Thursday, October 30
 

Buffy had a growing pile of butterflies in her hands. They disturbed her; she kept half-expecting them to flutter to life, stiff wood turning to wings against her skin. Ever since Ilwyn's reign, when she'd often find the magicked creatures softly skimming around her bedroom, she hadn't looked at them in quite the same way. She'd left them hanging on the walls until now, unmoved to make changes, but she was ready to put them away for good. She'd already bought some nice prints to take their place.

Placing the butterflies in a box, it occurred to her that Dawn might want them. And maybe the kitty-cat letter holder--she'd always liked it when she was little. Buffy would ask. Dawn couldn't have the stuffed animals though, she decided, picking a small plush pig out of the box and stroking its back. You couldn't pass down your childhood menagerie to a seventeen year-old kid sister; they wouldn't be properly appreciated. Used for trashcan basketball, more likely. No. They'd go into the basement for safe storage. Even if she didn't want them in her room anymore, they were hers; the friends of her girlhood. Mister Gordo. Mara the Monkey Girl. Teditha Bear. A grubby bunch, but maybe if she had a kid someday, a little girl--maybe she could clean them up.

Holding Mister Gordo, Buffy remembered that Angel's hands had once held him too. Nostalgia touched her for a moment and then she felt ridiculous. Stuffed pig. Vampire. Young love. These were not associations a mature woman should cling to. She put the stuffed animal carefully back in the box, tucking him down in one corner, before turning to inspect the progress being made on her walls. Xander was on a stepladder with his back to her, smoothing out another panel of wallpaper. And as her eyes traveled up along his back, along one outstretched arm, she felt a niggling sense of something wrong. Pale blue shirt, rolled up to show his forearms. His hands on the wall. Blue shirt, vast blue wall--

"Oh my god," Buffy said, face twisting in sudden, intense distaste. Xander looked back over one shoulder questioningly. "Why did I pick this color? It's like being in the pocket of someone's stonewashed jeans."

"Hey, denim's a perfectly fine statement of seventies cultural nostalgia. We'll scatter some felt patches around, a few psychedelic daisies." Xander broke off his air sketches when he saw her expression, and climbed down from the ladder. "I'm kidding. It's fine, Buffy. It's a nice shade of blue, like..." He paused, staring at the wall, obviously striving for an alternative and coming up blank.

Tara walked in holding a can of paint, looked from Xander to Buffy. "What's up?"

"My wall is denim," said Buffy pitifully, gaze fixed on the new paper.

"No, it's...it's not," Tara assured her, stumbling only a little over the words. She tilted her head and studied the wall. "It's cadet blue."

"How militaristic of me."

Xander wiped his hands on a cloth. "If you don't want it, not a problem, Buff. I can strip those suckers right back off before they dry. " His voice was untroubled, patient, and utterly kind, and Buffy felt a terrible desire to squish him into a hug.

"No. I mean, it'll be okay. I liked it in the store, right?" Her voice rose to a hopeful waver on the last remark.

"It'll be great," said Tara, setting down the paint. Tension seemed to lurk at the edge of her smile, making Buffy feel guilty even though the other woman had volunteered for redecoration duty with true Martha Stewart spirit. She probably had plenty more important things she could be spending her time on.

Well, of course she did.

"It's so nice of you guys to do all this," said Buffy, manners prompted by sincere appreciation. "Thank you. And, look, any time you guys want to cut out of here--"

"What?" drawled Xander, feigning amazement as he grabbed a cold soda. "And go to work, where they make you wear plastic yellow hats and pee off fifty-foot girders?" He smiled and then went glaze-eyed before taking a swig.

Buffy arched her brows. "Yes, and those waterproof hats make a lot more sense now." Then her face softened again. "But seriously, you shouldn't be wasting your vacation days on this."

"Nah," he said. "It's great to get away. Ever since Tony threw out his back, he's been ripping new ones right and left. And by 'ones' I don't mean backs," he clarified dryly. "The whole crew's crabby as a pod of Blugmar demons during hunting season." He cocked his head and blinked in self-contemplation. "I'm out of touch with the common simile, aren't I?"

"Well, you're definitely calling long distance," Tara agreed, re-stacking a pile of boxes by the door. "Do you want me to take these downstairs?" she asked Buffy.

"Sure, thanks. They're all pretty light. Clothes and stuff." Watching Tara leave with a carton in hand, Buffy thought of ways to reward her more tangibly later--cookie baking, maybe--then moved closer to Xander. "You're a life-saver with all this," she said, rolling one shoulder to indicate the half-stripped, half-papered wall. "On my own, I'd have papered the carpet really well."
 
"No sweat." Xander squeezed her shoulder, then rubbed it gently, with the affection of years of friendship, lunacy faced, battles survived. The gesture made her weirdly shy and self-conscious, though, a touch so ordinary that it called up every longing for family and every atom of solitude defining her, things she couldn't even put into words, and after a moment, Xander seemed to sense her awkwardness and let his hand drop.

"So," she said, casting around for a different subject. "You and Anya heading out Saturday?"

"Yeah. Drive up the coast, get lost, crash in cheap motels. We're hoping to find the kind with the shaking beds."

He sounded happy and satisfied--looked happy and satisfied--and Buffy smiled. "Don't they call those 'magic fingers'?"

"Don't tell her that. I'm afraid it might creep her out. Or, worse, the absence of fingers might actually disappoint her." He shook his head wryly, but Buffy could read the love in his eyes as he thought of Anya. Something in her chest constricted, and she wasn't sure why happiness and envy felt so much alike. She swallowed, ducked her head.

"I'd better check and see how Dawn's doing," she said. "Make sure she's not painting over the windows."

She threaded her way through the furniture in the hall, bookcases and chairs and dressers, and entered her sister's room. She really shouldn't have let Dawn stay home from school, but things were going so well it seemed okay to make an exception. Good grades, no fights, no calls from teachers about smart-alecky comments or cutting class. Nothing to complain about in months. At this point, Buffy had to admit that her sister's school record was looking more promising than her own ever had. It was one less worry.

Xander had made short work of Dawn's room, stripping the walls and repapering them in five hours, breakfast to lunch. The pink flowered pattern was a bit claustrophobic and not something Buffy would have chosen, but Dawn had beamed contentedly when she saw the results. Now she was sitting on the floor, leaning down to paint trim with painstaking care.

"Newspapers," Buffy reminded her, picking up a handful as she walked in and tossing them down next to her sister.

Dawn sighed and set her brush down across the open paint can. "I'm being very careful," she said. In less forgiving moments, Buffy would have called that a whine.

"You're making spots you can't even see, trust me."

"If you can't see them, what difference does it make?" Dawn snarked.

It's the principle of it, Buffy told herself. And then: Oh god, I've become mom again. It was a familiar and bittersweet thought, responsibility warring against a horror of sensible shoes and square pocketbooks and wallets that weren't fat with money but with all those extra slots and folders for credit cards you could never pay off and business cards of people who couldn't help you and the checkbook that never balanced.

She took a deep breath.

"Just do it," she said, firmly but not unkindly. As Dawn complied, Buffy inspected the contents of a box on a nearby chair. Framed photographs were heaped on top: their unbroken family gathered together; a six year-old Dawn grinning in a fairy suit for Halloween; Joyce Summers in a summer dress, a flower in her hand.

"Huh, this is weird," said Dawn. Buffy looked up to see her reading a section of newspaper, a scrunchy frown on her face.

"What?"

"It says that seven school buses have been stolen from the municipal district parking lot."

"Seven?" said Buffy, startled.

"And they say it's part of a 'rash of thefts' sweeping Sunnydale. Along with, um, 'thefts of munitions from the Ellsworth Army Base.' What are munitions?"

"Guns and stuff," said Buffy absently. "Let me see that." She took the paper from Dawn and sat down on the bed to read.

"Why are thefts always a 'rash'?" Dawn wondered aloud. "It's never a deadly virus of thefts, or a fungal infection of thefts." She realized after a moment she was being ignored, and returned to work with an ostentatious sigh.

Buffy was focused on the article. School buses, munitions, and a bulldozer were among the items recently stolen from around town. It was freaky, and she couldn't help but think there was some connection to the water supply thing, yet another hint of the invasion that might be coming. Even just the word 'municipal' was enough to make her uneasy these days. She took the paper back to her room and gave it to Xander with the command, "Read this."

He took the newspaper and read. "Huh," he said.

"Munitions, school buses, a bulldozer." Buffy paced as best as she could through the jumbled chaos of her room. "These thefts have got to be connected to the invasion. I don't know why or how. I mean, guns, okay. But the other stuff...it's just that hincky feeling I get. My hinck is all itchy...what is a hinck, anyway?"

"Yeah," Xander said slowly. "I've been thinking about that. Invasion, not hinck." Something in his tone arrested her attention. "Like, what are the odds that they're only interested in the water supply? You've got your gas, electric, phones--if you're going to take over a town, it seems like a good idea to hit all of those. Cut the power, control all communications--it makes sense. Strategically." His face had grown grim.

"God." Stock still, Buffy tried to wrap her mind around the implications. Her world was so weird sometimes, and she should be used to it, but now and then it grabbed her by surprise and shook her. In the midst of everyday life--painting a room, hanging with friends--

"You know, we never get to just coast," she said. "I know it's an old refrain. But it never stops. Invasions, saving the world, municipal utilities. And it's not like we can call up the phone company and say, 'Hey, some demons might be cutting your lines soon. Can you get someone on that?'" There was no authority to turn to, was what she didn't quite say.

"Well," said Xander, tossing down the paper. "At least we can be sure they won't strike right away. What with tomorrow being Halloween and all." He seemed to hear his own words a beat after he spoke them and met her eyes with dawning alarm.

Anxiety kicked Buffy in the gut, and she tensed. "Right. Great," she said. "Because there's never any trouble on Halloween."

And they stood thinking about that for a good long while as the irony dried around them.

"Hey," Willow said, spotting Buffy as she came in the front door. "How goes the makeover?" She set her books down on the hall table and smiled, trying to convey sunny enthusiasm.

