest.

"Do you mind?" he said aloud, and then let his voice taper off, speaking more to himself: "Some of us are trying to retain the few scraps of sanity we woke with this morning."

As Giles had hoped, the temptation to ridicule was sufficient to divert Spike from song. "Don't know how much you've got left," he said, "but you'd better hope Angel Heart here's got more. Nasty blighter when he loses his soul, isn't that right, o sire of mine?"

"I haven't lost my soul yet, Spike, but when I do, you'll be the first to know."

A chuckle drifted forward. "God, I can't wait till we hit Sunnydale--be like a very special episode of 'This Is Your Life'."

Giles glanced across the seat at Angel's stoic profile. It was clear to Giles that the other vampire had sensed the same pattern to Spike's remarks that he had; during the trip, the blond nuisance in the back seat had taken great pleasure in needling them both, making them doubt themselves and wonder what surprises their amnesia might hide. Already taciturn, Angel had only grown more so as time passed. But it was impossible to ignore Spike's provocations completely. He was like a child, a rambunctious five-year old. Giles was surprised he hadn't yet begun kicking the seat.

"You know," Giles said. "We've been theorizing that the memory spell affects everyone outside the town--this, er, Sunnydale."

Shifting sounds came from the back seat. "Yeah?"

"Why weren't you affected when you left?" He slid the question out smoothly, a rapier aimed only with blind suspicion; there might not be anything to hit, but Giles wasn't yet convinced of Spike's trustworthiness.

"No idea. Might be immune."

Not an unreasonable reply. Spells could work a number of ways. Angel, looking over, seemed interested in the question. "It does make sense," Giles conceded, working it out in his mind. "If deliveries are passing in and out of the barrier, the drivers would need to remember--well, the point of their journey, for one thing. It will be interesting to see if we retain our own memories when we leave again."

"Not especially interesting if you don't remember," Spike pointed out.

"Er, yes."

The shifting sounds from the back had been replaced with the crinkling noises of cellophane immediately recognizable to any ex-smoker. Angel stiffened, a movement like the infinitesimal ripple of a mountain before an avalanche crashes down on someone's unsuspecting head.

"You light that and I make you eat the entire pack."

"Give us a rest stop then." Spike's voice held a tense, nicotine-deprived edge.

"You can wait."

"You desperately need a vice." Frustration shaded into coldness now, a drawl that held nothing of Spike's previous humor.

"How about homicide?"

"Berk."

"Jackass."

Giles bit his tongue and stared out the window. A green sign loomed up in the headlights and then was swallowed from view. Sunnydale - 20 Miles, it said. For one brief moment it caught his attention and he opened his mouth to speak, but then the words dimmed, the thought forming in his mind came apart like smoke, and the moment was gone.

"Peasant."

"Mama's boy."

Giles sighed.

It was amazing how much damage you could do with a single rifle and a secure firing position, especially when your enemy was disorganized and overrun by a desperate crowd. Buffy had watched a score of Grauth soldiers fall under a tide of people willing to tear apart anything in their way. They'd made the gate, joined by the human residents of two more liberated barracks, and an equal number of demons of all races. The demons weren't as cohesive in their freedom, many of them scattering as soon as they were freed, but they did more damage.

Some of the damage was to humans, but Buffy couldn't cover everything. She'd jumped from the roof and back into the fray when she ran out of bullets, and slayed a few demons who didn't embrace the spirit of alliance. Bodies lay all around, human and Grauth and parts unknown. She ran into Vik near the corner of a bunkhouse.

"Is everyone out?" she asked.

"We've cleared the camp," the parasite demon said. "But the greybacks gotta have backup on the way." He cocked his head skyward and she heard what he'd heard, the beat of choppers approaching. "Time to vamoose."

They ran toward the gate together, the sound of helicopters getting louder along with trucks and possibly tanks. "If we had a way to blow the tunnel entrance," Buffy plotted aloud, "they'd have a hard time following us."