Buffy, bucket and rags in hand, smiled perfunctorily back. "Great." As her expression faded she flicked a fast, casual and somehow distancing glance down Willow, hair to shoes. She might just have been checking out Willow's rediscovery of plaid, but that one cool look recalled a hundred others given in the halls of Sunnydale High by Cordelia and Harmony and the other alpha girls who'd made Willow feel every inch a geek. Suddenly very conscious of her funky lesbo witchy self, she remembered that this was not her home. No matter how long she lived here, she sometimes felt she took a liberty just opening the door without knocking. They were friends and Willow knew she was needed and wanted and loved. But there was also a flinty judge in Buffy who stood aloof, measuring and ruling. Tension had sprung up between them again since their visit to the water filtration plant. It was as if Buffy suspected something, even though Willow had given her no reason to. Slayer intuition, maybe.

It was dangerous for them both.

"My last class of the day is over," said Willow. "I'm ready to put on my rubber gloves and, um, do I need rubber gloves for this?" She winced winsomely.

"Not really. I was going to sweep out some of the cobwebs, wipe down the woodwork. I don't really need help right now. If there were other things you wanted to work on...." Buffy trailed off with a meaningful look that Willow had no trouble reading: if you want to work on the prophecy you've completely failed to translate.

"Okay," said Willow. She ended up saying it to Buffy's retreating back as her friend climbed the stairs, and her smile dropped away into resigned unhappiness. She wasn't sure how much more of this she could take, all the sneaking and lying while everyone whispered to each other about how incredibly useless she'd become, which they had to be doing because hello, she looked like a big loser, didn't she.

As she walked to the kitchen, Tara came up from the basement. "Hey," she said. "How did you do on your cultural studies paper?"

In the kitchen, Willow fixed them both iced teas. "I got a B," she said casually while she poured. "But then I traded sexual favors and got it bumped up to an A."

"Doctor Magill is a very attractive man," Tara pretended to concede agreeably.

"Actually, he wants me to submit it as a journal article, to Camera Obscura maybe, or one of the other pomo, lit-crit, cult-stud rags." Some of her excitement surfaced despite her attempt to sound blase.

"That's wonderful, sweetie." Pride infused Tara's face. "You're going to be a published scholar. I'm dating a real academic now." She smiled, then adopted a serious expression. "You'll have to wear tweed, of course. And glasses. Wire-rimmed."

Willow leaned on the counter, grinning. "When I was five, I thought school would be like Oxford, with dons, and everyone wearing robes. I pictured myself running across the quad, late for class, my robe flying out behind me." She paused, said confidingly: "I was a tad precocious. And I was so disappointed when my mom told me we just went in regular clothes. I had this witch's costume from Halloween, and one day I wore it to school." Memory tumbled her back. "Xander was so sweet. When Billy Morehead made fun of me at the bus-stop, Xander pushed him down and sat on him."

"How long did you get to wear your robe?" Tara asked.

"Until recess." Willow sighed. "Then the teacher made me take it off." She pouted a bit, thinking of her stifled dreams and thwarted ambitions.

"We should celebrate."

Willow raised her brows. "That's kind of an odd thing to celebrate."

Tara's lips turned up at the corners, and her eyes might have been twinkling. "Your article, silly."

"Maybe we'd better wait. I'm not published yet. I wouldn't want to jinx it." She straightened up, took both of Tara's hands in her own. "But hey. We don't need an excuse to celebrate, do we? We could celebrate, um, us. The usness of us." Before the world comes crashing down around our heads, she thought.

"I'd celebrate that," Tara said. When the moment passed and the link of their hands fell naturally apart, she added, "Listen, what are you doing now?"

"Now? Nothin'." Willow pushed up her shoulders in a loose shrug, rocked in place. "Now I'm in the now. Ready for anything." She gave Tara a suggestive look, but Tara's earnest expression didn't alter.

"I thought we could work on the prophecy translation together."

"Oh," said Willow, feeling her face fall.

"I think I might have some new--I mean, I don't know for sure, but I've had some ideas. Which are a, a little c-crazy, you'll probably say, but I thought--" She hesitated, words breaking up and set adrift by old uncertainties, almost plaintive. But she was smart and it was quite possible she'd finally dredged some real meaning from the text. Willow swallowed at the thought.

"Sure. We should look at what you've found."

And Willow followed her out of the kitchen, gaze on the back of her lover's head, wondering just how far she'd go to keep Tara safe.

Elapsing time is a trick. When you're in a trance, the bridge from one moment to the next can carry you a distance of hours. Any altered state of consciousness can bend time into funny shapes, stretch it out or twist it down like the Shrinky Dinks you used to make as a kid. From the first steps into the dining room, Willow had felt time go out of joint. She could hear reverberations upstairs of footsteps on carpet, Tara's voice a lulling buzz of words, her own thudding heartbeat and rasp of breath. Time was passing too slowly; time was catching up too fast.

"...looking at the key word in the prophecy, kveffnyk-katuuri-jvetai-au. And then I thought, what if it is a key, in a more literal sense, one that's meant to unlock the text. The Nacirans liked puzzles and puns and codes, which I didn't even know until I researched their..."

Willow clenched her own knees under the table, her hands rigid and aching; itching even, with the unspent energy that gathered inside her, fueled by rising panic.

"...noticed patterns in the text..."

Tara was so smart. All that modesty and generosity obscured her intelligence even from herself, but if any proof was needed, this was it. Willow only half listened to the inevitable words which held no surprise for her; watching instead the play of light along Tara's hair, the moving curves of her lips.

"...numeric code, I realized there was a pun referencing a chapter of another, earlier work. A book of Fenwhar's on demon races." She tilted her head to look directly at Willow, who forced herself from her daze to pay attention. "I looked for the book but couldn't find it. Which really didn't surprise me. Since if I could figure out this translation after eight weeks, you must have been able to figure it out in half the time." Her eyes were steady, calm.

Willow froze, mouth hanging slightly open in an unspent gasp. She immediately checked to see if anyone else was within earshot, but lilting voices were floating down from the second floor along with distant, masculine laughter, so discordant with the subject at hand that it made Willow feel almost ill. She'd been played--maybe Tara's nervousness hadn't been faked, but it hadn't been her old self-doubt either. She'd maneuvered Willow exactly where she wanted her. And Willow had no defenses.

"I," she whispered. "I didn't..." But looking into her lover's eyes, there was no way she could complete her denial. "You don't understand," she said.

"I understand that you lied to me. To all of us. And I'd like to know why." Tara's eyes had picked up a hard gloss.

"Not here," said Willow quickly, as gleeful shouts from Dawn were heard upstairs.

They went into the backyard and sat under the jacaranda tree. It didn't escape Willow's notice that Tara perched as far away as she could on the painted metal bench with her hands tightly clasped in her lap. An untouchable wariness defined her pose. Inside the house, Xander passed by the window of Buffy's room, wallpaper in hand, unreachable and far away, small as the image on a postage stamp; while around them outside, birds chittered in the trees and two dogs barked at differing pitch. Somewhere a door banged, and Tara said nothing.

"I did translate the scroll, but I couldn't say anything," Willow began nervously. "I had visions. I saw what would happen if I told anyone the truth about the prophecy. It's...it's bad, Tara. What's coming, it's the worst thing we've ever faced. But if I told Buffy and the others, we'd die."

Tara's face sharpened in focus, but confusion brushed her features the way her lashes brushed her cheeks. "Die?"

Willow looked down at her hands, twisting in her lap like a mirror of Tara's. "All the visions were different, but they ended the same--we fought the demon invasion, and every time we tried harder. New solutions, bigger, more ambitious. But every time we lost. And we died. All of us. Buffy, Giles, Xander, Dawn...you. Everyone." Her voice felt scratchy and thin, but she kept grief in check. "I couldn't tell you what I'd found. If I had, the visions would have come true. No matter what I did, we failed."

"Oh, sweetie." Tara's shoulders lost some of their rigidity.

"I was so afraid, Tara." Tears brimmed unshed in Willow's eyes, hot and full. "I've been so afraid and I couldn't tell you or Buffy or anyone, and you've all been so disappointed in me, and Buffy's angry and you hate me--" The tears spilled, and she rubbed the heel of one hand roughly across her cheeks, unburdened relief mixing with shame. Her nerves had been drawn so tight for so long, and now they were snapping one by one. Much more of this and she'd be unstrung, incapable of speech.

"I don't hate you. God, Will." Tara scooted a little closer and rested a hand on her knee. "I just wish you'd told me. You shouldn't have been trying to keep this to yourself."

"I couldn't take a chance," Willow cried in her own defense. "Anything I did or said might have changed things."

"What's going to happen?" Tara said with a low, blossoming urgency. "And when?"

"I don't know when. But the invasion...it's going to be bad. Demons and vampires and humans working together, taking over Sunnydale. Maybe...maybe other places too. They've got armies and..." She hesitated as Tara looked back wide-eyed. "Spike, he's one of them. He goes over to their side. He's going to betray us. That's why I've been all bitter girl lately. I know what he's going to do."

"My god," said Tara. "Are you--are you sure? Maybe he--"

"I'm sure." Willow's lips tightened briefly. "I saw him in uniform, leading them."

"I can't believe it." Tara looked torn between anger and anguish. "He's been trying so hard."

"Not hard enough." What she really thought was not at all. Tara gave Spike far more credit than anyone else, but contradicting her generous optimism right now was pointless. She'd see the truth for herself all too soon. At least now that Tara knew what was coming, Willow had someone on her side. Knowledge shared was a greater risk, but god, she didn't want to be alone again with the future and her fears. Even if only one person knew she wasn't a failure and a vicious shrew, it propped up her flagging spirit.

"Have you told Giles about any of this?" Tara asked. "Maybe he could help."

"We can't tell anyone," Willow said with emphasis. "Trying to stop it--that's what gets us killed."

Tara digested this. "What are we going to do then?"

"I don't know," Willow admitted. "I've been trying to prepare, but--" She broke off, swallowing, and met Tara's worried eyes. "I don't know."

In the next yard, a child laughed and raced in circles on the lawn, a dog yipping at his heels. Willow and Tara turned their heads at the same moment to watch through the picket fence. The sun was descending, sending needles of orange light between the houses and trees. A very still, heavy luminosity filled the air, outlining a towering date palm and red tiled roofs in the distance. A woman came out onto the back porch and called, "Robin!" The boy ran to her, arms outstretched, jacket nearly falling off. She buttoned it for him, gave a kiss, and loosed him again to play.

"She shouldn't leave him alone this close to sunset," Tara said as the woman returned inside.

Willow watched the child tumble to the ground under the dog's leaping fur. Everything she hadn't done and everything she might still do were playing out to stalemate. She'd invited the visions and for this she'd have to bear witness. The scene next door was just another reminder of everything that would be lost. As she watched, her face felt as if it had melted and refrozen like ice cream; a cool, tear-stiffened mask. "Soon," she said.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tara look her way. "Soon what?"

"Soon it's not even going to matter."

 
Friday, October 31
 

"This year, things are a little different," said Buffy. She glanced around the living room at her friends. In the know, Xander had his head down, shoulders hunched. The others made an attentive audience.

"We always hear that nothing supernatural happens on Halloween and every year some new baddie gets a bug up his butt and decides not to play by the rules." Half expecting someone to bring up Spike's rap sheet, she paused to dare them, but no remark came. "We know some mega-evil's rising in Sunnydale. We don't know when. But the slaying biz has been busier than usual this past week--our native demons are getting restless, and Halloween is looking pretty good in the betting pool right now."

"Is there really a pool?" Anya whispered to Xander. He shook his head gently, and disappointment filled her pout.

"We'll patrol at full strength tonight," Buffy continued. "Keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary--even for Sunnydale." She saw Tara and Willow exchange a glance, but neither woman spoke. "I don't even know what to tell you to look for, other than our fedora-wearnig friends. Oh, and stolen school buses. And a bulldozer." She paused and gave up on it. "Just be sharp. Xander and Anya will be hitting the demon bars. Willow, Tara--you guys are on street duty. I'll be covering the graveyards with Spike. If I can find him," she added.

It took all Buffy's willpower not to look at Willow; she was afraid her temper might betray her if she did. Spike had vanished since that scene in the Magic Box, and it was beginning to freak her out. Only regular trips to his crypt reassured her that he hadn't left town; she'd found changes of identical clothes strewn across the bed, the reserve of stocked blood lowering day by day in the fridge. But no Spike.

"What about me?" asked Dawn hopefully.

"We need you here," said Buffy. "Everyone's going to be checking in on the hour."

Dawn's face wavered between resentment and self-importance, before the first won out. "Have you people ever heard of cell phones?" she asked snippily.

"Come on," Xander chided, "you know how bad service on the Hellmouth is."

Dawn sniffed. "Mine works fine. Mostly. Except between three and four in the morning, which is...uh, totally theoretical."

"We also need you here to pass out candy," Buffy said with a pointed look, cutting short the debate. "The rest of us will meet back here at one to debrief."

"That's a late night," Anya grumbled.

Buffy lifted her brows. "If we save the world, we can sleep in."

The streets of Sunnydale thronged with costumed kids who made Buffy smile: tiny trolls and giggling witches and princesses in taffeta, so short she kept stumbling to avoid them when they blundered around hedges, heads down as they checked their loot. Pirates with eyebrow-pencil mustaches and plastic hooks bumped along next spacemen like they'd wandered out of their stories and gotten lost. It was a big load of cuteness, but it was the innocence that Buffy really saw. Wind rattled the leaves in the trees, and the kids hurried excitedly along the sidewalks, candy-heavy bags slapping their shins, parents in tow. It was the adults who looked spooked, their flashlights already switched on despite the lingering sunset, eyes unconsciously darting to every bush. Any town resident old enough to smoke developed a gift for selective memory, a certain glaze-eyed obliviousness to the evil surrounding them; but at times like this you could see how living on the Hellmouth stripped its inhabitants' nerves.

Buffy slowed her pace as she neared the center of town, mapping her territory and trying to see even more clearly than usual what hid beneath the surface, like dirt under a shiny, painted nail. Downtown was busy; Halloween just another Friday night to the puberty set and all the people she still vaguely classified as 'grown-ups'. Couples strolled arm-in-arm on their way from pubs to theaters, or sat in clusters at the Espresso Pump with coffees warming their hands. A nip was in the air, and the sky had fallen into dusk. Buffy scanned faces young and old and inbetween, most of them pale. Not vamp pale, but still pretty monochrome for southern California, and that might have been noteworthy, if she hadn't long ago stopped noticing that the Hellmouth was a white-toned, upscale town, whose populations of color (as Giles once put it) had largely fled--either that or been thinned from existence by vampiric feeding. No one had ever been able to say for sure.

When Buffy met people's eyes, they looked away as if by habit or instinct. No one wanted to look at her too closely, to really see her. She was known to the town, and she wasn't known at all, and usually she was happy with that strange double-vision. Only a few of the bolder guys tried to hold her stare. Some of them even had girlfriends. Skeeves. Were guys ever not on the make?

Pay attention, Buffy reminded herself. Find the ones who don't fit. But of the faces bobbing by her in the dusk, all looked human, no vamps or obvious demons. No one in sight posed a threat, yet she kept tensing for attack. In front of the drugstore, Groucho Marx teased a gaggle of girls with his unlit cigar and their shrieks made her jump; and at the arcade, a line of high school boys leaned against the wall, flaunting their letterman jackets. When they whistled at her, she shivered. Coming toward her, a fortysomething couple took up most of the sidewalk, swinging their joined hands and humming; behind them a family edged along in single-file with grim expressions. They could all be demons, Buffy thought, demons of Way Too Much Cheer, demons of Big Grumpiness. Demons of Testosterone and Inane Tweeny Shrieking.

Of course, it was probably just her overactive imagination.

At the little theater where she'd seen her one and only film with Angel, where she'd never yet managed to see a film with Spike, the marquee half-heartedly spelled out the starring role of the new Arnold Schwarzenegger film ("Arnold Schwarznggr"). Its ticket line stretched down the block, though, and as Buffy passed by in the opposite direction, faces turned her way one by one: carefully blank eyes, expressions smoothed free of interest. And then a big whoop echoed down the street, some frat boy calling to his pals, and all those white faces leaned out a little at the spectacle, hanging to one side like blossoms on a lily-of-the-valley.

Nothing strange. Nothing at all. At least, no one looked suspicious or out of place, and Buffy had no way of guessing what secrets they held. You couldn't look at Dawn, for instance, and tell she was an ex-Key. Or still a Key. Buffy wasn't entirely clear on that. But either way, little sister proved that some secrets defied casual scrutiny. As did Anya, Willow--even Spike when he wanted to blend. And it occurred to her suddenly that maybe they should be thinking outside the box. Why sit around waiting for the axe or the big stinky shoe to fall? There were surely spells that could help; give them visions or let them pin-point magical forces at work in town. Because this--this wandering randomly and peering down alleys--wasn't likely to get them anywhere.

No fedoras, school buses, bulldozers.

When Buffy arrived at the first cemetery on her rounds, it was almost completely dark under the spread of the trees. She headed straight for Spike's crypt, entered in a no-nonsense way and descended. Empty. Of course. "Spike," she called to the corners and shadows. "I know you're here." She didn't really. His place felt as empty as it looked, but she didn't entirely trust her slayer sense with him. She looked around, picked up a few caseless CDs. "Spike, say bye-bye to 'Love Bites' and, uh, 'London Calling.' I'm about to snap them in two. I mean, four." She waited, but there was no answer.

"It's been a week. Don't you think this is getting childish?" She put the CDs back down and wandered to the bed. A blue shirt lay there and she examined it, discovering Freddy Krueger-like rips down the front, and a spray of stiffly dried orange stuff that had to be demon's blood, but looked more like that fake cheese they poured on nachos.

She frowned and put the shirt down, then checked the blood supply. "Well, you're drinking," she muttered. A few empty blood packs on the top of his fridge confirmed it, their drained skins resting next to an equally drained bottle of Maker's Mark. "And drinking." She sighed and made to leave.

"I'm going now," she called as she paused near the ladder. "Off to patrol and possibly be killed in a horrible, permanent way. Or maimed. Might even lose a foot." Her tone was faux thoughtful and upbeat: "Could be whipped in the face with a stinky demon tail, go blind, lose my ability to slay. Live out my life as special-needs girl, doddering around the Magic Box until the day I keel over into the dried sage."

When no response came, Buffy felt frustrated and oddly deflated. She'd depressed herself with that last scenario, and he really wasn't here. Wasn't lurking or listening or watching. The emptiness was merely empty, and she was...

She was late for patrol.

Entering the next graveyard on her rounds, Buffy blinked in surprise and paused. She'd wanted to find some sign of weirdness this Halloween, and she'd found it. Right out in the open among the graves sprawled a bevy of demons with horns and long twitchy tails. One was strumming 'Lay Lady, Lay' on a guitar and croaking the words rather better than Dylan; the rest listened in various reclining poses on the grass or on tattered blankets. A bottle of wine was being passed around and what might have been a joint. Nearby on the grass sat an inflated sea-monster, like toddlers used in swimming pools.

Buffy boggled for a moment. And then she walked up to them and folded her arms. "I realize you've got this whole unwashed, unplugged, and generally unsavory scene going on here, but just what do you think you're doing?" She would not ask about the sea-monster. Would not.

"Slayer, right?" said a purple, lizardy, and somehow very feminine demon. "Pull up a patch of grass, honey. Get your funky self down with the new world order."

She crossed her arms tighter. "First? Snowball. Hell. And second, what do you know about a 'new world order'?"

Words that sounded so crisp and commanding to her didn't seem to impress her audience. A blue lizard with yellow spots frowned. "They do have snowballs in Hell, you know. One of the hells, I mean." His tail waved in a whateveresque way. "Some are pretty cold. You can get in some good skiing."

"I was there once," a third demon reminisced.

"Where?" asked his friend.

"Aspen. For the film festival."

"Cold?"

"Nah, I'm fine."