"Grauts hate tunnels," Vik said. "Makes 'em puke. Sensitive little pugs. Hey, hold up." Stopping short of the gate entrance, he snagged a fresh gun from a dead Grauth. "Ammo," he said with a cheerful grin and then coughed his bloodied teeth out of his head and fell dead at her feet. Buffy had the weapon up again immediately to take out the shooter. After that there was nothing left to do but keep running.

She made it to the tunnel entrance and found a handful of people still crowding around it. They looked frayed and freaked out and became even more panicky when she appeared. And then one of them, a girl, asked, "Are you the slayer?"

For a second, Buffy felt the same unguarded shock that Clark Kent might feel after dropping his glasses. "Yes," she said. "Slayer, me." God, that was sad. "You, dead--if you don't get into that tunnel."

Herding them forward, she tried not to feel her luck running out, the enemy closing in. Escape demanded total focus. But as she was pulling the grate shut behind her, she heard a groan in the nearby brush and hesitated. "Hello?" she called, anxiety kicking her under the ribs.

"Here," someone said weakly.

Buffy stepped back out of the tunnel, hand tightening on her gun, and moved toward the bushes, where she could now see a pair of stretched, immobile legs. Someone was sitting against a tree, face turned away. She saw shabby pants first, then two gnarled hands covered in blood, folded together over a stained shirt.

When the figure rolled its head her way, she saw it was the Dryac from the bar, tusks hanging low from slack face muscles. "Oh, hey," she said warily. "Vik said you were dead."

"You believe everything from a demon's mouth?"

"Point." She knelt next to him and examined his wound. He growled when she tried to push his hands away. "Let me see." He sighed and submitted to her attention, his blood warm and jam-like under her fingers. "Did you find your brother?"

"I find him, we're escaping, I'm shot--pow! He goes on."

"He just left you?"

The Dryac sighed, a huge sigh, a sigh that could have huffed a house down, an almost Russian sigh. "He's a shmuck."

"Family's like that," Buffy said, tugging at a beefy arm. "C'mon."

"Go." He lifted one paw and waved his nippers negligently. "I die here alone now. Forgotten like a--"

She propelled him to his feet and cut the mournful dying scene short. "Shut up and move."

They lumbered into the tunnel in time to avoid being seen and Buffy drew the grate closed on the tunnel's entrance, hating its inadequacy and not at all sure that the prospect of vomiting was a strong enough deterrent for the Grauth soldiers on their heels. From up ahead, she could hear the splashing feet of the escaped prisoners. Deja vu. All her dreams took place in tunnels these days.

"They'll follow us," the Dryac noted.

"Probably." Buffy kept moving and kept glancing around, hoping to spot an idea somewhere in the vicinity. The only light came from grated manholes above them. At the next one a half dozen men were waiting.

"Slayer," one said with a nod. "We need to make a barricade."

Startled, Buffy hesitated a moment, then shrugged out from under the Dryac's arm. "Here." She pushed him at a few of the men. "Get him someplace safe." She noticed their exchange of looks and the squeamish way they held him upright. "He helped free you," she told them. "Get over it."

"I'm an engineer," the first man said as the others left. "This whole stretch of tunnel was built at the turn of the century. There's earthquake and flood damage--the mortar's weak." He traced his finger along a crack that separated the bricks in a long, jagged line. "If we can find something to use as a crowbar--"

"Stand back," Buffy said. The remaining men glanced among themselves, then moved away. She gauged the wall carefully--no good putting full force into her kick just to break a heel. That'd be embarrassing. When she'd taken her best guess, she twisted sideways on one foot and slammed a boot into the bricks. It took a few more kicks before the wall really started to crumble, but the effect was even better than she'd hoped.

"It's caving in!" one of the men warned her. Hands pulled her away as the tunnel sides collapsed and a cascade of bricks and earth fell from above. They were left in complete darkness, the air around them heavy with dust. A few coughs broke the settling silence.

"Well," Buffy said. "I think that worked."

"This doesn't look promising," Angel said, gazing at the flat empty road ahead of them. The car idled on the roadside, doors open, engine purring to itself. Crickets chirped from the depths of the grass.