Buffy, who'd never been to Aspen, grew irritable and began squinting suspiciously at what the lizards were puffing. Lately her war on demons had started to resemble a war on drugs. At least schoolkids wouldn't be tempted to shop a stash from giant hippie newts. God, she hoped not. "That isn't jackweed, is it?" Then she tensed with a moment's self-doubt. "And you are lizards, right? I mean," she gestured with her stake, "Big, mouthy demon-lizards in spring-fashion colors?" She wondered which was more likely to lie, a demon or a hallucination.

"No way," said the spotted lizard.

"What?" She grew briefly anxious.

"It's just a clove cigarette, honey." Purple lizard held the smoking roll up for examination. "But if you're selling...."

"What?" Buffy repeated in a more dangerous tone.

"Jackweed. Got any?"

"No," she said, feeling the conversation getting away from her.

"Cocoa?" asked the spotty one.

"No."

"Gorash bile?"

"Do I look like I have bile? Don't answer that."

"Altoids?"

"I'm going to kill you all now," Buffy announced, brandishing her stake.

"Peace, Slayer. Find your second chakra. We're just celebrating the dawn of a new age." Despite his apparent calm, Buffy thought the spotty lizard's eyes held a spark of nastiness. "The rise of the underclass. The revolution, baby. Change is on the wind."

"Funny," said Buffy, tilting her head to one side. "I don't feel a breeze." She raised her stake an inch higher. "Unless you mean the one I'm going to make when I ventilate you...if you don't tell me everything you know about this revolution."

"You hugged your mattress lately, girl?" asked the purple demon. "'Cause that attitude's harsh."

Buffy didn't deign to answer, just gave her a cool, slitted look.

"Aw, we don't know nothin'," the guitar player said. "Word is there'll be wars and rumors of wars and all that jazz. No one's got more to say than that." His lips grew a rude smile, revealing some broken fangs. "Whatever's comin' sure sounds fun, though."

Buffy narrowed her eyes and said grimly, "Yeah, but I'm here now, and I don't think you'd like my idea of fun. So hold your be-in somewhere else, or I'll make you not to be."

The demons exchanged glances, then rose lazily and gathered their things. The spotted demon, last to join his straggling companions, paused and turned to Buffy. "You might want to be nicer, Slayer. You never know when the worm's gonna turn."

Bemused, she watched him walk off, tail swishing across the grass, and thought about turning worms. Her mother used to say that too. And now...this was the graveyard where her mother was buried. Buffy nearly always came here first on her patrols, to make sure the grave remained undesecrated, and because it was one of the town's more restless haunts, its plots barely half-filled. She paid her visit, dragging her steps down the broad avenues. Near her mother's plot, the trees thinned and the graves grew quieter, more tenured. Her mother's headstone was a pale familiar beacon in the distance. She found it well tended; she never had to do anything--never had to pull a single weed or clear out trash--and almost resented this.

What did clutter the headstone, Buffy left alone: the tiny sticks left by burnt incense, the melted candles, the marigolds and salt and bread. The bread hadn't been touched by birds yet. He'd been here recently, then, doing his thing, whatever that was exactly. Not long after her mother's death, at some forgotten occasion when Buffy had been too weak to deny a visit, Spike had shared all kinds of colorful rituals of the dead with Dawn, who'd immediately wanted to place a photo of their mother by the grave in memoriam. But in Sunnydale it was too risky to leave such a talisman out for the taking. You don't want some bogeyman walkin' around with your mum's picture in his filthy pocket, he'd said. Would stir up ideas. Power the mojo. You let me worry about it, Bit. I'll protect her. 'S what I do. Take care of the dead. Since the livin' won't let me. And he'd looked at Buffy over Dawn's bent head, getting his jabs in even then.

But he'd kept his promise. Looked after her. No one had ever dared disturb her mother's grave, not in all this time.

Buffy kissed her fingers and reached out to touch the cool surface of the headstone, then stiffened as her ears picked up the not-stealthy-enough vibrations of approaching feet. Many feet. She began turning. "I thought I told you to--" And stopped for one brief moment before grabbing her stake. Counted four vamps and two demons, and sensed more behind her. Vamps and demons together. Weirdness. Bad weirdness. They weren't the demons from before; these were uglier, bigger. Greener.

"Slayer," said the lead vamp with a menacing grin. He wore a Lemonheads tee-shirt and ratty jeans, but a lot of muscle propped up those clothes. The muscle was somehow confusing; the tee-shirt and the lower half of his face oddly familiar.

"Todd?" she asked. "Todd Pendergrast?" Amazement colored her voice.

"Uh...hey," said Todd, a sheepish smile replacing his unmenacy menace. He glanced at his pals, hunched his shoulders a little at their glares.

"Oh my god--you've been working out. You used to be so weedy. Like, record-store-clerk level weedy. I can't believe how ripped you are now." She reached out and casually felt up one arm, which he flexed proudly before ducking his head and scuffing one boot on the grass. They both ignored the low growls from the other vamps.

"Yeah, hey," said Todd. "Thanks for noticing. Really. It means a lot, 'cause, man, I didn't even think you knew my name or nothin'. You never looked at me in high school. No one did. But everything's changed. Ever since I died, I've got this whole regimen--" But sadly, Buffy never learned what it was, because she grew bored and he exploded into a big cloud of dust.

Unsurprisingly, the others took that as their signal to attack. Buffy twisted through the swarm with a duck and a roll, taking the fight away from her mom's grave and repositioning herself to get a better idea of what she was up against. There were still four vamps--another had joined from the rear, along with two more demons of some different species. A nicely integrated team, but way more than she wanted to play. These thoughts flashed by in a second as she spun and kicked one of the vamps back and staked what might have been his girlfriend. Well, love was a tragedy.

Seven to go, but they were on her in force now, and Buffy kept them at bay only with increasing effort. It was probably time to run, but they'd encircled her and she'd have to punch a hole in that wall, and hey, she had no problem with that, but whenever she got close to one, her opponent would dance back and the others would close in, and damn it. All those stupid jokes she'd made in Spike's crypt were coming back like acid reflux and scaring the hell out of her.

"Screw this," she said and leapt at one of the demons, slamming him to the ground and springing over him in a back-flip to land clear of the fray. She took off at once, beelining for the cemetery gates. She could hear her attackers thudding behind her, laughing and cat-calling. One mocked her with the name 'mighty chicken girl' and she almost turned in outrage, but managed to ignore the bait. Her rep could take a few knocks if it meant she lived even just one more day.

She'd nearly made it out when something huge and heavy landed on her back, bull-dozering her face-first into the sod. Her stake went flying, and Buffy bucked her assailant off and rolled to one side. Up on her feet again, she deflected the next two vamps bent on bringing her down and then lunged for the stake, but the first vamp beat her to it. She whirled to kick a demon and then another and another. Adrenaline was shooting through her veins, her gut clenching. Completely on the defensive now, she could barely even focus; couldn't strategize, only react. Blows fell, kicks met their targets--but not all were her blows and kicks. Something sharp grazed the edge of her cheek, barely missing her eye, and she felt the hot sting of blood.
 
Damn it, she wouldn't go down like this, not--

--covered in dust, which she shook out of her eyes to see Spike laying into another vamp like a mad thing, fangs bared as he snarled, duster swirling around his booted, ass-kicking legs.

Oh yeah. She liked these odds better.

Strength flooding back, Buffy turned to the vamp holding her stake. "I think that's mine," she told him, and then--in a striking tumble of limbs--took it back and planted it in his heart. A few demons later, she stopped and took a deep breath and looked around her. Four heavy demon corpses and a lot of dust. Carnage good, she thought. But she felt shaky, and her pulse rabbited up the side of her neck. She stared at Spike, who stared back, face devamped but chiseled into ice.

His gaze flicked down her body, assessing whether she was hurt. The inspection was as clinical as a doctor's or a torturer's, even when he paused to note the light gash on her cheek. And then he threw his stake to one side and turned and walked away.

Bastard, she thought simply, gaping until her mouth caught up with her brain: "Hey!" Then her belated body caught up too, and she ran after him. When Buffy grabbed his arm it was like tugging on the door of a bank vault, but she turned him. "What the hell was that?"

"Looked like me saving your life," Spike noted coolly. Mister I-don't-break-a-sweat. And of course he wasn't even breathing hard. At all. "I'm sure you'll tell me different, though." God. He sounded almost polite. She hated that, and hated her own trite reactions.

"I'm talking about you walking away. About this." She didn't know how his attitude could still get under her skin, but it did, making her bewildered and angry. "Why have you been avoiding me?"

"Been busy. Busy now, in fact." He turned and started walking off again, and she wasn't about to let him get away with that. She moved faster than he did and planted herself in front of him. He'd clearly have walked around, but she grabbed a handful of leather lapel.

"You know, there are a few anatomical terms for how you're behaving right now."

"And you've had your way with both."

Buffy flushed and nearly slapped him. Old habits died never, but this time something stayed her hand. Her own dignity, maybe, or the odd tilting that was happening inside her, as if two feelings were finally teetering into balance on a scale; the old anger on one side, and on the other...what? Maybe it was nothing; maybe she just didn't want to hurt him.

God. She didn't want to hurt him.

Before she could stop herself, Buffy cupped his face with one hand. She felt him stiffen. An apology rose to her lips but didn't quite form; she ran her thumb across his lips and watched his face. She could see him struggling for detachment, and then he drew in a deep breath, turning his head away as if her touch alone burned. It was the stylized gesture of a drama queen but she didn't question whether his pain was honest.

"You have your way with all of me," he grated out. His throat worked a long moment. "Maybe you should get me a leash--nice leather collar. Partial to black." He slewed his gaze back to her, coldness surrounding pin-points of burning rage. "Make your decision, why don't you? Then let me know."

And he walked away again.

He half wanted her to come after him; was relieved and bitter when she didn't. As dramatic exits went, it was a conflicted victory. He'd been shadowing her on and off for a week, and there was always that risk she'd be gang-banged during his off time, like tonight.

Spike had noticed strange things this past week. Unrest among the demon types. Clans who'd held uneasy truces were skirmishing; different races were banding together; gangs were forming of previously lazy buggers who'd barely gophered their heads up from the sewers before now. It wasn't all looting and keggers either. Just the other night he'd seen a pod of Trictnar busking on the sidewalk in front of his favorite trattoria--horns and tails hanging out for anyone to see, one of them strumming on a guitar and rasping out a Joan Baez cover. None of the humans passing by had blinked; a few had even tossed change in the hat. It's a local fad, he'd heard one man said knowingly to another, nodding at the Trictnar. It's this whole get-up the kids do; kind of a new wave thing.