Spike was standing in the middle of the motorway and turning in a circle, frowning at local landmarks. Broken white lines stretched away into the darkness in either direction. His hair was no less white and stuck up like a rabbit's fur, while his jumper curled away from his neck in a heavy droop under the swish corduroy jacket. Looking lost made him appear even younger, and Giles had to remind himself not to take vampires at face value.

Turning on his heel again, Spike stared head cocked at the gas station to their right, and Giles followed his gaze. With its vintage architecture and tiny pumps, it should have been abandoned decades ago, but the adverts, neon, and general tidiness said that someone was keeping it alive. Around them California pines nodded, but just down the road they thinned into low, rocky hills backing a flat desert.

"This is it," Spike said, his face and tone firming now. "Definitely."

It was hard to credit the sudden certainty. "Are you sure?" Giles asked, injecting warning into his tone. "If I use the spell ingredients, and this isn't the place--"

"Here." Spike walked over to the verge, knelt, and brushed something off from the dust. Angel and Giles came up behind him and looked down over his shoulders. It was a road sign that had fallen to the ground, painted with what seemed to be a sun. "Welcome to..." it said, but where it welcomed travelers to remained a mysterious blank.

"This is useless," Angel said and walked off a few paces. "There's nothing here."

"That's what I'm telling you." Impatience had a way of rounding Spike's words into an almost cultured contempt. "Town starts here," he nodded toward the trees, "right where the nothing does."

"We've been up and down this road three times, Spike. There's nothing out there but rocks and sand." Anger was starting to escape around the edges of Angel's control.

"I'm telling you--"

"All right," Giles broke in, keen to derail another argument before it got started. "This may be part of the magic's design, to deter discovery. Which would answer the question of how an entire town could be in effect wiped off the map."

"Yeah." Spike spared Angel a brief, superior look, as if he'd received corroborating testimony in a court case, then gave more businesslike attention to the road. "Barrier's got to be 'round here somewhere." He stretched a hand out and patted the air in front of him, obviously trying to feel it out, face showing effort. Giles rolled his eyes.

"We've just driven through it," he reminded the vampire, withholding the "you stupid berk" he wanted to suffix onto his comment.

"Oh, right."

"But if the sign was accurately placed..." Giles knelt where Spike had and uncovered the post holes in the ground. "The barrier should run along here." His fingers traced a rough line through the dirt and grass toward the edge of the road. Though he'd scorned Spike's own attempt, he surreptitiously let his hand linger a moment and tried to attune himself to any trace energies.

"Well, then. What are we waiting for? Let's not stand here all night ducking the fog and jiggling our plums. Chop chop."

Giles rose to his feet without hurrying and looked at Spike askance. "The spell bag is in the car." When Spike loped off to fetch, Angel allowed himself to move nearer again. They exchanged a glance. "It's like slapstick," Giles observed, taking off his glasses and running a hand through his hair. "With the sound turned up too high."

"He doesn't grow on you," Angel informed him in the voice of experience.

"Nor did Benny Hill." Giles paused. "Actually, the similarities are rather striking." He put his glasses back on and focused on Angel. It seemed a moment inviting candor, some recognition of forged bonds. "I have, however, enjoyed the opportunity to meet and work with you--though perhaps enjoyed is, is not the word--" He was turning self-conscious under Angel's unwavering gaze. "But to discover now, so late in my career as a watcher, a vampire with a soul--" Another drawn breath. "I must admit it's inspiring. It challenges all our preconceptions. I'd even go so far as to say--"

"Here," Spike said, thrusting the bag at Giles, forcing him to take it before it fell.

"Thank you," Giles replied with restraint, as he imagined cuffing the vampire's head like one would a puppy. It took him less than a minute to lay out the ingredients he'd prepared and draw a configuring line across the road--they'd best drive in, after all. The vampires flanked him like a pair of lions, watching with detached interest.

As the final of several steps, Giles took a pinch of powder from a small brown bag and tossed it "Sis modo dissolutum. Exposco validum scutum." For a moment nothing happened.

Spike made a sound of derision. "Well, that's a--"

The air in front of them flared brilliantly as if a match had been touched to oiled paper, burning out from where Giles had cast the powder to reveal an entirely different landscape than the one they'd driven through previously. Through the hole in the barrier they could see the continuation of trees, their branches curving down to meet in an arcade of velvety darkness that narrowed with distance. The white lines of the road seemed to be directing them toward a precise spot, an end not yet known. The optical effect of forest against false desert was disorienting, but confirmed everything Spike had said. Giles let out a breath he hadn't been aware of holding.

"Home, sweet hell." Spike got back in the car. Angel and Giles followed suit with less sureness. Once in, Giles belted himself up with a sense of apprehension, feeling as if they might lift off the ground at any moment.

Angel let the car roll ahead slowly, but Giles braced himself as they drove through the barrier, readying himself for--and even as he thought it, was groping to name his fears and nebulous expectations, the shape of his world dissolved and reformed and shoved seven years' worth of forgotten memories into his head.

The car accelerated, swerved, and screeched to a halt diagonally across two lanes. Angel got out and stumbled a few feet away, back to them, head down, hands to his face.

Giles breathed. In and out was the trick. Buffy, he thought and then blurted it aloud as it hit like an aftershock. "Buffy...dear god."

"Remembrance breaks like the dawn," Spike said, with no real sympathy. "Must be a bit of a--"

An arm drove into the car and ripped the vampire out, pulling him right over the seat. After taking a moment to collect himself, Giles got out of the car on his own side and walked around. Angel had Spike half on the asphalt, shirt fisted in one hand, and was pummeling him in the face again and again. Giles wasn't especially inclined to interrupt, but his own anger paled against that display, and as memories continued to join up with present events in puzzle-piece clicks, the inevitable realization of Spike's actions struck him.

"Angel," he said sharply, and the vampire's head whipped around to reveal game face.

Spike took advantage of the distraction to grab his opponent in a delicate place that leveled the odds. Roaring, he tossed Angel to the ground and got in a few good kicks before the older vampire rose again. They faced off with snarls.

"Enough!" Giles said. His tone seemed to surprise them; two heads turned as the vampires gave him the identical, measuring expressions of predators. "Just...enough."

His follow-up may have been weak, but as he circled back around the car he could see their postures shift into grudging truce, and they returned to join him, simmering like teenage boys chastised by a father, their presence and animosity bringing into sharp recollection every fight, every death, every tragedy, every loss that Giles had ever suffered on the Hellmouth.

Sliding in next to him in the front seat, Angel cast a look his way, one of those assessing looks he practiced when maneuvering around other people's grief, a look shadowed in self-awareness and history and guilt. Not enough guilt, though. Never enough.

"Giles," he began.

"Drive," Giles said with a new harshness. Five minutes new. Five years old.

The bird watching over the Peacock Club door had lost feathers from its tail, and half the letters in the sign had burned out, leaving its message lopsided and obscene. On the wet ground, neon lay mirrored in a black puddle, legible until Willow's footstep disturbed the water. The club door was green, and the bouncer let her through with a nod. She could hear Tara singing as soon as she entered, high notes winding back to her through the curtains. Flaming torches ensconced on the walls led Willow forward until she reached the end of the hallway. A mirror hung in front of her and she smoothed her hair, trying to brush off the raindrops.

"I lost my hat," she observed to herself with a touch of anxiety, then glanced down at a table where several hats had been laid out for selection; a crooked witch's hat, a baseball cap, a naval tricorn, and a sombrero. She put on the witch's hat and tried for several moments to straighten the peak, but it was hopeless. Turning away from the mirror she noticed that the hall stretched in both directions and each way looked exactly the same: the same flocked wallpaper, red velvet on a white background; the same torches; the same dark red carpet runner. All the doors were closed. She had to choose a direction, but nothing gave a hint of which way was better.

"Tara," she called. "Tara, honey?"

When she heard a rise in the singing, she moved toward it. Several steps down the hall it began to grow darker, so she took a torch from the wall to light her way. The further she went, the less familiar the club looked. The fancy whorehouse wallpaper faded into tatters, then gave way to bare wood. The hall had become a mining tunnel, the carpet runner a set of tracks. Around her, embedded in the walls, chunks of green rock glowed. Stopping, she worked one loose and held it up to her face for a moment, staring into its heart. Sweat was breaking out on her temples; her breath coming in short gasps.