What was the world coming to? He didn't know what was worse, the arrogance of lackbrain demons, or the ignorance of the bloody suburbanites. One sort put him and his kind at risk for unwanted attention, and the other sort didn't even see a risk because they were too stupid and sheep-headed to notice when they were three paces from being eaten.

He made his way back into town unhurriedly, walking along Alvarado under the overhanging trees that edged the cemetery's brick and iron fence. The paved road was wide and empty of cars; on the other side of the street was a tony golf course. In the open distance, beyond clumps of trees and shrubs, a useless white pagoda sat near the edge of a wide lake, skeletal in the darkness. He'd once killed some old codger there. Night game. After, he'd lit a fag and took all the little orange balls and stroked them one by one into the lake. Dru'd put on the fellow's pom-pommy hat and begged Spike to dance a fling with her. At his refusal she'd sulked and driven the cart away when he wasn't looking, forcing him to chase her down.

The local landscape held a strange nostalgia for him already, though his time spent here to date was only a tiny fraction of his long life. The burbs were all right. Parts like this anyway. Not a lot of humans crowded against each other out here like juiceboxes going stale on a market shelf, just a black road glittering under long rows of streetlights, symmetrical and chilly. Emptiness and rustling trees and the sky. Your dead buried on one side, and greenery stretching out on the other, the way a hunting ground might look in some vampire heaven.

Fanciful rubbish, he told himself, loathing his own broodiness. And as soon as the lights of the town began appearing ahead of him, his interest in the cultivated and antiseptic wilderness of Sunnydale waned and he felt the familiar stirring of desire for civilization. His own brand of it, anyway. Time for a drink. Shake off this soft-headed wanking, seek out the things that'd remind him he lived in the armpit of hell as a slayer's despised lapdog. Or a misunderstood rebel. He wasn't sure which suited him more tonight, but no matter. Fights needed to be started, blood drunk and spilled.

His steps carried him by habit to the latest incarnation of the Alibi Room, down recessed stairs in the sidewalk to the basement entrance of a former convent, whose converted cellar was now open round the clock to serve the bad and the ugly. Speaking of. The bouncer, a grumpy Chirago demon in a red satin cowboy shirt, gave him a lengthy once-over that threatened to become a twice until Spike sighed and slipped him a tenner. Chiragos couldn't count higher than their fingers and didn't have many of those, and he was waved inside, where a wall of beery air hit him at the same moment a flock of seedy faces turned. Spike played a scowl around the room and stalked across patches of drying, blood-soaked sawdust to the bar. Rows of bottles gleamed there, tempting him to excess. When Willy spotted him, a look passed across his face that Spike liked to think was reserved for his appearances: nervous, cautious, disgusted.

It passed away just as quickly, replaced by a sour and ingratiating show of enthusiasm. "Hey, Spike. Always good to see you in here. Glass of AB neg?"

"Double. And give it a bump."

Spike sat on a stool and swung around to scan the room. Best, he'd found, to put a little fear into the crowd before turning his back on them. It was also a good trick for provoking the most touchy of the bar's inhabitants; get the unavoidable fights over with early, pave the way for a good heavy soak. And the room was alive tonight, edgy and electrical and most of it trained on him. A posse of M'Fashnik demons glared at him from a corner booth. Surly, stoned Trictnars deliberately ignored his gaze. He counted a pod of Gnoslacs, two strangely solitary Hellions, some Lei Achs, several lesser demons, and a giggling table of fledglings, one of whom was making fangs out of ketchup and fries. It reflected badly on vampires everywhere. Watching her, Spike felt almost as ashamed as if he'd turned the silly bint personally. Christ, she couldn't have been more than seventeen when she bought it. Dawn's age.

No one stepped up for a bit of aggro, and irritably he turned back to the bar and downed half his blood before chasing it with whisky. Single malt. Willy knew to give him top-shelf, and Spike relished the burn, eyes half-closing. Shifting toward the bar, he winced in pain and glanced down at his shirt; a shadow on the grey cloth caught his eye and he touched it, drew away his fingers with a light film of blood. He dipped his fingers in his whisky and absently swirled them around. The cuff of his coat was getting frayed. The sight of it against his hand stirred him almost to melancholy. All trophies had to be tossed sooner or later, he supposed, or you risked turning into one of those sad wankers who carried around the skull of their first kill in a bowling bag and pulled it out for a yarn when they got a bottle or two in them. But who would he be next? He'd cultivated this. This attitude, this look. He had no plans.

"I am the baddest of the bad," he muttered to himself, inspecting his chipped fingernails, then looked up at Willy, who was ambling by. "Hey. You got any of those little cherries?"

"This probably isn't the best place for you to be tonight," said a concerned voice at his shoulder.

Spike turned his head casually sideways, without moving the rest of his body. "Never is."

Clem was giving him a worried, almost reproving look. "Everyone's real antsy." Ears flopped to one side as he shook his head, and he laid one heavily swagged arm on the bar. He held a beer. "There've already been three fights."

"That so? My timing's off then."

"You're tough, Spike. But one day you'll get in over your head. I'd hate to see that," he said in his earnest way.

It was novel, hanging with someone who gave a shit whether you got busted or dusted. Not that he and Clem were bosom buddies, but they'd been tight for a couple of years now. Spike's lips shaped a tiny smile he would have denied was affectionate. "Get my friend here another round," he said to Willy. "His bottle looks low." Clem smiled as if genuinely surprised, and freaky as hell though it was, it reminded Spike of Buffy, of the rare luminous smiles she bestowed when joy escaped the tight prison of her heart.

God, he thought. I am lame. He sucked in a cherry and didn't even try to knot it with his tongue.

"Thanks, Spike."

A switch flipped on his mood, and in darkness, Spike remembered why he often avoided Clem. Those sincere thanks, that plain good nature. Downright sickening, not to mention embarrassing. As if a dollar beer were something deserving of mention. He let the issue go, though. Far better targets for his perverse temper, and most within reach.

"Things have been antsy all over," Spike remarked, keeping the subject impersonal. "Noticed it myself this past week. Seen more action than usual on my rounds. Demons wanderin' out in the open, puffed up with entitlement. Walked in on a Dryac buyin' smokes and crisps in the Kwik-E Mart, hadn't even bothered to cover his tusks. 'S not normal." He flicked a sidelong glance at Clem. "You heard anything?"

"Just rumors," said Clem, taking his fresh beer. "Something big's coming. Something new." He sighed at his beer. "I was actually thinking of getting out of Sunnydale for a while."

A frown etched itself into Spike's forehead. "Yeah?"

"Always wanted to visit Vancouver. Plus, I've seen this thing before. Some new clan moves in, promises the world. It always looks rosy at first, but then they run out of humans, and everyone gets tense. Someone invokes the Gr'Nashic Code, someone else mocks it, the racial slurs fly, and before you know it, you've got internecine war." Dark eyes fixed on Spike's, expressing the sadness of the ages. "It's hard to sleep well when chaos is brewing," said Clem. "I just bought this great new bed from Pottery Barn. It's no help at all."

Spike knocked his glass of blood against Clem's beer bottle. "Here's to a good day's rest."

From the farthest, smokiest corner of the bar, Clude peered through his glasses at his notebook, then looked again to where the vampire sat hunched over in black leather, talking to his demon pal. "He's on the list," he said.

Lalethki shifted in the corner of the booth to get a better view of Spike. "I don't understand why we didn't take care of this sooner."

"I just follow orders, like you."

"He doesn't look so tough," Lalethki sneered. "Just another vampire in leather."

Clude pocketed his notes. "He's killed two slayers, thousands of humans, and countless demons." He took a sip of his milkshake, a long one that half-drained his glass. After wiping his lips, he said: "We'll take care of him together." And from across the room he watched the white-blond head turn sideways as the vampire spoke to his companion, his shoulders flexing beneath the long leather coat. He did not look dangerous, but he was.

He also looked strangely familiar.

"It's quiet," said Tara. "It's like it has that too-quiet feel, though. Don't you think? I could just be imagining it." She glanced around the deserted street; it was late enough that most trick-or-treaters would be at home, tucked into their beds. The neighborhood they walked through was locked down in the way that defined Sunnydale after dark, and few windows remained lit. Each house was a shadowed boxes hidden behind shrubs, silent, even the dogs swept inside for the night. Down at the end of the block the industrial district began, demarcated crosswise by Chapman Street, which edged a desolate field stretching to the underpass. In its ditches bodies were often found. Tonight barrel fires flickered out among the tall grass and rusting machinery, and the wind carried inhuman laughter to her.

Tara wished for that too-quiet feeling back.

Shouldering close, Willow tucked her hands in her jacket pockets. "'Too quiet' is kind of eluding me as a concept, I think. Quiet on Halloween I'm okay with. Usually by now we'd have reached the screaming and spidery part of the evening."

"So you don't think it'll happen tonight?" she asked. "The invasion?"

Willow stared down the street as if she weren't seeing it at all, as if her feet were moving her along automatically. "I don't know. Nothing in my research has said anything specific about when. Just what."

"These demons that are coming--the Grauth--from what you said, it sounded like the Fenwhar Compendium didn't have a lot of information." Tara wished she hadn't been called to babysit Kirsten last night; she'd had so many questions boiling inside. She still did, but she'd dwelled in her thoughts too long, getting lost in speculation and fears; she wasn't sure anymore what was important to focus on and what was trivial. She needed to look through the books herself. She learned best by direct application--maybe why she so often felt overshadowed by Willow, who was always first to solve any problem and thought redundant efforts a waste of time.

"It was sketchy," Willow admitted. "But I don't think we're going to find much more in our own library. I wish we had the Wiley-Barringer Encyclopedia, or even some of Angel's references. I did think about calling Fred, but...." She trailed off.

"You don't know if she'll tell," finished Tara.

"It seemed more important to keep the secret than to pursue the research." Willow's voice took on a thin, wavery note of indecision and second-guessing. Tara'd been there so often herself she knew that tune by heart. "Now I'm not so sure."