"Willow!"

Letting the rock fall, Willow staggered down the tunnel, feet catching in the ties. "Tara!" Fear crushed her chest. She'd allowed herself to be weakened and distracted and Tara needed her now, but she was tripping and sprawling on the ground, her torch rolling away, dropping into a crevasse. Willow got to her hands and knees and pulled herself forward, wooden ties splintering in her hands--and then the world shifted and realigned itself and she realized she was climbing a ladder, up out of a hole, trying to reach the top where Tara waited. They were all waiting on her. For one moment she saw a hand stretching down and heard her lover's voice, but when she looked up again to take hold, the hand was gone.

It took all her strength to pull herself to the lip of the hole and crawl out, and as she drew eye-level to people's feet and ankles they began to walk away. "Wait," she said. "I'm ready!" She made it to her feet. "I'm prepared," she assured them. "I have my notes!" Somehow, though, her notes weren't in her pockets or under her hat, and removing her hat might have been a mistake because the wind tore it from her hands, whirling it past her friends and into the widening portal like a witch into a tornado, taking all her powers with it.

"No!" she cried. "You can't do this without me!"

But her friends had lined up in fighting stance with their backs to her, swords raised. Only Tara took a moment to glance over her shoulder. She smiled reassuringly, face so lit with eagerness it almost brought Willow relief. "It'll be okay," Tara told her. "We have the -----." Her lips formed a silent word that Willow make out.

"I can't--I can't hear you."

Still smiling, Tara turned away, just as the portal blew open in a wave of light--

"No!"

At the touch to her shoulder, Willow came awake. Jonathan was retracting his hand as if he'd just awakened an unfed dog and eyeing her with nervous respect.

"You were dreaming," he said as she tried to collect her wits. "And talking. I figured I should wake you. Even if it's just from one nightmare to another."

Jonathan had three tonal settings: edgy bitterness, confusion, and a subdued resignation that he was expressing now. In most other people this would have been tiresome, but he tickled a liking out of her the way a cynical comedian might, Woody Allen with weltschmerz, and she managed a smile now.

"Thanks. This is the better nightmare." As she was straightening and stretching, she knocked the wynariver model aside a few inches with her wrist. Annoyed, she picked it up and turned it over a few times, itching to throw it across the room.

"How's it coming?" Jonathan asked, gaze moving across the components scattered on the table top. Something in his question vaguely registered on her--a note of genuine interest, like that of a fellow doctor asking about a case.

"If I were designing a paperweight? Really well."

"You know," he began diffidently. "If you want, I could--"

"Some help here!"

Their heads snapped around at the urgency of Buffy's hail and Willow stood up fast, trying for one disorienting moment to curl her hand around a spell in case they were under attack. But she came up empty. Luckily it wasn't an attack; the people flooding into the Initiative behind Buffy had no weapons and looked too ragged to fight.

Buffy helped a wounded demon to a seat while Willow and Jonathan gawped. "We need food and blankets," she said, an imperative that got them moving.

"What's going on?" Dawn asked, coming up with sleep-wrecked hair but a wide-awake face. Kethas and the other kids trailed up next to her, staring at the swelling crowd.

"Refugees from a work camp--and maybe some recruits." Buffy left the Dryac slumping on a crate and gave her sister a moment's full attention. "I need you to help me sort them out," she said. Dawn looked amazed for about half a second and then nodded. "We'll need to triage the wounded, draft the able ones to help us, set up sleeping areas--" The list of tasks was dizzying and daunting, and she swept a gaze across the room, wondering if she was forgetting anything important.

Dawn squeezed her arm with more sisterly camaraderie than she'd shown in weeks. "So we need to be bossy and redecorate. No problem." She gathered Kethas, Dor, and Marcos around her and began cracking out orders. "See if there are any doctors," Buffy heard her say to Dor.