"We should call her," Tara said, quiet but firm in her resolve. She was in on this now. Her opinions counted, and she intended to put her weight behind them. Not for her own sake, but for Willow's. She'd gone it alone too long; a share of that burden needed to be taken off her shoulders. Released from secrecy, Willow's entire body revealed her tiredness: lank hair, fine bones showing closer to the skin, shadowed eyes.

"The invasion is coming this year, the prophecy said." Tara frowned. "That's only two more months. We need to be ready."

"You're right." Willow hooked her arm through Tara's, and Tara could hear the smile of relief in her lover's voice even without looking. But she did look, because...it was her Willow. Like a fox who'd stolen her heart, a red wildflower, a tree under whose shade she could rest. Her profile in the darkness was pale, the features more familiar to Tara than any sister's could ever have been. And kissable. There was worry to be kissed away.

"They won't hate you," said Tara, speaking to Willow's unspoken fears. "When it comes. When we explain. It'll be okay." The assurance she projected was almost enough to make her believe it herself; it had to be, even though her belly was tight, increasingly anxious as they neared the end of the street. She told herself not to fear a gust of wind rattling the leaves, not to exaggerate the threat of distant fires in the dark. Just shadows. And this was just another night, ordinary evil at work. Don't go buying trouble, her dad used to say.

Willow nodded with forced optimism. "Yeah, maybe. Maybe...."

The moment lingered on that uncertainty, each of them drifting apart in thought.

Neither Willow nor Tara looked up when a car drove past them slowly on the other side of the street.

"Five thirty-two, five thirty-six, five-forty," said one of the passengers. "This is it."

The driver pulled the car into the drive of a modest, red-roofed house, parking next to a station wagon. He turned off the engine and looked out his window at the grassy yard, in which kiddie toys were scattered like a colorful accident scene. An overturned tricycle fascinated him unduly for several long moments. Then from the back seat came the sharp sound of guns chambering rounds, calling him back to attention. He got out of the car along with his companions. Four doors shut quietly.

After a sharp inspection, the driver gestured them toward the house, and his three uniformed passengers filed neatly along the flagstone path toward the porch. The driver paused a moment more to peer up and down the street. Crickets emphasized the silence around them. No one had come to their windows to investigate the perfectly ordinary event of a perfectly ordinary car parking at a neighbor's drive. There was no movement at all, except far down the street where two figures walked hand in hand. But they were heading away, which was the safest direction for them though they didn't know it, and even as he watched they turned a corner and disappeared.

He followed the others up to the front door. They'd waited there for him, and when he nodded they raised their guns. He rang the bell. Seconds passed before the porch light snapped on. In its illumination it would be clear to anyone that the visitors to this house weren't human. It didn't matter.

The demon fixed a polite expression on his face as the door opened. The man inside blinked out at him, rubbing his stubbled jaw, his open robe and boxer shorts suggesting he'd been roused from sleep.

"Wow," the man said, looking amazed and then suddenly offering a wide smile and a salute. "Welcome to earth! All hail the New Reich!"

The creature at the door had taken his crisp new five-dollar bill with a grunt and allowed them entry. A good thing, since Xander was running out of money. The Alibi Room should probably have been their first stop, but Anya, with a disturbingly accurate compass for the demonic party vibe, had led him from dive to dive around town in a tightening circle that ended here. It was like she knew instinctively where all the worst bars were. Xander tried not to question that. At least they'd managed to last the night unscathed. So far.

"This place has gone downhill on a greased sled," he observed, gaze skipping from the bloody, sawdusty floorboards to the trash-encircled tables, to the broken ceiling lights. "Does no one respect the building code?"

"I'm sure they pay their share of bribes," Anya said reassuringly, and then waved at a group of horny demons, all of whom waved back with too much eagerness. "Clients," she said in a mild, businesslike aside.

"Ancient or recent?" he asked in trepidation, scowling their way.

"They have a standing order for Baby's Breath," she said.

"We sell baby's-breath?" Xander asked in puzzlement, then paused, cogs grinding toward the dark places he tried not to think about. "You know what--forget I asked that." As he continued his scan of the room, his eyes lit with dismay on a figure at the bar. "Oh hell."

Anya followed his gaze. "He may have news," she noted.

"Like he'd tell us." Xander walked over anyway, conscious of being inspected by too many eyes. Some of them on stalks, some without whites, some kind of dribbly and...ew. He forced himself to focus on Spike, and laid a casual hand on his leather-jacketed shoulder as he came up behind him. Spike whirled on his stool, one hand clamped to Xander's neck, the other digging a stake into his gut. Almost before Xander began gasping for breath he was released.

"Gahhh," said Spike in strangled, painful disgust, smacking a hand to his temple.

Xander smirked unkindly. "Jumpy much? And, hey--got any Advil on you?"

The seething hatred in Spike's eyes when he looked up was something Xander hadn't seen in a while. Not bright and unveiled like this. He seemed unable to speak he was so angry, and from the clenched, working line of his jaw Xander knew that if Spike's chip failed right now, he'd be a dead man. And not from a cool strangulation or a quick staking either. Spike wasn't in game face though, which was weird--and somehow more personal.
 
"I could snap my fingers and have you killed quicker than downing a shot," Spike said coldly. "I could have you hung by your ears, gutted with a swizzle stick, drained into the nearest cask and sold on tap. Tell me why I shouldn't."

"He's the father of my unborn child," Anya chirped before Xander could reply with all the nasty things waiting on his tongue. She laced hands across her svelte, innocent-looking stomach. "And every child needs a daddy."

Spike stared at her gut in appalled wonderment while Xander stumbled back a step and yelped, "What?!" His own saucer-eyed gape must have matched Spike's.

"I was going to tell you," said Anya. "Soon." She beamed. "Soon became now."

"You've spawned?" Spike said to him, with a regard undecided between grudging respect and disgust.

"Oh god," said Xander, staring glassy-eyed at himself in the mirror behind the bar. "I need a drink."

From the next stool, some ghastly, flabbacious demon--oh, wait, it was just Clem--raised a hand to signal Willy. "Shot of Jack," he said. "And hey, congratulations," he added warmly to Xander, who nodded back in a daze.

Spike grimaced. "Make that two shots." He tucked his stake away, and when the drinks came handed one to Xander. "Here's to your Bad Seed." Despite his jaded scowl, he clinked his glass aggressively in a toast and tossed back its contents.

"Whoa, there's nothing wrong with my seed," Xander retorted, but then it occurred to him that precisely because of that fact he was going. To have. A baby. He downed his own shot in one fiery, panicked gulp of incipient fatherhood.

"There," said Spike, banging his glass back on the counter. "I've been all nice and polite about the sprog-to-be. An' I'm not even going to have you killed. Now get out the hell of here before I change my mind."

"Oh, relax," Anya said. "You act like we're bad for your reputation or something."

"Well, not to put too fine a point on it." Spike stared at her meaningfully, his raised eyebrows saying: duh.

"I don't know why more demons don't try to kill you." Anya's speculation was matter-of-fact as she looked around the bar. "You're on a crusade against their kind."

Lips compressed grimly, Spike closed his eyes a moment, then opened them. "Hello," he said, affecting surprise. "You're still here. Pining to die, then?" He made a gesture as if signaling for a hit, aborting it as Anya spoke.

"What would you do exactly?" she asked with what sounded like real curiosity. "Call someone over, offer them money? Because I could probably offer them more to kill you. My stocks are doing very well."

That's my girlfriend, thought Xander with pride. Then queasily beckoned for another drink.

"Fine," said Spike in a clipped tone. "What do you want? Information on your plot of the week? Sorry. Don't have any."

Xander took his second shot and drank half. Sunlight hit his gut, made him pleasantly warm and numb. If he drank the other half now, he wouldn't have to hold onto the glass. Good idea. He had so many. "Buffy's been worried about you," he said, glass empty. Wait...was that him who said that? He blinked, and Spike blinked back, and then Xander took a deep, shaky breath and spun truth back into falsehood. "She cries and cries," he went on, tone edging into sarcasm, "And I think she may join a nunnery."

"Xander!"

The fleeting hope in Spike's face had vanished, and his eyes were arctic again. Before he could speak though, someone--thing--loomed at Xander's shoulder. He craned his head north to find himself looking at a great and terrible shagginess. The shagginess was looking at Spike.

"You shouldn't have come here tonight, vampire."

"Yeah," Spike said curtly. "Heard that one already."

"You reek of humans," Shaggy went on.

"Heard that too." Spike was getting impatient, looked on the verge of a snarl. Xander found he suddenly didn't mind Spike's temper so much, given his own proximity to Shaggy. He managed to tip a nervous smile the thing's way.

"Hi," he said. "How's the weather up there?"

Shaggy threw back his head and roared. Xander and Anya took synchronized steps to flank Spike. "That joke sickens me!" Shaggy cried. "Ages I've walked the earth, and it never changes, everywhere I go, inquiries about the weather. Why ask when it is so clearly the same weather here," he made a chopping gesture at his head, "as it is down there for you, little stupid man?"

"I, I don't know." Xander smiled and swallowed. "It now seems very childish and cliched. And your bigness...very menacing. I'm sorry."

"Do you protect this son-of-a-shrimp?" the demon asked Spike, red eyes glowering.

"Me?" Spike looked sidelong at Xander, jaw carving the air between them, cheekbones hollowing a moment. "No. Can't say as I do." He looked away, while Xander's heart sank stomachward. "On the other hand..." Spike leaned back on his stool in a rude, gape-legged sprawl. "I object to you on principle, mate."

"Likewise," snarled Shaggy and heaved himself at Spike, who slithered aside almost too quickly to see, then popped up and tripped the demon, slamming him across the bar like a fallen oak. A big gleaming knife hung in the air and then sank into the back of the demon's neck. It took Xander longer than it should have to process that the knife was attached to Spike's hand, which was attached to Spike, who was looking dangerously satisfied. He stared Xander down with a wordless, unfriendly smile as he yanked out the knife and wiped it on the demon's jacket. Wish that had been you, his eyes said.

"Cool," Clem piped up cheerily. "Bar fight."