Not letting herself rest--if she did, she'd never get up again--Buffy took an armful of blankets and began moving through the crowd, handing them out to the needier looking refugees. Some were barely dressed and blue around the lips, their feet muddy from the tunnels. When she ran out of blankets, she found more; it was one thing the Army'd left behind in fine supply. Across the room, Willow and Dawn were arranging the wounded in rows on the work-out mats, while Jonathan unboxed what medical supplies they had. The kids were passing out food. It looked like Thanksgiving in a homeless shelter.

"Get your disgusting demon stench away from me," someone said angrily from nearby.

"Humans have such sensitive noses. Fragile too, I hear."

Buffy turned to see a man squaring off against a red-skinned demon. Before she could break in, they launched themselves at each other, grappling and cursing. She dropped her blankets and made a limping leap, got one hand in the man's collar and pulled him back, and saw the demon reel away with equal force, not his own, to end up dangling from a familiar hand.

"Angel," she said. Her grip loosened and the man she'd been holding freed himself and edged off.

"Buffy."

He sounded the way she felt; surprised not by the meeting, but by the sight of her. Through his eyes she became conscious of the filth and blood on her clothes; his own were impeccable, the height of L.A. fashion. It was all she had time to notice before her gaze found Giles. He stepped forward to meet her, and she could see his face decomposing--not in a zombielike way, but as if he'd meant to control himself and was losing the battle. He had on a tweed jacket, a vest, and a maroon tie she'd given him one Christmas. It was like seeing him step out of a photograph from a better time. She wanted to pour herself into his arms, but muddiness held her back for two, maybe even three seconds until he said her name. Then she let him pull her into a hug.

From the corner of her eye she could see Spike hanging back and watching; if she turned her head, she knew she'd see Angel doing the same. For a moment the sense of being surrounded by men, tall creatures who smelled comfortably of Old Spice and tobacco, gave her little-girl goosebumps. To shake the feeling, she mocked it.

"I'm glad you're here," she said, stepping back to regard Giles and putting heartfelt relief into her  voice. "We haven't made any decisions without you. How long until you solve all this?"

The deer-in-the-headlights expression that hit his face was beautiful. "Er, I--I don't really know that I--I mean, I'll certainly try my best, Buffy, but--" Spike snickered to himself while lighting a cigarette and Giles caught on and relaxed with a nettled sigh. "That was very unkind," he told her. "I might have had a small cardiac arrest."

"Sorry. Actually, I decided not to wait for the white-horse brigade." She made a slight gesture toward the chaos behind them.

"So I see," Giles said.

"What've you been up to?" Spike asked, frowning at the room as if trying to piece together his own answer.

"Raided a work camp."

"Work camp?" Angel said.

Buffy looked at Spike. "Didn't you fill them in?"

"Thought I'd save the juicier bits for you, love." The words fell short of a leer, but Angel's scowl measured the difference, and when Spike turned his head to reveal his black eye Buffy began to get an inkling of the fun she must have missed.

"Hey," a voice said, drawing their attention. The red-skinned demon was still hooked in Angel's grasp, collar choked up to his chin. "Why don't I leave you folks to your conversation?"

Angel let the demon go at her nod. "Strange bedfellows," he said expressionlessly, watching the demon leave, then swung a loaded look back on her.

"We need allies," she said before Spike could come up with any glib retort. "We're dying here, Angel, in case you hadn't noticed." His gaze followed the wave of her hand across the room, took in the wounded. "We need them more than they need us."

"I'm sorry." He shifted from foot to foot. "I didn't mean--"

"Don't apologize," she said, her heat already burnt out. "Just deal."

A nod of acceptance. "I'm here to help." He spoke simply, without self-aggrandizement, and she knew it was a promise.

"So there you go." Spike pitched his cigarette on the floor and ground it out. "One hero, signed, sealed, and delivered...oh, and Giles." The dismissive afterthought made Giles angle a dirty look at the vampire, who pretended not to see it. "I'll just be on my way then."

Sometimes Buffy wanted to smack him so bad it was a physical pain. But she also needed to thank him, and to let him know he hadn't been replaced. "You could stick around. Help keep the rowdies in line."

"You've got one vampire, pet. Don't need two."

But I've got only one insufferable, self-pitying vampire, she thought of saying, annoyed that he couldn't read her mind or the message she was trying to get across.