A loud crash followed, and a lot of jostling. Later, Xander recalled only fragments: jumping to avoid an overturned table that showered tap beer; slipping on a patch of blood and just missing decapitation by a claw aimed his way; staking some vamp whose last startled gasp smelled of french fries; running for the door with his arm around Anya. As they left he heard Willy's nasal cries of dismay ("Hey, watch the juke!") and Spike's growls mingling with the confused babble of the brawl.

Outside, the night was quiet and the air crisp and Xander's sigh of relief plumed out like a cartoon bubble. He kept an arm around Anya as they climbed the stairs, and then rested with her against the building's brick facade.

"As of tonight, no more bar-hopping with the nonhuman crowd," he said when he'd caught his breath. "We stick to safe, well-lit places that play Britney Spears mixes and don't serve blood." He shifted to lean on one shoulder, laid his hand across her belly with tenderness, fingers spread. "And no more patrolling. Our new number one rule is: keep the sprog safe." A smile surfaced; he was absurdly happy.

Anya smiled back. "Oh, I'm not pregnant."

Okay, thought Xander, did a brick just land on my head, or did she say-- "Huh? And a...whuh?"

"I just said that to shut up Spike. And to see how you'd react."

"Well, yay to the first, but...man, An." He turned away with a bemused head shake, looking out at the hazy sky above the office buildings and trying to switch gears. In the distance he could see the moving lights of a plane as it arrived at the airport, descending as he did.

"You reacted very well," Anya soothed, rubbing his arm. "Your panic fell within an acceptable range of normal responses, and then you became overly protective and giddy."

"Uh huh." He couldn't even muster a dry quip; maybe he'd spent all his sarcasm on Spike. Or maybe it was eaten up by the crushing sadness and relief of realizing he wasn't a father of some little tadpole in Anya's belly. Not yet, anyway.

"Are you angry?"

Xander took a deep breath and slid an arm around her shoulder. "No. We should get going, though. Head back to Buffy's." He tilted his watch face to catch the dim light, glanced across Anya at the time. "Halloween's almost over. Guess it's a dud this year."

"And we're glad, right?" Anya asked in her fact-checking tone, as they pushed off and began walking.

Xander, lost in his conflicted thoughts, nodded absently. "We're glad."

And in his distraction, which held Anya's worried gaze, he guided them past the mouth of an alley in which nothing visibly ominous lurked, unless you left the street and moved further in along its narrow bricked walls, past the rats and the overflowing trashcans to reach an ordinary looking garage, inside of which were idling a row of seven school buses from which uniformed soldiers filed.

Saturday, November 1
 

A storefront clock whirred to life and chimed the midnight hour with muted resonance in the empty downtown streets. A few blocks away, leather swirled around the legs of a figure striding homeward.

"Did you see him?" Lalethki asked as they trailed the vampire back to his cemetery. They were keeping a safe distance, and the lowness of his whisper had more to do with the pain radiating through his jaw than a need for caution. He pressed the dripping, ice-filled handkerchief tighter to his cheek. "He socializes with humans, kills his own kind. Vamp should be a pariah."

"He has presence," noted Clude, pushing his glasses up his nose. One lens was cracked now. "Not to mention age, power, connections. And not all demons hold to the ancient code, or idealistic concepts like the brotherhood of hell." He gave Lalethki a pointed, ironical look. "We ourselves don't. You know the principles of the new order. Other races lack our discipline. They must be guided, regulated...controlled." The last word sank into a momentary silence.

"But he's not doing it for political reasons," Lal complained, after mulling this over.

Clude allowed himself a thin smile as he watched Spike disappear through the cemetery gate. "He will."

Buffy heard the heavy tread of his boots descending the ladder, and thought about hiding, just to make it all the more dramatic when she sprang her presence on him. Instead, she stood in the center of his crypt and folded her arms. Then laced them behind her back in a posture of nonchalance. Then, noticing her perky breasts, hastily folded them again.

He spotted as soon as he walked in, and paused a moment before continuing to the fridge, tossing his coat over a nearby chair on the way. That was promising, Buffy thought. He wasn't going to run off if he'd removed his coat.

"All topsy-turvy, you stalkin' me," Spike observed. He had his back to her and was inspecting the refrigerator's contents. He closed it without removing anything and scrounged a bottle from an open case of liquor.

"Who says I'm stalking you?" she challenged.

He turned his head in a raven's swivel; his gaze was piercing. The bad men in her mom's bad novels had gazes like that. Though if his name had been Lord Spike Ravenswood she might have gotten over him long ago.

"Smelled you in here every night this week," he said. "That flowery perfume of yours gets everywhere."

"It's soap," she said, hating that he'd known of every visit. "I don't wear perfume."

"It's not soap, pet." Spike watched her a moment, then took a drink.

Buffy shifted, stroked her fingers along each arm, nearly hugging herself. It was cold. Another winter for him, buried in this crypt like a popsicle in a deep freeze. She thought about their first time together after his return, how she'd invited him to live in her basement, and was glad now he'd turned her down. But she didn't want to come here when the nights were so chilly, when his sheets were. And his hands, under the sheets.

"I thought you might want to come over," she said, trying to make it sound like a peace offering and not her own lonely need. "Stay with me. Stay...the night."

Spike paced silently in front of her, muscles tense, as if thinking it through with his body. Something in the way he was moving alerted her. He halted as she stepped closer and ran her gaze down his torso. But when she reached out a hand to the top button of his shirt, he caught her wrist, held her eyes with decision. "Not tonight, love. I've got a headache." The words were lightly mocking, but his face was hard, devoid of humor.

"You're hurt." Buffy thought he must have taken one in the ribs fighting those demons earlier. It was probably wounded pride, not flesh, that made him keep her at bay.

"Not at all," he said, letting go of her wrist and moving casually off.

That only roused her instincts further. There was some wrongness here, because Spike was lying about something he shouldn't need to lie about. Wouldn't have bothered to lie about. Buffy could have tackled him to the floor and ripped open his shirt, but shook off that idea reluctantly. It would defeat the purpose.

"Let me see," she said quietly. She moved to his side, not touching but forcing him to turn by her own strength of will. He sighed and began unbuttoning his shirt one-handed, still holding the bottle in the other. After a moment Buffy brushed aside his fingers and took over. She could see stripes of red skin, but it wasn't until she pushed the shirt open that she saw the extent of it, what it was. Burns in the shape of a small cross had been pressed into chest and belly; most fresh and raw, others starting to fade.

Spike watched Buffy's face, thinking that even if he had her by his side for a century as he'd had Dru, he would never tire of looking at her, of cataloguing her every expression. Revealing one moment, indecipherable the next. And, well, yeah. A bloody girl, wasn't she? Bints were as changeable as the weather, brains opaque as aggies. No man knew what went on inside there, and it didn't help to hold the squishy mass in your hand either. What was she thinking now as she stared at his burnt skin, touched her fingers to him so lightly it felt like a kiss? Even as he asked himself the question, her face was changing, hardening into a subdued anger. That expression he knew.

"Who did this to you?"

Spike blinked, briefly thrown. Well. All right. He hadn't expected her to leap there. It tempted him to play the sympathy vote. "Why?" he drawled. "You going to beat him up for me?"

"Oh my god," she said, face threatening to crumple in a way that unmanned him instantly, went straight to his gut and made him ready to kill and die on her behalf, whatever it took to erase that horror. "Was it Xander? Did he do this?"

"Hell, no!" Shocked into blurting out the denial, he faintly gaped at her, and she pulled herself back together. When she'd redressed her face, covered that naked pain, Spike was able to relax. "It's interesting, though, Slayer--you taking this for Harris's handiwork and not, say, your pal Alex's, come back to work me over."

"This isn't his style," Buffy said tightly, right before her eyes widened and she processed the implication of her own words. "I mean, I didn't really think it was Xander. I just--" She moved her arms as if she couldn't find a place to put them; getting all worked up. Tense as a spring. "He's the only person I know who hates you this much," she finished. "At least, the only 'him'."

"Oh, a lot of people hate me." Spike took a swig from his bottle, feigning satisfaction. Inside though he could feel his mood twisting and blackening at the reminder of Xander and all her other friends.

"But this was personal." She stepped close again, fingers stroking the air at his chest, not quite touching. Making him ache even as he sank deeper into darkness. He wanted to pull away from her as far as he could go, away from the sympathy she offered, which always proved false in the end.

"Tell me," she said.

Spike swallowed and retreated from the lulling command of her voice. Not tonight, he thought. "Don't worry about it," he tossed off as he moved to the bed. Back safely turned, he made his voice light: "Did it myself. Got bored." He plonked down on the bedcovers, stretching out in a pose of comfort to regard her; admission made, distance established. "Terrible thing, boredom. The longer you walk this earth, the worse it grows."

"This is boredom?" She sounded horrified. "What, you couldn't watch Must See TV?"

"Well," he said, feeling viciousness take him in its grip, "Thought about ripping off a convenience store, but then I told myself you wouldn't like it." He let the cruel sing-song sink in before adding pointedly, "So I did this instead." Sucking in his cheeks, he savored her flinch of pain, the sweet zing of her guilt. There you go, bitch. Hurts, doesn't it?

Buffy was looking away from him, and he could sense her inner struggle, see it in her fists. To go, to stay. Whether to retaliate; or maybe just how. "Spike." She moved toward the bed and he tensed, more afraid of her gentleness than her strength. "I know it hurt you, that crack about, about keeping you on a leash. But I wasn't--" A swallow of her throat. "It wasn't serious." Almost gentle words, except her face was taut, voice a live wire.

Spike tipped his head back a little further. "Oh, but it was. You were right, love. And I've always known it. The only way to be with you is on a leash, all this libido locked up. Your bad fairy offered me the choice, didn't she--soul, demon. And what did I choose? You." Pressure was gathering in his chest and skull. "You think I don't rewind that little scene over and over?" He leaned forward abruptly, pointing to his head as his anger grew, wound his finger jerkily as if turning a movie reel. "Over and over. Every day. Every day I have a good laugh at myself. Thought I'd made the wrong choice for you. Turns out it was the right one, isn't that so, pet? Makes you wonder what kind of soft-headed berk sticks with a woman who only wants him if he's crippled and castrated."

"Crippled? You fight as hard as I do." Her eyes were flashing. "And the other thing I think I'd have noticed by now. God, I can't believe you're sitting there feeling sorry for yourself because you're not a psychotic thing feeding off my friends."

Any other time the backhanded compliment might have distracted him, but Spike brushed it off and stood, abandoning his bottle to spill across the sheets. "Oh, don't imagine that little fantasy hasn't crossed my mind, pet." He loomed, wanting to be close enough to watch her face. "Take this chip out and I'd make an ashtray out of Harris's thick skull and play dominos with the leftovers. Like this." He snapped his fingers nearly against her cheek.

She hit him of course. He let her, turning his head back to smile at her through the pain. The taste of his own blood only whetted his rage. Made him think of all the blood he'd gone without. He half-expected another blow, but Buffy just looked up at him, something like disappointment in her eyes. Something worse than anger, anyway. "Is that what you wanted?" she asked. "A chance to swagger, another dose of punishment?" She was trying to take the piss out of him, and Spike almost deflated under her cool regard.

"What I want," he said, hardening his resolve, "is for you to stand up to your friends. Admit I feed your nature." His eyes bore into hers. "I make you stronger, hone your edge."

"I don't need you," Buffy said immediately, striking out as if he'd attacked her.

Spike fumed and gripped her shoulders. "Need doesn't matter. Want does. Want me, Buffy. Want me. I'm a hard bastard. A killer. I'm rotten. Can't you love me for me and not in spite?" He knew how stupid the words were as soon as they left his mouth. She wasn't Jesus sodding Christ, bestowing blessings on the unworthy. He meant his plea anyway, couldn't help it. Couldn't help but hope she might finally bend to the sheer force of his will and love, the way she had for Angel.

"Who says I love you at all?" she asked. Her eyes were big and amazed. And then abruptly, horribly, she began to laugh. Not mockingly, but in honest amusement. "I can't believe you," she gasped through giggles. "Love you for being a murderer? Oh my god, Spike."

Spike's hands dropped from her shoulders, and he thought seriously about killing her. He could do it. In hot blood, in cold. With the crack of his fist against her throat. And he wondered how he could adore Drusilla's cruelty, and even that of Angelus once upon a time, but hate it in her. A golden cruelty, like sunshine; which was just fire, far away. If he loved even her cruelty, the way he loved every other particle of her...it would be too much. Burn him up.

"I mean," she laughed, "Come on. I'm sorry, but...that's too crazy even for you."

He'd asked her to care for him, and thought that even with all the troubles between them she'd come to accept that idea. Apparently care was a long way from love, as far as he was from sun. All her soft moans, her nails digging into his back, the way she breathed his name: meaningless, carrying her not one flight higher to love. Spike turned away and pressed the heel of his hand between his brows, where the ridges of his inner face were shifting wildly under the skin, trying to solidify.

"Go," he said, unsure if the word was a warning or a rejection. He heard her laughter hiccup to a stop, then a soft hand touched his shoulder. He whirled on her, showing his face, half-trapped between monster and man. He could still feel the crawling itch under the surface, the ribboning movement like wind across a lake.

"Get the hell out!" Spike bared his fangs in punctuation.

Buffy stepped back, arms raised in a defensive stance. "I don't want to go," she said, looking surprised--how had he surprised the bitch? Surely he was as sad and predictable as sun coming over the sodding hill. And was she a touch desperate? Not a candle to him. "Not like this," she said. "Spike--"

"Get. The. Bloody. Hell. OUT."  The last word roared from him and he swung his arm, knocking over a lamp, and then kicked his bedside table to splinters. The wall was right there, unforgiving stone ready to take his bloody fists, but he merely leaned against it, arms splayed like some luckless git being patted down on the roadside. Eyes closed, he listened to her silence, and then he listened to her leave.

When she passed outside the compass of his devotion, Spike sat heavily on the edge of the bed. His sodden bedsheets smelled bitter, as if an alkie had died in them, and the light made his head ache. He put his face in his hands, but the light poured through the fan of his fingers, the lamp's red shade like a lady's skirt gone askew as she lay broken on the ground, showing her shocking white legs. He couldn't bring himself to move or sweep it up, though. Couldn't set it right.

When he heard footsteps on the stairs, he lifted his head and snarled. Game-faced, he didn't think he could control himself any longer--but it wasn't her. Two sets of footsteps, and none of her grace. He hoped they'd be something he could kill, and smiled when he saw they were.

"What have we here?" Spike said, rounding a pillar and striking a pose to contemplate his visitors. He fancied himself as one of those poncey male models. His face wasn't so pretty right now, though, and he could see them growing wary, their dark gazes measuring his gold one before dropping to consider his wounded chest.

"Looks like the slayer doesn't take care of her toys," said the slightly taller demon, who wore spectacles. The way the light glanced off them irritated Spike, and he growled and sauntered forward. The demons exchanged a look. "We know you kill demon kind," said Specs quickly, holding up his hands to halt Spike's advance. "We're here to offer you a job. The pay is excellent, the benefits even more so."

Spike stopped a few inches away from the fellow and made a show of sniffing him. "That so," he said without interest. He straightened his head, attention sharpening until he saw a twitch of nervous eye behind glass. He carefully drew the spectacles off, smiled, then dropped them to the ground and crushed them underfoot. "You don't smell of money." He adjusted the brim of the demon's fedora to a jauntier tilt. "In this New Age cult, are you? Expect you've got a whole testimony you're just dying to unleash." Rage softened and sweetened his voice so words rolled out like molasses, and he ached to torture someone as slowly as seduction. "Go on, share. Give me the recruitment speech. I've heard it all, mate. Nothing you say can surprise me."

The demon's lips thinned into the approximation of a smile. "We'd like to offer you a Captain's commission in the Army of the New Grauth Reich."

Spike paused, briefly nonplussed. "Okay. That's...different. Never been offered a commission before. Still," he shrugged, "If you're the General, I'm gonna have to pass." He clamped a hand round the blighter's grey and greasy throat.

"I'm a civilian for now," Specs choked, tugging at Spike's wrist to dislodge his grip. After a moment he gave up and resumed passive strangulation. "Please hear me out."

"Well, since you say please." His hand tightened.

The shorter demon finally stirred, taking a document from his coat pocket. It was thick, creamy paper the likes of which Spike hadn't seen in a century, and he watched idly as Shorty unfolded it. After a throat clearing, he read: "The Imperial State of Grauth offers you the following, pursuant with activating a commission of Captain in the Army of the New Grauth Reich: a base salary of seventy thousand turgrik per annum. Furnished officer's quarters. One personal live-in servant. Three daily uniforms and accessories, including boots. One standard-issue sword--"

"All right," said Spike, rolling his eyes and releasing his grip. "I get the drift." Watchful and silent, Specs rubbed at his throat. Spike walked away to light a cigarette, giving himself time to think. Mad as hatters, they were. But they'd got some organization to them from the sound of things. And he had nothing better to do than look into it a bit further. Frowning, he tried to think of why this might be a bad idea, and was relieved when he came up blank. Success or failure, flesh or dust--what did it matter at this point; it was all just playing dice to while away the years. And besides. He could use a vacation from the human element about now.

Maybe it was time to see what these demons had to offer. 

"Fine," he said after a minute, turning. "I'm game. Lifelong dream of mine to join the army, be all that I can be. I feel manlier just thinkin' about it. Where do I sign?"

Gits one and two smiled knowingly at each other. "We can't finalize your commission here," said Specs. "Consider this an initial interview. To determine your level of interest. You'll need to meet with one of our recruitment officers next."

Spike was already buttoning up his shirt and shrugging into his coat. "Right. Let's be off then." He shook off his game face to give his visitors a winning smile. "Don't want to keep the brass waiting."

The Scoobs began trickling in after midnight, beginning with Xander and Anya. When they came in all mushy and whispery, Dawn feigned interest in the monster movie she was watching, even though the cheeso space vamps were pathetic compared to the real thing. She wondered if anyone in Hollywood have ever seen a real vampire. Well, there was Angel, who went to ritzy parties once in a while, but he didn't count because he could pass for human, the way Mister Bintliff, her history teacher, said light-skinned blacks sometimes used to pretend they were white. It was stupid. If you were going to be a vampire, Dawn thought, half the fun would be showing off, like terrorizing all the  jerks who used to make fun of you in high school just because your purse spilled open and your tampons and your stake rolled down the hall. Like comparisons between the two were so original and witty.

Of course, once you were turned, maybe you looked at things differently. Down in her heart of hearts, Dawn hoped she never got turned. It would kill Buffy. And Buffy would have to kill her. Unless Spike did. She sometimes suspected Spike might stick by her, if it happened. Might let her hang at his crypt until she got her own. Maybe with all her former keyness she'd turn out to be a good vampire, help Spike and her sister slay demons, feed only off bad guys. It wouldn't be so bad, if it happened like that.

Sometimes...sometimes she got the urge to kill things.

The space vamp with the big breasts straddled the clueless guy and began unbuttoning his shirt. "Sheesh," said Dawn in disgust. "She's got silver eyes. Doesn't he even see that?"

Anya crunched a potato chip consideringly. "I don't think he's looking that high."

"Yeah, she's all 'I vill vamp you vith my space breasts'," snarked Dawn.

"They do defy gravity, don't they?"

Xander made a faint throat-clearing sound from further down the couch, and Dawn's lips twitched. She didn't know how he could live with Anya and still wig over a little frank girl talk. It wasn't like she'd said 'tits' or even made that 'nipples like gumdrops' comment she'd been thinking about. "They're like party balloons," she said instead, then paused as two heads turned her way. "At a really skeezy party," Dawn amended uncomfortably.

"Gee," said Xander brightly, looking at his watch. "Getting late. I wonder where everyone is."

As if on cue, the front door opened, and Tara and Willow walked in on a breeze of cool air. Tara had her hands tucked into her cuffs for warmth, and gave Dawn a tiny smile. "Hey," she said. "Sorry we're late--we were going to call, but we met up with a vamp."

"He thought we were late-night snacks," added Willow.